There is a legendary class mod that increases Iron Bear duration by 50% and reduces fuel use by 50%. Combined with the action skill cooldown and fuel talents and there’s decent uptime. You just have to stay in M0 for the best experience
I thought Borderlands 1 & 2 were boring, and if memory serves TPS didn’t have a turret, so I’m ok with Iron Bear as turret, so I’m ok with the turret, especially since it’s amazing to look at. However, it’s balanced for M0, plus they did advertise a mech. I totally get wanting to be a MechWarrior
As you may know, it seems they recently nerfed the Auto Bear duration, but there is a legendary class mod for that now as well, Auto Bear in effect lasts several minutes instead of ~15 seconds. A true badass turret
If you must have legendaries first, one way would be to farm Slaughter Shaft. I must have seen 99% of legendaries by now multiple times; I plan on dropping down to M0 just to have Iron Bear / Auto Bear action, and on my favorite Slaughters (Slaughterstar 3000, here’s looking at you)
Btw, you don’t really need legendaries for M0, I found many purple weapons to be more fun, and still use a blue artifact with +102% slide speed and +33% aoe damage despite having 10+ legendary ones