New Guardian perk ideas

[damien_hine (EpicDamo)]

I don’t know about you guys, but I have enough in each of the Guardian trees that if they created new perks (assuming they came at the 150 point threshold), I could pick them all up straight away. So I’ve been thinking what would make some good new perks.

Good Guardian perks, in my opinion, can effectively buff previously weaker aspects of the game or add in entirely new abilities which effect all vault hunters and my ideas would look to stick within that vein.

Badonkadonks - Enforcer tree
Grenades gain +10% damage and splash radius for each grenade missing.
Again, grenades are one of the underperforming aspects of the game so this perk aims to address that. The closer you get to 0 grenades, the more powerful they become. Quite a high damage boost if played towards but not constantly available and not available to completely new vault hunters (who will not yet have all the grenade SDUs). Listed damage counts as v2 “damage” and not “grenade damage” to avoid a negative interaction with the 150 ASA grenade anointment.

Barrelarama - Survivor tree
Barrels do double damage to enemies… and half damage to you.
I was thinking about barrels a lot, as this is one I’ve seen expressed elsewhere. Life steal based on barrel explosions seemed like too much, immunity to barrel explosions felt like it would be taking away the risk/reward factor. In the end I settled on this - barrels being less risky to you and providing greater reward if you can use them to your advantage.

Broke Baby - Survivor tree
+5% damage reduction for each second your action skill is recharging.
Yesterday I was going through Guardian Takedown with my new mumma bear Moze and the time between action skills was the greatest killer. Something like this would have been really nice.

Crit-DOT… Crot? - Hunter tree
Damage over time caused by critical hits has 300% more damage.
Right now damage over time is one of the weakest forms of damage in the game, including when you spec into DOT builds on Amara/now Moze. This works to counteract that, with the critical hit trigger working to stop this being too OP or having unintentional side effects like Unleash the Dragon becoming far too powerful.

Jump good - Hunter tree
The vault hunter can jump once more when airborne.
Double jumping, Pre-Sequel style. Generally fun in most of the game, and makes jumping puzzles a whole lot less frustrating. Title is a reference to Samurai Jack.

[kenziesilk]

While I’m not sure we need more guardian perks, these elements of the game are among the most in need of shoring up. You’ve clearly put some thought into these, and I think they’re great ideas.

[hovismetaphor55]

Everything’s a nail - enforcer
All impact damage (so slam and slide) counts as melee, gaining all damage bonuses and effects.
Sliding into enemies has never done enough damage and it should count as a melee attack. Adding slam too would also boost it’s usefulness.

This Slab has swangas - enforcer
Sliding past an enemy, within a short distance, will count as if you slid into them, triggering any and all effects and dealing damage. This will not stop you or slow you down and can trigger on multiple enemies per slide.
This is based on the American car mods called Slab (slow low and banging) while swangas are the things that stick out from wheels like the spikes in ben-hur, and I figured Brick would like the Slab theme.

Stop, drop and roll over them - survivor
Sliding or slamming while suffering a DOT has a high chance to transfer the effect to the nearest enemy. If they are already suffering a DOT, this stacks.
Pretty sure sliding has some sort of DOT reduction effect, but being able to pass the effects instead would be cool.

Hold the line - survivor
Shield effects (like novas, spikes and boosters) are massively boosted in power.
They need a boost.

Adrenaline rush - hunter
While your shield is depleted, you gain up to +200% action skill cooldown, based on your missing health.
Amara in particular suffers from not being able to use topped off on some builds, but this would balance nicely against it, for all VHs.

MORE POWER - hunter
Gaining a guardian rank or level will reset the cooldown or duration of your action skill, and fill your health and shield.
So, like when you level up, but includes GR too, so you keep getting these boosts after hitting max level.

[renfried]

@damien_hine

Barrelarama - Survivor tree
Barrels do double damage to enemies… and half damage to you.

Barrels already do half damage to self. The problem is all of the damage modifiers that get applied to them. This would need to remove those for self damage to do any good.

[Analysis] Barrels and what makes them so dangerous

In this thread I’ll be talking about this: Chances are you’ve often gone insta-FFYL and/or suffered severe DOT especially in places like Slaughter Shaft and didn’t know why. Chances are you figured this has to do with barrels but you didn’t understand why they have such range and damage. I’ve analysed this and will explain what’s going on and just how big this problem actually is. What the hell is going on? Barrels aren’t just passive things that simply always do the same damage. If you (not …

Overall I like these ideas. Specifically the double jump. Could even add this to, or replace the ‘Come on and Slam’ perk.

[hovismetaphor55]

Seems obvious from the fact that they added a 2nd page that they planned to add more guardian perks, but then they just stopped. Maybe they’ve run out of ideas, in which case hope people sharing ideas will help, but seems more likely they’ve shifted focus to paid dlc or something or maybe just given up. Fingers crossed we get some new perks soon, though.

[garfield1283 (Kick the Bukkit)]

Don’t know what else they could possibly add

The slam perk was actually a band-aid because slam was just bad

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

here are my ideas

remove hallow point
remove ground breaker
remove topped off
remove too angry to die

now you have a passable guardain skills

[tysonyar (No! YOU have a timeout!)]

I agree with @Hexxusz0r at least insomuch as I think that the interaction between Hollow Point and Overkill can create some pretty silly results. But also to be fair, it’s not like you can’t turn off specific GR perks either.

I think the interaction between Hollow Point and Overkill is way, way more powerful than most players realize. Turn off these 2 GRs and assess for yourself how much more difficult the game becomes. I promise that you will be surprised at the difficulty spike you see.

I don’t really use any builds that rely on Groundbreaker or even any melee at all really, but GB also is super powerful.

[Hexxusz0r (Resident inZane)]

overkill is nowhere broken on it’s own if anything even with overkill single shot guns are still behind pure dps guns in every situation, while i think overkill should not exist either i did not include it in the list because it is not as broken as one’s listed.

[tysonyar (No! YOU have a timeout!)]

@Hexxusz0r It’s the interaction between the two that I was driving at - when you proc both at the same time, everything just dies. I don’t think the interaction is “broken” or anything, it just accounts for way more damage than most players realize, I think.

[hovismetaphor55]

So, maybe just cap the damage/stats on some of the perks?

Aside from the slam one, which obviously should have been how slam worked to begin with, I think the idea behind most of the perks are good. They just need some fine tuning. Sadly that’s true of a LOT of things in the game though and gearbox is either not making them better, or is actively making them worse.