Running head: Commando Skill Review

Commando Survival Skill Review Borderlands 2 Chris Meyers

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW Axton, the Commando, feels like the bread and butter of Borderlands 2; Hes the quintessential everyman, much like Roland, the Soldier from the first game. While the other

classes have far more specialization, allowing them to fit into well-defined niches, Axton appears to be good at just about everything. Taking a brief look at his skill trees, we can see how he can be built for various roles. We can make him a walking tank, able to deploy multiple shielded turrets and survive on the brink of death. He can become an explosives expert, relying on rockets, grenades and nuclear weapons to decimate his enemies. Additionally, he has the ability to focus on rapid fire weaponry, spitting out hundreds of rounds in the blink of an eye. And he can even increase the raw power of his Sabre turret, turning it into a death machine that spews rockets and slags his enemies. This essay will discuss the pros and cons of the Survival tree and why I feel it deserves to be reevaluated. Id first like to start by introducing my credentials, the reasons for my credibility as a skill tree reviewer. Ive been playing this game, non-stop, since launch. Axton was not my first character; I began playing as Maya and later Salvador. After reaching level 20 with both of these characters, I decided to give the Commando a try. This was the character with which I completed both Normal and True Vault modes first; as you might guess, he was also my first 50. Since then, Ive completed Normal with every character and have attained over 10k Badass Rank across the board. Ive farmed most bosses for their coveted legendary loot, the Warrior for his seemingly endless supply of eridium, and Terramorphous for virtual no reason at all. Needless to say, Ive sunk a lot of time into this game; Im sure there are people out there that would tell me to get some sun or a life but I wont let that bother me. The first 30 levels with this character, I focused on the Survival tree, assuming it would keep me from dying while I played solo. Skills that increased my maximum shields and health,

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW as well as regeneration abilities looked really appealing to me as I knew that I wouldnt have anyone to rely on to revive me. I still found, however, that I was getting demolished by bandits, even when taking a tactical approach to the game. I would crouch behind cover, deploy my turret, throw grenades and burst fire my weapon; all things I would do successfully in a firstperson shooter. But I was still getting knocked into last stand regularly and found myself

crawling to no avail toward enemies behind walls. I still continued to play with Survival, though, because the thought of two Phalanx shielded turrets seemed like a brilliant resource and I was sure they would increase my survivability a thousand-fold. I was wrong. Heres a simple breakdown of the Survival skills, why I feel they deserve improvement, and how to ultimately make them more appealing and useful. For the sake of simplicity, assume all skills are at max rank unless otherwise noted. 1) Healthy a) Increases Health by 30%. i) Healthy appeals to the survival-minded player, if youre out of health, youre dead. Increasing your health is always a good idea because it gives you more overall mitigation. In Borderlands 2, enemies do not deal regular damage over time. One shot is generally good enough to not only drop your shields but take a significant chunk of your health away. At level 50, I can reach about 40k shields and 100k life and some enemies can still down me in a matter of seconds. Having high health doesnt help you at all if enemies can deal massive burst damage. The idea behind mitigation is that youll be able to survive longer than the guy who isnt using similar skills but this simply isnt the case. I find more often than not, Im still being downed just as often as the maniac rushing bandits with a shotgun.

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW (1) Suggestion: Reduce the Health bonus by 2% per rank (to 20% at level 5) but increase your overall damage resistance by 20%. 2) Preparation a) Increases shield capacity by 15%. Additionally, you regenerate 2% of your health while at full shields. i) Preparation is appealing because shields provide a buffer. Any good gamer knows that if your shields are down, youre in danger of taking health damage and even dying instantly. More shields, more buffer, less health damage taken. Due to the

damage enemies deal, however, shields get popped immediately in a fight. What is the point in increasing your shielding if they are always going to be down? In order for a shield to be useful, it must prevent damage from reaching your health levels. ii) This skill also sounds great because health regeneration means not having to search for potions to refill your health bar. Having played characters without health regen, this skill feels invaluable because you never have to enter a fight with low health. However, its just that, youre waiting in between fights for your health to regenerate. This part of the skill is more of a luxury than anything. (1) Suggestion: Increase shield capacity to 25% at rank 5. Coupled with the damage reduction from Healthy, this should provide more of a buffer and make these two skills synergize well. 3) Last Ditch Effort a) Increases Gun Damage by 40% and Movement Speed by 70% while in Fight for Your Life

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW i) This skill is hardly appealing. I havent read a single instance where anyone found this skill useful. Ive personally tried it and found it to be worthless. The hip-fire mechanics in fight for your life mode mean that youre missing your target the majority of the time anyhow, so the increased gun damage is nearly pointless. Being able to move faster is useful to find targets to kill as they like to hide when youre downed. (1) Suggestion: Remove Gun Damage. Increase Fight for Your Life time by 50%. Increase accuracy while in Fight for Your Life by 25%. This should help make the skill more appealing and focus on allowing you to get back on your feet before bleeding out. 4) Pressure

a) Increases Reload Speed by up to 70% and Shield Recharge Delay by up to 60% based on how little health you have. i) Skills based on your health levels are unreliable and ridiculous. To get any real benefit from this skill requires you to always be at low health. Not to mention, we have no idea what kind of benefit we get when at full health. Shields recharge ends if you take any damage, which means youre probably seeking cover anyhow. At that rate, whats the point of improved reload speed and shield recharge delay? If youre behind cover, you have all the time in the world to regenerate your shields and reload your weapons. (1) Suggestion: Remove this skill entirely. Pressure should synergize with shields, not health. Improve movement speed by 50% while shields are down to give quicker access to cover, improve shield recharge RATE to get your shields back to full

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW faster. Leave delay alone, let pressure be a skill that requires you to find cover to be effective. 5) Forbearance a) Reduces the duration of status effects by 40% and increases maximum health by 5%. i) Status effects are a pain sometimes, fire and corrosive damage from barrels and enemies can easily down you. However, this skill is completely unappealing due to the ease of reapplying status effects. If an enemy has a shock weapon, he can continuously apply shock status on you, making a reduction in duration significantly pointless. (1) Suggestion: Remove this skill entirely. When inflicted with a status effect you

gain 20% improved resistance to that element and take 20% reduced damage from all status effects. Additionally, while this effect is active, any bullet damage you deal also inflicts the elemental damage type that you are resistant to. This will improve your elemental damage mitigation, making you feel more tanky as well as keeping the 40% reduction of from status effects. Plus, it increases its appeal by giving you a small but unpredictable boost in damage. 6) Phalanx Shield a) Your Sabre turret projects a protective shield. i) On paper, Phalanx shield sounds amazing. Not only does it provide protection for your turret but it can also be used for cover for you and your allies. However, this shields capacity is ludicrously low later in the game (and with more players). The Phalanx shield breaks within moments of deployment at the highest levels, making it nearly worthless. Not to mention, there is zero indication of the health of the shield,

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW so it breaks unpredictably. Not a terrible skill while leveling up but not amazing either. (1) Suggestion: Improve shield scaling. Also, make the shield change colors to show how close it is to breaking. Give players inside the Phalanx shield increased reload speed or ammo regeneration, something with a bit more utility. 7) Quick Charge a) Killing an enemy causes your shield to regenerate by 5% per second for a short time. i) This skill is useless. I used it while leveling, the shield regeneration does nothing to prevent damage to health as enemies can easily tear through the small amount regenerated. The short time youre regenerating shields is generally overridden by your passive shield recharge anyhow. (1) Remove this skill. Make quick charge focus on recharging your sabre turret

cooldown when you get a kill. Passively, this skill could improve your revive rate: Other than the Sirens Res skill, there is no way to improve the dreadfully long revive rate. The survival tree seems well suited to be a sort of Support class, being that youll survive longer than your friends will, you can help keep them alive. 8) Resourceful a) Reduces the cooldown rate of your Sabre turret action skill by 25%. i) Im not sure why this is in the survival tree. Dont get me wrong, the 10.5 second reduction in cooldown is great but its not exactly groundbreaking. It doesnt really do much to improve your survival, either. And the 5 skill point cost doesnt make me feel any more resourceful.

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW (1) Suggestion: Remove skill. Increase team health, shield, and ammo regeneration while your turret is deployed. Now whos resourceful? 9) Mag-Lock a) Your Sabre turret can now be deployed on walls and ceilings. i) Again, not sure why this is in the survival tree. This skill sounds great but it is incredibly flawed and doesnt synergize with the rest of the tree at all. Whats the point of attaching your turret to a wall? This prevents you from utilizing its Phalanx shield. Also, the short throw distance means you literally have to be right next to the surface you want to stick it to. (1) Suggestion: Move this skill elsewhere. This tree doesnt need it at all. Perhaps it should just be a perk of the class in general, its not exactly overpowered. 10) Grit a) 20% chance of ignoring death, regain half of your max health. i) This skill should be the epitome of the Survival tree. A chance to ignore death completely and recover health? Sounds awesome, right? Well a 1-in-5 chance isnt exactly reliable by any means. Investing this many points into the tree should make you feel like an un-killable badass as it is, shouldnt you be further rewarded for

sticking to it? Couple this with the fact that there are no class mod boosts for the skill. (1) Suggestion: Increase to 40% chance of ignoring death. This will give the entire skill tree more value and make you feel less squishy. Youll still have a good chance to be incapacitated, so you wont rely solely on the skill but it wont be worthless either. 11) Gemini

COMMANDO SKILL REVIEW a) Allows you to deploy two turrets at the same time. i) Gemini looks like an amazing talent. Being able to deploy a second turret gives this skill tree a lot more damage, especially when paired with some of the Guerilla skills. The synergy with Phalanx makes it feel more useful and can help you protect your team more reliably. And ultimately, its like having bringing a 5th and 6th member to your team, drawing fire from the people that matter. The biggest issue with this skill is the deploy time, as it takes you a few seconds to actually toss your turrets. Most of the time, I find myself defenseless as I attempt to chuck the pair around the battlefield. Theres really no way to improve your deploy time other than Longbow from Gunpowder, which isnt exactly the best way to spend your additional points. (1) Suggestion: Improve ALL turret throw time, other than that the skill is fine as is. To recap, the Survival tree isnt where it should be in terms surviving. Spending points into this tree is really just a means to getting Gemini, as it stands. With 25 virtually wasted skill points, Survival feels awfully gimped in both damage and survivability. After playing with this tree extensively, I can honestly say it is the worst of the three options by far. There is no

incentive in speccing into a survival build, it does not provide you with enough protection; unlike the Guerilla and Gunpowder trees, which simply feel more fun and actually have practical uses. If left in its current state, there is absolutely no reason to play this specialization; Its boring and broken.