Short Newbish Gaige questions

Borderlands 2 Gaige the Mechromancer
#25

My feeling would be that Gaige can snipe pretty competently up to 100-120 stacks depending on the make and individual parts of her weapon.

Thus, you might consider speccing for minimum stacks and triggering Discord at regular intervals to burn off the excess when you get between 100-150.
I’m suggesting this because Gaige has no crit bonuses whatever in her skill tree, which might feel underwhelming if you’re used to sniping as Zero. Shock Storm does cause bonus damage, but it has poor range.

For an elemental sniper you’d benefit from Anarchy since that synergizes with splash damage and I’m guessing Maliwans would be included as weapons of choice?

If you want to go with Pimpernels, Gaige is of course absolutely lethal with them - but so is everybody, and it’s not really a ‘true’ sniper build, perhaps…

@MidnightNova has a cool Jakobs build for Gaige here: [Build] JakobsGaige (A.K.A. Meredith) (lvl 72)
I think it was mainly intended to get the best out of the Unforgiven, but snipers like the Buffalo have a natural spot in there as well. Might be worth checking out.

#26

I’m not sure you’d need Typecast Iconoclast? Especially if you’re mainly shooting a sniper rifle with reduced capacity from Smaller Lighter… You wouldn’t be wanting huge stacks anyway, since at some point that would hurt your accuracy too much to snipe effectively. I’d put those points back into Interspersed Outburst, and maybe run with a class mod that boosts IO as well (although the More Pep nudges your IO proc chance up a bit too.) It would be interesting to try though!

#27

A Storm would also be good with the points in WDT/EB.

#28

Gah, multiple posts at once…

@charlestmattson : You wouldn’t be super accurate with Discord active. You’d be more accurate than you were, is the best I can say . I’ve always found the increased fire rate to be the better part of Discord.

@VaultHunter101, a Storm is an absolute monster with WDT/EB - but also with anarchy, since it’s one of the very few weapons to have DOT boosted by anarchy.
I’m not even sure I’d call it a sniper - much less a ‘pure’ one if that’s of interest - since it basically covers an enemy spawn in a blanket of shock and fire death.
Which is nice, of course.

#29

If SS range was better than we could have a good sniper setup. Either way, try a Necromancer COM with +6 WDT plus a boost to accuracy and some Maliwan Snider for the extra splash. Play with Anarchy as you will need the boost to effectivelly 0N0K.
Discord plays in a weird way with its accuracy boost, so maybe it and the accuracy boost from the COM could be able to hold your aim for longer as you stack up. When you feel impossible to score critical hits, hit Discord.
But I feel like Discord should be a key piece for this playstyle, so it should be up all the time.

You can try it with a Snider and, when things get intense, swap for lets say a Droog/Lyuuda and unleash lead into their critical spots.

#30

Just my 2 cents but: even though DT can cause a Shock Storm by killing foes my suggestion would be to move those points into So5G on your second build to make it look like this:
http://bl2skills.com/mechromancer.html#535100150040500055150501410140141000
while your first build I would make like this:
http://bl2skills.com/mechromancer.html#555100150551550105151551000000000000
I know rank skills got a boost but unless I was using a Storm I really haven’t used SS to any great degree…

#31

I played around with SS a bit in my build trials. If the nova radius was bigger, it would be more useful, but even when enemies are on top of each other, it seems to miss, a lot. Looks neat though. There is that

#32

Shock Storm is VERY situational, and that’s putting it lightly. As the user above me said, it’s radius needs to be bigger. But when it hits, it does some decent damage.

#33

True. I’m wondering if they’ve kept the radius so low since it procs on a DT kill as well? That wouldn’t matter as much in UVHM but they do have to consider balancing across all play modes.

Do you mean burning off all stacks and starting a fresh batch with RA? That could work of course, but my own feeling is that it’s easy to crit up to 80 stacks or so.
As you mentioned, though, the accuracy boost from Discord behaves strangely sometimes, especially in conjunction with the Necro COM.
It feels like the accuracy boost doesn’t get applied evenly across weapon types with that COM equipped and Discord active, although how I’d prove that is beyond me.

On a side note, ONOK capacity feels pretty secure on at least OP3-4 even at low stacks given that mobs will hardly ever aggro/seek cover if you toss a few longbow slag bonnies in their midst from your sniping nest.
While that makes absolutely no sense, I’m not complaining.

1 Like
#34

Enemies need to be in hugging distance for Shock Storm to take effect, so I do think it might be a attempt at balancing the skill for DT since he is a aggro magnet.

Still, I like Shock Storm now it does good damage, but I would love if the radius could be increased.

#35

Not burning all the stacks. Just keep it on until you clear the camp you are at then repeat. With RA and TI, you are going to end with some stacks even with Discord on all the time, as the point here is to one shot with snipers.
Maybe some pre-stack is needed, at least to the 100 stacks range so you can safely burn some of them through Discord and still keep a good amount after all the clean up.

My doubt now is what should be better, a Snider with a Necromancer COM or maybe stick with Jakobs ones and the Prodigy COM.
Also, Droogs seems pretty nice with TBH boost.

#36

Both of those combinations seem great.
Droog + TBH boost + lower base damage and DOT proc, though…yeah, could work with good shooting, but I can already hear the plaintive call: “Hey! Could you give me some of those bullets back?”
This might be a weapon where the lack of crit skills weighs heavy, although I’ll gladly keep an open mind since I haven’t tried one on her in ages.

#37

I wonder if that plays out due to the different parts that go into “accuracy”? If I remember correctly (not guaranteed because lack of coffee right now) there’s the weapon spread, sway, recovery, and chance to hit. (I don’t know if recoil fits under the accuracy umbrella or not, but that’s another potential factor.) Folks have already commented on discord reducing spread, which gives you a better chance of hitting if your aim centre is on target, but doesn’t help if you’ve struggling to tame that Hyperion beast before its first shot. There’s quite a bit going on under the hood, and I’m not sure you’d get the full picture without being able to dig into the actual code.

#38

Agreed. I only rarely look for dev blogs and so forth (not sure if I’m worried about immersion being broken or something) but a more detailed discussion about this from GBX would be very interesting.

It’s pretty rare for me to use manufacturer relics, but I’ve always felt that (apart from fire rate) acc. recovery is the most telling - although that’s arguably because the relics I have used have mostly been the Jakobs ones.

That’s probably a mistake, given that those relics might provide a better insight into the mechanics.

When triggering Discord with a Hyperion weapon I usually fire the first chance I get anyway, so I haven’t really thought about weapon sway for those weapons in particular.
The sooner those stabilizers can kick in, the better :acmwink:

But yeah, both sway and spread feel distinctly different when Discord is triggered, and then feel different again with a Necro COM - only a different sort of different…
(I think I could use some coffee too.)

#39

The Boston’s Best is kicking in gradually here.
:coffee:

#40

Yeah, I think that even swaping the Droog for a Lyuuda, the Snider should be the more ammo-efficient choice as the splash is boosted by Anarchy too.
One more thing to test, just need to reach 72/OP8 again :frowning:

#41

Talking about splash damage only makes me sad that the Cobra’s splash gets no benefit from Anarchy :confused:

1 Like
#42

Really?

#43

Been over a month now but I saw no change in the number for the splash damage when I gave the Cobra a spin; a Muck easily outperforms it.

#44

Never knew it. The Cobra is so screwed, oh my.
The splash isnt buffed by grenade damage nor Anarchy.