Nimbus + Ion Cannon = <3

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

I notice something about Nimbus that I haven’t seen told by me at all. Probably others know about it or maybe not but Nimbus damaging cloud seem to base on elemental damage on the weapon that is currently out.

I have a level 28 Sellout when I use Nimbus. The could damage tickles Jabber rare (Hellfire farming) at Mayhem 4.

I have level 50 Ion Cannon, fire element (unsure matching element with fire Nimbus matters) and Ion Cannon has a huge status damaging effect. So…

I damage Jabber on M4 with Nimbus. Can hold Ion before or switching it in during Nimbus cloud effect. It kills the Jabber quickly and I didn’t fire a bullet. I think I know what Class Mod I’m going fall in love with as I carry Ion Cannons with me. If I have to I can use shock or corrosive Nimbus for shield/armor types.

I feel late just now knowing Nimbus + Ion Cannon is a deadly combo. I gotta try this out on actual bosses to find out how much damage the cloud can do on tanky enemies

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#2

The damage is based on some combination of base and elemental damage that I gave up trying to find the ratio of. This is also only factoring the 2nd DOT of damage that has a chance to proc based on the % chance listed on the weapon. The original Nimbus DOT sucks and needs to be buffed.

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#3

The original Nimbus “dot” isn’t a dot at all, it’s just a damaging cloud that exists only to put the massive dot on the enemy. Buffing that dot would probably make nimbus broken, as I’ve already been able to solo the takedown with a nimbus/ion cannon build.

That said, I feel like something should be done on the card so that newer players don’t look at it, scoff at the 25 damage, and forget it exists

#4

In my opinion they need to buff the cloud dot and nerf the secondary dot. Becuase it is based on proc chance of the gun you have (Also works with non elemental for some reason) and a combination of base and elemental damage (also note two non elemental guns with similar base damage do different Nimbus damage, as well as two elemental guns with different base and same elemental.)

This would allow more consistent use than only relying on holding one gun. And if you change guns the nimbus isn’t snap shotting the cloud damage, so it can be reduced. The nimbus is very inconsistant and will only be effective with your strongest card damage gun in your hands at all times. This makes it severely weak compared to Spiritual Diver, Phasezerker, and Golden Rule.

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#5

That’s a fair read, though the dot plays better with Amara’s dot buffing skill than the cloud would, so it might be a step down. Making it not weapon dependant could be nice though. I doubt they’d make it as strong as with an ion cannon with +250% dam ASE, but being able to switch weapons could mitigate that as long as it doesn’t get down to pet/mech level insignificance.

Though if the dot effect switch to the cloud damage, it’d probably be a lot less effective against Wotan now that I think about it; the long duration of the dots does wonders for getting through the shield phases. And while it’s gear dependant, I will note it’s the only mod I’ve been able to beat Wotan with, Solo or with a partner (the driver is definitely better, but it’s a play style I’m terrible with). Still, it could definitely use some adjustments; if I didn’t love running around with ion cannons in general, it’d probably get a bit stale.

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#6

My build for Nimbus (I call it Me4tb4ll. Because cloudy with a chance of murder) is based on having a KotW for Shields, a Slowhand, an Ion Cannon, and a Scoville.

The Scoville has a high DoT and a wide aoe. With ttb it’ll spread damage back and forth like a nightmare while the cloud can do work on the main enemy. If you let the DoT tick off the KotW or Ion Cannon then switch to the Sco or Slow after the 16 or 12 k shows up. You can keep going. It’s a lot of weird, but holding a few high DoT weapons that are also good weapons is nice.

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#7

20200226_030018
20200226_0300181560×2080 1.85 MB

I just got this tonight and… it works. It’s chewed up both Gen. Traunt and Katagawa Ball so far. One grasp, one shot, watch their health fall off in huge chunks. Really satisfying.

#8

As for what the damage is based on:

A gun’s DOT damage is based on its gun damage. Each manufacturer/weapon type combination has a constant that multiplies this (e.g. Ion Cannon = 68.25%), so damage/s = gun damage × constant × “elemental damage” gun parts.

Thus, the Ion Cannon in the screenshot above has 20020 × 68.25% = 13663.65 dot damage.

This means that kinetic weapons have a “hidden” dot damage value that determines the Nimbus’s DOT just as if it were elemental. In fact, this means that kinetic ones actually deal the most Nimbus damage because gun damage is reduced on elemental weapons: the gun part that turns a weapon to element has an unlisted -20% gun damage penalty on shock/fire/corrosive, -25% on radiation and -15% on cryo. If you’ve got several guns of the same type, just take the one with the highest gun damage. 24000 gun dmg kinetic > 23000 dmg elemental.

It’s only based on the damage of a single projectile, so almost all ×2 versions of weapons do less Nimbus damage due to their gun damage penalty. One notable (and in this case most important) exception is the Ion Cannon which has no double-projectile damage penalty, so a ×2 does the same Nimbus damage as a ×1 one.

DOT chance however is also based on weapon type/manufacturer combination. The One Pump Chump deals the highest Nimbus damage of any Jakobs weapon, but at a pathetic 4% chance (assuming it’s the same as Hellwalker) it’s too unreliable, too often it doesn’t proc at all.

The same principle is used for DOT from Infusion btw.

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