im back after a while.

[Pnutimus]

so lvl 72 OP8 was fun when i stopped playing just stopped because the group faded out. Im back been back for few days now and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OP 10 is hard do people actually play OP 10? am i just bad now?

[Pizzaghetti]

typical gearbox, op10 is an unbalanced mess.

[antisimetric]

what's up. I mainly play OP10, always enjoyed late game more.

Depends: If you use only meta gear I wouldn't call it hard. I think main issue you're having, if you enjoy the challenges the higher difficulties provide, might be shaking the dust off your skills.

I recommend starting with top gear, things that "always work", then slowly try to use less potent gear, see how you do.

The game overall is hard until you learn it (obv you have), and OP10 is indeed considered hard by the vast majority. Most people do not play it. I do not recommend hosting public OP10 games. It's a cringefest of hacked BAR, sal pimp+ahab, and imaginary weapons that punch 20x harder than a norfleet.

[xoxo]

add me

[Renfrew]

I'm glad you are looking to learn instead of just blaming the game.

OP10 is fine, I've been playing at OP10 since it was added and have completed the peak solo with all 6 characters at OP10. I never use Moxxi weapons or the Unkempt Harold (overrated and misunderstood gun), and can survive and kill with ease.

Anyone who can't handle OP10 can just decrease their OP level, it's always an option, but due to ego they'd rather blame the game. Those who say it's unbalanced usually cheated or exploited the peak (save edit, carried in multiplayer, rocket jumping) and thus expose themselves as to why they can't handle the difficulty increase, so it's their own fault they should have stayed at level 80 until they got better. The alternative is they generally have no clue why they are regurgitating a popular opinion that probably originated on reddit, since it is mindless and has no justification. There is only one instance where OP10 is objectively unbalanced and I will touch on that.


Main upside of Level 80 + OP10 increase:
You get 8 extra skill points - this is no small thing, as it makes already highly optimised builds even stronger and more effective, which negates the difficulty increase to an extent. It slightly increases build diversity, but tbh if you're playing at OP10 and your goal isn't to optimise then you're better of dialling down your OP level, so you can enjoy a more casual experience.


Downsides of Level 80 + OP10 increase:

1. Refarming all your gear - this hurt a lot, especially for those of us with perfect gear, but you'll get through it eventually.
   
2. 10% extra damage reduction to enemies due to the level difference - The extra skill points make this a non-factor except against bosses. It also means the gear check is much harsher.
   
3. Bugged raid boss HP - Raids are where that 10% damage reduction is truly noticeable. Two of the bosses (Hyperius and Voracidous specifically, as far as I know) have bugged HP, which makes their HP value absurdly high, making these raids near impossible. This is actually a proper objective instance where OP10 is unbalanced, and its a result of the formulas being bugged. Gearbox had said before that they couldn't do another increase because of the formulas causing bugs, but then they went and did it anyway without fixing... What makes this worse is you run out of ammo easily in these fights, with no way to regen (unless playing as Salvador or with a Salvador in co-op using a Hoarder class mod variant) and often have to do absurd exploits just to weaken the boss (i.e. it's highly likely it won't even kill the boss and you will still need to try to finish them off).

Question for you:
How did you get to OP10 without doing the peak? Being 72 OP8, you can't just become OP10 that quickly, you have to level up your character to 80 first which takes a while, your gear also becomes outdated because old OP8 gear is equivalent to level 80 gear, so you have to do a LOT of re-farming. After that you have to do 2 successful peak runs to get to OP10. I'm a little suspicious because if you did the peak you would have experienced that slow introduction to the difficulty. The point of those OP levels is you either reach your gear/skill ceiling (it's a combination of both to an extent) and can't progress until you get better gear or improve your technique, or you adjust it to a level of difficulty you enjoy. It makes no sense that if you've already gotten to OP10 legitimately that you are struggling to adjust, so do explain that more...

[Samos]

About the main upside, depends on the character. Axton for example hasn't gain much from the +8 skill points and has even became quite boring to play because there is just one build to rule them all (Gemini + Double UP and all the dps skills in the Gunpowder tree). Zer0 already had too much skill points at level 72 for most of his builds, so again +8 skill points doesn't do much. To me the only character that really benefited the increase in level cap is Maya, because you can really improve your survivability even more by grabbing more points in the Motion tree and also spreading points in skills that might be boosted by other COMs that the one you're using but it's not like she was squishy at level 72.

For the most part, level 80 kinda ruined diversity because you can just take any skills that matter so the path to min-maxing your character is just so simple.

[Renfrew]

Originally posted by Samos:

About the main upside, depends on the character. Axton for example hasn't gain much from the +8 skill points and has even became quite boring to play because there is just one build to rule them all (Gemini + Double UP and all the dps skills in the Gunpowder tree).

Misconceptions about Axton still being spread in 2023?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwC9J45jyM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNuyIqUmqnE

You can learn from Demonite's videos or don't; he has many covering Axton. If you don't even know who this is, he is recognised as one of the best Axton players, and considered the go to source for learning about Axton.

What you are confusing is that every character has "essential" skills, by the same logic Maya is repetitive because you always go for Ruin and Scorn is optional but nah no real need for it because look how fast bone of the ancients + converge + 5/5 quicken allows Maya to keep enemies slagged, and then Thoughtlock is mediocre. Nuke is a misunderstood capstone, not everyone plays Gemini + Double Up, the only essential skill there is Double Up. In-between the essential skills there are skills that are interchangeable, and that depends on build. Key note: builds aren't only based on skill points , that ignores gear choices and what enemies you will be facing completely, which are a fundamental aspect of builds, especially class mods. Legendary Ranger is your kill skill Axton, Legendary Soldier is your all-rounder, Pointman is your grit abuser (Non-legendary works too), Grenadier is for your splash damage heavy builds or even rocket launchers thanks to the big boom blaster shield. As for enemies and gear, don't expect kill skills to work well vs most bosses, don't take shield regen skills with shield depleted skills, don't expect Steady to synergise with Jakobs guns, Duty Calls is a perfectly viable option, don't take a utility grenade and then boost grenade damage and so on.

If you want to talk about a lack of diversity you should actually be looking at Gaige, who is pretty much only Anarchy-based, and her class mods don't do much to change that. Your main goal regardless is to shoot things with your gun and deal as much damage as possible thanks to Anarchy. The only time I have seen someone not use Anarchy to its full extent is with a DoT build, but even that used Rational Anarchist and Discord for survivability, and it was barely a powerful build, since it relied so heavily on Evil enchantress, which is a kill skill and is thus mobbing oriented, especially since most bosses are immune to DoT.

Originally posted by Samos:

Zer0 already had too much skill points at level 72 for most of his builds, so again +8 skill points doesn't do much. To me the only character that really benefited the increase in level cap is Maya, because you can really improve your survivability even more by grabbing more points in the Motion tree and also spreading points in skills that might be boosted by other COMs that the one you're using but it's not like she was squishy at level 72.

You are basically repeating what I said:
"this is no small thing, as it makes already highly optimised builds even stronger and more effective"

However you are spinning it off as if it doesn't matter and only applies to Maya. When those 8 extra skill points give you that extra bit of damage or healing and is what puts you from overcoming the 10% damage reduction and increased damage of enemies at OP10, that's a huge compensation and that works for every character You seem to be discussing as if this is about level 80, and not OP10, that's a separate debate because they are not the same. I would even argue level 80 forces you to go to OP levels because of how ridiculously easy it is.

Originally posted by Samos:

For the most part, level 80 kinda ruined diversity because you can just take any skills that matter so the path to min-maxing your character is just so simple.

Your build is a combination of:

1. Knowing which skills are bad - multiplicative vs additive bonuses, proper skill synergies, skills with bad or negligible effects, and skills with poor scaling
   
2. Min-Maxing - in other words not spreading skill points everywhere
   
3. Class mod - This basically will define your skill selections
   
4. Your gear - I put this separate from class mod, because it is obvious why they are different
   
5. The enemies you will fight - Different species of creatures, bandits, sometimes bandits and vehicles, rats, Loaders, Loaders + Hyperion personnel, bosses

What you are also essentially implying is that there is an abundance of skill points, so you never really have to respec, and thus everything is the same. If that were true then I could just switch between Explosive Krieg, Melee Krieg, Hellborn Krieg and Blood Bath Krieg constantly without ever changing a single skill point. This of course is not exclusive to Krieg, and as above your class mod is the defining feature, in my opinion. Of course you can always take a completely different approach: find interesting gear and think about how you can integrate it and make it work; or in other words have some fun...

[PleB Hitzgi]

As long as you play the bug character, it's not that hard rly.

[Samos]

Renfrew even Demonite has said it in one of his recent videos that after the FFS update, Axton got his build reduced to the same skill distribution at end game for any of his different playstyle such as the legendary Ranger like you pointed out, and I feel the same can be said about Soldier, Engineer, and others.

If you're really looking to maximize your damage, survivability, crowd control...etc which you should at OP10 (and not so much at level 80 as it will become too easy at some point like you wrote) you're generally gonna feel forced to take the same skills except maybe Pointman which has a few skills that you wouldn't normally go for.

I wasn't trying to spread misinformation, trust me I'm not of those guys, I really like Axton and leveling him up is fantastic because his playstyle are so different from one another.
But there is such thing as diminishing returns even for skill points, even though I agree that skill points are not the only thing to take into account when building your character.

Zer0 shotgun build didn't get much out of those extra points, nor his Sniper build, not even his Melee build, I don't even think you can get extra damage nor sustain for Melee and if you can, it's pretty much irrelevant at that point even more at OP10 with the damage reduction which can actually be higher than 65% because some enemies spawn at level 92 and others like Goliath can increased their level.
Spec for Zer0 online with level 72 cap for all of the builds I've mentionned above, you'll see that there were already a few points wandering around to max a barely useful skill and so the extra points really didn't improve build diversity, it's just the same with added damge reduction on enemies. I think there was a video by Bew or Striker Zidane can't remember, showing differents results in the Badass Round of Murderlin's Temple between old 72 OP8 and 80 OP10.

About Maya, that was just one example, I was thinking about Derch's Twisted Pimp build which had a few points spread out because all of her DPS, sustain and utility skills were pretty much maxed out, and now with the extra skill points you can drop some on Fleet for Breakneck Banshee, Helios if you switch to Leg Binder, Kinetic Reflection for Mirrored Trickster and so on. And then there's Sub-Sequence builds with Thoughtlock or not, that can get Ruin and up to Life Tap which is great for solo play and you're still have a few points to spend in Restoration in case or coop or the others that I've mentionned above.

One of my point is that there's less incentives at level 80 to try to balance your build and make for example decisions to cut some of your dps for more survivability because you got those extra points.

Demonite's thoughts on making level 80 builds video : https://youtu.be/R9IRo01eAUs?t=473

Of course, you could run Gemini + Nuke and that's great, I actually think Double-Up is overrated for the slag, since Axton is one the best slag Pimpernel user with Expertise which I always favor over Impact, but the difference in playstyle between this build and Gemini/Double-Up wouldn't be clearly noticeable.
One gives more slag and turret dps, the other gives more crowd control and damage overtime but other than that you grab the same skills.

So yeah I agree it is no small thing for certain characters like Maya who really gets a remarkable boost out of those extra points but for others it really didn't do anything or even worse kinda tunneled you into picking the same exact skills across different playstyles. Now, write a 10000 words essay on how I'm wrong :D
Just kidding, I hope that you don't think I was condescendant and simply disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing with someone online, I just think there's room for a debate on this.

[Renfrew]

I think you took that the wrong way, a misconception isn't an accusation, but rather an examination of your view. It's more rhetorical and ironic, than accusatory. 😕

I assumed you were one of the Axton haters, so all I wanted to imply is Axton doesn't have to be played that way, and that you should be adjusting your skills per build instead of literally picking the same skills beyond the skills that are essential. I don't care much about defending Axton, I nolife Krieg, but I see Axton gets a lot of hate for no reason. I wouldn't use Nuke + Gemini personally, as fun as it can be, but to each their own, that said that's a case for diversity right there!

I was also trying to distinguish between level 80 and OP10 because to me that's a separate debate. Level 80 is boring and easy now, that is definitely true, but OP10 is punishing for not spending skill points properly, as well as the gear and skill check. That's why people make threads seeking advice, again if putting skill points everywhere was working why do people need assistance to optimise what they are doing? Clearly there's a bit more to it. Combine that with gear, enemy types, and just generally being able to multi-task, I can understand why people struggle.

In the end, indeed it is debatable. Also making it very clear that I thought you were dunking on Axton that is all, I wasn't trying to say your entire comment was a misconception, just an address of a specific part, and even offered an analysis.

[Samos]

Oh yeah sorry, just realised that I meant to say "misconception" instead of misinformation and I definitly didn't take that as an accusation, wrong wording there!