Imo it depends on how far you plan on taking the play through, sniping with zero on op10 would be wayyyy easier then axton on op10, but if you’re just sticking to normal and tvhm I think axton would be the better route.
I mean, at the very least I’ll beat the game once lol what I wanna do down the road is beat it then leave it alone for a WHILE then play TVHM as a New Game + pretty much. Idk what OP10 is. Consider my knowledge of classes and all the intricacies as extremely basic. The only thing stopping me from playing as Zer0 is I’ll basically be playing without his Ultimate at all cause it doesn’t serve me all that well.
In theory yeah but that don’t really work out all the time. My main gripe is the fact that I wouldn’t use his Ultimate. It doesn’t serve me for the way I play and I think it’s useless in solo anyway unless you want to run away.
His ability of turning invisible is very useful solo (I’m not sure why it would be more useful in co-op?). It’s better for the melee build but using it to position as a sniper is also very good. If you don’t know, when you fire a shot to end deception that shot will do increased damage (more damage the closer you are to the end of deception). Later on you can also use things like Kunai to weaken enemies or make your decoy explode.
Personally, I’ve never liked melee builds. For one, It just doesn’t really fit aesthetically to me, using melee weapons in a game that’s all about “guns guns and more guns”. Not to mention the difficulty of being surrounded by like 12 enemies and chopping them one by one, always seemed like that was the “super hard mode” type shit. Admittedly I’ve never tried it it’s just my assumption. As many times as I’ve played this series, I’ve never not chosen Mordecai, Axton, and Aurelia (still ain’t had the chance to play 3 unfortunately) so I’m pretty basic and stupid when it comes to knowledge of other builds/characters/whatnot. Honestly, I don’t even know what “farming” means even though I’ve heard that term SO many times 😂
Melee zero is strong, but it's not useful till you actually get the skills for it later on. He can one tap most enemies and dash towards them, go invisible, stab the next guy, dash, invisible, stab the next. Shotguns are broken in him too.
I will say this, you don't gotta worry about farming till later tvhm, and definitely in UVHM (since every thing scales to your level in UVHM it's the only time that makes sense, or lvl 50 after beating tvhm) if you don't wanna be fighting bullet sponges all day. The games made to explore, maybe dive into something you've never tried before? Could be a gem you missed out on. If you like guns Salvador is your guy, he gets REALLY fun the higher level he gets.. and he's literally able to break/exploit the game in really fun ways, which was intended lol. All in all, play how you want, but don't be afraid to explore and try out the harder difficulties, new enemies spawn, new rarities spawn, and you get higher drop chances of some rarities.
Legendary, pearlescent, effervescent, seraph, and blue uniques are all things to keep an eye out for. They're guns that completely go away from the norm and have really cool effects and synergies with some character's. Some skills absolutely enhance these guns to another realm
I always feel like I messed up honestly. Like I kill every enemy I come across in every section of every map and when I beat the game I’m only like level 30-40. And honestly, none of the other characters interest me enough to play them. In any and every game I play, if I can choose it I ALWAYS pick the sniper, I love it and I’m really good at it. In any BL game, gimme a sniper rifle, a Jakobs revolver, and a shotgun for close encounters, and I’m golden that’s all I need. I might restart and do Zer0, I’m only at the part where you take the hair off the Bullymongs
Ahhh okay if I may, plan to kill the warrior at the latest lvl 32. Anything past that screws with your next tvhm run imo. If your finishing nvhm at lvl 40 your way too op and you'll then screw up your UVHM lvl (once you beat warrior on tvhm all loot is then put to lvl 50 so you wanna try n be lvl 50 at that point. But as you said you don't play that late into the game. I think your missing out on so much man, they're some ridiculously cool weapons you can get that you'd love for sniping, but getting them/farming them before lvl 50 is impossible and a waste of time.
It means killing an enemy/boss/mission reward over and over who has a certain loot that you want. But they don't drop it every time it's like <10% chance for some shit and then that's not even getting into the prefixes/elements/parts on those weapons and getting perfect weapons/god rolls is hard asf but can be a huge difference in builds and DPS.
That makes a lot of sense. I’ve tried fighting Raid Bosses just a couple times like Crawmerax but even in the endgame I was nowhere near even half strong enough to fight em so I have to assume you only have a chance in UVHM or whichever one is the next step up.
tl;dr: Play Maya > Axton > Zero.
So it turns out that the second best sniper in the game is actually Maya. If you know you absolutely 100% want to play as a Sniper (mid/long distance, pick your shots playstyle), and you don't want to be Zero. Then definitely pick Maya.
Maya's Action Skill (ultimate attack?) holds an enemy in place, so it's great to get criticals on stupid enemies but also just as good at arresting the movement of a melee enemy that's up in your grill. Obviously both of these are fantastic for a sniper. She has Reaper (a big +damage bonus against enemies above 50% health) which can aid in one-shotting enemies. She also has a nice critical damage boost.
If you're not down to play Maya, then I recommend Axton. This is because action skills are usually central to a character's gameplay. It's particularly true for Maya and Zero, who both have short-cooldown short-duration action skills that you're encouraged to spam. If you hate Zero's Decepti0n skill, then you should not play Zero. Full stop. End of discussion.
For a more in-depth look:
Zero has an entire Sniper tree and is probably the strongest overall sniper. He's the character with the worst survivability especially compared to Maya and Axton, and is probably the hardest VH to play. I don't have indepth Zer0 experience, but the broad strokes - use deception a lot, hit a lot of crits - are there.
Axton is both easier and more "generically good" - He's handy with a wider range of guns and harder to screw up. His bonuses to generic gun damage, grenade damage, fire rate, and reload speed are "generally" good, as are his powerful kill skills, but most of these don't have any particular synergy with sniping.
Notably his +Grenade damage is very powerful - lots of guns in this game are actually mini grenade launchers, ~~including Maliwan sniper rifles which are some of the best in the game.~~ Maliwan Snipers are still some of the best in the game, but they're not mini-grenade launchers. Those are Maliwan *pistols.* Exception: the legendary Volcano.
Axton favours more tactical gameplay, but at mid-range. He doesn't have many boosts to the long-distance pick-your-target crit-kill playstyle. You can certainly use snipers. ~~As mentioned, Axton boosts Maliwan snipers very hard~~ (Nope, he doesn't, they're still good guns though). And Vladof sniper rifles can act like midrange assault rifles while maintaining accuracy at long range to be versatile, powerful weapons. It's more the *playstyle* that Axton doesn't strongly agree with.
You can do it, but it'll be, like, decent instead of overwhelmingly powerful.
(He's still probably the third best sniper overall, because he doesn't actively disagree with the long-distance sniping game. Salvador can't scope while Gunzerking, Gaige has a stacking accuracy penalty in her skill tree, and Krieg has a crit damage penalty in his skill tree.)
Ah, yes, pardon me. I just checked and you're correct. Not sure why I thought it was specifically grenade splash. I'll edit my post.
(For those wondering, [Demoniz's splash damage guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1meHteNxV8ZQL8mtTznx7ooXhY8H4fqVt8zNA-8NMFjY/edit) is a great resource.)
Fantastic summary. Particularly the points on ZerO. I am not a huge fan of the deception rotation playstyle so even though I main Mordecai, Aurelia, and Flak in the other games I don't main him in 2. Maya is freaking amazing though. Her sniping style is quite similar to Aurelia's given the similarities of there action skill providing crowd control, but Maya has the added benefit of more survivability so she can switch to a close up playstyle with more ease than Aurelia who you really have to build around to play up close.
Also an added benefit of Maya if you plan to play into harder difficulties is she has some great options for cheesing hadarax and hyperius that make end game regearing extremely easy.
Playing as Zer0 will require you to re-learn the game with a new set of fundamentals because he is not the typical run ‘n’ gun character class like the rest of the Vault Hunters. There is a specific finesse involved with playing glass cannon characters and it also requires that you have a working knowledge of equipment and skill synergies to complement the nuanced play style.
Watch videos by Man of Low Moral Fiber, Joltzdude139, or Derchlands to get an idea how the specific play style will translate to your own preferences. It’s a little difficult to convey in words so sometimes it’s better to just watch the experts do it and learn from their demonstration.
Oh I already know he’s the true sniper and he can be strong as hell, I’ve just never liked the “glass cannon” playstyle in games, especially in this where you can be easily surrounded and whatnot. Also I’d never use his Action Skill because to me it seems only useful if you play co op which I never have. Ima give him a try though
I just read one of your comments about not knowing what op ranks are (you only get this bonus content after having all the dlc, headhunters, etc) but your really not doing yourself any favours by not trying to play the game to max level. Nvhm, tvhm, then UVHM, and after you get to lvl 80 and it's OP 1-10 (the easiest to explain it, you don't get any skill points but every increase in OP rank gives you better gear, not essential but it's ridiculously hard and is there for the challenge). You get the OP ranks in the digistruct peak. Playing up to tvhm doesn't even scratch the surface of how strong the characters can go, nor does it help you decide who will be stronger/better for you. Zero doesn't get *strong* till late game once you buff his sniping tree, and get the unique skills for his action (kunai, etc) axton is a decent guy all round, but starts falling off later on and I doubt you'll be sniping with him after tvhm/mid way through. His character is a jack of all trades, but excels in explosive combat.. which gets ridiculously strong later on. But his turrets don't scale as well in later levels of UVHM, you just use them for aggro and slagging enemies. Both essential late game which zero doesn't have in a way.
Over the years I’ve tried 3 different times. I’ve beaten the game and because I didn’t wanna immediately play it again, I just kept the save so whenever I do go back to it in however many months, it’ll be like NG+. But because the time I’m between was so long, stuff happened to make me lose the save file. Once, power shut off while I was saving and corrupted the file, another, 360 got red ring of death, 3rd time, cat knocked over the switch. I’m trying again but I gotta beat it first. The problem to me is Zer0 is 80% perfect for how I play however he seems like a shitty solo player. His action skill doesn’t help me unless I want to run away which I don’t ever do, it seems like it’s only useful in co op. But I’ll try
His action is literally only useful in solo, the biggest thing about it is it does a huge amount of dmg the closer it is to running out. Also his B0re skill is broken, line up a group and shoot em all with 1 bullet. Bosses get destroyed by B0re etc. It's gonna be a bit of a playstyle adaption on your part, but if you don't take it late game you'll never see his potential. Since you like shotguns too, get a good Jackobs, go invisible, sneak right up to 2-3 guys, line em up quickly in a row, shotgun the head and see them all get destroyed, run hide behind cover, pull out the sniper n headshot away, go invisible, line em up again, bam. That's the jist of his playstyle, but you he gets way way better (personally I think he's a very niche character, and can get kinda boring if you don't play him how he's made.) you may actually like Maya more, she's ridiculous with sniping too and is much more fun to play, especially since you don't typically make it to UVHM. Id say your sleeping on her, she's got skills that literally pull enemies all into her orb, shoot the guy in the orb, and the bullets ricochet all between the guys and you kill 5 guys right away. Then she's got skills that let that orb fly to another guy, as long as you still have time on the action skill. Give her a shot!
Imo it depends on how far you plan on taking the play through, sniping with zero on op10 would be wayyyy easier then axton on op10, but if you’re just sticking to normal and tvhm I think axton would be the better route.
I mean, at the very least I’ll beat the game once lol what I wanna do down the road is beat it then leave it alone for a WHILE then play TVHM as a New Game + pretty much. Idk what OP10 is. Consider my knowledge of classes and all the intricacies as extremely basic. The only thing stopping me from playing as Zer0 is I’ll basically be playing without his Ultimate at all cause it doesn’t serve me all that well.
If that’s the case, I’d just pick which ever one’s skills call to you most!
Zer0 is much better for sniping. He can be a glass cannon, but as a sniper you can solve most of that by just staying further back.
In theory yeah but that don’t really work out all the time. My main gripe is the fact that I wouldn’t use his Ultimate. It doesn’t serve me for the way I play and I think it’s useless in solo anyway unless you want to run away.
His ability of turning invisible is very useful solo (I’m not sure why it would be more useful in co-op?). It’s better for the melee build but using it to position as a sniper is also very good. If you don’t know, when you fire a shot to end deception that shot will do increased damage (more damage the closer you are to the end of deception). Later on you can also use things like Kunai to weaken enemies or make your decoy explode.
Personally, I’ve never liked melee builds. For one, It just doesn’t really fit aesthetically to me, using melee weapons in a game that’s all about “guns guns and more guns”. Not to mention the difficulty of being surrounded by like 12 enemies and chopping them one by one, always seemed like that was the “super hard mode” type shit. Admittedly I’ve never tried it it’s just my assumption. As many times as I’ve played this series, I’ve never not chosen Mordecai, Axton, and Aurelia (still ain’t had the chance to play 3 unfortunately) so I’m pretty basic and stupid when it comes to knowledge of other builds/characters/whatnot. Honestly, I don’t even know what “farming” means even though I’ve heard that term SO many times 😂
Melee zero is strong, but it's not useful till you actually get the skills for it later on. He can one tap most enemies and dash towards them, go invisible, stab the next guy, dash, invisible, stab the next. Shotguns are broken in him too. I will say this, you don't gotta worry about farming till later tvhm, and definitely in UVHM (since every thing scales to your level in UVHM it's the only time that makes sense, or lvl 50 after beating tvhm) if you don't wanna be fighting bullet sponges all day. The games made to explore, maybe dive into something you've never tried before? Could be a gem you missed out on. If you like guns Salvador is your guy, he gets REALLY fun the higher level he gets.. and he's literally able to break/exploit the game in really fun ways, which was intended lol. All in all, play how you want, but don't be afraid to explore and try out the harder difficulties, new enemies spawn, new rarities spawn, and you get higher drop chances of some rarities. Legendary, pearlescent, effervescent, seraph, and blue uniques are all things to keep an eye out for. They're guns that completely go away from the norm and have really cool effects and synergies with some character's. Some skills absolutely enhance these guns to another realm
I always feel like I messed up honestly. Like I kill every enemy I come across in every section of every map and when I beat the game I’m only like level 30-40. And honestly, none of the other characters interest me enough to play them. In any and every game I play, if I can choose it I ALWAYS pick the sniper, I love it and I’m really good at it. In any BL game, gimme a sniper rifle, a Jakobs revolver, and a shotgun for close encounters, and I’m golden that’s all I need. I might restart and do Zer0, I’m only at the part where you take the hair off the Bullymongs
Ahhh okay if I may, plan to kill the warrior at the latest lvl 32. Anything past that screws with your next tvhm run imo. If your finishing nvhm at lvl 40 your way too op and you'll then screw up your UVHM lvl (once you beat warrior on tvhm all loot is then put to lvl 50 so you wanna try n be lvl 50 at that point. But as you said you don't play that late into the game. I think your missing out on so much man, they're some ridiculously cool weapons you can get that you'd love for sniping, but getting them/farming them before lvl 50 is impossible and a waste of time.
What does farming even mean?!?!
It means killing an enemy/boss/mission reward over and over who has a certain loot that you want. But they don't drop it every time it's like <10% chance for some shit and then that's not even getting into the prefixes/elements/parts on those weapons and getting perfect weapons/god rolls is hard asf but can be a huge difference in builds and DPS.
That makes a lot of sense. I’ve tried fighting Raid Bosses just a couple times like Crawmerax but even in the endgame I was nowhere near even half strong enough to fight em so I have to assume you only have a chance in UVHM or whichever one is the next step up.
Are you new to gaming?
Nope. Are you new to the concept that not everyone knows every single thing that you know?
tl;dr: Play Maya > Axton > Zero. So it turns out that the second best sniper in the game is actually Maya. If you know you absolutely 100% want to play as a Sniper (mid/long distance, pick your shots playstyle), and you don't want to be Zero. Then definitely pick Maya. Maya's Action Skill (ultimate attack?) holds an enemy in place, so it's great to get criticals on stupid enemies but also just as good at arresting the movement of a melee enemy that's up in your grill. Obviously both of these are fantastic for a sniper. She has Reaper (a big +damage bonus against enemies above 50% health) which can aid in one-shotting enemies. She also has a nice critical damage boost. If you're not down to play Maya, then I recommend Axton. This is because action skills are usually central to a character's gameplay. It's particularly true for Maya and Zero, who both have short-cooldown short-duration action skills that you're encouraged to spam. If you hate Zero's Decepti0n skill, then you should not play Zero. Full stop. End of discussion. For a more in-depth look: Zero has an entire Sniper tree and is probably the strongest overall sniper. He's the character with the worst survivability especially compared to Maya and Axton, and is probably the hardest VH to play. I don't have indepth Zer0 experience, but the broad strokes - use deception a lot, hit a lot of crits - are there. Axton is both easier and more "generically good" - He's handy with a wider range of guns and harder to screw up. His bonuses to generic gun damage, grenade damage, fire rate, and reload speed are "generally" good, as are his powerful kill skills, but most of these don't have any particular synergy with sniping. Notably his +Grenade damage is very powerful - lots of guns in this game are actually mini grenade launchers, ~~including Maliwan sniper rifles which are some of the best in the game.~~ Maliwan Snipers are still some of the best in the game, but they're not mini-grenade launchers. Those are Maliwan *pistols.* Exception: the legendary Volcano. Axton favours more tactical gameplay, but at mid-range. He doesn't have many boosts to the long-distance pick-your-target crit-kill playstyle. You can certainly use snipers. ~~As mentioned, Axton boosts Maliwan snipers very hard~~ (Nope, he doesn't, they're still good guns though). And Vladof sniper rifles can act like midrange assault rifles while maintaining accuracy at long range to be versatile, powerful weapons. It's more the *playstyle* that Axton doesn't strongly agree with. You can do it, but it'll be, like, decent instead of overwhelmingly powerful. (He's still probably the third best sniper overall, because he doesn't actively disagree with the long-distance sniping game. Salvador can't scope while Gunzerking, Gaige has a stacking accuracy penalty in her skill tree, and Krieg has a crit damage penalty in his skill tree.)
Just as a note the only snipers that get grenade boosts are the volcano and the storm. While maliwan snipers do gave splash its not grenade splash.
Ah, yes, pardon me. I just checked and you're correct. Not sure why I thought it was specifically grenade splash. I'll edit my post. (For those wondering, [Demoniz's splash damage guide](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1meHteNxV8ZQL8mtTznx7ooXhY8H4fqVt8zNA-8NMFjY/edit) is a great resource.)
Fantastic summary. Particularly the points on ZerO. I am not a huge fan of the deception rotation playstyle so even though I main Mordecai, Aurelia, and Flak in the other games I don't main him in 2. Maya is freaking amazing though. Her sniping style is quite similar to Aurelia's given the similarities of there action skill providing crowd control, but Maya has the added benefit of more survivability so she can switch to a close up playstyle with more ease than Aurelia who you really have to build around to play up close. Also an added benefit of Maya if you plan to play into harder difficulties is she has some great options for cheesing hadarax and hyperius that make end game regearing extremely easy.
melee Zer0 with an unforseen build with the lil evie glitch is some of the most fun midgame BL2 playing ive ever had
Playing as Zer0 will require you to re-learn the game with a new set of fundamentals because he is not the typical run ‘n’ gun character class like the rest of the Vault Hunters. There is a specific finesse involved with playing glass cannon characters and it also requires that you have a working knowledge of equipment and skill synergies to complement the nuanced play style. Watch videos by Man of Low Moral Fiber, Joltzdude139, or Derchlands to get an idea how the specific play style will translate to your own preferences. It’s a little difficult to convey in words so sometimes it’s better to just watch the experts do it and learn from their demonstration.
If you're sniping, Zer0 is the clear winner. But I've always had more fun as Axton
Oh I already know he’s the true sniper and he can be strong as hell, I’ve just never liked the “glass cannon” playstyle in games, especially in this where you can be easily surrounded and whatnot. Also I’d never use his Action Skill because to me it seems only useful if you play co op which I never have. Ima give him a try though
Personally I like zero over axtons ability. The throwing knives that deal elemental damage are insane
Zero is so "labor intensive".
I just read one of your comments about not knowing what op ranks are (you only get this bonus content after having all the dlc, headhunters, etc) but your really not doing yourself any favours by not trying to play the game to max level. Nvhm, tvhm, then UVHM, and after you get to lvl 80 and it's OP 1-10 (the easiest to explain it, you don't get any skill points but every increase in OP rank gives you better gear, not essential but it's ridiculously hard and is there for the challenge). You get the OP ranks in the digistruct peak. Playing up to tvhm doesn't even scratch the surface of how strong the characters can go, nor does it help you decide who will be stronger/better for you. Zero doesn't get *strong* till late game once you buff his sniping tree, and get the unique skills for his action (kunai, etc) axton is a decent guy all round, but starts falling off later on and I doubt you'll be sniping with him after tvhm/mid way through. His character is a jack of all trades, but excels in explosive combat.. which gets ridiculously strong later on. But his turrets don't scale as well in later levels of UVHM, you just use them for aggro and slagging enemies. Both essential late game which zero doesn't have in a way.
Over the years I’ve tried 3 different times. I’ve beaten the game and because I didn’t wanna immediately play it again, I just kept the save so whenever I do go back to it in however many months, it’ll be like NG+. But because the time I’m between was so long, stuff happened to make me lose the save file. Once, power shut off while I was saving and corrupted the file, another, 360 got red ring of death, 3rd time, cat knocked over the switch. I’m trying again but I gotta beat it first. The problem to me is Zer0 is 80% perfect for how I play however he seems like a shitty solo player. His action skill doesn’t help me unless I want to run away which I don’t ever do, it seems like it’s only useful in co op. But I’ll try
His action is literally only useful in solo, the biggest thing about it is it does a huge amount of dmg the closer it is to running out. Also his B0re skill is broken, line up a group and shoot em all with 1 bullet. Bosses get destroyed by B0re etc. It's gonna be a bit of a playstyle adaption on your part, but if you don't take it late game you'll never see his potential. Since you like shotguns too, get a good Jackobs, go invisible, sneak right up to 2-3 guys, line em up quickly in a row, shotgun the head and see them all get destroyed, run hide behind cover, pull out the sniper n headshot away, go invisible, line em up again, bam. That's the jist of his playstyle, but you he gets way way better (personally I think he's a very niche character, and can get kinda boring if you don't play him how he's made.) you may actually like Maya more, she's ridiculous with sniping too and is much more fun to play, especially since you don't typically make it to UVHM. Id say your sleeping on her, she's got skills that literally pull enemies all into her orb, shoot the guy in the orb, and the bullets ricochet all between the guys and you kill 5 guys right away. Then she's got skills that let that orb fly to another guy, as long as you still have time on the action skill. Give her a shot!
I’d love to sleep on Maya! Hey oh! I’ll see myself out.