#46

So been playing BL2 loads again (again :smirk: )

Maya is absolutely beastly, from start pretty much straight through to level 50, quite obviously the strongest and easiest to beast with.

Sal, for all his technical overpower, actually can be quite a chore to play with. Havenā€™t started TVHM with him yet but heā€™s heavily reliant on Gunzerk to do heavy damage and actually Gunzerk takes a while to cooldown (Maya is so quick, unbelievable, is it as quick as Zero?). Also Sal is quite evidently slower on his feet than Maya, before I really played (like really) I used to think all characters in this game basically were the same before skill etc. now I realise they are not.

Maya clearly is overpowered in this game, maybe only at around level 60 or something do other characters finally begin to become stronger than her. The developers really must have loved her, which kinda makes sense, she is very cool, and she is a Siren.

Oh and forget, the 2 bonus characters, Iā€™ve decided that the orginal 4 are the best!

#47

This depends entirely on how you choose to build him through NVHM into TVHM. My second Sal (currently sitting around level 38 in TVHM) is specced almost exclusively into the Brawn tree, which can make him quite speedy. (Axton also has a movement speed buff skill iirc) Alternatively, going down Rampage gets you Iā€™m Ready Already, which cuts cooldown nicely. It becomes a bit redundant for mobbing later on if you take Yippie Ki Yay, but itā€™s a nice skill. And Money Shot combined with small mag size weapons gives you some nice damage boost for NVHM/TVHM.

Thatā€™s one of the things I like about this game: you play, find what you like, have fun. And then if you want to, you can come back to some of the characters you didnā€™t enjoy so much the first time, dig a little deeper, find things you didnā€™t notice or fully appreciate the first time, and have even more fun!

So, donā€™t be too dismissive of the 2 bonus characters - you may actually find yourself coming back at some point the future and finding your inner Gaige or Krieg!

Most importantly, continue to have fun!

5 Likes
#48

maybe youā€™re right, but yeh just as I said Sal was heavily reliant on his action skill to deal big damage

Mayaā€™s cloud kill was stupidly overlypowered. Did they make it like that because they realized she was noob character of choice? I will be really interested in how far I can take her into UVHM now, without breaking sweat or effort

Axton needs a kill for his speed buff to kick in, Iā€™ve never been much of a fan of kill skills. I do like Axton very much as a character though, I made another thread where I theorized that he was the strongest character at around level 50 etc.

I played them both before, Gaige in particular did not appeal in taking any further than NVHM, she definitely probably was the most powerful of all characters at lower levels (as discussed before in this thread). Maybe one day in the distant future I might try Krieg with Torgue gun buildā€¦ who knows

#49

I get the impression that itā€™s an issue with how the damage numbers - and particularly the scaling - is coded within the game for the progression from starting NVHM through to level 72. A number of Mayaā€™s skills (like Cloud Kill) were always good in lower modes, but largely useless in UVHM thanks to the increased health, damage reduction, and health regeneration of enemies. It would seem that getting the skill to work well in UVHM means itā€™s somewhat OP in lower modes (especially with the fixed map/enemy levels through the main story). I am not complaining about the buff it got at all though - makes things more fun!

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#50

Maya and Axton are good at any level. Krieg is either good from the start or after lvl 32, depends on how you want to spec. Sal becomes really strong in uvhm if you grab a decent moxxie gun. Never really played zero or gaige

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#51

I think this word is incorrect. :slight_smile: I found cloudkill to be wildly OP throughout the game. All she has to do is throw a bullet at something (actual gun is irrelevant) and it will melt to death from the DoT. It becomes less absurd in UVHM when flesh and/or shielded enemies start to require actual gun damage for quick kills, but sheā€™s still able to one-bullet most armored enemies well into the OP levels. And as Derch showed she can kill OP8 Saturn with the level 2 starter pistol; if thatā€™s not ridiculously OP I donā€™t know what is! :slight_smile:

My understanding is that the current overpowered cloudkill was an overcorrection in the final patch. For most of the gameā€™s history (I wasnā€™t here at the time, so old-timers :older_man: please correct me if Iā€™m wrong!) cloudkill was pretty weak, which you can still see in a few old build or skill discussion threads where people skip cloudkill. The final patch fixed that, along with the rank-damage skills like Helios, Zeroā€™s Unforeseen, etc. They got the rank skills right, but boosted cloudkill to about twice what it should be in my opinion.

To me thatā€™s one of the most obvious things the UCP could have tried to address, but the UCPā€™s design philosophy is all buffs, no nerfs, so I stopped paying attention to them pretty early on.

A good approach to leveling Sal is to focus on getting his ā€œperma-zerkā€ skills - Last Longer, Yippie Ki Yay, Get Some - filled up as fast as you can. Once you have those, you should rarely fall out of zerk in combat. Remember that Get Some can proc on all sorts of things, like stalker poop and other breakable ā€œcontainersā€, barrels, firemelons, those shock tree things in Three Horns, etc.

Down Not Out is the other key Sal skill for leveling, in my opinion. It prevents FFYL from ending your zerk, and everyone takes a knee briefly now and then.

So I found Sal to match or pass Maya in effectiveness around the late 40s once he had LL/YKY/GS and DNO (with Money Shot on the way there). He does care about gear more than she does, though.

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#52

It was nearly useless

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#53

Cloudkill was a joke with a terrible punchline for years. At this point, it is awesome early game, and strong (but not truly OP) at OP8.

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#54

I still wish gearbox would give some updates to TPS and BL2

#55

For most of the gameā€™s history, Cloud Kill was probably considered the weakest one-point skill in the franchise. There have always been a few that were really niche (Hellfire Halitosis and One Two Boom come to mind), but none were as universally skipped as Cloud Kill.

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#56

Cloud kill is like the fastballā€¦it used to be complete ā– ā– ā– ā–  and now everyone loves it

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#57

From what I remember, it was OK in normal mode. I remember dinging up and getting it for the first time during my first-ever run through Bloodshot Stronghold on the way to rescue Roland (I was also overleveled because I was doing every side mission up to that point and had also kinda unintentionally XP farmed a lot by exploring various maps repeatedly over different play sessions.) I think I remember ditching it at some point during TVHM because it wasnā€™t doing any real appreciable damage anymore.

#58

Only weakness criticism I can offer for Maya is it appears she is levelling up much slower than other characters. Enemies killed with cloud kill give less xp?

That said, my Maya exactly 2 levels lower than my Axton I would say is equivalently powerful.

#59

No

Are you doing less side missions or is this just that weird thing I had with Salvador all over again?

#60

It used to be so bad that no one spent the point on it. It got overbuffed to eight in the last patch. Still, better this way than having a useless game changer skill.

If you want to see just how bad it used to be you can check out Bahroo on youtube where he and 3 other people are trying to take out a single OP8 Scaylion with just Cloudkill. They are not even tickling it. 4 digit damage numbers (with not K to follow it up) on OP8 was so bad itā€™s not even funny.

3 Likes
#61

Check my new thread guys!

I was able to fairly easily beat Finks Slaughterhouse on UVHM with Maya and recorded it for YouTube! I remember I tried this last year with Axton and couldnā€™t do it

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#62

Went back to playing Krieg, went down left skill tree as suggested

still he is doing very poor gun damage IMO

in TVHM he is only VH I couldnā€™t destroy Constructor holding Roland first time with, I had to go to Gulag

that is rather shocking to me tbh, every other VH I was able to destroy it first time with relative ease

if Maya is the game on easy mode, Iā€™m inclined to say perhaps Krieg is the game on hard?

1 Like
#63

You mind posting your skill tree and what gear you were using? Bloodlust Krieg makes certain types of gear really shine, so if you werenā€™t using those kinds of weapons, I can see where your ideas of him being poor with guns come from.

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#64

heā€™s level 35 like this http://bl2skills.com/psycho.html#52201411153120200000000000000000000

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#65

Definitely. A pure gun-based Krieg is one of the toughest classes to level in the game because he is much more gear-dependent than other classes and alot of his skills esp in the hellborn and mania tree will actually hurt the player without smart gear choices.

While most people go down bloodlust for gun krieg, I feel going down Hellborn and grabbing Elemental Empathy, Numbed Nerves, Elemental Elation and Delusional Damage would have been a wiser idea. Then make your way down the Bloodlust Tree in TVHM and grab Bloodbath.

Adaptive Shields are crucial.

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