I started Borderlands 3 with Amara, the Siren. Having played most of the previous game with Maya—BL2’s Siren—I thought it would be a natural progression. At some point around level 10 or 11 I began to find gameplay difficult so I stopped and tried Zane, the Operative.
Things became even more difficult.
So I stopped and thought for a second. One of the things that was getting in the way was ammo. What I never liked about the Borderlands series as a whole is that I always seemed to run out of bullets. Ammo, like all loot, is generated randomly, so getting lucky with finding a good gun feels useless when I don’t have anything to shoot it with.
So I started over and chose the class that has bullet regeneration: Moze, the Gunner. I figured she could feed the others once I got her to farming bosses.
Here’s something I learned about leveling in BL3 now that I’ve played all four classes: I had an easier time with the game when I played as Moze and FL4K. Amara and Zane felt like I was handicapping myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they’re bad characters. It’s just that the differences between those two pairs are like two sides of a coin: there is no middle ground. I was either playing on easy mode or I wasn’t.
Much of this is because of how their respective action skills work. Moze’s and FL4K’s are very powerful. If I use them, badass targets will die. Amara’s and Zane’s don’t have that advantage. And if they can’t kill badasses, then how are they going to get better weapons?
In other words, Amara and Zane require a lot of work. I played the first 15 levels of Amara using her melee skill tree—AKA the green one—because it was less dependent on good gear than her red or blue trees. By investing in that tree and then using a gun that buffs melee damage, it was easier to level overall. Of course, all of that was thrown out the window once I got a good elemental gun. I then switched to the red tree when that happened.
I have yet to figure Zane out.