#6

Hey there. It’s been a while, but I would like some thoughts on my build again. I need help deicing where to put my three reminding skill points. Zane (borderlands.com)

#7

I have many questions:

5 points in Domino Effect… why? It’s not a kill skill, so it doesn’t benefit from the kill skill boosting skills/coms. If you’re just moving down the tree, it’s almost unavoidable to put a point or 2 in. Except you’re not even taking Eraser? Why bother going down that far then? Fire rate/reload is good, sure, but you can get more than enough from a couple points in Cool Hand & Violent Violence from the tree you’re already investing heavily into.

Speaking of which, 5 points in Salvation? 1 point is more than enough. Put those points into CH & VV instead.

Brain Freeze I sorta understand, but again why bother if you weren’t planning on going down to CCC? And Adrenaline? You have infinitely stackable CDR from Commitment… Ditch all the green skills, and just finish with the purple capstone Our Man Flynt. Use a cryo weapon & aim down sights does the same thing, and deals more damage on top.

#8

I don’t really get why Eraser is a big deal? I know that crits will make the bullet go through enemies, but how often will enemies be line up to take advents of the extra damages?

#9

It can produce some rather interesting interactions with the hustler com and weapons like Convergence, Complex Root, Redistributer, etc. Otherwise, yeah, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me either.

What I was asking is if you aren’t taking Eraser or Our Man Flynt, why bother going past tier 2 skills at all? Domino effect isn’t impressive enough to warrant going that deep unless you’re going all the way. You could use those points to get 1 point in Duct Tape Mod (for the immunity), and any remaining on Donnybrook for another heavy damage buff.

#10

I also meant to say I’m genuinely curious about your reasoning as I’ve been tweaking my own skill tree that isn’t that far off from yours. What’s the setup for your gear, action skills, and playstyle?

[Edit] Also more specifically about Domino Effect… for 5 points you get 15% fire rate & 20% reload speed for 8 seconds after a crit. It’s a solid boost, not hard to maintain with repeated crits, and isn’t reliant on kills/seein dead. That’s all cool. I even run with points in it regularly, but it’s less of an “I need to take a tree this far and no farther” than it is an “I don’t feel bad about putting points here to get the next tier” kind of cool.

2 points in Violent Violence will give you 16% fire rate for 15 seconds at 2 stacks, and that’s with just the skill tree bonuses; without Seein’ Dead or Spy factored in.

Cool Hand is even better for reload speed as it gives you a flat bonus for each point on top of the kill skill itself. 2-3 points here is again a better return than Domino Effect.

That’s not to say DE is a bad thing, I just question it as a stopping point. If your goal is just the fire/reload buffs, you’ll get more out of CH & VV for a proportional investment. If you want to keep the points in DE, move some over from Salvation. You really, really don’t need more than 1 point… 3% of 1M damage is already more health than the average VH, and that’s lowball damage. 2 points is overkill :joy:

If you need to go that far in purple to unlock Proliferation, I understand, and I have two suggestions for a more effective distribution.

One route is minimum investment: leave everything in T1 & T2 as is, remove Fugitive (optional, but I find it to be just as wonky as it is on Moze, and it’s mutually exclusive from ADS), and put the remaining point(s) needed just to unlock the next tier. That gives you more points to play with elsewhere. There’s also an advantage here in that you can still get the capstone if you use the Spy COM.

The other route I’d suggest is finishing the purple tree. Our Man Flynt with a cryo weapon (which we already find desirable for Zane) does the same job as Brainfreeze but easier. ADS & crit.

#11

Although i dont always use brain freeze, its often nice to have for a bit of cc, but that said with his new tree, most things die so fast anyway once you have hit them a few times :grin:

#12

Made some changes to its base on what everyone said. Zane (borderlands.com)

#13

I’d make some adjustments still, but overall more than good enough–but really, put those 3 points from Sheer Will literally anywhere else. :wink:

With Commitment, the net value of any CDR from other skills/gear is effectively negative. 2-3 stacks is more than enough to allow cannon spamming.

This also makes Brain Drain mostly redundant as an augment; you can spam all you want without it. I use Colder Shoulder for the cryo synergies, but Wetwork is also good for mobbing. Basically, Brain Drain isn’t rewarding you for scoring a crit in a way that isn’t already covered by the skill tree itself.

For reference, here’s the most recent version of my Zane build that I’ve been rolling M10/11 with:

Frozen Snowshoe with ASS shield break + cryo MNTIS works with Our Man Flynt to snap freeze AoE around both you and what you’re aiming at.

The one thing I’m noticing more every day is that Commitment is so damn good that it makes almost anything viable after enough stacks. :man_shrugging:

#14

I might not be seeing what are you doing with this but would SYNCHRONICITY not really work since the MNTIS is only active for one second?

#15

It’s purely to get to Donnybrook and Duct Tape Mod. I don’t need mag size or duration, so Synchronicity is the least useless. I always have SNTNL out, and 20% isn’t nothing.

One of the reasons I don’t put anything in Renegade is because Donnybrook has regen more than covered. When it comes to recovery, I tend to prefer buffs that can be reliably triggered by MNTIS over a similar one that activates on crit, but that’s also just my personal preference.

I also like Donnybrook because my Seein’ Dead has +5 to it. At 10/5 2 stacks I’m getting +90% gun damage and 15% missing HP/s, which is active at essentially all times, and that gets me rolling real quick.

I talk a lot about how Commitment sorta overshadows all other damage buff kill skills right now, but there’s still a ton of value in diversifying. For one thing, I fully expect a cap in Commitment stacks to happen sooner or later, but also because it’s still gotta ramp up before it gets crazy. That’s just Zane, and more sources of damage buffs gets you up to the sweet spot faster.

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#16

Hey everyone, I’m somewhat new to playing Zane and I just started farming his new class mod in arms race. I was wondering if the class mod has an ability to roll +4 or +5 on commitment as I’ve yet to find a spy com that can.

#17

Art of War is beyond worthless.

Having 3 points into Tunnel Vision doesnt make sense when you have Man of Focus which gives around 150-200 percent accuracy and handling.

#18

Art of War is beyond worthless.

Why? I mean, you can spam your cannon, get 10 stacked and kill a boss with a one cirt. I think this is just my guess as I haven’t tested it out yet. and isn’t good to have more accuracy and handling with both Tunnel Vision and Man of Focus.

#19

Art of War at 5/5 gives 15% gun damage per stack… (it’s not like URAD or other bonus damage) 150% max. 10 action skill activations, for one shot. “Beyond worthless” is beyond an understatement!

With Seein Red (the skill, which you have in your build), every time you activate an action skill you get a stack of both AoW and Commitment at the same time, and each stack of Commitment literally does more than AoW point-for-point… for all shots, not just one.

Art of War is just not a good skill even at face value

#20

I see. Well taking all of what everyone said here, I made some new changes to my build. Take a look.
Zane (borderlands.com)

#21

You’re almost running my build at this point. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

But why aren’t you taking Our Man Flynt or Duct Tape Mod? You’ve stopped at an awkward place in the purple tree… seems like you purely want to shoot from the hip without aiming? Maybe it’s just playstyle differences, idk.

Duct Tape Mod, however, is huge. 1 point gives you immunity to all self-damage (except DoTs), including
damage from splash and action skills. I’d recommend trimming down blue or purple a little, but go 4/5 Donnybrook if you have to… it’s worth it to get that immunity.

#22

Yes, I’m shooting from the hip as it is a speedy build where the faster you move, the more damage you put out, and you can’t really sprit while aiming down.

#23

Right, sprint & ADS are mutually-exclusive, and that’s why I skip Fugitive. If it works for you, cool! I main Moze usually, and being accurate while sprinting with her snail pace is wonky enough as is… throw Zane’s mach speed on top… not for me, not with how this game performs on ps4… With my speed boosts active, my movement speed while aiming down sights is still faster than a normal VH sprinting.

While that’s just my personal, anecdotal experience (and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your build/style), I think the math actually favors ADS with the purple capstone (OMF) for total damage output.

For one thing, the damage boost from Violent Momentum (which I of course still use myself) is only gun damage. It only impacts the damage per pellet listed on the weapon card, but the bonus while aiming down sights from OMF is bonus damage based on the total damage dealt.

From just a damage formula standpoint, OMF is a more valuable multiplier on paper, but that depends. Does anyone know how VM actually scales with movement speed? I’ve heard it does not scale well at high speed, but I’d genuinely prefer to see an actual formula… I have lots of questions. Such as whether sprinting even has an effect at all.

The (gun damage) bonus is in proportion to walking speed (default/modified), but does that also serve as a soft cap? It’s entirely possible if the formula is just an integral evaluated from zero to (mod) walking speed. Lots of things with this skill that I’d love to know more about.

But what we ultimately want to know is the differential in total output for sprinting vs aiming down sights. Maximum (relative) movement speed is assumed for both, so we would want to know the difference in gun damage (xxx%) granted by VM between full sprinting speed and speed while aiming.

If that xxx% gun damage differential results in a <25% increase of total output, then you’re missing out on more damage by sprinting than if you moved slower while aiming.

For my skill/gear loadout, full (diminished) speed while ADS consistently dealt 20% more total damage per pellet than full sprinting speed while shooting from the hip. I cannot stress enough how your mileage may vary, and if anyone knows more definitive info about VM, please let me know!

#24

OMF is amazing at insta freezing.

My favorite gun to use lately is a cryo luciens call.

A quick ADS and shoot freezes, then you can just sprint and shoot at frozen enemies crits and tear them down.

Granted, if you were to ADS you would probably do a bit more damage, but VM scales well with speed and the survivability of not standing around comes into play too.

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#25

Since this is a thread regarding a crit-focused build involving MNTIS, I thought I would ask this question here: does Our Man Flynt apply to use of the MNTIS cannon while aiming down sights on the currently-equipped weapon? It appears to me that it does, but I cannot tell for certain.