why does Borderlands 2 punish solo players?

[kommando367]

git gud or git rekt scrub

Here are a few tips for beginners.

Axton sucks when his turret is not out.

Use cover liberally.

Get a Torque Hulk or Ravager shotgun and bathe thyself in the viscera of thy enemies.

Use transfusion grenades.

Use elemental weapons to deal extra damage against fleshy, armored, or heavily shielded enemies. Use slag weapons to soften up the enemy for your next attack.

Keep a good rocket launcher equipped to get second wind.

Try to spec your character to optimize a certain play-style such as sniping with Zer0, crowd control with Maya, or tanking with Salvador. You can look up character builds on the wiki.

 

[Netrigan]

I only really have an issue against the big boss characters (__________ the Invincible), but those are raid bosses and are actually made for 4 high-level players, so I can't really complain. Otherwise, I found it to be challenging, but not impossible. It really does depend on the character that you are playing as: Axton, and Gaige for example are really good solo characters, but characters like Maya are good too. One thing that I would really like is the ability to get yourself up, maybe as a sustained ability, so if you get hit, it cancels, but the amount of times that I have died because of poison/fire and ended up respawning because of it is pretty silly.

They all have good Solo Builds. The problem is certain characters (namely Maya and Claptrap in the new game) also have support builds which absolutely suck in solo play. If you're lured in by the promise of extra health, you'll find yourself with a nearly unplayable solo build.

Combine that with the quick leveling and constantly outdated guns and you have a situation where an unwary player can get in over his head and find the game incredibly frustrating. God knows it sucks when your favorite weapon becomes completely useless. I used to love my Level 50 infinite pistold... until they raised the level cap and I suddenly had to worry about ammo again, because the pistol couldn't do diddly after a handful of level ups.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Whilst trying not to toot my own horn I really didn't find the game too hard when I played solo, and I'm someone who plays pretty much every game on easy because I get frustrated easily. I also played a bit of Maya but my main was Zero.

 

[zumbledum]

I'm playing as Maya.. I wanted to try the unique Siren character.. maybe she's not good to play as if your going solo?

i never had much luck soloing with her, she is the team healer , didnt actually like any of the characters in 2. ended up using axton he seemed the best solo.

do like nisha and athena in the pre-sequel

 

[MHR]

Well if you just rush mainquests, yeah, it's going to be hard solo when enemies outlevel you.

I've played borderlands 2 solo 3 times through doing all the sidequests and killing tons of stuff everywhere and firing all the bullets. If you do sidequests, it's mindlessly easy. Keep a rocket launcher for when things suddenly get bad somehow. I hardly ever use my rocket launchers because it's so easy. Don't forget to buy ammo for it though.

 

[Odbarc]

The first and probably one of the most frustrating bosses was that flame-dude after Boom Bewm.
Died millions of times despite all purple gear (At level 61?) and it wasn't until he got stuck in a corner and I poked him in the head to death did I get past him (solo).

The solo difficulty curb was quite intense and only got worse with the worse loot drops. Mostly greens where you'd commonly find blues in a group and sometimes better.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I only ever had that problem on the OP levels

But the enemy health is X4 when you play multiplayer so... there's that.
The really shitty thing is that legendary drop rates are higher in co-op.
Which basically means that they're lower in single player so farming solo sucks

 

[Ryotknife]

The game is actually pretty hard in the beginning until level...12 or so. Mostly due to lack of options both talent-wise and weapon-wise (not to mention cant find a decent shield for awhile). It also doesnt help the only element you get access to is fire in the beginning when so many opponents are fire immune (especially capt Flynn, who is also basically immune to crits). Captain Flynn, to this day and age, is still one of the hardest bosses ive ever fought in the borderlands series. Only the optional bosses have anything on him.

 

[Ravinoff]

Maya is great for soloing, you've just gotta know where to put your points. Forget the Harmony (middle) tree entirely, and only take the left (Motion) tree up to Suspension early on, to boost your Phaselock duration. Then pour everything into the Cataclysm tree. You want to put out as much elemental pain as possible, so drop points into Flicker early on. Immolate makes your shots deal major fire damage while downed, and Helios causes a fireblast whenever you Phaselock someone. Take what you like on the next tier, none of them are absolutely amazing. I like Cloud Kill because of Loaders, and Backdraft to give even more fire. Max out Reaper for 40% bonus damage when an enemy has over 50% health left, and drop one or two into Blight Phoenix to clear the way to the final skill, and put the rest wherever you like (Blight Phoenix, while fun, doesn't actually do much damage). Then you get Ruin. Ruin is exactly as handy as it sounds. With points in Helios, you can now apply every elemental type (except explosive) on whatever you Phaselock, plus its nearby buddies.

That takes you to around level 40, and from there you can basically take what you like until you hit the level cap.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I think the main difficulty comes from the aimbots that all the enemies are sporting that let them one shot you from a billion yards away, especially on UVHM and the OP's. That and for solo players, dying to a boss means you just wasted your time and ammo while with a team, you can at least try to cycle your deaths so you slowly wear the boss down.

He's not talking about UVHM though (totally agree, it's ridiculously hard to solo -slag is pretty much mandatory), he's only level 7.

Honestly OP, I'm not sure what to tell you. I didn't find solo play all that challenging until I got to the second playthrough. For a comparison, I honestly don't think I got my first death until I fought Doc Mercy (he's maybe an hour or so ahead of where you are). Then again, I had played a lot of the first Borderlands. The combat of Borderlands has a different feel to it than many other FPS games so you'll probably start doing better once you're used to it.

Also, while it is definitely easier playing with friends, they do scale up the health and dmg of enemies to try and compensate so it's not going to get THAT much easier in co-op.

1. All the Borderlands games were designed with teamwork in mind.
2. For Borderlands 2, the following is true:
Axton is the easiest to solo (out of the original four) as his turrets can both protect and act as your teammnate
Salvador and Maya are excellent in the late game because they become overpowered, but can be problematic early on
Zero is good early on but is severely undermatched late game. His strengths lie in keeping his distance and later on that's not an option soloing.

Don't confuse opinion or bad conventional wisdom for actual truth. Zero is not overmatched in UVHM, with some decent gear. The Pimpernel sniper rifle is the most damaging gun in the game if you know how to use it, (more effective at range than the Harold) and is a blue quest reward. Keeping your distance is absolutely still a valid option solo. I've soloed the entire game + all DLC as Zero in UVHM. It can be done. And has been, by many. Sniper Zero, Shotgun Zero, Pistol Zero, Melee Zero -- you name it.

Ya, I'm going to second this. Zer0 is one of the most versatile characters in the game for build options. My favourite is melee because chaining tons of kills together is a blast. He can be tough to play correctly due to his squeamishness, but in the hands of a player who knows what they're doing, he's a murder machine. Saying that you need to keep your distance with him is absurd. I beat the Warrior to death with my bladed pistol (though you do need some fairly specific gear if you want to make melee Zer0 work later on against the raid bosses).

 

[beastro]

BL2 solo wasn't bad, at least they got rid of the specifically group quests in zones that were very hard to beat solo (didn't stop me though).

 

[MHR]

Now I'm just curious. How are you all dying all the time playing BL2 solo?

Do you run up and face-tank all the bullets so you can run-and-gun them in their grill with your un-scoped assault rifle better?

Do you forget about cover just because there isn't a "glue yourself to the chest-high wall" mechanic like in other shooters?

Do you think side quests are distractions for chumps?

Borderlands 2 is an easy game. You just stick to cover, make sure your shields take most of the damage, fire down the ironsights, and be sure not to get overwhelmed by numbers or higher levels. You don't even need great gear to do it. Greens of the same level you are are actually quite good compared to that blue you got 4 levels ago.

This isn't counting overpowered levels, DLC, or UVHM of course.

 

[Saika Renegade]

I'd hardly say it's impossible or punishing. Less loot perhaps, and given ability to itemdupe, loot drama is almost a nonissue. I'll admit soloed Borderlands 2 with a Gunzerker build focusing heavily into a mix of Rampage and Brawn; if you want to let enemies have it in the face, short of buying the Krieg DLC, you really can't go wrong with a build that combines high firepower and health regeneration.

I will mention that the aforementioned Gunzerker build killed everything so quickly that my sniping friend said that he couldn't draw a bead on enemies fast enough before I reduced them to Torgue shotgun gravy. It also resulted in the hilarious circumstance of Gunzerking for the entirety of Slaughterhouse fights or farming bosses by the expedient of two pistols and a good laugh at their expense as they try in vain to kill an angry dwarf supported by a mixture of rage and batshit insanity.

Good times.

 

[asdfen]

BL2 was the hardest FPS game I have ever played when I played it for the first time when it came out.
I died about 30x times on Captain Flynt and then I had to use exploit and shoot him from the starting area and I had to go farm cash to be able to buy ample supply of boolets to kill him.
When I got to the end boss the warrior ... I had to shoot him for 30 minutes. Thats 30 minutes of continuous firing for him to die. Once again I had to shoot him from the area where he couldnt reach me. So yah... hardest game ever.

 

[Signa]

Maya is terrible at low levels while solo. Her active skill is nothing more than a stun effect.


Later, that stun is a nuke or a finger of death. She's amazing at later levels.

 

[Auberon]

I keep dying because Maya specced for DoTs has basically no survivability around level 20, and supposedly gets better at 31 when Ruin is unlocked. And I ran out of SMG ammo against Wilhelm...

 

[DoPo]

I keep dying because Maya specced for DoTs has basically no survivability around level 20, and supposedly gets better at 31 when Ruin is unlocked.

Played her with DOT and snipers and it was pretty cool - it was fire and forget about it combat and often the enemies don't even get to me, because they are too far away. Pop out of cover, scope in, shoot them in the head (or whatever critical point they have), pop back into cover, repeat. If they are still alive after the initial shot, the DOT usually takes care of it. Also, I had two snipers (at least) equipped at all times - one corrosive and one fire, to deal with mechanica/fleshy threats as appropriate. The SMG was for when things got rough and personal.

Also, at level 20, I had Flicker 5[footnote]improve all DOTs, duh[/footnote], Helios 5[footnote]combines with the class mod for more Helios, it was an instakill against some smaller enemies, and a good damage boost against larger ones[/footnote] and Foresight 5[footnote]less and shorter reloads mean I can shoot and kill more stuff, and dead stuff generally doesn't pose a threat to me[/footnote] levelled in that order, too. For reference, after those, I got 1 in Cloud Kill and Immolate 4 purely because I didn't find the other tier 3 abilities that useful and Immolate was the most effective of the rest of the skills in the Cataclysm tree...and also the only other skill in the Cataclism tree I could level. I believe I also respecced that Cloud Kill into Immolate because it wasn't that useful itself, in the end[footnote]more often than not, I'd have to choose between shooting a guy I need to shoot, or shooting something I don't, just to place a weak-ish DOT down. And also, the enemies don't really need to go through that DOT. It's sort of OK against stationary enemies...but again, they are STATIONARY, so I can just shoot them with any DOT and they'd die regardless, so the skill was saving me...what, a bullet against some turrents? Not my cup of tea.[/footnote].

Wilhelm, I believe I just side-stepped and shot a few times and that was it, it certainly wasn't a fight I recall being that hard.

 

[darkcalling]

I've beaten number 2 with everyone but salvador and never had enough trouble to make me want to give up. Maya was my first. Level the cataclysm tree and eventually nothing can stand in your way. The borderlands series is actually balanced so that it adjusts to the number of players.

if you want a game that was never balanced for single player then play Dead Island. There are the exact same numbers of enemies no matter how many playerss there are. Plus several points on the map where they respawn constantly. I beat the first one out of spite. Riptide felt a bit more fair to me though.