I know how to kill them, like I said multiple times he was my 5th Militant in this run. That’s not the point of the topic.
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Ain’t trying to get into a fight guy. Just threw some strategy at ya. Seems everyone just wants to be mad and not constructive. Not my thing. GL
Do you have anything to say actually related to the topic or did you just come in here to try and teach me how to play?
The topic is about how unfun his mechanics are. And we are all being constructive talking about ways he could be made less annoying while still being a difficult enemy. Perhaps you missed the comments.
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I wonder if GBX will compensate us as combat mechanic devs if this conversation gets implemented as the “fix”? 
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I think they have an integral part of the game. There has to be fun and unfun moments in every game. The annoited militants are a way for the game to make you stop and re-evaluate your strategy and your gameplay. They suck, but not unbeatable. If they get “fixed”, there is going to be another character you will hate because they are “unfun”. Apparently they are not invincible or no one would have finished the game. There are 2 ways to look at a complaint. Either you complain and hope someone fixes it for you, or you can adjust your strategy and keep on keeping on. Yes I read the thread and it’s rinse and repeat for the upteenth time. If you back off far enough, it ends the fire attack. I offered some help instead of hopping on the hate wagon. I guess some people don’t want help. Enjoy your 5th annoited. Good luck man. It’s all good.
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I think there is a distinction between a “love to hate” sort of enemy which is a good thing for the game and just “hate” which is not.
To use BL2 examples, surveyors were a great enemy type that were super annoying sometimes. But there were enemies that just sucked. Anchormen in Scarlett’s DLC for example - they had broken hitboxes with attacks that could randomly go throw walls, and they would defend themselves with everyone’s favorite mechanic, bullet deflection.
To me anointed are kinda borderline right now. Cool concept but they are glitchy and the ai is pretty dumb sometimes. Anointed militants probably interrupt my gameplay less than than the tinks and giant purple orbs that just chase you forever (and kill your beloved pet!). But that doesn’t really mean they are a good enemy
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I agree.
There is “suck” and then there is stupid. The first time I ran into the infinite immune fire situation with an anointed it occurred to me how broken it would be in a closed area where there is no escape because you have no way to counter attack. Then I played the Anvil and there is this one TINY room with a white chest where you have to slide or crawl under the door. In that closed area a militant spawns and the only way to reliably kill him is to crawl back out, run to the end of the hallway, then try to shoot his feet IF you can actually see them. That feels more stupid than “suck” to me.
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I think they need to make Nog Shield Generator Bots an enemy. There’s nothing worse than having your second wind kill blocked by one of those showing up as you’re about to whack a basic trash dude.
*this was in response to surveyor as decent enemy *
This for realsies frustrates the CRAP out of me but I 
the fact that it’s in the game because it makes FFYL something to avoid instead of a non issue. Allow me to explain.
When they added ADS in FFYL to the game I appreciated it but I realized that FFYL may become trivialized because of it because it almost guarantees a second wind if you can land head shots. But with a smarter AI that is actively trying to stop us from getting second winds it makes FFYL something to avoid or strategically plan for, thus making this iteration of Borderlands even more dynamic and engaging than its predecessors.
I’ve stated this elsewhere but there is some real innovation in BL3. Unfortunately it’s over shadowed by the MANY bugs and performance issues that plague the game in its current form. But I am on the lookout for these innovations and appreciate that they exist and has moved this franchise forward.
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As someone who has practically built their play style around FFYL drops and revives (my Gaige ran a Black Hole, my Amara runs one now, and my Gaige eventually moved to a Hide of Terra which would blow up, give me boosted melee, and I’d be back up after breaking someone’s face in), that’s a disheartening viewpoint but I get it. I love the FFYL Mechanic.
Im in the “remove them from the game entirely” camp. But I’m dramatic
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That sounds more melodramatic than dramatic to me!
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I did say I’d like them removed from the game. And I was absolutely being melodramatic last night. Was just annoyed. But our conversation today grounded me and I would absolutely prefer they be adjusted to be a difficult enemy that just isn’t stupid.
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Heh, cruising up on 50 myself, these are among the worst for sure :P. I’m going to disagree with you on why tho.
This isn’t to say “you’re wrong” but I do want any devs who read this to understand that I know how they work and how to kill them. The ridiculous amount of time to be spent is the issue, not an inability to make them dead and move on to kill new things.
When they have the shield up the shield is what’s Immune. Using splash weapons will damage them, I use Alien barrel Shotguns, Vladoff heavies with Mortars etc. Alternatively shoot enemies behind it with a gun with bullets that Ricochet.
Alternatively bring a friend and bracket it ay 180 degrees. One in front, one behind, only shoot when you’re not on the side the shield is pointing at.
As a last resort, play Amara and just stick a giant fist under it. It’s shield goes out the side while it’s locked like all other militants.
Lastly, and I understand this will be a foreign concept to some, you can just kill everything else and leave it in your dust.
Just stay out of LoS and bounce around like a Kangaroo until you get there. It’s a puddle attack so only hurts while you’re standing in it. Sure, it occasionally catches you off guard with not a lot of health left but that’s not an issue in anything but M3 and M4 (more on this in a moment) and even then only if you haven’t left some trash standing just in case you need to get out of FFYL.
That aside, it’s going to remain annoying no matter what. The main problem with Anointed Militants is they scale so strongly with Mayhem Mode. Before that they’re fairly easy to kill between immunity phases. They’re a bullet sponge to start with though so the more bullet spongey the game gets the more backpacks of bullets the Anointed Militant can eat.
The unfortunate fact is they don’t actually work as designed once you get into M3+. They warp in front of other enemies to ‘protect’ them but the Anointed Militant is almost always the last thing left standing.
They’re only so frustrating for solo players as a result of the way the game uses a bullet-sponge approach to enemy scaling. They have one semi-immunity phase and one true immunity phase which amplifies their already large base health pool which is amplified by the bullet sponge method of scaling through Mayhem modes.
They can’t undo the base level because it will then trivialise it in anything under M3.
The blanket bullet sponge nature of scaling has been a mistake since day 1 and has created a number of enemies that ‘overscale’ with it and keep people unhappy.
Gearbox needs to find a way to address this problem for all of these enemies, not just anointed militants.
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Just want to clarify this part. I call it overpowered because you can’t do anything to him while he does it. Not because it kills me. If you look at the clip I provided I understand how to not die to it.
Another issue I do have with these guys is that they are just way too frequent. They take longer to kill then most bosses in the game. Yet I have to fight 5 of these “boss wannabe’s” in a short mobbing scenario- This is still the beginning of Anvil and I faced 5 of them already. Bosses should not be a common occurrence in normal mobbing imo. This is still ignoring the other anointed enemies I encountered at the same time, which I don’t mind as much because they all have counters and ways to kill them quicker.
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Even with solutions they’re a problem still when…
They doubling or tripling tag team at once
Interrupting a rare/boss farming which can be very tedious (like when I do my business with Sky Bullies)
I barely get by with them but what I would LOVE is they lose the teleportation. Let the Militants walk far to reach me. I just can’t deal with many of them at once
Gotcha. No need to be defensive ;). It’s like explaining something to a colleague in a staff meeting. You’re talking to them in ‘the conversation’ but the bosses are right there too and can hear exactly what’s going on ;).
When saying things in forums the people we really need to convince if we want things to change is Devs. Sometimes that means over-explaining so they understand that we have taken these things into account in formulating our opinions. It’s how we can stand out from the people who are just complaining or venting rather than providing constructive feedback.
I’m right there with you.
Again, I attribute this to how the game scales, not the mob itself. In M3 with a +70% elemental boost, multiple Anointed Militants are trivial unless you use a bullet hose and give them a chance to go into that invuln fire-spamming cycle. They’re dead easy to knock off with large hit weapons and a player will bypass that cycle.
M4 changes that by making everything a bullet sponge but not offering counterbalancing damage boosts which highlights a problem with how they scale.
Yeah, I farm Anvil myself where this isn’t unusual:
That’s 2 Militants, 1 Zealot, 2 Maniacs and an Aggro Tink not including the other Militant that was already dead before I started recording.
Mind you, I was testing out Amara skills I was unfamiliar with so triggered multiple spawns to make the load heavier.
But you can see that by using Amara and locking an Anointed Militant in place it’s not going to take me a minute 40 to kill just one. It doesn’t take me that long on Moze either. In some ways your video is a worse case scenario. Again, I’m just acknowledging it for the sake of Devs, it’s not a personal attack.
This is what you deal with, it’s a fair comment on your part.
Here’s the thing though. It’s not like you or I were ever in any real danger in the videos, I certainly pulled more at once but I always had something on hand to finish off if I needed to get out of FFYL too. I’m nearly 50, my reflexes aren’t what they used to be and judging by the aim on display in that video my eyes are also getting worse the greyer my heir gets. If I can handle it then it can’t be what we could call “challenging” in an industry-wide sense.
At some point we need to look at things like this and understand that this stuff is there to intentionally waste our time and eat through our ammo supply - or at least it’s considered an acceptable outcome of RNG spawns. There’s a very real chance here that a video showing off how long it takes to kill one isn’t telling Devs anything but “working as intended”.
Without discussing the possible intentions behind these things, or even if it’s actually intended or a by-product of Mayhem they aren’t adequately addressing, there’s little chance we’re going to change their minds on the minor concessions they already made.
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Got you wasn’t trying to be defensive just trying to clarify what I find OP about it.
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This is the most annoying mob in the game. If you get more than one of these mobs in a time trail, forget it, you won’t finish in time. Even with three people firing at this mob, it takes forever to die. Please remove from the game or fix the constant immunity from the shield or fire ability.
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Honestly, I was pretty frustrated too, but it’s not impossible. It just requires different strategy.
This was nothing compared to Megaman 3, or countless games from when we (the 40+) were kids.
I was way more frustrated with other sorts of bugs than the enemies.
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