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 kirsanth wrote:

 Aldarionn wrote:
smacks of butt-hurt designers who don't like that players found combinations of items that trivialize their half-assed encounters.

It is basically impossible that Gearbox did not know the Bee + conference call wrecked shop.

Especially with quotes of Randy Pitchford saying a (I think it was Rampage) Gunzerker dual wielding Conference calls while wearing a Bee is probably the most powerful build.

Lack of forethought seems more likely than lack of testing.
(I would be surprised if there is not a bug filed for that combo in their database somewhere marked "Won't Fix" or somesuch.)

They currently have a fix in the works for the Bee shield, which will significantly reduce the damage with Conference Call. It will only apply the damage once per trigger pull instead of once per projectile, so weapons that fire a spread of projectiles will get the damage spread out amongst all of the projectiles instead of having it applied to every single one. Granted, this doesn't stop silliness from Gaige with 600 Anarchy stacks (Slayer of Terramorphous class mod gives +4 to Preshrunk Cyberpunk, increasing stacking cap by 200) who gains over +1000% bonus damage on each of those pellets. I found that using the Bee was detrimental in that case because it has a slow recharge delay, and it did not add the damage before the 1000% multiplier, and the extra damage from Anarchy was so massive that the amount the Bee added was negligible. In fact, I would assume that build is far more potent than the 2x Conference Call + Bee Gunzerker. I killed Playthrough 2.5 Terramorphous in just over 2 clips from a Conference Call WITHOUT the bee. Factor in a level 50 Baby Maker to that equation and you have literally the highest DPS in the game with none of the accuracy penalties (they don't affect thrown grenades). Somehow I don't think they considered that when they made the Ordered Chaos tree. One can kill Hyperius the Invincible in less than 10 seconds using a Baby Maker and 600 Anarchy stacks.

 kirsanth wrote:
I imagine it was more them thinking about their planned "raid bosses" and deciding that since they were "Invincible" such combos would be fine - especially with a level cap increase theoretically* making it obsolete. Not that that was a good idea.


* see previous post about bee + shreddifier

Not sure what you mean here. If they are "Invincible" then people should not be able to solo them in seconds using an absurd class ability paired with an absurd weapon. They should be near impossible to kill without a full group of 4. I don't know about the new raid boss, but the other two are easily soloable, and thus do not live up to their "Invincible" name. The once per day lockout reminds me of daily quests from WoW, but with significantly less useful rewards. The Seraph crystals can only be used to buy Seraph items, and aside from the O-Negative Grenade Mod and the Evolution Shield they aren't worth the effort. Not a single one of the guns are worth the code used to make them because their accuracy is terrible and/or they fire slow projectiles.

Hopefully the next to DLC will do better because the Captain Scarlett content has very little re-play value to me, and I have no interest in the Torgue DLC.

I know there is a fix. I meant that there is 0 chance they did not foresee their use (and abuse it themselves).

As for the "Invincibles", the raid mobs all have that moniker and were, apparently, made so that regardless of silly DPS shenanigans with the Bee - thus the name.

I get that it does not work that way, but that is why I said it.

My issue was simply with the statement that implied the developers did not try, let alone understand, the silly combinations possible.
Preposterous.

editing to add:
To clarify, I am not saying that justifies anything. If anything it makes it worse.

It is clear this was a deliberate design decision that I agree with you was a bad one.

Nerfs to non-competitive, non-MMO games are bunk.
The entire reason I traded for a Conference Call was simply to try it out, I had been farming for one in futility for a while and I would have continued to do so had not the patch announcement come. Which literally means I am going to spend less time playing the game.
That is bad design.

THAT said, I still love it. Hard to beat co-op I can play with my lady.

 kirsanth wrote:
I know there is a fix. I meant that there is 0 chance they did not foresee their use (and abuse it themselves).

I'm sure they saw SOME of those combos coming, but probably not things like 600 Anarchy + Baby Maker. As for using them themselves, I don't see why they need to. They can just code whatever weapons into their accounts that they want, and thus don't need to farm.

 kirsanth wrote:
As for the "Invincibles", the raid mobs all have that moniker and were, apparently, made so that regardless of silly DPS shenanigans with the Bee - thus the name.

I get that it does not work that way, but that is why I said it.

Not sure I understand what you mean here. If they were supposed to be "Invincible" and the designers intended to make them live up to the moniker in practice regardless of the massive DPS combos available, then they failed miserably at their task. And if that was their intention, why make the raid lockout in the first place? It doesn't really make sense. Either they planned for the bosses to be so hard that the lockout was unnecessary, or they planed for people to break their game and put the lockout in to slow down the acquisition of crystals.

 kirsanth wrote:
My issue was simply with the statement that implied the developers did not try, let alone understand, the silly combinations possible.
Preposterous.

Again, I'm sure they knew about some of it in advance, but I'm also sure they did NOT know about some of it.

 kirsanth wrote:

To clarify, I am not saying that justifies anything. If anything it makes it worse.

It is clear this was a deliberate design decision that I agree with you was a bad one.

Agreed. It simply means that they knew in advance they would have to nerf items and put them in the game anyway.

 kirsanth wrote:
Nerfs to non-competitive, non-MMO games are bunk.

Not necessarily. Consider that a couple of players playing on a system want to get another couple random people to join them via matchmaking for whatever reason. They don't have any of this overpowered gear available to them, but the people that join them do have it and trivialize everything. What part about that is fun to the two people who started the match? Just because a game is non-competitive and non MMO does not mean balance should be thrown out the window. It should be a fair experience for everyone if they want to play online. I don't play online specifically because of this problem, and because I know it would simply be a massive fight for loot.

 kirsanth wrote:
The entire reason I traded for a Conference Call was simply to try it out, I had been farming for one in futility for a while and I would have continued to do so had not the patch announcement come. Which literally means I am going to spend less time playing the game.
That is bad design.

The Conference Call is still an excellent weapon regardless of what other gear you use it with. It's extremely useful against crows of enemies, and against very large targets like the Warrior, Teramorphous, Vermivorous, Etc...It's not exceptionally useful against small targets unless you can get close, because initial accuracy and stability are a problem. Try it on Gaige in a Discord build (IE always have Discord active and balance the buff with your Anarchy stack) and see how awesome it can be.

 kirsanth wrote:
THAT said, I still love it. Hard to beat co-op I can play with my lady.

Oh I still very much enjoy the game, but I don't like the tedium of leveling characters through the early parts, hence my system for powerleveling to 31, then blowing through playhtough 1 and starting on TVHM. Much more fun.

@avatar: level a bit on earlier content. 1-2 levels will make a world of difference. I found the arenas were great for xp and you'll get a couple levels just from trying and failing at lower levels.

The only clarifications I have are:
Invincibles, as I read it are called that because the dmg that you do is irrelevant - at least the new ones. There is a method to use that wins, not gear. Thus it would not matter what crazy gear combos people use.

The fact that you can play with other people and they can cheat does not mean the game designers need to change anything. If I am playing a co-op game for fun and wanted to join randoms (I don't, which may reinforce it for ME more) I would just leave if they were playing in a manner I did not like. I do not think the game designers need to change the game so that people cannot do what they want any more.

As for my CC - I know its good without the Bee. I will still use it. I meant that the fact that it is being nerfed "soon" means that I need to get one "soon" if I want to see the absurdity - which I did. So, instead of spending x time farming for it when the patch may be in x - 1 time, I used a shortcut that I would never have done otherwise.

As for why the Devs need to use it. . .need is the wrong word. I work in the industry and know these guys love their games. Yes, devs can hack their own games, but they also PLAY them. There is no reason to cheat when you know the game as well as them.

When QA read a list of the Legendary drops and was tasked with making sure they worked I can 100% guarantee that these sorts of things came up all the time. I bet this is where your statement about devs coding whatever they want. QA coded themselves every combo around and showed how they work - that is what they do.

I also doubt Anarchy (at al) surprised anyone at Gearbox with its power, after release.

Otherwise I agree 100%.

 pretre wrote:
@avatar: level a bit on earlier content. 1-2 levels will make a world of difference. I found the arenas were great for xp and you'll get a couple levels just from trying and failing at lower levels.

I'm trying the 5th round of CoS at level 29, and keep getting owned. Something in the waves manages to 1-shot my shield, and I die quickly from there; Buzzard waves just kill me within seconds of starting thanks to what appears to be absurd levels of damage from the airborne marauder weapons. If a single Buzzard manages to drop off its cargo of marauders, I'm finished, because I can't kill those guys before another pair are dropped off, and they then lay into me; shredding my shield as if it was paper. The last buzzard wave that finished me even managed to destroy a brand new turret I'd just thrown out in about the same time as they killed me, so I wasn't even taking their full firepower.

I dunno, but I feel like shields are pointless, seeing as how I've spent the majority of the last few levels in an almost perpetual state of shieldlessness during firefights.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Every time I load this game up, it seems only to get more annoying. Either combat is really easy, or really difficult; taking out the pipelines in the Arid Nexus (yes, I'm still only level 28 because every time I play this game I come off it never wanting to see it again), for example, all I fought were SGT Loaders, with the exception of two IONs in an enclosed space, and two EXPs in an enclosed space for the first two stations, and the third station spawned a rocket engy who appeared from nowhere in the middle of a firefight, nuked the car I was using for cover, and refused to die afterwards, eventually caving my skull in with another missile just after I Second Winded off my turret.

That area of the game is particularly annoying because of the enclosed space, but I will warn you that you are a bit low level for it. As mentioned, you might want to get to a higher level before continuing on that area. Lynchwood might be a good place for your current level to get some experience, as there are a number of quests and everything in playthrough 1 should be roughly level 27-29.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Now in the Badlands area, and I'm exploring Fyrestone, minding my own business, when this Saturn thing appears and tears me a new one. My turret included, I expended 12 corrosion missiles, 8 high-damage MIRVs, and most of a corrosion SMG to even get it to half health before I kicked the bucket.

Saturn is a beast, however he is NOT an insurmountable opponent. There are a few things you need to know about him before you take him on. First, he has no critical hit spot, so you cannot do any extra damage to him that way, and as far as I can tell he is immune to status effects (corrosion, fire, etc...), but not immune to elemental damage. Second, he has turrets mounted in four locations on his body, and these turrets CAN be destroyed, and do NOT respawn afterward, which significantly cuts down his firepower. Also, they can be used for second winds. Third, his firing pattern for his laser cannons is predictable. They charge up, then fire a devastating blast that homes in, but they are slow moving. His missiles fire much like Constructor missiles, so keep that in mind.

With all of that knowledge, the best way to defeat him is to use cover to your advantage. There is a large crate near by, and a corrugated metal fence leading back toward the town of Fyrestone. His shots cannot penetrate these if you are standing right up next to them, and he is such a slow moving target that you can easily hide behind the crate and take shots at him around the corner, then fall back behind the fence and continue. There are even more hiding spots inside of the fence, so if he follows you in there just keep moving from cover to cover. The idea is to stick out far enough to blast him, but not so far that his main gun can hit you, then duck behind cover when the missiles are fired. With a good caustic SMG and a decent missile launcher I'm usually able to take him down just falling back to the fence. Just be sure to clear the area of JNK Loaders first.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
I started the commando with the turret being the best thing since sliced bread, now he gets blown up moments after I sling him out; I can barely find time to reach cover and/or reload a weapon before he goes down. Not like cover's much use anyway: if I pop my head out, it gets torn off, if I stay there, they eventually walk right up to me and do the same thing.

What spec are you using? Be specific on talents if you are able, and use this link to post your tree. If I see what you have taken, I can help you out a little better and perhaps suggest a spec that might make leveling up a bit easier. Personally I recommend a Survival build, as it generally lends itself well to keeping Axton alive. Pair it with an Engineer class mod. At level 28, I might try this build since it gives you health regen when your shields are fully charged, and killing enemies quickly recharges your shields. Once you get 3 more levels, you will have two turrets you can stick to walls projecting forcefields that you can use to block enemy fire.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Fights nowadays consist of my shield being busted about 5 seconds in, and me running around like a headless chicken because I can't kill anything quickly enough, relying solely on corrosive ticks to keep refreshing my health regen.

Your shields are guaranteed to go down. The question is, what kind of shield are you using. Nova shields are great because they take out enemies close to you like Maniacs, and adaptive shields are great because they give you a health boost and resistance against elemental effects.

I would expect you to be having this kind of trouble with a character like Zer0 or Salvador, but not Axton. His abilities are too strong. Unless you are using massively underleveled weapons or trying to fight enemies way higher level than you, you should not be having so many problems. If you are on 360 I will be more than willing to give you some fire support with one of my characters and help you get through some of the tougher parts of the game, or help you finish off some quests for XP, or even take you in for a few Terramorphous kills to get a couple levels and some cash/loot. My Gamertag is AldarionnEB, so hit me up if you want some help. Just send me a message and let me know who you are.

kirsanth wrote:The only clarifications I have are:
Invincibles, as I read it are called that because the dmg that you do is irrelevant - at least the new ones. There is a method to use that wins, not gear. Thus it would not matter what crazy gear combos people use.

Hyperius is killed via weapon damage, and with the right combination can be killed without using any "method" or "mechanics". Master Gee is killed using a mechanic, but that mechanic is made trivial by a "safe spot" in the zone, and a shield that makes you immune to corrosive damage. The new one I cannot speak about, because I have not seen his fight. I don't have that DLC. They failed at making them "Invincible" in that respect.

kirsanth wrote:The fact that you can play with other people and they can cheat does not mean the game designers need to change anything. If I am playing a co-op game for fun and wanted to join randoms (I don't, which may reinforce it for ME more) I would just leave if they were playing in a manner I did not like. I do not think the game designers need to change the game so that people cannot do what they want any more.

The weapon combos mentioned are not cheating. They are combining legitimate items in the game that serve to trivialize content. It's not an exploit or a cheat if the items are legit. It's simply poor game design, and asking that they fix that game design is not preventing people from playing the game the way they want to play. It's removing a broken combination that should never have existed in the first place. I don't necessarily agree with that position 100%, but that's the argument nerfers will make. Personally I say don't play online unless you are willing to deal with randoms (which I am not, so I don't play online except with friends).

kirsanth wrote:As for my CC - I know its good without the Bee. I will still use it. I meant that the fact that it is being nerfed "soon" means that I need to get one "soon" if I want to see the absurdity - which I did. So, instead of spending x time farming for it when the patch may be in x - 1 time, I used a shortcut that I would never have done otherwise.

Fiar enough. I see what you mean.

kirsanth wrote:As for why the Devs need to use it. . .need is the wrong word. I work in the industry and know these guys love their games. Yes, devs can hack their own games, but they also PLAY them. There is no reason to cheat when you know the game as well as them.

So they played with it simply because it's fun to use broke-ass stuff to do ridiculous damage and watch everything fall to pieces around you? I guess I can get behind that. I only use my CC + Bee for farming at this point. I use a Striker for most other content, and a selection of SMG's/Sniper Rifles depending on character.

kirsanth wrote:When QA read a list of the Legendary drops and was tasked with making sure they worked I can 100% guarantee that these sorts of things came up all the time. I bet this is where your statement about devs coding whatever they want. QA coded themselves every combo around and showed how they work - that is what they do.

I also doubt Anarchy (at al) surprised anyone at Gearbox with its power, after release.

I suppose it does make sense for Gaige to be higher powered than the other characters since she is paid DLC, but 600 Anarchy stacks is a bit.....much. It's hilarious to use with Conference Call though, because the bullets literally fly everywhere, including directly at you. If you could be hit by your own bullets, I would kill myself more often than anyone else with that spec.

 Aldarionn wrote:
Hyperius is killed via weapon damage

That one I have not fought yet. The new DLC guy. . .honestly not too sure, but damage alone simply did not cut it.

 Aldarionn wrote:
The weapon combos mentioned are not cheating. . .It's simply poor game design

Exactly. However there are methods to cheat, and it relates, that is why I mentioned them separately.

Also, on the off chance you are playing on PS3 Avatar 720, I would be willing to help out. The only issue is that the only character I have near that level is 25 Mechromancer currently. Though I guarantee my 50 Siren could help you stay alive.

Omg, got my zero to 30. I had saved all the good snipers and class mods from my other playthroughs. He is insane. He has captain Scarlett's pimpernel and killed Saturn in like 3 or 4 shots. ( I think each piece of the spread hit him so it wa like a sniper shotgun.)

Constructors and badass cons are 4 or 5.

I'm going to try out the melee thing as well now that I get the never come out of deception skill.

 Aldarionn wrote:
Shields are less about capacity and more about what they give you. Health regeneration

Wait. They can still do that?

I have never seen a shield with health regen in the sequel.
TELL ME MORE!

 kirsanth wrote:

 Aldarionn wrote:
Shields are less about capacity and more about what they give you. Health regeneration

Wait. They can still do that?

I have never seen a shield with health regen in the sequel.
TELL ME MORE!

Well, they are not common, but they DO exist. The Neogenator is a Legendary that increases health, adds health regen, and has a lightning fast recharge. I use it against Terramorphous for its recharge, because capacity does not matter at all. All of his strikes knock you down to health gate. The Seraph shield called Evolution also does the same thing, but the recharge is not as quick. I do like that it increases health capacity when your action skill is active though. It's one of only two Seraph items I am seriously considering farming for.

I have a Neogenator, and if you happen to play on 360 I'll dupe it for you.

Gadzooks man, thank you kindly!

I have no idea how we over-looked those. . .
Well, the non-Seraph one, anyway. We have not done too much with that expansion yet, but you just gave me a great reason to go for it.

And no, PS3.

Yeah, the Neogenator can be relatively easily farmed once you do the Monster Mash quests. It drops from Spycho, and he's not too far away from a fast travel.....which reminds me. I need to farm Scorch for a Hellfire. He's in the same zone.

Bummer about PS3. A lot of people in this thread seem to be on PS3, and only a few on 360.

My roomie, another buddy and I just killed Terramorphous and he dropped us a legendary commando mod. It's only +4 to each area though, not a +5 or +6. Darn...

Wow. Totally owned warrior and jack. Got a 30 CC. Zero is fun. Off to tvhm.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My roomie, another buddy and I just killed Terramorphous and he dropped us a legendary commando mod. It's only +4 to each area though, not a +5 or +6. Darn...

All of the Slayer of Terramorphous mods are +4 to five different skills. Most classes get +4 to five tier-one skills, but the Mechromancer gets +4 to a bunch of skills across all trees and tiers. They all have an increase to burn chance, burn damage and health. The only class mod that gives higher bonuses to all skills is the Legendary <Insert Class Here> Mod dropped by Vermivorous which gives +5 to six different skills for some classes, and five different skills for other classes. Again, they are usually tier-one skills, but the Mechromancer gets a bunch of different skills across all tiers in the BFF and LBT tree.

If you want a specific class mod to give a larger bonus to one skill, you need a purple class mod of some variety or another, and they will give +5/+4/+3 to three different skills, and will be named differently depending on which skill gets the +5.

Blood of Terramorphous = I no longer feel like I NEED a nurse mod.
Legendary Siren mod is cool. Glad that thing came from a chest, even spawning Vermivorous is a pain with just 2 people.

Thanks again for the mention of the shields, Aldarionn; we finished the quest and farmed for the first one a bit, and did a few more missions of the DLC for the second last night with some 50s.

Also pretre,
I killed that thing over 100 times without seeing a CC.
Still haven't seen one drop, actually, I just stopped counting. Congratulations!

Heh. Too bad it was only level 30. it's serving him pretty well right now. I've got 2-4 sniper rifles and CC keeping him alive right now.

Had more difficulty with Flynt, simply because of his absurdly hard to hit crit spot. Still running right through though. Going to try to get to 50 with minimal quests so I can beat War/Terra and get Playthrough 2.5 rewards.

Can someone explain to me how this max level thing works?
I want to get the unique weapons at level 50.

You beat the main game on TVHM without doing ANY side missions that give you any items you want (deadly thumper, flame of the firehawk, etc) and after you beat Warrior and Terramorphous, all the quest enemies will be 50, as will the rewards. Go ahead and do all side missions to build XP that only give rewards of $, Eridium, skins and heads. Don't do quests with items. Unless you don't care about the items. I went ahead and did the Clan Wars and TGTBATM (Mordecai quest) because I wanted the Maggie, Verruc and Lyuda guns and didn't care about the quest items: just the legendary possible drops. I'll do the same for Doc's Shotty from Old Slappy-quest reward means nothing, I want the shotty.

And what happens if you beat TVHM? Will there be a new mode after that? I hope so. I don't see the point of grinding for weapons if there's no reason to use them.

No, there is no new "mode" per say after you beat TVHM. It just levels all of the enemies and unfinished quests up to level 50, and once you beat Terramorphous and turn in the quest "You. Will. Die. (Seriously.)" all legendary drops become level 50 as well.

Question for you guys who already beat both rounds of the game, is the TVHM version of Terramorphous harder than the normal mode version?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Question for you guys who already beat both rounds of the game, is the TVHM version of Terramorphous harder than the normal mode version?

He doesn't do any more or less damage, but he does have extra HP. I don't find that it's enough to significantly increase the difficulty of the fight but Im using Legendary items to defeat him so my opinion might be biased. Without the Conference Call and Bee combo he might be genuinely difficult.

On a side note, I've determined that if you can get a wired controller or some means of keeping a wireless controller active for long enough, if you leave Gaige in the Vault of the Warrior after killing him, and put up Deathtrap, he will kill Rakks indefinitely. Do this with a second character on split screen and in about 15 hours they will be level 50.

Does it matter if your CC is 50 or not, since Bee is doing most of the damage? I was going to use my 30 CC with Bee.

And lol at the Rakk thing.

Probably not. The Bee is adding a flat boost to the CC damage so it's likely the same for a 30 CC as it is for a 50 CC. If you do it with Anarchy stacks though it does matter since the increased damage is percentage based.

For the Rakk thing, I found out that it actually doesn't work. See, the game seems to calculate each stack individually when it totals your damage bonus unlike other stacking buffs. When I got to 900 stacks with Deathtrap, the game was lagging so bad that he could not acquire and kill a target fast enough to keep up with his cooldown, so 960 stacks was the highest I got before he despawned. When he despawned the lag went away entirely so I know it wasn't just my system. It might be doable on a high end PC, or maybe a PS3, but not on 360. It's still worth doing, but you can't just completely leave it alone and walk away. You can do it while doing other things tho, and just respawn Deathtrap after it resets.

Neat, I'll have to hold onto that 30 CC then just in case.

Well if you played on a REAL console instead of that wussy PS3 I'd GIVE you a level 50 Conference Call

 Aldarionn wrote:
Well if you played on a REAL console instead of that wussy PS3 I'd GIVE you a level 50 Conference Call

I'll take it!

I can currently offer a level 50 soldier mod from terramorphous for it. Duped, on both our ends, of course.