Borderlands 2

[Neon Knight]

I suppose I will have to wait for some number crunching on that. However, I'm really interested in that last, emboldened bit.

By utility, what do you mean? If you mean usefulness then I have a dissenting opinion on the matter. Brawn spec'ed gunzerking has fantastic utility. Instant health, good regeneration that scales with damage taken, damage reduction, ammo regeneration, and a taunt. The Rampage and Gun Lust trees offer different uses but it's pretty boss in solo play and team play, provided the gear is in place.

Cloak and revive? I've found that useful multiple time playing with my friends. Long distance snipe shots on badass enemies? When I fought Flynt solo, I took down half of his health in one shot before he got to do anything. I haven't played the Gunzerker, but I don't think you can aim while gunzerking.

Krade's remarks are in line with my thoughts. To elaborate, perhaps utility was a poor choice of words. Gunzerking lacks strategic and tactical ability. What Gunzerking is, essentially, is a set of really cool, really awesome, and pretty powerful stat boosts. With those stats boosts, you do what you do when you are not Gunzerking: you shoots things, and you shoot them a lot. Compare that to Axton's Turret, Zer0's Decepti0n, and Maya's Phaselock, which fundamentally alter the way these characters are played, and provide them with new capabilities.

Gunzerking lets you do things that you did before, only much, much better. And the degree of improvement is so significant that it might let you take risks and exploit opportunities that you may not have before. But the Gunzerker will never set up a flank on a Badass Nomad with his turret, or move invisibility to an excellent fighting position, and Maya's abilities speak them for themselves about the new opportunities they provide. I don't want that more abstract kind of power to get ignored in the face of raw damage numbers, in which the Gunzerker will probably excel. I don't want the discussion to be "Gunzerking is the best action skill because it has the biggest numbers." Not that you were necessarily arguing that, but the discussion could head that way.

As Axton, I value my turret not just as another source of DPS, but as providing cover via bubble shield, and as a second gun aiming and acting independently of me. I can be gunning down Hyperion loaders while my turret clears the sky of Surveyors, or it can be shooting down Rakk while I fight the Skags trying to eat us. I can cover one direction while turret fires down another. The turret is more than a way of generating bigger numbers, and I really appreciate that, even though I could be using those two purple Torgue shotguns I found together at once to make a literal hail of rockets (and body parts resulting from those rockets) as a Gunzerker.

This is a stat based game. Numbers matter. But, they are not the only thing that matters. The Gunzerker looks awesome. I'm sure I will enjoy playing him. But I know that as awesome as ammo regeneration, health regeneration, damage resistance, and 100% more gun is, I will miss some of the capabilities I had as other classes. What I'm trying to say is, I love my girlfriend.

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Since I have endeavored to answer your question, sir, may I ask you one? You mentioned that you favored Jakobs as a Gunzerker. Now, I enjoy a good Jakobs. Fine guns, certainly. but I always found them best used from a distance, since carefully controlling my aim and fire rate to manage their recoil was how I got the most out of them. Sure, if you're caught point blank you can fan the hammer and empty your gun into a sucker, but in general Jakobs recoil is so fierce that I prefer to keep up a steady pace of fire, letting the recoil level out, rather than dump my magazines into a guy.

For my Gunzerker, I was planning on either dual wielding Vladofs (because if you put out enough bullets fast enough, you'll hit something) or Hyperion weapons, particularly SMGs. With Hyperions, your first shots are going to miss anyway, so you might as well hip fire and gain all the benefits wherein, and as you shoot more, you suddenly become dead accurate with very little recoil. This seemed a natural fit for Gunzerking, what with it being locked into hip-fire, and a way to extend the reach of the Gunzerker. What are your thoughts on this theory? Do your experiences speak against such an approach?