Level 67 misery, please help.

[Shady]

I haven't played this game in... some colossal amount of years. I think the latest DLC was Tina's, it was great, spent thousands of hours in the game, etc etc...

I did a lot of playtime as level 50, and a lot as level 61.

At some point in time, I must have gotten the 72 DLC, as my Axton is level 67 right now. But I stopped playing, also a long time ago, because it was miserable.

Well, I was missing BL2 recently (as usual) so a friend and I decided to give it a go again. But we're just having hopeless struggles. We were both glassy Bee users, though, but even then, our DAMAGE didn't even feel great. Only "viable". If we didn't use it, we wouldn't even move health bars.

So anyway, I decided to go on my own and try a respec. I went into a tanky build, with almost 1 mil EHP at level 67. I also have a level 67 Lascaux, and a 60-something Unkempt. (And some level 50 guns I was using with Bee: Sea Hawk and Lady Fist.)

https://i.imgur.com/1UaMcwC.png

I went out looking for a test fight...

... and some regular skag enemy rushed out, dogged me down and 3-shot me. I couldn't even *pretend* like I could fight back.

Lascaux wasn't even moving the health bar.

Unkempt would be able to kill, if I had about 5 seconds of free DPS.

...

...

...

What am I doing wrong, lol?

[Diogenes49]

use gold keys get some solid 67 purple guns although the lascaux should have been effective even a harold at level 60 would not be effective against 67 enemies

[Shedding my mortal skin]

1. Slag is vital in UVHM. It triples damage dealt to enemies. Considering you said you relied too heavily on the Bee, I'm going to tell you to always have a Slag gun equipped, at least until you hit the green skill tree's capstone.

2. Use on-level gear. The Lascaux is good, even in UVHM, so rely on that while you slowly rebuild your arsenal. Either farm bosses or use golden keys.

3. You absolutely need to use the correct elements. If you don't have the ability to use all elements for some reason? Use shock and explosive. Axton has plenty of skills that boost grenade damage, and most explosive weapons are boosted by grenade damage (but not all. Google a guide to grenade damage if you want to learn more). As for shock, in UVHM, it hits everything that doesn't flat-out resist shock neutrally, unlike incendiary which does 0.4x to armor and corrosive doing 0.4x to flesh (with both also sucking vs shields, although I don't know the exact details).

4. What build do you have exactly? Go to https://bl2skills.com/commando and recreate your build, then create a permalink and post it here.
For reference, I haven't played Axton in awhile, but I made it to about old OP4 before I stopped. Using my current knowledge, this is the build I'd go for.
https://bl2skills.com/commando.html#05055050515105515010005553100151

5. More max health isn't always a good thing. It's better on Axton than other characters due to him having Grit and two passive health regeneration skills, but by lowering your max health, you can use other forms of healing (Moxxi weapons, transfusions or healing from a teammate Maya's Restoration skill) to constantly keep your health above health gate so you can tank a lot more damage. Then again, I also love Pangolin shields and abusing the health gate, so maybe this point is moot.

[Shady]

But that's what I'm saying. Lascaux was NOT good. Even WITH Bee. (And yes, Slag. My turrets were applying slag.)

And yet, when I entered Down state, my level 63? Unkempt was able to kill things pretty well if there was a medium distance.

With slag + Bee, my Sea Hawk was doing about 600k to 1m damage a pellet, with about 3-5 pellets hitting a target at a time. And these skags could tank about 6 burst shots from me.

... So when I take my Bee off, and now my Lascaux is hitting for about 40k a hit, no. No, I don't think that's gonna cut it, lol. Since these things have shown themselves to have millions of HP.

----

As for survival, do I basically HAVE to use some sort of HP gating + life steal abuse mechanic? Because, like I said, I had 950k EHP and I get 3-shot. And that's just skags. When I'm being shot at by enemies as soon as my model is within line of sight, it's just a miserable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's no surviving that AND attacking enemies at the same time. And my turret gets blown up, too, including with the Phalanx shield talent (and 110% HP talent, of course).

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https://bl2skills.com/commando.html#55550050015500510000055004105000

This was my "tank" build.

https://bl2skills.com/commando.html#55555000015505500505005000000000

This was roughly my Bee build (I forgot by now TBH).

I don't think skill tree really matters here, lol.

[Casurin]

BL2 on UVHM is not an easy game, specially if you haven't played it for some time you will need to learn it again.
And - the right skills+elements+Slag can easily be a factor 10 in damage, let alone on-level equipment.

[Shedding my mortal skin]

Another thing that I forgot to mention is that Axton is a generalist. He's good with all weapon types, but he doesn't excel with any like Zer0 and sniper rifles or Maya and SMGs. So if the Lascaux isn't cutting it, try something else. A shotgun with three or four barrels (especially if the shotgun is Jakobs or Torgue) will go a long way. Even when I was playing Zer0 with a sniper build, a Jakobs Quad was doing massive damage when it was about four levels under.

[Starbug]

I play Axton a lot. That early uvhm part of the game is the toughest. Wouldn't bother with investing points into or using other accessories that give bonus hp. One or two hits will still kill you regardless. Instead invest into all the shield bonuses and explosive dmg buffs.

If you can wean yourself off the bee, I recommend the antagonist shield. It's available in the seraph vendor in flamerock. Really useful item and almost(!!) mandatory on digistruct peak. For weapons, I'd recommend a newer Harold and the seraph SMG, Florentine. Those are mainstays on my commando.

The turret will last longer if you get the longbow and sticky add-ons. Sticking it on a ceiling will avoid enemy melee damage and draw enemy aggravation away from you and onto it. No matter what, the shield on the turret will still melt away in seconds on uvhm.

Good luck and have fun with the bestest, prettiest character!

[Shady]

Yeah this makes no sense, lmao.

So I was level 67, started farming Bunker looking for Sham just to try it out.

... ... Well that literally took me all the way to the tippy tip of level 70, I'm basically one more run from 71. Finally got a Sham, but it's minimum rolled of course. So forgetting it for now.

But farming Bunker was easy. I thought maybe things were looking good from here.

... ... Then I went back to my main quest. Data Mine, in the slaggy place, where you gotta go up and down the pipes. Yeah, everything here just obliterates me. I even have 1.7m EHP now, and it just means absolutely nothing. And everything is a freaking tank. Practically as tanky as freaking Bunker was.

I really don't get it. I feel like the game is bugged or something. Why is everything so colossally overtuned??? I spent ALL DAY farming Bunker very easily, only even went into Downed state just one single time. Then the INSTANT I get back to main quests, I can't even 1v1 a single normal enemy???

Like, I'm slagging this robot with Magic Missile, shooting him with a rocket for 11m damage, and it does less than 1/3 of its HP, lmaoooo. But the immediate frame where I entered his line of sight, I lost half of my total EHP in a single shot. Am I expected to play the entire game around corners and avoiding enemy line of sight entirely???

It doesn't add up. And I just ragequit after going down to another single, solitary enemy.

[Shedding my mortal skin]

UVHM (especially late UVHM) plays heavily into the exponential curve. Although I don't see why the loader should've done that much damage if enemy gear is lower-leveled than the gear players can obtain.

[Shady]

I'm wondering if it's actually an overlooked part of the game, maybe tunes incorrectly at my level range, and most people don't have their levels cross this area in the same way as I have.

My gear is up to level par, and it showed during my Bunker farming. Everything made sense there.

Then BAM, soon as I go to the eridium pipe main quests, it's all ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up again. I dunno what to do. Maybe I'll just snail through it, corpse running until the game makes sense again...... I don't know......

[z00t]

I have had a look at your builds, and you are not spending points well. The turrets in UVHM are there to distract and slag enemies. They will not kill anything in UVHM. Points in turret accuracy are pretty much wasted.
Take the 5 points out of Laser Sight and put them somewhere useful. Able or Grenadier if you want to keep them in that tree.
Gunpowder tree :
Duty Calls is a bit specialised and arguably not that useful in UVHM where matching elemental to enemies is way more effective.
Ranger is basically crap. A max of 5% bonuses for 5 skill points - put them somewhere useful. 1% buff per skill point is just crap.
Duty Calls points, try them in Battlefront. Much more effective.
Ranger points, put 1 into Longbow Turret and Do or Die. The other 3 put into the Survival tree and not in Healthy. Having lots more health is not always a good idea.
Pressure is a reasonable alternative. Keep putting points in that tree until you get down to Mag Lock. Then you will be able to longbow your turret somewhere and stick it to a wall or similar and the enemies will concentrate on that, not you.
Search YouTube for a guy called Demonite. He is basically the #1 Axton player and knows what he is talking about. This is one done with Derch, another knowledgeable BL player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzrC7QdZb2w

Find out what makes Axton tick.

[Shady]

Dude, my skill tree isn't... even... remotely the issue here.

I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna stop being 1-shot because I have 5 more max grenades.

[z00t]

But you are not spending skill points effectively. No, it will not fix your problems, but it will help. You still need to put points somewhere to allow the capstone to be reached, Grenadier would be more effective use of the points. Especially if you get yourself a Fastball or two.

In UVHM it is far more important keeping your gear up to date - guns will essentially become almost useless every 5 levels or so.
Want up to date Bee shields? Start Tina's and get far enough as The Forest. The treants there are do drop Bees regularly.
For general upgrading of gear, go visit Marcus' Mercenary Day headhunter. The loot train that arrives after you defeat the nasty snowman is a great source of on-level gear.
Got Lilith's DLC? The butt-bot and Cassius drop lots of gear. The former is easily farmed.
Visit Savage Lee and Boll regularly. Doc Mercy as well if you are an Infinity fan.
Gettle and Mobley in the Dust for up to date Lyudas. Loot midgets... Lots of loot sources.

The game is not even remotely balanced concerning enemy health. You have to work at it to defeat them, while they can healthgate you in a couple of shots. From the devs point of view, way easier to implement than good enemy AI that could match you and provide a challenge. If you could kill any enemy in two or three shots you would get bored very, very quickly I suspect.
Go here to have a good look at just how much enemy health is, compared to yours.
http://www.blstats.com/index.php

UVHM does mean that you will have to do things a bit differently, like using cover, picking enemies off individually etc. That bunch of loaders? See if any of them are RPG loaders, If so, get behind cover and target them first. You have to learn to identify and prioritise your enemies.

UVHM is hard. It is meant to be. You will have to learn how to thrive there. Stuff that worked in earlier playthroughs will not necessarily work in UVHM.

[Shady]

I don't know if you're reading my posts.

My gear is up to date. I am wearing level 70 gear. I am level 70.

I have 1.7m EHP.

I literally just loaded the game up and got 2-shot by a single guy with a pistol. Bam, bam. Down.

This isn't because I took talents that you consider inefficient. (By the way, taking additional grenade capacity is extremely inefficient when you use Magic Missile. And you SHOULD use Magic Missile. Turret can't always be up. On the contrary, its cooldown is massive, and even still unreliable if you gear for CDR.)

And for all the talk about needing up-to-date gear, my BEST performing weapon is my level 65 Unkempt. NOT my level 70 weapons.

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I guess I'm expected to put myself at low HP amounts and use a life steal weapon to abuse the "health gate" mechanic?? Isn't that kind of lame, as it severely limits what I should be using?? Or even limiting myself to requiring a Siren that wants to heal-b**ch me??

[Overlord]

After reading your last post, i remember one occasion with enemies dealing too much damage.
When you see a on level Antagonist being demolished by two or three shots of a common pistol, you know something is not right.

I quit, restart my pc and try again, enemies damage was normal again. This never happened again.

Did you try restart your pc, then return there?

[Shedding my mortal skin]

TGB původně napsal:

I guess I'm expected to put myself at low HP amounts and use a life steal weapon to abuse the "health gate" mechanic?? Isn't that kind of lame, as it severely limits what I should be using?? Or even limiting myself to requiring a Siren that wants to heal-b**ch me??

You just figured out why UVHM sucks so badly. If you aren't spamming healing, constantly staying behind cover or killing everything immediately, you're going to have pain.