New skill tree confusion

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 SPOILERS
#1

So, I’m not too impressed by the new skill trees, overall, though I do like the sound of “phaseflare”. So far, not enough to make me want to buy the new DLC, but still 2 trees to come.

One thing I noticed is that the announcement on borderlands.com has 2 descriptions of skills which don’t match the skill trees available. Look below and see what you think. Hopefully gearbox will clear up the confusion.

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So, combo breaker has a chance to fully reset the cooldown… or always halves the cooldown?

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And monkey do triggers when the pet crits and boosts fl4k… or triggers when fl4k crits and boost the pet?
And the phrase “best of all, this passive has a short cooldown” (which the skill tree doesn’t show) is kind of insulting. You know what people love? Cooldowns, and not being able to use their skills, right? Um… no, gearbox, just no.

I’m guessing the announcement is wrong and the online trees are right, but maybe not. Guess we have to wait and see.
Just sucks that Gearbox can’t even get the announcement of these trees right, let alone implementing the trees themselves, which I’m not exactly confident in (especially given issues with the existing trees).

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#2

For the cooldown thing, I’m HOPING that they mean “best of all the cooldown is short” not that “everybody loves a good cooldown”.

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#3

Yeah, hope that’s what they meant. The wording just made me laugh, because it clearly could have been phrased better.
Given that the skill tree doesn’t have a cooldown listed, anyway. I’m also hoping that “best of all”, there isn’t any.

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#4

Not a huge fan of how melee heavy her new tree is.

#5

I’ve noticed that no matter how much Action Skill Cooldown % you have you always have to wait at least 5 seconds before you can use your action skill again.

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#6

I think it’s bugged, whenever I respec the cool down is initially faster but after save quitting it reverts to the 5 secs. Or maybe the respec is the bug, I just don’t know haha

#7

I didn’t notice that. I usually run the same Amara build for 2+ weeks depending on how much I like her build then I change so I wouldn’t notice the quick cooldown. I’ll try and pay attention next time I respec as Amara

#8

I don’t recall exactly how it works, but yes there is a respec glitch that affects the cool down timer.

#9

While I’m not as excited about how melee heavy the new tree is since she already has the brawl tree. I am excited for the new phaseflare. So far what I’ve seen, that thing is stupid OP.

Amara now has an AFK skill like iron bear and Zane’s clone. I mean, she was already broken, but it’s just getting ridiculous now.

Speaking of broken… Can Moze have her hex spam back? That was rather mild compared to what we have at this point.

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#10

Yes that bug is still there, its caused by the GR perk that speeds cooldown when shields are full, to avoid it you can remove your shield before doing a respec

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#11

Same issue again, with the new skill trees for Moze and Zane.

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So, does Limit Break increase the cooldown for each status effect currently active… or add a stack whenever triggering a status effect, with stacks being lost if no status effect is triggered for a set time?

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And does Running On Fumes trigger for 6 seconds after a status effect is applied… or last the entire duration of any/all status effects?

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And does Commitment boost gun damage and action skill DAMAGE… or gun damage and action skill COOLDOWN?

I genuinely don’t understand how they can still be making mistakes regarding what skills do. One of these must be wrong (or both, giving that it’s Gearbox, tbh), so why didn’t someone fact-check them before publishing them online.

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#12

I’d recommend you watch some of the big streamers break the new skills down. I think alot of what is on the right hand side in those images you shared is wrong or misleading. For instance, Commitment should only boost gun damage and cool down rate and is insane. Kill skill with no stack limit haha

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#13

There doesn’t seem to actually be an overall person in charge of changes/mods/nerfs/plans to this game any more. It would explain how disorganized and disconnected changes to the game are.

It also seems that ‘support’ is coming from about 1/10 of the time of one programmer.

On the other hand, there apparently IS a staff detailed to create code that may generate sales.

#14

As is very usual with these kinds of takes, you don’t have much of an idea of what it takes to make changes to a piece of software as complex as a video game.

I work in regular software. I did QA and regression testing yesterday (I’m a developer, we’re just helping cover resource while automation ramps up), and wrote one line of code. That, builds, and a couple of support escalations took my entire day. I only QA’d a subset of our app’s capabilities - we had it split over about ten people.

tl;dr: judging time spent solely on what you perceive the end result to be is a poor metric.

#15

Does commitment stack? Doesn’t mention it in the skill tree, but I guess that’s what they mean by “chaining it”, in the announcement (on the right).

And yeah, I’m sure I can find info on how the skills actually work, from the streamers or whatever, but it’s a sign of bad game design if the info listed for the skills is either wrong/misleading or not informative enough to allow us to figure them out without a bunch of testing or watching other people test them. And it’s a sign of bad marketing when your announcements give wrong/misleading information, too.

#16

Yea, it has infinite stacks. One of the streamers said he got like 50 stacks at one point, so an extra 1300% gun damage or some crazy number like that haha

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#17

I’m a retired hardware engineer. I’m aware of what you’re suggesting/pointing out. With respect, given the age of the game and it’s current state, I just don’t think they’re spending money on ‘support’. My opinion only.

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#18

My apologies for jumping the gun. I’d edit it out but it seems better to leave the silly assumption there.

I mean, who knows. There are so many variables in what folks can mean by support (actual support being handled primarily by 2K regardless - we have no direct line to Gearbox except these forums and social media, and both are relatively indirect). Games development is notoriously stingy on resource, and too many companies treat post-release / implementation support as an afterthought.

Personally, I think that even if developers are doing it on their own efforts (which I’d find disagreeable but whole other thread), it’s definitely more than a tenth, or even a fifth, of a good programmer’s time. But yeah. Even in that case, maybe management aren’t actively paying for it. That’d be dire, in my opinion, considering the game is actively producing content, but I’ve seen worse.

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#19

Well said.