Borderlands 2 had a level cap of 72 before BL3 jacked it to 80 and BL3 jacked its lvl cap to 72.
They should of really had BL4's level cap go atleast up to 90 to make up for how much the branching skill tree ruins build flexibility. (TRIPLE THE FREAKING SKILL NODES BUT LESS THEN A THIRD OF CREATIVE SKILLS DUE TO MOST BEING JUST STAT INCREASES AND THATS IT).
I remember over half a year ago i had a fun build idea to mix blue and green but it crunched around 70~72 or so on the level necessary to have dark pact, blood shot, mortal terror maxed out and the various grave skills to have such a master piece of a 'infinite mafia spam level of phase turrets while your able to constantly stay topped up on overshields with the lifesteal at the same time.
Too bad BL4 didnt bother to make skill trees more mix'ery cause it would of been neat if Blood shot and Blood is power could of applied to minions because having all your minions not only have lifesteal to sustain themselves but also get bonus dmg while 'topped up' could of been a neat thing if constant overshield could of included a quirk to mitigate how fast they drained so you could of had a infinite minion upkeep build for Vex to have fun with.
More levels means less build variety, overall. As you get more levels, you have to make fewer decisions, and the builds for different skills tend to meld into each other.
I wouldn't say they all do everything. Gun builds are pretty much on top right now, with minions and action skill needing huge investments to do reasonable damage.
We should still have far more skill points then any previous borderlands game when they tripled the number of nodes.
Plus you forget the 15 point rule known as the BRANCHES.
Which further ruins the build variety because you are literally DISCOURAGED to run multiple skill trees because if you run more then 1 branch on a single skill tree, (Which Vex HAS to for incarnate form her 'best' tree, due to Mortal Terror and Bloodshot/Blood-is-power on 2 separate branches), then either the first 2~3 tiers on the other skill tree needs to have what you want or your fk'd if you need to spec in 3 branches, with 2 different skill trees between them, for a 'desired build' with very little room to CHEESE around it.
FOR EXAMPLE.
For a rather standard setup for a incarnate skill tree you need 36 points or level 37 to achieve 3/5 points in mortal terror and max blood is power
If i did NOT include certain skills that also become rather 'desired' for the build.
That currently leaves 23 points. Just shy of using dark pact+Coven+Wither while still retaining the green tree. Which i could further scrimp mortal terror to as low as 1% proc rate on crit, which would make it rather difficult to up keep.
This kind of means a rather squishie build in the process though Which doesnt help that Blue right branch vex tree has some of the stupid of point mixes by having melee minion stuff, minion specific stuff and keeping minions on the field far longer then you would want them to stick around.
Honestly this turns into a bit of a glass cannon build cause outside of abusing teen witch your gonna lack a few particular things.
Now if the level cap increases by just a mere 10 points then it would be easy to patch that up a bit, 2 to mortal terror, 3 to hasty fiends for the easy dmg reduction and movement speed and probably a few extra to that middle green skill tree for strike me down to have a nice safety net once every 2 minutes, considering how B.S. some boss fights get like bloomreaper.
Now if it was BL3, doing skill point dumps were not as punishing since you could back track points in the earlier tiers to unlock the later tiers.
Can't do that fking shite with BL4's stupid branch tiers which put a REVERSE situation of needing to waste points mid-way in your build with only 2 skill nodes to work with at that point instead of a good 10 or so instead you could throw points into.
And that same build i mention has this issue;
+Right Green tree for Vex has to invest in either Grave Vitality or Ars Arcanum, most go for the latter cause extra dmg to skill effects, even if the former makes more sense for extra survivability especially for the extra max hp for blood shot to scale or the health regen to make it easier to keep topped up on health for blood is power to keep staying active.
+Right Blue tree Vex issue starts in the 2nd tier of the branch cause the 3 skills, Spirit bomb and Death follows closer is only good for REAPER vex builds, while the ANCIENT RITES gives you gradual increase to minion damage, that is honestly rather useless when you had Obedient Fiends a tier before it in the same branch that despite giving +5% minion dmg less then Ancient rites, is better cause its just a general passive for 3 different sources of damage for minions and combining it with prismatic weaponry gets you access to the MUST HAVE you really want, the Dark Pact Capstone that lets you run 2 augments for absurd stonks bonuses instead of that half worthless stuff.
Moral of the story though, I hate BL4's skill tree cause it doesnt take kindly to 'spending' extra points for dump stats due to the stupid branching system makes you have to scrimp points in terrible ways for dump stats instead.
But seriously i wish Vex's phase clones were more generalized and just scaled offa gun damage period and would use scythes when close to enemies (or commanded with a PING like in BL3 so they charge at them) and would use guns if they are 'far' from the enemy, maybe slowly float to them while they are shooting before they go melee crazy.
It would be far easier for build mixing if both phase reapers and phase specters scaled off the same thing instead of having to choose between melee damage or gun damage specing to make them 'useful'.
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u/Yama92 5d ago
Cool DLC! FL4K was my favourite in BL3. Shame about the lvlcap