I run something very similar for general play. I love the one pump chump and its the most satisfying gun to use when it works ( ie no horrible modifiers). However, I do not take Donnybrook. I instead take Duct Tape 4/5.
Why Duct Tape? B/c I got lucky and found an anointed recurring hex cryo grenade. This grenade is amazing. Combine it with an icebreaker artifact and enjoy.
Also, an underrated gun is the quest weapon “Pa’s Rifle” It is a shock Jakobs assault rifle with high damage per bullet (~1450) and crits ricochet 3 bullets.
Main issue with Duct Tape for me is how long the cooldown is in the current iteration, as well as how the grenade tends to go all sorts of weird places when you fire it, espcially scoped. I used to run a grenadier Zane while leveling and had to stop because Duct-tape Mod kept killing me. My drone’s cooldown might be 15 seconds, but somehow it’s always firing that grenade when I need it to be fired the most, and it’s always at the right spot. So, for me Duct-tape Mod is a no-go, but ymmv. While Donnybrook isn’t a lot of extra damage, every little bit counts especially with massive amounts of damage multiplication, so I take whatever I can get.
What I will be excited about with a level-cap increase is seeing if I can get Cool, Calm, Collected back into the build, as having automatic shield regeneration is huge for getting follow-up amp shots.
it is still worth 1 point especially in open arenas, any homing nade will still do fine. now non atlas delivery modules indeed are tricky to use like that.
Hmm… Maybe with a homing grenade and One Pump Chump I could see that yes. Still I wouldn’t want to give up any gun damage to accomodate for that. Maybe when the level is raised I’ll consider it.
If you are able to kill enemies in one shot AND if you have the guardian rank perk “shield reboot”, you won’t need Cool, Calm, Collected for follow up amp shots. Your shield should immediately start recharging on the kill.
Duct-tape Mod is only as good as your grenade. Like I said, I have a recurring hex cryo grenade. it splits into 2 in air, then each into 3 mirvs… all homing. Using a one-pump chump and i shoot a grenade every 10s.
Sure, in theory I’ll kill every normal mob in one shot, but with all the variables of enemies, and damage bonuses at the time… There’ll be plenty of times an enemy won’t be one-shot. Also in boss scenarios, Cool, Calm, Collected paired with Brainfreeze would be your only reliable source of instant shield-regen.
So, for me, I’d rather have more sources of instant shield regen, and I also think the main two things this build lacks are Mayhem modifier flexibility, and durability. Sustain is still covered by Re-router itself with its heal, but my Zane can easily have his shield and health evaporated by a few big hits in rapid succession. By getting Cool, Calm, Collected back, as well as the damage resistance skills that I’d be populating while working my way down there, I’d gain back the durability, and even more sustain than before, while also helping add to the instant shield recharge mechanic that increases amp damage uptime.
Right now I’m working on another revision to the build that drops Donnybrook for more skill investments in Hitman to allow for better Mayhem modifier flexibility, so right now I don’t even have the points to spare for Duct Tape Mod.
But, I will say I do see the merit of the skill, and by all means use it if you want. You’re right it could be very good with a Hex, or any good homing grenade.
As far as snipers go, would the Cold Shoulder be good? I know it’s an ammo hog because of the x2 bullets per shot but its does high damage, good fire rate for a sniper, and freezes incredibly well. It won’t do much at all to Annointed enemies but for overall mobbing, it might work?
Yes, it would work. I wouldn’t say it’d be the most efficient, but it’d be serviceable until you found something better. Here’s the issue with it though, it having that x2 affix means that Playing Dirty only provides a 50% damage increase as opposed to 100% normally. Now, since it’s a strong sniper rifle already, this isn’t the end of the world. But, because of that fact, you’ll find a strong Jakobs bolt-action to surpass the Cold Shoulder for damage output.
But the underbarrel RPG is actually very nice with Playing Dirty as it allows you to fire two RPGs at once, so it would be very useful if used purely for the RPG.
Derchlands has just inadvertently given me a revelation about my build. His explanation of multi-pellet weapons’ damage with Overkill turns out to be happening for Playing Dirty as well. If an enemy has 99k hp, and each projectile deals 98k damage, then 196k damage will be shown and 97k damage will be added to overkill. But if each projectile deals 100k damage, then only one projectile will register, and only 1k damage is added to overkill pool. This is big for three reasons
Zane is missing out on at least half his overkill bonus in high damage scenarios with Playing Dirty spawning an extra projectile
This is why Zane’s one-shot kill playstyles do not seem to get as high numbers as other characters
Jakobs double ricochet is not going to happen all the time because of this
And another thing to consider is this is why Mayhem modifiers tend to swing the build both ways, as Mayhem mods that are buffing damage push Zane to this threshold very quickly, and also help push him past a lot faster too, so the Overkill “slump” isn’t noticed much.
But on the other hand, with a damage reduction, this damage threshold will effectively be a soft-cap for Zane’s overkill potential as it would take quite a few shots to overcome, and it’s very likely a miss will have happened by then.
To be clear I don’t think this breaks the build, as this specific behavior was present the entire time I made and used it, but it explains a lot of inconsistencies, and should be known when using Playing Dirty with Overkill.
Ooh. I had absolutely no idea that was happening. Wow… I’m gonna have to do some testing to see what’s going on there, but that’s a massive loss of damage in that case. I honestly might try testing without Playing Dirty at all, but that’s dependent on if I can get enough damage to still start building Overkill without it.
There’s one more major thing I finally noticed though, during all this. Overkill bases off of the most recent kill and that’s regardless of if there were multiple kills in a single shot. As a result, this means when you crit an enemy with a Jakobs weapon with high enough Overkill bonus damage for a ricochet projectile to kill an enemy, Overkill is going to take the damage from that ricochet, which will effectively reset your bonus to zero. You can see this happen in my video from 4:08 to 4:22 where in four shots I went from 383K on crit, to 273K on crit, to 44K on body shot, and then 93K on crit. I believe this also explains why my initial shot on Traunt was so low, because I unknowingly had my Overkill bonus reset just a few seconds prior to the fight. So, with that new knowledge in mind I’m seeking to find weapons that have high base damage, are single projectile and do not use the Jakobs ricochet mechanic. Jakobs ricochet is great for softening a room, but if a ricochet ends up killing just one enemy it’s almost guaranteed to reduce your damage back to base, and that’s terrible for a build that is reliant on damage. Dots also can do this, but since most of the dots in this game are pretty low damage they rarely kill so that’s not going to be too big of a deal, but Jakobs ricochets are full damage shots and can easily start killing when they’re above 100k damage.
Well that’s terrible. That alone would make a massive difference if that gets fixed. Makes me wonder what this build could do with all these issues fixed
That’s why my One Pump Chump was better in TVHM M3 than in Normal M3 with the same exact gun. I switched to a Cryo Zane build instead and didn’t go far enough down Hitman to get Playing Dirty. I use an Infiltrator mod with RR shield too. Despite less DPS from skills, the One Pump Chump wrecked Annointed enemies as long as I was moving and prioritizing the weak spawns first. On normal when I was focused on DPS with an Executor Class Mod that was actually level 50 with Jakobs crit buffs, I almost sold the thing because it had a minimal punch for something you have to reload so damn much.
Wanna know what else the Re-Router doesn’t work with? The Barrier capstone. I only tried a few shields that do so far but I don’t know if they all work in multiplayer yet. Transformer works the best of the ones I tried because of the absorption rate getting buffed. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Red Card seem to work too. Red Card has some potential with the right cryo slide ice breaker artifact… I guess lol
Yet another bummer for the Zane Gang. More skills not working as advertised/intended. I wish I played him as my last VH now instead of my first. He might be perfect in a few months but for now it’s frustrating AF to main Zane
Executor still is likely going to end up better for my build, as I would prefer having Confident Competence, and the build still is capable of significant damage, but it just gets a ton of inconsistencies and is currently not capable of stacking up Overkill bonuses linearly past 400k or so. I’ll play with Rough Rider and Infiltrator to see if it helps though. I currently am busy in rl so haven’t had time to test stuff and find the fixes, but when I do I’ll update the post.
I’ve never focused on stacking Overkill damage. I’m on xbox using a controller and not mouse & keyboard. I miss too much to rely on it personally. It seems that Playing Dirty is better to build up the damage quicker, but limits your overkill. I’m still a HUGE fan of Cold Bore and running 2 one pumps, swapping between them after each shot.
Sorry for the incoming wall of text, but these are the numbers I got from my testing a week ago. It would be great if someone else could test and verify as well. I’ve listed my guess at the formula (simplified). Base damage was shooting the car in Sanctuary with no action skills or damage buffs from artifact/class mod/shield.
Base = 571
Base + Re-Router = 1257 = Base x (1+1.2)
Base + Playing Dirty = 1143 = Base + Base
Base + Playing Dirty + Re-Router = 1828 = Base x (1+1.2) + Base
EDIT: Cold Bore… With Cold Bore, a 2nd number pops up (bonus cold damage) along with the original. Per Superfre34k below, Cold Bore is 0.3 x unreduced damage (base/.8 for kinetic vs armor) x armor effectiveness (1.5). [(1/.8) x 0.3 x 1.5]/1 = 0.5625
Base + Cold Bore = 571 + 321 — (321/571 = .56)
Base + Cold Bore + Re-Router = 1257 + 707 — (707/1257 = .56)
Base + Cold Bore + Playing Dirty = 1143 + 643 — (643/1143 = .56)
Base + Cold Bore + Playing Dirty + Re-Router = 1828 + 1028 — (1028/1828 = .56)
Now the real question, IMO… Does the Re-Router work with multi pellet shotguns/weapons? If the Re-Router amps all pellets of multi pellet weapons then either the re-router not working with playing dirty is a bug or the re-router working with multi pellet weapons is the bug. I do not know the dev’s intents. If the Re-Router does not work with multi pellet weapons and only boosts one of the pellets then I would say that the Re-Router not working with Playing Dirty is intended.