Joe_M
2701
Yeah, I found myself just using the most powerful shotgun or assault rifle I’d found as the soldier. I had a crazy good shotgun for a while and mourned it a little when I bought the Knoxx DLC. It just wasn’t feasible to continue running around with one weapon when baddies dropped dramatically faster if I swapped around guns for appropriate elemental types. I do like the design, though… it makes me think some beyond just aiming and pulling the trigger (and cowering behind my turret).
I’ve played Siren and Hunter to level 35+, and Soldier (which I’m currently trying) to level 22.
Siren is definitely the strongest class of these. The turret and hawk are very minor abilities compared to being able to teleport out of most bad situations. The turret’s a better ability than the hawk, but I like the Hunter’s skill tree a lot better than the Soldier’s. The Soldier abilities are for the most part pretty meh, particularly compared to the hunter’s shield-piercing skill. While many early enemies have little or no shields, there are some late-game enemies that have far, far more shields than health. Those are pushovers for the Hunter, and a serious challenge for everyone else.
I’ve found that all classes can get some use out of all weapons, depending on the weapon stats. The skills obviously modify that a bit, but not so much that I end up forgoing “non-class” weapons.
JoshV
2703
This is more due to how the two games operate. L4D 1 & 2 are very good for pickup games, while Borderlands is not, if someone is more than 5 levels apart, the game doesn’t do well, and if someone has completed quests the other hasn’t, it can also be a pain. They handled both those things pretty badly IMHO. It makes it tough to play with disparate groups to get together for pickup games. I still had a blast going through all the content with my best friend, and the expansions too. So far the zombie expansion was the best.
Hunter and Siren are pretty much neck and neck in my opinion. A fully spec’ed pistol/revolver hunter is probably the fastest DPS of any character, with wicked accuracy to boot. Note that this type of hunter pretty much ignores using the bloodwing.
While I prefer going the sniper rifle route, just due to personal preferences, I think that ignoring the bloodwing is pretty much the correct way to go. Upgrading it just doesn’t give the kind of rewards that spec’ing sniper rifle or revolver does.
I’ve gotten my solder up to level 25, which means he was enough to 5/5 a top-level skill. So far I’m pretty underwhelmed by the turret, even when you add points to relevant skills. It might be worth more in a team environment where the ammo regen, health regen, and supply drops can help your team.
So, from what I’ve seen the one class that really benefits from skill points spent on the special ability is Siren. The health regen during pathwalking and invulnerability afterward are both powerful improvements. I’m less sure of the damage-oriented ones, since I haven’t played with those, they don’t really fit what I enjoy doing.
The Turret is amazing. The best thing about it, beyond you being able to toss a gun somewhere you don’t want to be anywhere near, is that it attracts agro really well. Toss it at a boss skag and watch as the skag chews on the turret ineffectually so you can pepper it with your guns.
Also stockpile is awesome before you get your class mod that gives team ammo regen.
Once you get the missiles for the turret it can put out some serious hurt too.
I’ve just beaten Sledge and have taken care of all the missions I can find in Arid Badlands. Moving on to Dahl Headland now I suppose, but my map in Arid Badlands shows a bounty board that doesn’t seem to exist. There’s obviously the one in the main camp area, but there’s an icon on my map for one near the first big gate you unlock when you first get a vehicle and jump a valley. Glitch? Something I haven’t unlocked? Something I haven’t found?
Also, each time I arrive back in the zone, Claptrap tells me “Shep whatever has a new mission for you!” but I can’t find Shep anymore, and Claptrap was telling me that back when finishing off Sledge was still the only mission Shep did have (when I’d already accepted but not yet completed it). Another glitch?
While I don’t use the bloodwing when spec’ed for pistols, I do find it much superior in terms of damage dealing ability, than Roland’s turret.
A decked out bloodwing will kill most non-bosses or sub-bosses (e.g., badasses) in one hit. It’s not uncommon to see damage numbers in the 3000 range, per hit, on same level enemies.
The key is the having a good hunter class mode (the one that adds to bloodwing damage) and elemental artifact. The bloodwing also recharges in ~13 seconds with the recharge skill maxed compared to 50 seconds for the turret with max deploy skill.
Bloodwing is good for getting an extra whack of damage on something big. The turret is much better at crowd control and killing small things quickly.
Funny, I have the exact opposite impression.
The turret is good for distracting (main benefit) and whittling down big targets.
A spec’ed out bloodwing will hit 9-10 targets per flight. Basic enemies will die in one hit often clearing an entire room of guys with one use.
I settled on the hunter. I think I’ll concentrate on sniper rifles and pistols like it was mentioned above. I’m at level 7 and feeling the pull of level up and loot addiction, even though I’m already bored of shooting skags.
I’m a big Roland guy, I use the turret to hold aggro or distract them so that I can run in and hit their vulnerable spots with big large shotgun blasts. Doing this I’ve always been the most successfull when playing co-op.
WTH! You all died? Omg I’m just going to dance around my turret regening health and ammo and then dodge in for some critical hits.
Joe_M
2713
Once you can gleefully run them down in a vehicle it all becomes much less tedious. :)
Tony_M
2714
I got near the end of General Knoxx months ago, but I still haven’t finished it. Why? Because of the stupid checkpointing system. I know I have to play for significant chunks of time in one hit or I lose my progress. Why did they design the DLC like this when the original game had a perfectly workable checkpointing system?
I have noticed that. It’s funny, it seems like 90% of the time you don’t want to use the turret’s shields, despite that being an advertised feature. Rather, you want to dump it and get the heck away from it.
Just to answer my own questions:
http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=94649
Of course! I have to use a separate Securom deactivation tool. What a wonderful convenience.
Squee
2717
Update, mostly fine. Every time I launch the game I get a Steam corner-pop up saying it finished downloading General Knoxx. Every single time I launch the game. And it’s apparently downloaded and installed because it’s showing up fine in the game itself.
Anyone else get that? I can live with it but it’s kind of weird.
You could try using the Validate tool. Open Steam, right-click Borderlands, choose Properties | Local Files, click Verify Integrity of Game Cache. That fixed one problem for me.
I get the same thing. Purchased the game plus all DLC when it was on sale over the weekend. Every time I start it up, I get a popup for each of the DLC items. I’ll try the validate tool when I get home and see if that works.
It’s normal, I think. I get the Steam notifications as well and I had no issues with Knoxx from beginning to end.
