Borderlands 2 skill calculators released

Borderlands 2 won't arrive on shelves until next week, but you can start planning your character builds right now as Gearbox has released skill calculators for its FPS-RPG for you to pore over. Vault hunters, start your min/maxing engines.

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Borderlands 2 won't arrive on shelves until next week, but you can start planning your character builds right now as Gearbox has released skill calculators for its FPS-RPG for you to pore over. Vault hunters, start your min/maxing engines.

Head on over to build your Assassin, Commando, Gunzerker, or Siren. Unexcitingly, most of the skills add small passive bonuses, which is never the most exciting use for a skill point, but there are some tasty abilities there.

The tree for the Mechromancer DLC class is still under wraps, but is known to include summoning robots and a tree made especially for people who need a helping hand in FPSs.

Borderlands 2 arrives for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 18.

From The Chatty
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    September 10, 2012 6:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Borderlands 2 skill calculators released.

    Borderlands 2 won't arrive on shelves until next week, but you can start planning your character builds right now as Gearbox has released skill calculators for its FPS-RPG for you to pore over. Vault hunters, start your min/maxing engines.

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      September 10, 2012 6:12 AM

      Awesome. Axton has a skill that lets you place his turret on walls and ceilings.

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        September 10, 2012 6:59 AM

        maybe i missed it but I don't see a turret healing ability which is pretty lame. was the best part of that class, healing yourself and teammates within range. :\

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          September 10, 2012 7:05 AM

          Hmm, looks like you're right. There is a turret shield skill at least.

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            September 10, 2012 7:19 AM

            down a tree that doesnt seem to increase damage much at all. all defense no damage except for your turret which you can't increase your cooldown rate till the 4th tier. doesn't seem worth it to go down that tree to me unfortunately. i'm liking the guerrilla tree. for group healing i guess it's ok to fall back to spamming health grenades with the extra grenade capacity perk in that tree + health regen for yourself on enemy damage in the 3rd tier.

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          September 10, 2012 7:12 AM

          It looks like they shifted the team heal abilities over to the Siren. She has 2 or 3 of them.

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            September 10, 2012 7:20 AM

            awww she picked up the shooting friendly players heals them skill. god damn, i loved that playing commando

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              September 10, 2012 3:04 PM

              It was awesome as shit with a shotgun

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          September 10, 2012 9:09 AM

          Maya now has A LOT of healing abilities, i think axton is now more of a dps/nuke champ

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          September 10, 2012 9:36 AM

          it seems they spread out those abilities :( gunzerker can regen ammo o_O I miss the supply part a LOT more than the healing part. and as mentioned, the healing part went to the siren. I gotta reread all of them but I already miss the jack-of-all-trades soldier pal :(

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            September 10, 2012 10:14 AM

            yeah the more i think about it, the more i'm not seeing the appeal of that class anymore

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              September 10, 2012 10:40 AM

              That's what a friend and I are thinking. The commando class looks pretty tame and boring compared to the other 3 (possibly 4). Maybe he's been geared even more towards the more normal FPS player?

              It's also possible that specialty class mod equips change it up some though. They always had some team-based special abilities, like health regen and stuff. Maybe he gets something neat that only his class can equip?

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                September 10, 2012 12:47 PM

                i think you are right,
                In borderlands 1 you had soldier as an ultimate support, no other class could do anything alike, at least not even close, now they spread those abilities to other classes, which is a good thing, i think... now all classes are useful! (i hope)

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      September 10, 2012 7:33 AM

      Considering a melee assassin build. Are there randomised melee weapons? I think there might be nowhere near the variety of melee weapons compared to guns.

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        September 10, 2012 7:50 AM

        No, it's always the same sword. I'd be melee too of it had random swords.

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          September 10, 2012 7:56 AM

          But then it would be Diablo with swords instead of Diablo with guns. Full circle!

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        September 10, 2012 7:58 AM

        man, i bet that would be so slow going. so you're pretty fragile going up against huge groups of dudes and you can stealth to get close to one and take one down with melee and then what? stealth again if you can and repeat or are you basically chopping up the rest of the dudes while you get mauled to death?

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          September 10, 2012 9:13 AM

          if you go down bloodshed tree, last skill give you the awesome ability = if you kill an enemy you deploy another decoy and go back to stealth, no limits, so you can just run around and keep killing from stealth, ALL THE TIME!

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            September 10, 2012 10:17 AM

            but for a large portion of the game you won't have that skill

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              September 10, 2012 12:20 PM

              but the damage from melee will be massive, they made it into it's own skill tree so that means that they need to keep it up with the best weapons in the game = almost from the start the melee attacks with zero will be devastating!

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          September 10, 2012 9:32 AM

          There are a couple of skills to buff you up for this. Health on attack, health on kill, shield regen on kill, and movement speed on kill, reduce cooldown on your stealth on kill. It look viable, although as mentioned above the lack of sword drops will be lame.

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        September 10, 2012 11:03 AM

        One of the bonus attributes that guns can receive is bonus melee damage. So you can find a gun that does huge bonus melee damage, as well as shields that give you even bigger melee bonuses when the shield is depleted.

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      September 10, 2012 8:05 AM

      I don't even care anymore just give me the game.

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      September 10, 2012 9:25 AM

      Nice! Interesting to hear that Siren gets the ability to heal teammates by shooting them (Though I do miss the Soldier's Turret Healing Ability in Borderlands 1)

      I've been wondering, though (I haven't been keeping up with the game as much as I should have, namely to avoid Spoilers in the like, ex the Skill Trees):

      1- Any word on what the level cap will be initially this time around? In Borderlands 1 the cap was Level 50, follwed by 51, 60, and 69 right?

      2- Will the Mechromancer class be avaiable to play from Day 1 to those who preordered the game? And for those that didn't, they have to wait one month or so to unlock the character via DLC right?

      3- Is the enemy level scaling the same as before in Borderlands 1? Such as, if I were playing with a Level 21 character, and a friend joins who has a Level 30 character, the enemies will only be at my (The Host's) current level, right?

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        September 10, 2012 9:34 AM

        1. Assuming you get 1 skill point per level, level 50 is the max.

        2. Pretty sure merchromancer isn't even close to developed yet, so no Day 1.

        3. No idea.

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          September 10, 2012 10:15 AM

          it's october 16th for mechromancer i think. if you want the exact date search the news items for it. i think it was posted last week

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            September 10, 2012 11:28 AM

            Yep you're right, guess I misread it the first time around, thanks!

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          September 10, 2012 11:27 AM

          Yeah, seems like Level 50 is the cap like in the first game, still good though!

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            September 10, 2012 11:52 AM

            the calculator linked in the article shows max level is 50 so that is pretty much confirmed

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      September 10, 2012 9:28 AM

      Hmm, I was going to choose Gunzerker, but reading his skills it sounds like too many of them only apply while in Gunzerker mode.

      Leaning towards commando...

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      September 10, 2012 10:25 AM

      C'mon what? Game related subthread vanishes. News at never.

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      September 10, 2012 10:52 AM

      Hmm how will picking a healing spec'd siren effect xp gain? or will healing give enough xp to offest the xp she would get if she was dps? Anyway there's much more variability in class spec but imo it looks like the Siren's skill tree has had the most thought put into it.

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      September 10, 2012 11:02 AM

      Yowch. 47 points to max out a tree. They really want you to min/max a single tree, don't they? I wish it were easier to pick and choose abilities without having to spend so many points just to unlock progression.

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        September 10, 2012 11:05 AM

        I think you can get the terminal skill in a tree and get to the 4th tier of another tree, that's pretty good imo.

        Double-barreled slag-shooting turret that has a shield pls.

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          September 10, 2012 11:07 AM

          Hmm...I'm not seeing that on the Assassin calculator, anyhow.

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        September 10, 2012 11:05 AM

        You don't have to max every skill in a tree to get to the bottom of the tree.

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          September 10, 2012 11:10 AM

          No, but you've got to use ~35 points. You're only going to get the terminal ability in 1 tree.

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            September 10, 2012 11:14 AM

            By design I guess. If you could get most of the "good" abilities in one go there wouldn't be any build diversity.

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              September 10, 2012 11:19 AM

              That's a valid point (build diversity). I guess I'll just have to keep playing the DLCs when they start bumping the level caps.

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            September 10, 2012 3:09 PM

            Was about the same in B1. You were much more limited at launch then you were after the DLCs added a ton more skill points.

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              September 10, 2012 6:43 PM

              In BL1 my builds got me all except one or two top tier skills in each of the three trees (w/o DLC Skillpoints). do a 3/2 or 4/1 and you can get up to the next Tier in a tree. No rule saying you have to put 5s in everything. However, I see in BL2, they have "fixed" that with those single columns. Really, I have to put 5 points in Grenade capacity? Probably won't be using the Double Gun Sentry then. Nuke or Gemini it is.

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        September 10, 2012 11:17 AM

        You can reset/re-spend your characters talent points at almost any time, for just a bit of cash.

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          September 10, 2012 11:19 AM

          O RLY?? I'd missed that part, that's nice/fun.

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            September 10, 2012 12:18 PM

            They did that in the first game. Re-specing was only a few thousand bucks.

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