Which character leaves the most to be desired?

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

In terms of skill design, playstyle variety, gear options, etc. which character leaves you wanting more? If you look in each character’s dedicated topics it won’t be long before you find threads of bugged skills, skill & class mod redesign suggestions, proposed buffs (and nerfs), etc. This is a thread to compare the design strengths and weaknesses of each character.
This is not a discussion topic about DPS capabilities.

So, in your opinion which character most fails to live up to their potential?

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Amara, a good siren but not a good Amara
#2

Zane and Amara for sure.

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#3

I think I would have to say Zane. With Seein Dead, he can do OK but once you remove it the problems become apparent. He’s the only character where one class mod has such sway over whether he plays well or not. The others all have options. His green tree is also lacking in offensive options overall.

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#4

For me it’s Moze.

  • She only has 1 action skill compared to the others who have 3. This is a huge deal to me
  • Her blue tree is a Frankenstein’s Monster combination of splash, grenade, and Iron Bear skills. It’s cluttered and unfocused, while containing useless skills like Why Can’t I Carry All These Grenades and Explosive Punctuation (which is not useless, but has been highly criticized as redundant).
  • Rushin’ Offensive was botched when it was updated to give lifesteal. Now it’s clunky and frustrating to use
  • Torgue Cross-Promotion is the #1 cause of death among splash Moze players. It’s the kind of skill that you tolerate but don’t like
  • Her red tree capstone Tenacious Defense is a disappointment. Certainly not the worst capstone in the game, but difficult to call anything but disappointing (in my opinion)
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#5

IMO there is only one all around “good” vault hunter :
Fl4k.
Let me explain bit, i’m gonna go from which one is the “worst”, to the “best”. (worst = worst design, best = best design, i’m not going to talk about power).

Ok so the worst for me is Zane, the character needed a lot of buff at launch, and even that didn’t make him good enough. So they decided to introduce the seeing dead COM, which ruins all build diversity on him.
It’s a shame since he is one of the best character to play style wise.
His trees are well designed except the barrier one which has a crap capstone and offers no damage.
(If there was no seeing dead he would be 2nd or even 1st).

The second worst for me is Amara (or sal2.0).
I don’t feel the character has a true personality, and ties that bind needs to be reworked.
When the character only needs one skill to kill everything in m10, there’s an issue. You can do M10 with white gun as well.

Then comes Moze, she has some issues, like being the vh that is focused the most on some weapons (splash and big magazines), and can’t play with every weapon like other vhs do.
Then there is fire in the skag den, which like ties that bind needs a rework.
It’s not okay to get that much damage and render the weapon choice secondary.

I think Fl4k are the best overall since they can play with everything, has great coms (stalker, bounty hunter, deadeye, red fang).
They also are the most challenging to play, he has low durability and you need to think a bit, unlike other vhs which have crazy survivability/healing.

Again, some issues are due to how mayhem works, because of the scaling you can directly jump into m10 with moze and amara, and that’s not okay.

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#6

For me it has to be Amara, grab an enemy for TTB, shoot then a few times and kill the entire group, rinse and repeat. TTB+Indiscriminate is simply Blurred Trickster 2.0.

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#7

I think you nailed Zane’s two biggest problems pretty well.

  • By far the worst selection of legendary class mods. Seein’ Dead reigns supreme. It isn’t just better, it’s much better. I’ve seen videos of endgame Zane with other class mods being used but they always just look like novelty build showcases. They can’t do anything Seein’ Dead can’t do better.

  • His green tree is widely considered to be pretty weak. A lot of unimpressive skills like Adrenaline (which hardly makes a difference with the Guardian Perk, Topped Off), Stiff Upper Lip, Nerves of Steel, Refreshment (which is redundant since Zane also has Salvation), etc. Doesn’t help that Distributed Denial is at the top. It’s a weak skill tree with a very weak capstone.

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#8

Probably Zane. Don’t get me wrong, I love the lad, but he’s got issues.

1: Class Mods. For the other characters, the best class mod depends mostly on the build. Sure, every character has some that are not great, but there’s at least 2-3 that are equally good. For Zane, it doesn’t really matter, the best Class Mod is always gonna be Seein’ Dead. Why? Simple, because he’s 80% kill skills and if none of them are active he’s pretty weak. That puts him in a difficult spot if there’s a lot of tough enemies around or he’s in a boss fight without any minions to finish off. Sure, he’s got Seein’ Red, but that’s an ASS effect whereas Zane’s action skill loadout is all about uptime.
2: The Green Tree is pretty obsolete. There’s a few really good skills that you’ll want to have, like Brain Freeze or Confident Competence, but a lot of the stuff is just shield boosts that aren’t much fun to play with. Besides, all the survivability in there is basically outclassed just by having some points in Salvation which is a tier 2 skill in the blue tree. It also has by far the worst capstone. Another previous must have skill in CCC has simply become irrelevant since Seein’ Dead with Good Misfortune is more reliable and doesn’t outright limit you to to using a cryo weapon alongside the barrier. Simply put, Moze does the whole shield boosting business better and in a more interesting way and there’s really just not that much reason with Zane to make the character tankier if your other options revolve around damage and speed and more damage through speed.
That Green Tree really just needs a rework or Zane needs to be given an incentive to get all those shield boosts. I’m not saying nerf Seein’ Dead because without it Zane would just immediately drop to weakest Vault Hunter, but there need to be alternatives. Seein’ Dead being too good is only half the issue, the other half is the rest of the stuff being too bad.

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#9

I like to think of this as the Krieg syndrome. When you base a character nearly solely on kill skills it has several negative effects

• Lack of base damage, making those first few kills potentially very challenging to get. Then you need to maintain those kill skills making it difficult to maintain damage/survivability when there is a lack of mobs to kill.

• Very anti synergistic in co-op settings, it can be frustrating when you can’t maintain you needed kill skills when other players can take them so easily.

The only cure for this is reworking the skills though. Zane needs some of his better damage sources to be passive, this could weaken the crutch that is known as Seein’ Dead.

#10

Zane by a large margin. Without seeing dead or a hyper specific non-seeing dead build his options are limited

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#11

I wish Zane wasn’t solely based on kill skills. I wish he had more straight forward upgrades like Fl4k. If they maybe took some of fl4ks skills and Zanes and combined elements from both I think that Zane and Fl4k would be more interesting.
I main Zane after coming from Moze but just… Relying on movement speed for damage is just annoying sometimes.
Also, the barrier is so boring to me so I never spec into that tree. One reason I don’t is that I have to drop the shield and pick it back up to wear it. Why? Why can’t I just hold the button to deploy a body shield? That kills the flow.

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#12

fl4k has the worst capstone in the entire game - Dominance.

I was level 27 and read that skill description then noped. Thats how bad it is.

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#13

From a versatility perspective, definitely Zane.
Excepting a very few outlier players, Zane can be summed up in one simple COM. He had alot of issues, and GBX fix was simply one COM from DLC .
And nothing since. A shame because I love him as a character, just his mechanics need a ton of work.

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#14

I have spent most of my playtime on Moze so i everything i know about the other VHs are mostly what i’ve heard from others, so i have to say Moze.

She isn’t bad, she never were and especially not currently but her skill tree setups are very one dimensional, imo. Red tree is filled to the brim with gun damage that diminishes the more you invest in it at the cost of healt gate, and a capstone that is far from amazing, but not horrible(unless you trade away health gate). Also made seemingly pointless when consecutive hits and pearl exists. Green tree’s top half has everything you need and covers it so well that the bottom half looks even worse than it already is. Her blue tree, which may seem like the weakest of the 3 at first glance, synergize so well with almost all her class mods that it has become the corner stone for the majority of her builds. Moze is a one trick pony, but it’s such a good trick that it doesn’t even matter.

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#15

I’d definitely say that Zane has the biggest issue due to him being dependent on a class mod. However all the VH have issues where 1 skill tree houses the most useful skills by far. Zane’s blue tree, Amara’s blue tree, Moze’s blue tree and FL4K’s red tree.

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#16

Question to OP: are you implicitly assuming M10 and hardest content here?

I see a lot of Zane mentions, as in “only Seeing Dead is viable, so not good, bad design etc.”, but - who cares at lower difficulties? You actually have a lot of flexibility just from mix-and-match scenarios for action skills alone.

So many discussions here revolve around endgame, hardest content etc. - however (IMHO) game designer would be crazy to design/optimize for use cases which only a small portion of player base will experience.

I’d throw in my vote for Moze as being the most one-dimensional. She has a single option (more or less) for her action skill, and while in previous games that would be par for the course, in BL3 she will be compared to other VHs who are much more versatile and offer more interesting options.

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#17

I can usually find multiple ways to play each character that can work with different sides of my varying playstyles.

Zane is just fun. I can occasionally do a Support/Shield role to outlast the enemy or I can go full frenzy and just become an offense master with a bot and a clone destroying everything in my wake. Not to mention he has some of the best voice line in the game and just kinda feels like the coolest character in many respects.

FL4K has multiple pets and each of their Action Skills and trees attached genuinely feel unique and different. The Augments make me more comfortable with the actions skills that don’t tickle my fancy and I never feel like I’m wanting for options when I play as them. It feels like they have something for everyone.

Amara is a fun character that, while I never got the feel for in end-game content, can do a great job at either appealing to my love of up close and personal combat or my desire to be a space mage. I can find multiple ways to play as her that are just solid for me. She was also my first character and I love every second I play as her.

…Then there is Moze. Don’t get me wrong. She is strong, cool, and has some great one liners. I just only like one skill trees and, on top of that, her Iron Bear is pretty pointless last I checked. I just never felt I could connect or feel satisfied while playing as her. AoE is nice sometimes, but given how you can harm yourself, I never found it palatable in most situations. I like the guns, but what makes each character unique is their Action Skill and Moze doesn’t really HAVE one once you get to the late game and most every gun outperforms your hulking mech. She has often just come off as “Blank Slate Stereotype Soldier Person” to me. Again, she can be strong and I’m sure some people find her enjoyable enough. She just never jived with me personally.

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#18

Hm, from my experience, playing all characters to 60, Zane had the clunkiest leveling process and the least synergistic set of skills. Though I find the way to play at endgame really nice.

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#19

For me it has to be Zane. I don’t like any of his Action Skills or Skill Trees. He gets great lines, though.

1 Like
#20

I don’t think the discussion has to be anchored to specific things like M10 or the most difficult content. But I think you’re right, it would be useful to have some sort of general reference point because honestly anything players can throw together will destroy at lower difficulty levels. I’m thinking basically Mayhem Level 6 and above, since there is exclusive content locked behind M6+. I think that’s a good level where players can’t go in with a poor build and do well, but they certainly aren’t forced to use the best of the best items all the time in every slot. So there’s some good room to play around with things but there’s at least some semblance of the enemies putting up a fight.

1 Like