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RIPPA

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I've done nearly all of the challenges for Athenas so I guess my next step is to take down Captain Traunt or whatever his name is.

I've seen how hated this encounter is on the Gearbox board since he is always two levels higher than your current level, which means I'll be fighting a 19th or 20th level version of him and that will probably suck.

He's also supposed to have a gigantic honkin' shield and I have got like zero Shock weapons, so I will probably have to farm one or two Shock weapons before I fight him.  My Vladof auto-pistol has a Tazer on I, but I don't think that's going to get the job done.

I've got a Transfusion grenade mod for Moze and I've specced Iron Bear's load out to Minigun for DD and Railgun for Shock DoT, so that's a start although I may go with Railgun and the Bear Claw.  I thought about using the Rocket Pods, but I think that bosses are still resistant to Explosions even though it's not an element.

Edited by J.T.
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Which brings me to my next bit of sad experimentation.

I think we've all seen how the Skill Trees aren't exactly intuitive and Moze is the worst, I think.

You can use the Skill Trees to custom configure the mech's load-out so that it has access to different weapons.  He has minigun, railgun, flamethrower, hydraulic punch, and rocket capabilities that you can either double up on or mix and match.

Some weapons are element specific, so if you're running up against shielded enemies (for example) the railgun has a Shock damage property that can take care of those blue bars in a hurry.

As you put points into Moze's skill tree, you can either get access to different weapons or improve or alter the functionality of existing guns.  You can improve railgun functionality so that the weapon uses less fuel. you can improve the heat sinks on the minigun, etc.

You can customize Iron Bear for nearly any threat, provided that you have a bit of time to plan.  

So, what things have you guys found out from the tragedy of trial and error?

Edited by J.T.
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I beat Captain Traunt on the first go and I suck

I have no idea what the fuck people are complaining about unless they are racing through and trying to fight something 4 levels above them

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8 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I beat Captain Traunt on the first go and I suck

I have no idea what the fuck people are complaining about unless they are racing through and trying to fight something 4 levels above them

Eh, you don't suck and I think most of these people are running Operatives, while you're running a Siren and most of the time, that class is the most versatile when it comes to dealing elemental damage. 

You should be dealing Shock damage almost at will.

Besides, I've heard that this guy is an egg.   His blue bar is beefy, but his red bar is pretty soft.   Once his shield is down, I should be able to murder the crap out of him.

I'm probably going to go IB heavy tonight, so you should get some decent progress ahead of my campaign.

Edited by J.T.
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4 minutes ago, J.T. said:

I'm probably going to go IB heavy tonight, so you should get some decent progress ahead of my campaign.

You seemed to be a planet ahead of me last night so I am not sure about that.

I didn't realize that Killavolt was its own separate area with additional missions and stuff so I am still knee deep in that

And if you haven't checked your mail - I sent you my best purple sniper last night to get the achievement

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

You seemed to be a planet ahead of me last night so I am not sure about that.

I didn't realize that Killavolt was its own separate area with additional missions and stuff so I am still knee deep in that

I've murdered KillaVolt but haven't given Traunt his dirt nap yet and you are visa versa, so we are more or less at the same spot.

I'm probably going to take a shot at Traunt first and if he gets to be too much of a pain in the ass with my current load-out, I'll switch over to D2 and fight in the IB for a bit, and then farm for Shock guns later on.

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

And if you haven't checked your mail - I sent you my best purple sniper last night to get the achievement

I got your Level 12 shotty.  It was very underleveled for me, but at t least it was purple. 

It helped pay for the grenade I am going to shove down Traunt's throat.

Edited by J.T.
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2 hours ago, J.T. said:

Which brings me to my next bit of sad experimentation.

I think we've all seen how the Skill Trees aren't exactly intuitive and Moze is the worst, I think.

You can use the Skill Trees to custom configure the mech's load-out so that it has access to different weapons.  He has minigun, railgun, flamethrower, hydraulic punch, and rocket capabilities that you can either double up on or mix and match.

Some weapons are element specific, so if you're running up against shielded enemies (for example) the railgun has a Shock damage property that can take care of those blue bars in a hurry.

As you put points into Moze's skill tree, you can either get access to different weapons or improve or alter the functionality of existing guns.  You can improve railgun functionality so that the weapon uses less fuel. you can improve the heat sinks on the minigun, etc.

You can customize Iron Bear for nearly any threat, provided that you have a bit of time to plan.  

So, what things have you guys found out from the tragedy of trial and error?

Since I'm relatively terrible at speccing my characters and things like that, I'm using a skill tree that I looked up in the days before the game came out. (I've got it bookmarked on my computer at home.)

Basically, I put my first skill point into the shield for Iron Bear and am now going to work maxing the Bottomless Mags tree. Going to require a lot of fire/explosive weapons to make it as effective as it can be.

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I beat Killavolt this morning (my "work from home" day)

I might have to do what Gonzo is doing and just find a build online that I like since my current spec job is all over the fucking place

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The game feels easier than BL2 to me so far.  Particularly the boss fights.  Only times I've felt in much danger were when I was severely under leveled.  

Got Moze to Sanctuary and started in on FL4K.  So far, I'm really liking him.   Gonna get him to Sanctuary, then figure out who to run the first playthrough with.

I'm just taking wild guesses on skill trees so far.  I'll eventually look some up to see how I like em, but I don't figure they'll matter too much till TVHM, or whatever comes after the first playthrough is done.

Looks like gun duping is still possible, which is gonna come in handy once it becomes clear what the good high end shit is.

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So, I just hit Level 12. Here's my Moze build so far:

Demolition Woman Tree - 0 points

Shield of Retribution Tree - 1 point (Security Bear, 1/1. . .probably need to start putting some in Selfless Vengeance at some point here)

Bottomless Mags Tree - 9 points (Cloud of Lead, 5/5, Stoke the Embers, 3/3, Redistribution, 1/1)

The build that I'm going towards is this one here. I'm not sure whether to max out Fire in the Skag Den or Scrappy next, or put my 4/5 in Selfless Vengeance so that I can move down that tree.

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Finally got play a bit more, I beat him but fuck killavolt..very annoying. Apparently Torque loves me, keeps sending me weapons. I'm guessing that's dependent on how and with what weapons your using. Getting that promotion was great, however it's killing the personal time. Fortunately my platforming skills are so legendary that I absolutely had no problem playing hopscotch all over the roofs of Lectra City?

 

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6 hours ago, AaronMLuke said:

 Fortunately my platforming skills are so legendary that I absolutely had no problem playing hopscotch all over the roofs of Lectra City?

I was giggling the entire time while doing things in Lectra City just imaging JT cursing the heavens bitching about how unfair it was

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2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I was giggling the entire time while doing things in Lectra City just imaging JT cursing the heavens bitching about how unfair it was

I've gotten better at platforming in this game and been able to find a lot of the widgets the Gearbox guys have hidden on the Y axis.

I'm also happy that I have the badass guns I need to effectively clear areas and allow me to explore them.

Captain Traunt is wormfood.   Killed him dead on the first try.  I have no idea why there is such pissing and moaning about how hard he is supposed to be.  I took down his shield with my badass Shock property Dahl trace rifle, pounded him with the mech for a bit, and then played ring around the rosie with him and shot the living shit out of his backpack crit spot with my trusty Jakobs scatter gun.

Transfusion 'nades also came in handy when I was pretty badly wounded, but I never needed a Second Wind.

Now it looks like I get to smersh the head of Maliwan.  Good thing I did the side quests in Lectra City before this and got some backstory on the CEO and his family.

Learned a lot from the battle with Traunt and respecced Moze more for solo-campaigning. 

She has some skills that support other characters so I don't really need to put points in those since this is a solo runthrough.  The point I put into equipping Iron Bear with a back turret (which I honestly thought would help with solo offense) went poof and got slugged into giving me two ranks of the Fuel Consumption perk which I plan to max out.

I also specced the Mech for CQB, so he's armed with the Minigun and the Bear Claw.

Much happier with Iron Bear's performance since then.  Badass enemies go down a lot faster than they used to.

I will probably get good at this min / max stuff just in time for New Game+.

Edited by J.T.
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9 hours ago, AaronMLuke said:

Finally got play a bit more, I beat him but fuck killavolt..very annoying. Apparently Torque loves me, keeps sending me weapons. I'm guessing that's dependent on how and with what weapons your using. Getting that promotion was great, however it's killing the personal time. Fortunately my platforming skills are so legendary that I absolutely had no problem playing hopscotch all over the roofs of Lectra City.

Grats on putting KillaVolt down.   His ability to take your shield down almost at will is a pain in the ass, but his henchman are always there to give you plenty of Second Wind opportunities.  It's a challenging encounter, but not hard.

DoT weapons were my key to victory, especially my nasty full-auto Dahl SMG with Radiation properties.  I got dropped twice but didn't stay down for long because my SMG was the perfect adds melter.

And yep, the more kills you get with a certain manufacturers weapons, the more often they will send you free samples in the mail.  I believe these are the "loyalty packages" I've heard about and I think you can unlock an achievement after receiving a certain number.

Don't quote me on that, though.

I used to be a Jakobs darling, but now my arsenal is made up more of Tediore (TURRETS, MOTHER FUCKERS~!) and Dahl weaponry and there is a Hyperion sniper rifle with the Shock property that I am very fond of since a lot of enemies at Skywell have very healthy blue bars..

Edited by J.T.
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10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Katakawa Ball can eat all the dicks in the world

Hopefully you beat it without going bankrupt paying for New U rezzes..  It kicked my ass once and I tapped out and went to go pub stomp lowlights in the IB tournament.  Nothing makes me rage more in Borderlands than losing money.

I'm definitely going to need a better Corrosive weapon to use against it than this shitty Green Hyperion shotty I've currently got, so I will sell the shit-ton of loot I have to recoup the losses from my rez and try again when I have a better Corrosive weapon.  

I've got a couple of really good Shock weapons, so I'm not worried about his blue bar.

Looks like it will be a return to the old Borderlands tradition of farming for better guns before taking on a big boss.

Edited by J.T.
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On the plus side, I did manage to clear all of the Skywell challenges and knock out the side mission in one run so I can just focus on putting down the gigantic armored deathsphere.

I also have a couple of guns in the mail that I can put towards the Corrosive weapon fund.  I am angry at Zer0 for sending me a shitty Blue as my reward for putting down Handsome Jackie.  He could've at least sent me a Purple.

For some reason, the game felt like rewarding me with tons of cosmetic items during the Space Laser Tag mission, so I unlocked the achievement for collecting heads and skins and vehicle color schemes and shit in the middle of my run.

Edited by J.T.
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The thing that pissed me off is Skywell only has the one fast travel point so I am going to have to fight my way all the back

That was the first time where I was underleveled and it was irritating because I was Level 18 so guys were Level 19. No biggie

Hit 19 as I am going through and suddenly the enemies are 21

Fucking enemy scaling

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28 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

The thing that pissed me off is Skywell only has the one fast travel point so I am going to have to fight my way all the back

That was the first time where I was underleveled and it was irritating because I was Level 18 so guys were Level 19. No biggie

Hit 19 as I am going through and suddenly the enemies are 21

Fucking enemy scaling

Yeah, the enemy scaling in this game is the worst.  

It is bad enough that the bosses in this game are so cheesy, especially this fucking deathsphere and the fucking salvo of tracking exploding fireballs he shoots at will and it's so maneuverable that it's able to dodge my purple CoV Radiation crud thrower.

Being two levels higher than me just makes it worse.  

I am beginning to suspect that I probably should've played this runthrough on Easy to avoid the absurd upscaled bosses.

Edited by J.T.
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