Why no pet builds?

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Jack the Doppelganger
#61

I honestly don’t know. If you deploy them too far away from mobs (so you can pick them off from a nice distance) then the shotguns seems to miss a bit, and you lose out. I don’t find the damage increase to be so great, unless you’re pretty dag close, to actually be worth missing shots at range.

But this is just another one of those playstyle issues I was mentioning. You have to be somewhat aware of where you deploy your Jacks so you can get the most out of their damage output and yours. You have to deploy them in a spot where you can both engage enemies effectively, which means avoiding spots with too much cover for enemies, obstacles that could block shots, etc…

You have to work in tandem with your clones, and 90% of that battle is putting them in the right spot.

Lastly, about the shields, Black Hole (the nova takes enemies into integrity range most of the time), cryo nova, and avalanche (their roided melee attacks are actually fairly decent, and it gives them a constant damage boost of some kind when their shield is down).

#62

Generally its not worth worrying about maximizing Jacks DPS, mainly because maximum effectiveness Jacks have barely more impact than haphazard Jacks from my experience. If you kinda treat them like @Sljm treats the belt (used for their primary function, in this case kill skills, while adding nonzero DPS to your kit) you’ll have a much better time than putting all ur chips into them and hoping they’ll carry you.

#63

If having a tree designed around killing them somehow makes that their primary function, I don’t see why GB made a whole tree dedicated to the opposite.

As I said earlier, its something you should really just try for yourself. Personally, I find the Jackasses to be extremely effective for my playstyle. Me and Hoyle seem to have opposing views on this matter, as I’ve built my Jacks to carry me, and they do it well enought to kill every boss in the game. There is no content that you can’t do. If you want to speedrun or something it may not be a good idea, but if you want to try to play Jack in a new way, it is certainly a viable way to do things.

And if you enjoyed Axton, you’ll probably have a pretty good feel for it already, since Jackasses act like turrets anyway. And unlike DT, they don’t stand around staring at the unicorns in the sky while you’re trying to kill flying POS like RK5.

#64

Well the damage you get from killing them is better than the damage you get from keeping them alive, ergo primary function.

#65

And the damage you need to kill most enemies is not so much that the difference between them renders them ineffective.

1quad shot to the face vs a shot from the jackasses. If both kill an enemy in 1second,what is the difference between the two? The only enemies who have enough health for the distinction to really manifest itself are the last 3 bosses in the CV, vanilla game it doesn’t really make much of a difference.

#66

Uuuuuh, did I miss something in BL2? DT was awful in UVHM, he only served as a meatshield. I haven’t gotten too far in to UVHM for TPS as Jack yet, but most of my build still revolves around the Digi-Jacks. The badass ones deal a nice bit of damage, they redirect damage away from me, their mere presence creates a ton of damage and healing buffs, and of course Leadership.

I guess the main reason is simple: you should be doing most of the damage, not the pet. If your pet somehow manages to always exceed your gun’s DPS, you have a lot of things wrong there. I don’t want to sit back and have the pet play the game for me.

#67

You may not, but other people may. It’s an avenue worth exploring, since Jackasses are potential the most powerful pet in BL so far.

As to your other point, I don’t really get it. Are you saying you play with jackasses but they don’t outdamage you, or that you don’t play with them at all?

If it’s the former, I never said they should be the entirety of your DPS. They can make up a lot of it, but not all of it.

They kind of function like an AOE attack. They kill enemies you can’t see or don’t want to pay attention to. That in of itself raises DPS. They can kill multiple enemies in one blast. More DPS. Factor in bolster and TTF and you see what I’m getting at here.

#68

Not really sure if anyone cares at this point, but I just killed Eclipse/EOS in 10 minutes with this build.

Gear was:
Redundant shock taser
Shock Maliwan Splitter
Neutralizing Blowfly
Heartful Splogger

Eddie
Homing Quasar
Unrestrained VIP
Avalanche

Had to spec out of delegation for teamwork, since Eclipse was killing the weaker Jacks really fast and I needed a tad more tankiness. Still, for the most part, the fight was really easy. Spam bullets into his crit spot while Jacks are out, cower in fear when its on cooldown :grin:. Still, only went down twice, and still had a decent ammo count. And when the Jacks actually lived for a few seconds and got off some shots, they did some hefy damage to Eclipse and EOS. Overall I’m happy with how this turned out.

I’m thinking this fight may have gone a bit faster with tediore reloads if I could circle around his back to hit his crit spot, but I’m feeling far too lazy to try that :sweat_smile:. Maybe even glitched Maliwan lasers with the Overload glitch and Marginal benefits, sacrificing some points from integrity (which really does little to help during boss fights) and some of the game-changers. Either way though, I accomplished my goal of halfing the time.

I’m not really going to bother trying to optimize this run, because I’m enjoying just playing the game again instead of farming for stuff to make this one fight faster. Just posting this to show that you can do all of the content in the game with a pet build. There is nothing (besides flying enemies, still haven’t tried RK-5 with this) that a pet can’t do. This fight takes longer than other builds, but being able to stand in front of Eclipse and shoot him in the face is an asset on its own, especially in co-op, where Eclipse loves to spam those homing missiles.

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#69

I mean its k the Jacks dont really do much in raids anyhow 10 mins is your slow/average solo (I think my “hero build” kills eclipse eos in about 8-9 mins on average ands that’s literally me just facetanking him with no actual strategy), but I’ve been figuring out an Antagonist build that’ll be a thing soon enough (The key to good hero builds stay the hell away from their coms).

#70

I think we’re at an impasse here. I don’t understand what it is you consider good.

To me, 10 minutes with mostly found gear on Eclipse/EOS is pretty good. The fastest Jack speedkill that I recall was 3:37, so my kill was about 6 minutes longer than the fastest Jack kill without great gear. Not the best, but certainly not bad.

Besides, you said earlier that the Jacks didn’t do any damage vs bosses, and you had to carry them. The whole reason I posted all these times was to show that they can handle bosses.

Maybe we just gave different conceptions of what a good pet build is. To me, a pet build is Bolster, TTF, and PtR. Any build build that has PtR without Bolster or TTF isn’t really a pet build to me. Maybe you have a different idea of what it is that explains why I can’t understand you. Otherwise, I don’t really know what else I have to post here to prove my points. What is the basis of comparison here? I would like to know so I can better understand your position, because at the moment, your antagonist build, while interesting, doesn’t really sound like a pet build to me.

BTW, I don’t see how you can stay away from the pet COM’s. Bolster is thing that turns your jacks from distractions to offensive linesmen in boss fights.

#71

I’m saying your “pet” build is the equivalent of me standing there and shooting him for 10 minutes without any hero coms or special raiding gear just using the jacks to tank for me means that the point of “the jacks don’t do much damage vs eclipse” is valid.

Not to say pet builds are “bad” per se they’re fine for mobbing and whatnot but if your initial question was why no pet builds and the best answer is that there are better builds.

Oh an BTW my antagonist build does go down hero and I do have ptr ttf and bolster I just don’t boost them, I have heavy points in winning and delegation so I distribute damage to all three and basically never die with them up.

#72

Just tried Eclipse/ EOS again. Got 8 minutes this time, but the kicker is Eclipse went down in a minute. Got lucky with (what I presume to be) a double Jackass spawn. I guess Eclipse only attacked one of them, because the other wrecked his health (took it down to about 1/4 from full) after I took down the shield.

They also took out almost half of EOS’ health. I took down his shield, the Jack got 1 missile barrage off, and it took out enough damage to almost bypass the second phase (just had to shoot him about 10 times with the blowfly).

So they do, indeed, do damage to Eclipse and EOS. It takes some RNG (and the bosses having storm trooper aim at times), but they can and do inflict heavy damage on the bosses.

If I may ask you a question, what shield are you using? That may explain why you don’t notice the Jacks doing damage.

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#73

Well my build isn’t really a pet build its a tank build that picks up Jack perks to be more tanky I take all those skills but I take ttf ptr bolster. All I’m saying is your Jack dps build is about the same as a non investment tank Jack with very little damage overall that just stands there and shoots.

#74

What do you mean by “non-investment tank Jack”?
Also, weren’t you the one who insisted tank Jack was a bad place to start pet builds? What made you change your mind?

#75

The change was it wasn’t a pet build, it was a tank build that used the jacks as meat shields. The entire point is to have 50% damage relocation and restore 50% of your shield capacity when those jacks ate your damage. I really don’t like that the pet build coms that they give you are almost exactly the same, and both tank coms, because the Jacks damage isn’t worth the damage you give up by having constant killskills and infinite ammo. The biggest reason for this is that regardless of how epic you make your jacks they still drain a % of their health every second so unless you’er constanlty killing something and stay within your leash to your djs your bolster buffs die. I mean you said yourself that on your lucky runs you still do about on par as a normal jack that doesn’t invest anything into DJ damage.

My 2 cents, I’ll try the vip again but I already played with it once without liking it too much.

#76

I guess its just a playstyle thing then. I just specced out of delegation because I didn’t notice it doing anything, and I find it easy to stay near the Jacks so they can abuse Bolster. You only need to stay still for 5 seconds to double their damage, and they get kills pretty frequently.

And I don’t understand your second point. If by “normal Jack”, you mean a popping build, then wouldn’t my kill speed approaching that be a good thing? If you’re saying that my Jacks contributed as much damage as they would’ve had I not specced into them at all, then I’d have to disagree. When they did attack Eclipse, they put on some hurt. I’m still trying to figure out how to get it to happen more often (there seems to be an optimal distance to engage him at where the jacks can actually land a lot of shots on him before they die), but they definitely did more damage than they would have without the investment. They took out almost half of EOS’ health with 1 shot, there is no way a popping build is approaching that.

Still, neither one of us is going to convinve the other to like something they don’t jive with. I’ve got my way, you’ve got yours, and we’ve both killed the raid boss by now so there really isn’t much left to prove. There’s still a bit of build diversity in this game,and it seems like both our specs can handle the content.

#77

No a popping Jack gets 3 minute kills. By normal I was saying something along the lines of my no damage tank Jack.

I revisited the VIP and I can get roughly 5-6 min kils with them and a slightly optimized version of your build ( nothing much just made it work with a blue com and took some wierd skills out and put them into delegation). Theres merit to the build as you can get some heavy hitting cheap shots if their ai is any worse than yours. Any reason the avalanche is a thing it doesn’t boost their shots any more as far I’ve only seen it affect their kicks.

Edit: the same build can also take like 8 mins just because the Jacks randomly decide they don’t want to hit eclipse.

Eddit: it can also take like 12 minutes its an rng clownfiesta up in here.

#78

It does boost their shots. Roided digi missiles do 12 mil damage from what I’ve seen. It also boosts Optimism novas.

You are right about the RNG though. If Eclipse spawns in the wrong spot, the fight is instantly extended by a good 2 minutes. Still, being able to wreck Eclipse in a minute is still worth all the times he takes 3 or 4 minutes to me.

#79

WARNING: Long post ahead.

So I was thinking about what you said about staying away from the Hero COMs to make a good pet build, and I was looking through Jack’s COMs too see which ones would be the best options to explore outside of the VIP/ Protagonist, and I got an idea.

Pure pet builds miss the amount of DPS popping builds can get through infinite ammo and 24/7 kill skill abuse. So, even though pet builds (once the roid shield is done) can get higher burst damage, they can’t sustain that damage long enough to compete with popping builds with regards to damage.

In that case, the question becomes how to make a build that can sustain high DPS without needing kill skill abuse. And the answer lies with the Best Man COM, which also happens to be the COM used for his highest DPS build; tediore chucking.

Tediore chuck builds with Jack function independent of build. While the scav bonus from Sponsored By would no doubt be of great help to chucking, if the bonus from Integrity applies to chucks, that may make up the difference. If not, its a loss for sure, but the inclusion of Resolute could help to close the gap a bit.

The Best Man boosts Just Compensation, which obviously increase your damage with tediore reloads, grenades, and splash damage. However, what makes it a good pet COM is Lean On Me. Not only does it give a personal DPS boost to Jack, but it gives the Jackasses’ a 70% chance to do an extra 40% damage that scales with Bolster.

So, you get Lean on Me abuse, which is a DPS up for the Jacks as well, along with metric s**t tons of grenade and splash damage. Best part is, since the only other skill that could improve tediore chucks is Sponsored By, which again does not require digi-Jack murder, you don’t have to worry about missing damage from not popping. If anything, Projection builds might even be detrimental to chucking since AA could proc on the first shot of the mag, making it so you can’t reload.

So, perhaps something like this


or this

would suit your fancy. It would have synergy with grenade spamming, Overload glitch sniping, splash damage weaponry, and of course tediore reloads. It also opens the way for the Eridian Vanquisher to be used, since that COM is also fairly non-dependent on popping. CD is still a little to dependent on popping to work with a pure pet build IMO, but still, this is a pretty good compromise to me.

The Jacks get a pretty consistent 40% damage boost, you get a constant DPS increase, you have tediore chucking for bosses, and any variety of splash damage weaponry for mobbing. Plenty of choices in guns, shields, and grenades, and then there is ammo conservation in the form of the Jacks that kill enemies for you.

You probably tried this already, but still, any thoughts are aprreciated. I don’t really care too much for the original question at this point, becuase you are most definitely right in regards to DPS. There is no way a pet build approaches the DPS of a popping build. In that sense, popping builds are certainly superior to pet builds. However, while the DPS is superior, I still don’t think that the level of tankiness between the two is so far off that popping specs blow pet specs completely out of the water. I’m not quite sure popping Jack is more tanky than Hero Jack, but that may just be a playstyle issue (I personally don’t like teamwork that much).

Still, there are plenty of people out there who do still spec for the pets (although it seems like none of them are on these forums), and hopefully this thread will be of some use for them if they should stumble upon it. Besides, this thread has given me some ideas on different ways to spec my pet Jack so I’d like to keep it going and see what else there is to uncover.

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#80

Don’t have time for full analysis but you would want to find some space for a Scav Sponsor somewhere (Although its Really Tricky to accommodate all three trees with a Hero Mindset this is my first take: http://thepresequel.com/Jack/55514100010015050014104101505510000051/thebest,lv70) Im also concerned with how LOM is somewhat wasted in a chuck build bit it can work for mobbing with the IVF used as a gun
Lemme think about it