If it’s one thing I love more then Borderlands 2 its surprises and boy did Gearbox certainly give us one. For weeks Gearbox had been teasing players about the upcoming 5th class the Mechromancer, giving us Echo recordings and most recently, showing us the updated skill tree for the class. While many had initially circled on their calendars October 16th as the release date for the class, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford had tweeted,
“There may be a big surprise from us within the next 24 hours or so. Stay tuned!”
It was easy to assume that the announcement would have something to do with the new character class but of course who knew? Perhaps it was something related to the first batch of DLC set to arrive by at least June of next year. Well the following day the surprise was revealed, and we were treated to what felt like an early Christmas gift.
“So – here’s the surprise, Mechromancer for Borderlands 2 is ready about a week earlier than I promised. Oct 9, all platforms. Woo” tweeted Randy Pitchford. Woo indeed!
Rick Flair Agrees!
For those that pre-ordered Borderlands 2, the Mechromancer comes free of charge. If you were like me however and didn’t pre-order, it will cost you $9.99 or about 800 MSP on Xbox 360. By paying the cost you’re not only getting the new character class but of course all of the pre-order bonus rewards which include, the Vault Hunters Relic, two Gearbox guns, and a Golden Key to be used in the chest in Sanctuary.
So far I am having a lot of fun playing the game through my main, the Commando however, I do have other character classes as well. I will most certainly be checking out the new character class and haven’t decided if I wanted to go down Best Friends Forever skill tree, or Ordered Chaos (Anarchy) skill tree.
The Mechromancer Skill Tree
With the Best Friends Forever skill tree, it is aimed at more casual players with less skill involved. Essentially as the name suggests, Gaige summons a robot named “Deathtrap” who will soak up a lot of the damage while dishing it right back. Think of it as a Hunter class/style as seen in World of Warcraft.
The real challenge is the Ordered Chaos (Anarchy) skill tree, in that there is some math involved. Ordered Chaos increases the damage of your weapon and decreases the weapon’s accuracy by a set percentage every time you kill an enemy or empty your weapon’s clip without reloading. And the ability stacks. It stacks all of the way up to 150. If you forget and manually reload, you reset the ability stacks. So that means if you max out this ability and manage to go through 150 automatic reloads without accidentally manually reloading at some point to switch out a half-empty clip, you will be doing 266 percent extra damage with a weapon that has 266 percent less chance of hitting what you aim at.
If that weren’t complicated enough, the skill can get modified with other skills in the tree. The most important one to grab next is Discord. With this ability, manually reloading doesn’t completely reset your Anarchy stacks. Instead it starts to decrease the stack one a second. Each time you lose one of those stacks your weapon’s accuracy and fire rate increases and your character regenerates a bit of health. This ability will keep ticking through your stacks until they’re gone. Unless …
Unless you manually reload a second time, which turns off Discord and restarts your Anarchy ability with whatever stacks you had left at the time. So it’s sort of an on / off switch.
Personally for me that’s what makes the difference in replay ability in the game and thus will give me more hours to play a game I’ve already invested so much time into. What do you guys think about the new character class? Are you using one? If you aren’t are you going to use/purchase the Mechromancer? Let me know! Send me a tweet, leave a comment or shoot me an email at brad.rose@velocitygamer.com
Note: Thanks to VG24/7 for the featured image for this story
Like this Article? Share it!
