Why BL2 Disappoints Me:

[ColdConduct]

Probably going to be a bit of an unstructured rant here from the perspective of a 10-year BL1 player. By no means am I trying to insult this game or its fans. I do actually enjoy BL2 now; something I never thought I would say. It had taken me a good part of the past 8 years to finally get a measly 300 hours (90% of that time coming from the last 3 months) of playtime under my belt. With that said, after having completed every story arc and dlc in the game, defeated a few of the raid bosses, and started to familiarize myself with the game's loot pool and part mechanics, I can now recognize BL2's shortcomings and why its appeal is quickly fading away from me.

UVHM scaling, slag dependency, bossing mechanics, and consequently very little build variation:

Those areas alone are what's killing the game for me. Slag mechanics, in my opinion, are interesting but poorly executed. Every single build in the game is dependent on it. You're either going to sacrifice a weapon slot, a grenade slot, or likely a significant amount of skill points to get a build that has slag in your arsenal. I don't see much variation in playstyles when it comes to end-game builds and raiding as a result of this.

The raid bosses. Oh, boy, what a joke. I have not encountered a single method of killing these guys that does not seem like abusing a mechanic, hiding in a glitch spot, or using practically the same set of gear each time. I'm still fairly new, but my impressions of raiding in this game for each boss are as follows.

Tera: Hide behind a rock, sort of a glitch safe spot.
Master Gee: Circle him for minutes, invincible shield, and fight the worms instead. Boring.
Pete: Hide behind structures, swap between inflammable/alkaline shields, trespasser to remove his helmet, or use a glitch safe spot via the corner or 'nade jumps.
Haderax: Rebounding Warder instant kill. Waste your shield slot and a weapon slot on Toothpick/Retainer. Use a glitch safe spot near the chest on the rocks.
Hyperius: Immolate/Grog/Norfleet instant kill trick.
Dexi: Long, drawn out invincibility frames.
Vora: Tresspass the Chief or something? Don't know much about him. I think people can glitch under the map for this one?
Dragons: I have absolutely no idea. Have heard they are one of the hardest so I can only imagine the type of bs that's used to take them down.

Those are the common, 'suggested', and often the only practical strategies I've seen used because of the absurd amount of health they have. How about the gear? Yeah, absolutely no variation as far as I've been able to tell. Everything is about swapping gear mid-fight, abusing mechanics, unlisted projectile bonuses, and so on. Bee shield for practically everything. Sandhawk. DPUH. Butcher/CC/Interfacer. Shamfleet. Pimpernel. Grog/ChainLightning. Healthgating builds. Firing some shots then switching to a Lady Fist to make your original shots receive the critical bonuses. Definitely all intended mechanics and fun playstyles with a lot of unique builds, right? Give me a break... I may be biased, but Son of Craw and the story-related bosses like Bunker, Warrior, and so on were the only bosses that felt to me like I could actually, you know, use something I'd like instead of the same ol' strategies and setups above. This was not a problem in BL1. It would be difficult, but every VH could take down Craw with some run-of-the-mill purple gear. Every subsequent Crawmerax kill would likely yield a drop that'd make the next kill a little more forgiving. Rinse and repeat. We had a lot of flexibility with what gear could be viable. Moving on.

BL2 made cheating mainstream because of mission rewards.

This is a hot take here, don't take offense. Seems a significant portion of this community has no problem creating their gear in save editors (Gibbed). Many of the top content creators, highest rated guides, and forum posts not only mention, but encourage the use of Gibbed. This blows my mind, but I do not blame you guys at all. I think the reason for this is justifiable and is a result of the poor decision to place a lot of the best BL2 gear in the form of non-repeatable, non-farmable mission rewards. Sandhawk, Lady Fist, etc. Yes, I am aware BL1 had WillowTree and people modded and duped guns as well, but it was typically frowned upon by the community and sure as heck wasn't as encouraged as the use of Gibbed is here. Aside from farming Claptrap SDU's, fixing 'infected' quest logs from co-op play in the early days, installing community made content like the Oasis Hub, and repeating the Circle of Duty (like the Slaughterdome stuff), there wasn't really a need to use save editors in BL1. Mission rewards were niche and nice for collecting, but mostly useless and would be replaced by the next decent purple you found. For clarity, I do not oppose community made content. I think the UCP seems awesome, editors can sometimes be a life saver, and I knew many of the guys who contributed to GearCalc and Oasis. I do however strongly oppose the idea of creating your guns in an editor. That diminishes the value of finding rare gear and collecting - and that is the entire draw of Borderlands if you ask me. It's this game's fault, not yours. Read-Only farming and dashboarding is major league bs. Anyway, I did end up ranting.

Share your thoughts if you'd like. I would love to continue playing BL2 and I am DESPERATELY eager to hear if there are more options for end-game raiding. I beg of anyone to show me one that doesn't revolve around the Bee shield and take 10+ minutes of barely tickling the boss to death. As it stands currently, it just doesn't feel like there's much enjoyment left for me. What is there to farm for and collect if it all ends up being ineffective against the most challenging (and what should be the most fun) aspects of the game? Remember that marketing in their old trailer? Something like '87 Bazillion more guns.' More like 87% less gear variety across the board...

Cheers, y'all.

[---GHOST]

You need to play more, learn more,research more and watch how others are having fun!

Watch youtubers for that. I recommend joltzdude139 and sqeek cheesetaker. The last one makes builds and digistruck peak runs without bee, but with community patch and youtube will suggest more

[ColdConduct]

Originally posted by Ritrough:

You need to play more, learn more,research more and watch how others are having fun!

Watch youtubers for that. I recommend joltzdude139 and sqeek cheesetaker. The last one makes builds and digistruck peak runs without bee, but with community patch and youtube will suggest more

I sure hope you're right. Are there any builds that you yourself would suggest that are effective? And any specific videos from Joltz? I've come across a few of his videos and if I recall correctly I've seen the same setups being used.

[---GHOST]

Every character is effective in its own way. Bl2 is balanced this way.
There are a lot of steam users who encourages people to play the game as developers intended, glitchless and gibbed free, but most of the people wants to get gear easily and fast farming methods.
All of the raid bosses can be killed without safe spots and glitches, but its gonna take up more time. Also fandom wiki gives you normal and exploit strategy too.

If you want to play it legit, just say so. There are veteran users who have the knowledge to help and encourage you

[ColdConduct]

Originally posted by Ritrough:

All of the raid bosses can be killed without safe spots and glitches, but its gonna take up more time

If you want to play it legit, just say so. There are veteran users who have the knowledge to help and encourage you

How much more time are we talking here when it comes to those raid bosses? Yeah though, playing legitimately without having to resort to using busted mechanics is exactly how I'd like to play. In my experience there seems to be very little room for flexibility with regard to gear choice when bossing in this game unless I want to dance around some bosses for a very, very long time.

I guess I'll go over a little checklist here:

- Maya, Axton, and Gaige. Level 80, no OP levels.
- No Bee shield.
- No healthgating.
- I'd prefer not to rely on damn-near constant healing from a Moxxi weapon or some combo like Grog + Chain Lightning.
- No skill/COM abuse. Maya's Recompense + Rebounding Warder instant kills, Immolate/Grog/Norfleet instant kill, or anything else out there that exists like that.
- No glitches or safe spots. Corner walls at Pete, high up on the rocks at Haderax, behind the rocks at Tera, etc.
- No inventory swapping or weapon merging. Whatever you'd even call it. Firing some Sandhawk rounds then quickly switching to a Lady Fist so the Sandhawk projectiles get the 800% crit' bonus. None of that garbage.
- Don't want the fight to last longer than, say, 12 minutes max.

I'm all ears and entirely open to trying anything if you believe that can be within reach. So far I have only managed to kill Craw without using a Bee. I used a Sandhawk, Peak Opener courtesy of the Rebounding Warder abuse, Conference Call, and a Florentine. Pete certainly seems possible given I can kill him fairly easily with the Beehawk combo, but I'm assuming it'd be a very boring and drawn out fight. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence given he's one of the easier raid bosses.

Thanks for entertaining the thought, by the way. I genuinely do want BL2 to have the same lasting appeal that the original did for me.

[---GHOST]

Originally posted by Cold Conduct:

Originally posted by Ritrough:

All of the raid bosses can be killed without safe spots and glitches, but its gonna take up more time

If you want to play it legit, just say so. There are veteran users who have the knowledge to help and encourage you

How much more time are we talking here when it comes to those raid bosses? Yeah though, playing legitimately without having to resort to using busted mechanics is exactly how I'd like to play. In my experience there seems to be very little room for flexibility with regard to gear choice when bossing in this game unless I want to dance around some bosses for a very, very long time.

I guess I'll go over a little checklist here:

- Maya, Axton, and Gaige. Level 80, no OP levels.
- No Bee shield.
- No healthgating.
- I'd prefer not to rely on damn-near constant healing from a Moxxi weapon or some combo like Grog + Chain Lightning.
- No skill/COM abuse. Maya's Recompense + Rebounding Warder instant kills, Immolate/Grog/Norfleet instant kill, or anything else out there that exists like that.
- No glitches or safe spots. Corner walls at Pete, high up on the rocks at Haderax, behind the rocks at Tera, etc.
- No inventory swapping or weapon merging. Whatever you'd even call it. Firing some Sandhawk rounds then quickly switching to a Lady Fist so the Sandhawk projectiles get the 800% crit' bonus. None of that garbage.
- Don't want the fight to last longer than, say, 12 minutes max.

I'm all ears and entirely open to trying anything if you believe that can be within reach. So far I have only managed to kill Craw without using a Bee. I used a Sandhawk, Peak Opener courtesy of the Rebounding Warder abuse, Conference Call, and a Florentine. Pete certainly seems possible given I can kill him fairly easily with the Beehawk combo, but I'm assuming it'd be a very boring and drawn out fight. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence given he's one of the easier raid bosses.

Thanks for entertaining the thought, by the way. I genuinely do want BL2 to have the same lasting appeal that the original did for me.

So you want to kill an invicible without a bee, without safe spots in less then 12 minutes? You got to be kidding, right? Its impossible. A perfect terra kill using just bee, sandhawk, no lady fist swap and behind the rock takes 6 minutes. Without the bee it would take at least 30 minutes or more.
Maybe its possible to kill one without the bee with those characters, but not in less then 12. There is a reason why they call them invincible!
Look, using a bee is legit, also a sandhawk. I think OP don't like this combo because it's very powerful. You don't have to beehawk, use other guns, but the bee is necessary for that less then 12 minute kill, for raid bosses.
Also using the grog isn't legit, but there are other moxxi weapons like the kitten or the creamer or the hail that are legit. I think for raid bosses you have too options for healing: moxi weapons and transfusion grenades(for those 3 characters)

If you didn't tried out Pete yet, don't think that it's gonna be boring. I would say annoying. After each nova you have to got to the pipe to wash off the damage over time and also some enemies will spawn.
I don't like glitches either. I can live with the thought that I couldn't kill all of the raid bosses
Try to kill the raid bosses with your best bee combo without safe spots and glitches then give me your feedback

P. S. : You choose how you play the game, not others!

[Casurin]

I just have one objection:
You fundamentall misunderstood what RAID-bosses are - they are designed to be fought in a group - not to be soloed unless you have decent gear and significant skill and practice. I can barely manage to solo the raids, mostly losing the fight, but i also never played it to that level and never bothered to farm the right gear for it (in total maybe 1500 hours playtime with PS3 and multiplayer included ).


Cheating - it is bad that it has become so rapant in multiplayer over the years. This is one of the few parts where i think an anti-cheat system is needed - and let the host decide if he allows cheat in his party or not. But not like it was not a thing in BL1 either.
Slag - with 4 weapons, grenade, shield, action-skill and passive skills there are many ways to get slag but yeah - could have been handled better. But look at the bright side - in BL:TPS Cryo is way worse in terms of how powerful it is.

[Draekus]

i don't do Raid Bosses ( unless with a good crew ), so i can't give you any advice there.
but i know some people on here who can.

now, let's address some other issues.

UVHM scaling : it was designed that way.

Slag : has always been part of the game. you don't necessarily need it all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZWXOfO5pcI&t=431s
i do stuff like this for fun.

Boss mechanics : it's why they're Bosses. learn their weakness(es)

Build variation : why use garbage Skills ? isn't it better to have one Build that works with different Class Mods, than having to reset every time ?
Example : my current solo Siren build :
https://bl2skills.com/siren.html#555001554052052023005522510501
i can swap between a Legendary Siren and a Cat class mod without resetting.

my Co-op build : because i mostly play solo. but, as stated earlier, i do like playing with a good Crew.
https://bl2skills.com/siren.html#555001553052330142005522510501

i'm currently working on what i call a Hellcat build.

for the record, i don't use a Grog Nozzle. on ANY Character. don't need to.

haven't done Digi-struct Peak yet ? try it solo. it's fun. challenging, but fun.


edit : subbed.

[z00t]

So, you don't want to use slag, or bother with finding good gear, and you want the raid bosses to be easily killed in less than 12 minutes with purple gear and no special tactics on your part, like avoiding getting damaged by using cover, and no healing assistance from Moxxi weapons. Seriously?
Take your level 80 characters and play in TVHM or normal mode then, because that is the only way it is going to happen.

It sounds to me as if most of your raid bossing knowledge comes from YouTube, where the various glitches are shown to the world.
Never killed the Ancient Dragons, or Voracidous.
Or Hyperius and Gee from the sounds of it.
Never been to the Peak.
The badass round of Murderlin's?
So much you haven't seen or tried.

As someone who plays Maya almost exclusively these days, I don't care that she is basically crap at raid bossing. None of her action skills are particularly useful against them. They are not impossible though. But you do need good gear, an understanding of how any particular boss works and how you can take advantage of that.

I have killed Haderax many times, and not once used the Recompense / Rebounding Warder glitch. That only works on him btw, nobody else. Shock horror though, I used slag, Sandhawks, etc. from the main arena and not from the safe spot near the challenge chest. Gosh darn, I do confess to not standing there in the open, but firing from behind cover, and getting behind cover to avoid attacks. It took longer than 12 minutes each time I suspect but I never timed it.

Never used any glitches against Hyperius. Just tactics and good gear. Tactics that were developed by learning what did and didn't work, taking what did work and adapting and refining those to the point he was no longer a major challenge, but Farmable. You will have to do that with all of the raid bosses.

Good luck on your quest to find some magic combination of strategy, build and gear that will let you easily kill the raid bosses without you expending too much effort.

[---GHOST]

Originally posted by Casurin:

I just have one objection:
You fundamentall misunderstood what RAID-bosses are - they are designed to be fought in a group - not to be soloed unless you have decent gear and significant skill and practice. I can barely manage to solo the raids, mostly losing the fight, but i also never played it to that level and never bothered to farm the right gear for it (in total maybe 1500 hours playtime with PS3 and multiplayer included ).


Cheating - it is bad that it has become so rapant in multiplayer over the years. This is one of the few parts where i think an anti-cheat system is needed - and let the host decide if he allows cheat in his party or not. But not like it was not a thing in BL1 either.
Slag - with 4 weapons, grenade, shield, action-skill and passive skills there are many ways to get slag but yeah - could have been handled better. But look at the bright side - in BL:TPS Cryo is way worse in terms of how powerful it is.

I don't think so. More players mean more enemy health. The only advantage that I know in coop is that if you get down, the others can revive you.
When Hyperius or Vorac does a double nova all 4 can go down without the possibilty of getting a second wind. Im better of fighting solo. At op10 its even harder cause the bosses have even more health and you can run out of ammo very easiy if you rely on just one weapon.
Also at level 80 you already should have the necessary skills and practice.
But you can stil have fun aside doing bosses

As for the anti-cheat system, you don't need it. When you are the host you can kick the unwanted players and you can notice who is cheating and who doesnt. When you're not the host, you just leave the game.

[ColdConduct]

Cool, came back to some good posts. Let's see if I remember how to multi-quote on Steam lol.

Originally posted by Ritrough:

So you want to kill an invicible without a bee, without safe spots in less then 12 minutes? You got to be kidding, right? Its impossible. A perfect terra kill using just bee, sandhawk, no lady fist swap and behind the rock takes 6 minutes. Without the bee it would take at least 30 minutes or more.
Maybe its possible to kill one without the bee with those characters, but not in less then 12. There is a reason why they call them invincible!

If you didn't tried out Pete yet, don't think that it's gonna be boring. I would say annoying. After each nova you have to got to the pipe to wash off the damage over time and also some enemies will spawn.
I don't like glitches either. I can live with the thought that I couldn't kill all of the raid bosses
Try to kill the raid bosses with your best bee combo without safe spots and glitches then give me your feedback

That's what I figured, and that's pretty much the point I'm trying to drive home. Due to the way UVHM raids scale, I am disappointed that there are only a handful of setups that can be powerful against them. Many of those setups involve questionable methods/mechanics in my eyes. But yes, I've killed Pete over 20 times. Enough times to get a Florentine and Antagonist in DLC4 from the crystal vendor. I attempted Vora a few times and couldn't finish it, same with Hyperius, and same deal with the dragons. I am killed before I even start to get an idea of what's going on there. Need some more practice.

Originally posted by Casurin:

I just have one objection:
You fundamentall misunderstood what RAID-bosses are - they are designed to be fought in a group - not to be soloed unless you have decent gear and significant skill and practice. I can barely manage to solo the raids, mostly losing the fight, but i also never played it to that level and never bothered to farm the right gear for it (in total maybe 1500 hours playtime with PS3 and multiplayer included ).


Cheating - it is bad that it has become so rapant in multiplayer over the years. This is one of the few parts where i think an anti-cheat system is needed - and let the host decide if he allows cheat in his party or not. But not like it was not a thing in BL1 either.
Slag - with 4 weapons, grenade, shield, action-skill and passive skills there are many ways to get slag but yeah - could have been handled better. But look at the bright side - in BL:TPS Cryo is way worse in terms of how powerful it is.

You may be right about my impressions of what a boss should be. This idea of a 'raid' came from MMO games, right? Stuff like WoW. I don't play those. Borderlands is a shooter to me first and a loot/collecting/rpg to me second. If these bosses are designed to be taken on with very niche setups that are bordering on broken over the course of many, many minutes then I think that is very poor design. I just don't find it enjoyable. Tickling a boss to death is exactly what it is. It's not even a a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of tedious monotony.

As for the modded/altered weapons, I have hoped that GBX would add a couple lines of code somewhere in the weapon generation system that'd 'trip' when any component of that weapon had been altered in a save editor - resulting in the modded weapon having a different color or some sort of asterisk. The boys at WT and Gibbed could've implemented something like that, I have no doubts. Yeah though, one can dream and hindsight is always 20/20.

Originally posted by Draekus:

UVHM scaling : it was designed that way.

Slag : has always been part of the game. you don't necessarily need it all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZWXOfO5pcI&t=431s
i do stuff like this for fun.

Boss mechanics : it's why they're Bosses. learn their weakness(es)

Build variation : why use garbage Skills ? isn't it better to have one Build that works with
haven't done Digi-struct Peak yet ? try it solo. it's fun. challenging, but fun.

I'll check out your video. Maya is my favorite by far because I don't have to think about slag whatsoever outside of raids. Ruin, Scorn, and my Antagonist have me covered. In fact she became my favorite VH in the whole franchise. As for build variation, I was mostly referring to the COM and weapon choices while bossing having a lack of variety, not so much about the skill builds.

I did complete two rounds of the Peak. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I will enjoy staying at any of the acquired OP levels. Seems to me like doing that is only going to make the points I've made in this thread even worse for max level gameplay. We'll see.

Originally posted by z00t:

So, you don't want to use slag, or bother with finding good gear, and you want the raid bosses to be easily killed in less than 12 minutes with purple gear and no special tactics on your part, like avoiding getting damaged by using cover, and no healing assistance from Moxxi weapons. Seriously?
Take your level 80 characters and play in TVHM or normal mode then, because that is the only way it is going to happen.

It sounds to me as if most of your raid bossing knowledge comes from YouTube, where the various glitches are shown to the world.
Never killed the Ancient Dragons, or Voracidous.
Or Hyperius and Gee from the sounds of it.
Never been to the Peak.
The badass round of Murderlin's?
So much you haven't seen or tried.

I have killed Haderax many times, and not once used the Recompense / Rebounding Warder glitch. That only works on him btw, nobody else. Shock horror though, I used slag, Sandhawks, etc. from the main arena and not from the safe spot near the challenge chest. Gosh darn, I do confess to not standing there in the open, but firing from behind cover, and getting behind cover to avoid attacks. It took longer than 12 minutes each time I suspect but I never timed it.

Good luck on your quest to find some magic combination of strategy, build and gear that will let you easily kill the raid bosses without you expending too much effort.

As for your first paragraph, the answers are both yes and no. Yes, I'd love to find some good gear and no I don't expect the game to be easy. Collecting gear is why I enjoyed BL1 for over 10 years against the game's only raid-ish boss. The problem with BL2 bossing is that the 'good gear' consists of an extremely limited amount of options. We're Maya players - Beehawk. What an incredible amount of versatility! Dahl is even my favorite manufacturer, but that's still a load of crap and deep down I'm sure you can concede that. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Beehawk combination so powerful for the same exact reason the CC was nerfed shortly after this game launched? Because the amp damage was - NOT BY DESIGN - affecting the unlisted pellet spread as well. Same idea with the Sandhawk and a couple other guns, right? It's good because it's bordering on broken. Was GBX's approach to UVHM and raids then to scale everything around the premise that your community will be using said broken mechanics? Also, please defer to my OP for my opinion of Read-Only farming. Come on, man, really take a step back and let that sink in. Our best option, Beehawking, is likely not even intended to be as powerful as it is. Acquiring said gun can not realistically be obtained through legitimate means. It requires manipulating your save file or using Gibbed. Everything about that is poorly designed and executed.

Yes, a lot of my impressions are from YT kills. As well as the guides here and the official *gross* GBX forums.
Haven't been able to kill Vora or Dragons yet.
Attempted Hyperius, have not with Gee. Gee looked mindlessly boring to me.
Have been to the Peak and completed a few rounds. It was fun.
Completed DLC4's Badass round and all of the other Slaughterdomes.
Completed every story mission and probably 60% of sides. 100% base game completion.

[z00t]

The Bee / CC was nerfed because the CC and every other shotgun was getting the full amp damage applied to every single shotgun pellet, with the Bee having zero amp drain. It affected all shotguns. The CC is singled out because it was the one that showed the abuse better - decent mag, lots of pellets, some unlisted ones as well, very high fire rate and full amp damage on each pellet of every shot made for a very broken combination.
The Sandhawk has unlisted bullets including extras with the right components, making it a very powerful weapon in any character's hands, except Mr Broken, Salvador when he is gunzerking. It works as designed.

The game was never designed with UVHM in mind, but players wanted MORE after TVHM. The scaling is broken, there are the 2x tougher than TVHM enemies, UVHM enemy damage reduction depending on level difference etc etc. Slag had to be introduced to make it a bit more do-able, without altering the formulae they used for level progression, enemy and player and gear. It is not a linear progression, so it gets progressively worse the higher the level. Remember that BL1 had corrosive in place of slag. It performed the same function, any enemy that was corroding took more damage from the other elements. It wasn't Necessary because imo BL1 was much better balanced without the steep increases we have in BL2.
If there wasn't the slag mechanic involved, the range of workable guns would be reduced even further.

For general gameplay I don't use Sandhawks. I save them for the times I want Lots Of Damage! NOW! For the rest of the time I usually have a B!tch and an Avenger / Infection Cleaner in two slots. I have killed waaay more enemies with the B!tch than any other smg. Because I don't spend a lot of time raiding, and I don't like Sandhawks for general gameplay. Sandhawks come out of storage when needed.
People do read-only farm for them, because it makes a difference in the OP levels. The enemy damage reduction numbers become significant the higher the OP level, and gear needs to be optimal to make it a bit less of a chore.
There is read-only farming and gibbed abuse because there is no system in the game that will allow inferior gear to be improved, or in the case of mission rewards to allow for it to be tried for again.
There are no gunsmithing facilities in the game. Decent sniper rifle, but not the scope you prefer? Tough luck. The devs at Gearbox never got round to doing anything like that because I suspect most of them don't actually play the game seriously, and don't care about those that do.

It is entirely possible to get a perfect Sandhawk without any shennanigans. They are rare, but it is possible.

---edit---screenshot added---

like this one.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1780749840

[MV75]

Only thing I hate is that every single chest treasure reward sucks hard. The hyperion gift shop can not be beat. The real reward at the end of captain scarlett is being able to fight Hyperius. Same as badass crater. The real reward is pyro pete. The dragons real reward is the amount of eridium they drop. All those chests after them suck hard and just aren't even worth looking at except the very first room that is nothing but mimic chests. The real reward for the last dlc is both the fast midget farm and uranus for both farm and leveling.

[ColdConduct]

Originally posted by z00t:

The Bee / CC was nerfed because the CC and every other shotgun was getting the full amp damage applied to every single shotgun pellet, with the Bee having zero amp drain. It affected all shotguns. The CC is singled out because it was the one that showed the abuse better - decent mag, lots of pellets, some unlisted ones as well, very high fire rate and full amp damage on each pellet of every shot made for a very broken combination.
The Sandhawk has unlisted bullets including extras with the right components, making it a very powerful weapon in any character's hands, except Mr Broken, Salvador when he is gunzerking. It works as designed.

The game was never designed with UVHM in mind, but players wanted MORE after TVHM. The scaling is broken, there are the 2x tougher than TVHM enemies, UVHM enemy damage reduction depending on level difference etc etc. Slag had to be introduced to make it a bit more do-able, without altering the formulae they used for level progression, enemy and player and gear. It is not a linear progression, so it gets progressively worse the higher the level. Remember that BL1 had corrosive in place of slag. It performed the same function, any enemy that was corroding took more damage from the other elements. It wasn't Necessary because imo BL1 was much better balanced without the steep increases we have in BL2.
If there wasn't the slag mechanic involved, the range of workable guns would be reduced even further.

For general gameplay I don't use Sandhawks. Sandhawks come out of storage when needed.
People do read-only farm for them, because it makes a difference in the OP levels. The enemy damage reduction numbers become significant the higher the OP level, and gear needs to be optimal to make it a bit less of a chore.
There is read-only farming and gibbed abuse because there is no system in the game that will allow inferior gear to be improved, or in the case of mission rewards to allow for it to be tried for again.
There are no gunsmithing facilities in the game. Decent sniper rifle, but not the scope you prefer? Tough luck. The devs at Gearbox never got round to doing anything like that because I suspect most of them don't actually play the game seriously, and don't care about those that do.

It is entirely possible to get a perfect Sandhawk without any shennanigans. They are rare, but it is possible.

---edit---screenshot added---

like this one.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1780749840

Great, informative post. Thank you for sharing. You confirmed some of the things I suspected had occurred throughout development and the introduction of UVHM. You've also changed my position regarding slag, at least in terms of how I view it. I saw it as something that restricted our playstyles by taking away a gun slot or grenade slot, but as you've pointed out without slag we'd have even less options for gear that could be viable in general gameplay. Sort of the same thing at the end of the day and definitely not an ideal mechanic, but that's a different way of looking at it for sure. Slag was the Band-Aid fix to add more flexibility in weapon choice. I can happily accept that moving forward.

Perfect Sandhawk without any shenanigans, though? Eh... I consider Read-Only and dashboard farming shenanigans. Resetting UVHM playthroughs and burning through the first 7 missions of DLC1 would take about two hours? Then we have to account for 5 separate stocks, grips, elements (which I guess are independent of the prefix accessory in this game, unlike BL1) and finally hope for the right prefix out of what seems like a dozen possibilities. Excluding the scope, I'd wager that's likely a 1% probability or less to get a perfect variant. Sound like fun? I'd sooner go skydiving without a parachute.

Addressing the problems above, you completely nailed it. I have always wanted some sort of gunsmith feature added to Borderlands too. The Grinder in TPS is very close and a respectable step in the right direction. Being able to scrap some parts for a chance at a new one would be incredible and do wonders for the longevity of this franchise. It'd also negate a lot of the 'need' to use save editors.

Funny you mentioned getting screwed over a terrible scope:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2218740138

[ColdConduct]

Originally posted by MV75:

Only thing I hate is that every single chest treasure reward sucks hard. The hyperion gift shop can not be beat. The real reward at the end of captain scarlett is being able to fight Hyperius. Same as badass crater. The real reward is pyro pete. The dragons real reward is the amount of eridium they drop. All those chests after them suck hard and just aren't even worth looking at except the very first room that is nothing but mimic chests. The real reward for the last dlc is both the fast midget farm and uranus for both farm and leveling.

Good point. I might be wrong, but it seems like Haderax is the only raid boss that has a really deep loot pool as well. That's what I loved about the original Crawmerax; you could get nearly anything in the game from him. Lance Chests from the Armory could yield some amazing rewards as well.

Thank you all for the discussion. As an early poster suggested, I'm going to have to find a way to play the game that suits me. I think I'm going to have to get all of the drops that are exclusive to the raid bosses (blockade and tattler interest me the most) and then just move on from them as it doesn't sound like the experience is what I had hoped it'd be. I'll likely just stick to farming Tubbies and loot midgets, collecting every dedicated legendary drop, and so on. Happy Vault hunting out there.

[z00t]

Tattlers aren't the best smg's in my opinion. Big mag, but slow reload. All elements, but fixed blades. Being Bandit, not that accurate. With Hyperius having a 1/3 chance of dropping one, a reasonable thing to farm for. Some folks really like them. I have tried them out but generally they get left on the ground. The only Bandit smg I consider using is a Slagga. It does its job well, spraying whole areas with slag.
The Blockade is a good shield, but you will likely have to farm for a good version. Again a 1/3 chance of a drop from the Dragons.
Those annoying overgrown lizards need a Plan if you want to farm them.

Regarding that Sandhawk, that was the first hand in after the mission. When I farm for them in UVHM, my farmers get a single Sandhawk and single Pimpernel per reset. Normally I read-only farm until I get a decent one, then reset, but that one was straight mission hand in, no retries needed.