Leveling Down

So you picked up Borderlands and want to play with other people but don’t know where to start? Unlike other FPS games on the 360 with co-op, Borderlands requires you to pick a class type and sticking with it through to the end. Therefore, picking the one that best suits your playstyle is vital.

In many ways, Borderlands shares similarities to MMORPGs I’ve played in the past, and I will bring some of those tips here to those of you new to Borderlands with little experience playing MMORPGs. Look here for some tips on how to play nicely with strangers or even friends.

One caveat: I have yet to really get to the endgame for this, so many of my tips here are from my MMORPG experience as well as consolidating all of the relevant Borderlands information I found online. Some of it may apply and some may not, but this is what is going through my head as I prep for Borderlands with buddies.

Determine Classes With Your Friends Early On
Ideally, if you have several friends to play with, have everyone agree on playing different classes. This is sort of common sense: not only will you be potentially fighting over the same weapons, but other weapon types that drop will go to waste and you won’t even get to make use of the variety of abilities for all four classes.

Plan Your Class Out
Figure out how you want your character to be at level 50 (the max level in the game) and where you want to put your 46 ability points towards. On top of that, once you’ve figured out your build, next you want to determine how the points get allocated. Which skills are most important? Each of the three trees ends in a “super ability” so you should decide which tree you want to go down first.

Brick: http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/skilltree/brick/
Roland: http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/skilltree/roland/
Lilith: http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/skilltree/lilith/
Mordecai: http://www.borderlandsthegame.com/skilltree/mordecai/

Why You’re Playing as a Team in the First Place
Borderlands ups the difficulty with more players, making it important to stick together. Your reward for it? Better experience and better loot. Harder “trash” enemies may not require much teamwork for a full 4 person team (all guns blazing), but harder bosses will require the teamwork. To be the ideal team player, you want to build your character up with skills, abilities, and weapons that support the ideal role your class should play in a 4-person boss encounter at max level.

Consider Two Builds
You will most likely play Borderlands solo or with other players. Unlike Diablo, in Borderlands you can reallocate your skillpoints by paying money, but the cost goes up everytime you want to respec to discourage people from changing back and forth. You should ideally have a build where you’ve allocated your abilities in such a way to play the game alone (maxing out abilities that increase your own firepower and survival) and a different team-based “build” (maxing out abilities that help your teammates, whether it’s team bonuses, healing, etc.).

Creating Alts
If paying to respec back and forth between two different builds may seem too ridiculous, consider creating an alternate character or two. Alts are basically second and third characters, so you can use one character perhaps for just solo play and another character for team-based play. Alts often times solve the problem of friends that can’t all play together at the same time – you can maybe keep one character for solo play, one for only playing with your friends at designated times, and one for maybe public games. You can even make an alt the same class – but this time maybe each of the two classes have builds specific for their roles.

Now that I’ve hopefully explained class and alt management, it’s time to find out what each class specializes in so it makes it easier for you to decide which playstyle you enjoy most.

Brick
CLASS: Berserker
TEAM FUNCTION: Tank
UNIQUE ABILITY: Brick’s Berserk ability forces him to drop his weapon to attack with fists. During this period of time, Brick gains resistance to all damage types and regenerates health.
PREFERRED WEAPONS: rockets/melee
TEAMPLAY: Due to Brick’s unique damage resistance ability + melee, he functions best as a tank. For those new to this terminology, it means he will be the primary class engaging any boss or enemies and holding their attention. No other class has as much defensive prowess as Brick, so he defaults to being the punching bag. In a team-based fight, Brick should try to have every enemy’s attention because all of the other classes will drop more quickly due to their lack of health/defense. Basically, as Brick, your goal should always be to have every enemy attacking you and none of your party members. With a focus on melee, Brick is less gear dependent than the other three classes.

Roland
CLASS: Soldier
TEAM FUNCTION: Support/Healer
UNIQUE ABILITY: Roland’s ability allows him to drop a stationary turret down that can also provide the team with cover.
PREFERRED WEAPONS: combat rifle, shotgun
TEAMPLAY: Roland’s “Soldier” class is a bit misleading, as he functions best in a team capacity as a support/healer. This is due to the primary fact that one of his unique abilities that no other classes has is to heal other players by shooting them. Throw in the fact that he has several abilities that he can upgrade on his turret to provide ammo, health, and even reviving capabilities for the team means that this is his calling. In a team-based setting, he should simply be healing the tank class so the tank can survive long enough to keep all enemies on him.

Mordecai
CLASS: Hunter
TEAM FUNCTION: Ranged Damage
UNIQUE ABILITY: Mordecai is able to call down a pet falcon to attack and confuse enemies
PREFERRED WEAPONS: sniper rifle, pistol
TEAMPLAY: While Mordecai’s unique ability is not as useful in a teamplay setting, he is probably the most powerful attacker of the four classes, with abilities that allow him to increase not only his critical hit damage, but the amount of damage on his preferred weapons and the rate at which he can fire. This is balanced with the fact that he has poor defense, making soloing potentially difficult. But in a teamplay setting, he has the rest of his team to hold the enemies’ attention, allowing him to pick them all off one by one.

Lilith
CLASS: Siren
TEAM FUNCTION: Close Combat damage
UNIQUE ABILITY: Lilith has the ability to Phasewalk, allowing her to turn invisible and move really fast. Entering/exiting Phasewalk does damage to nearby enemies and Lilith can gain damage bonuses from meleeing an enemy (which brings her out of Phasewalk).
PREFERRED WEAPONS: SMG/melee
TEAMPLAY: Lilith tends to function very similar in a solo or team-based game: dealing damage. For those that play MMORPGs, she seems to be a strange hybrid combination of a rogue, mage, and elementalist. It’s really up to the player how to play her, but I prefer the rogue route, as one ability gives her an 800% damage bonus when meleeing an enemy in Phasewalk. At the same time, when she enters and exit Phasewalk, she does area effect damage, hurting any enemies in the area. The two viable builds for her are either an assassin, using Phasewalk and meleeining whenever she can to kill weaker enemies and to deal major damage to bosses, or an elementalist where she relies on an SMG and various abilities that make use of elemental attacks that cause damage over time on the enemies. Most likely, Lilith players will play in some sort of combination of the two, Phasewalking and meleeing when possible and using the SMG when waiting for Phasewalk to become available again.

How All Four Classes Work Together
Now that you understand what each of these four classes is about, it’s time to imagine what it’s like for a party of all four of these classes taking on a monster boss at the highest level in the game (level 50).

Brick, the tank class, will hold the boss’s attention by meleeing and staying up close to the boss. Roland will be positioned behind Brick and constantly healing him by shooting him and throwing down his turret. Mordecai will be positioned even further away, simply sniping the boss as often as he can, and getting ammo from his rifle by the use of Roland’s turret (since it should be specced to produce ammo). Lilith will be off to the side of the other three repeatedly entering Phasewalk to get up close and meleeing the boss before hiding again until the Phasewalk ability is recharged. In a sense, Brick tanks, Roland heals, and Mordecai and Lilith damage the boss until it drops. So, in Borderlands you have a tank class, a healer class, and two DPS classes. It’s now up to you and your friends to decide which classes to pick.

An Optimal Party
I have yet to play public games at a high level in Borderlands, but if it’s anything like a traditional MMORPG, each party of four is optimal with one tank, one healer, and two DPS. With the lack of classes in this game, that really means an ideal party will consist of Brick, Roland, and a combination of Mordecais and/or Liliths with all classes playing in their team-based roles. If you had a party of two Bricks and two Rolands, you may survive longer but you’ll be seriously lacking in firepower due to no DPS classes. And with four DPS classes, who is going to tank the bosses? Your whole party will get splattered real quick.

Class Popularities
Damage dealing classes tend to be the most popular in MMORPGs, while healing classes tend to be the least popular. I guess people seem to have more satisfaction in killing an enemy than preventing an ally from dying. What’s interesting to me is that I’m seeing Roland as the most popular class so far in my limited online play with Borderlands, and this may be due to his class being labeled as “Soldier”. After all, I’m playing this on the 360, a console that is best loved for FPS games so I’m guessing it’s not just me that naturally gravitates towards that class. Even I myself originally created a Soldier to learn the game with because I saw combat rifle as one of his specialties. However, keep in mind that the soldier functions ideally as a healer in a team-based role, so while it appears that the Soldier class may be very popular, I would argue that based on past evidence of healing classes, there are probably only a small subset of people actually playing the Soldier class as a healer. If you’re going to create a soldier, make sure you heal!

When to Handle Loot Drops and Trading
With no loot system in Borderlands, I’m not even going to try recommending a way to handle loot drops if you play in a public game, but among friends, you may want to consider what I’ve devised. First off, don’t have everyone stopping and inspecting gear after every drop (except maybe after a big boss). Instead, take the opposite approach: have everyone just grab everything during the chaos of every drop, but don’t bother inspecting or trading yet. Just keep moving and if you see one of the players not moving, you know he’s inspecting the pickups so you can ”encourage” him to keep moving.

Instead, I recommend inspecting the weapons everyone has picked up the next time all of you reach a vendor, so you can ask if anyone wants it before you sell it. Often times when you get to a vending machine, someone has to stop to buy ammo or sell stuff anyway, so trading weapons then is a natural time that won’t slow down the action.

Weapon Priorities
As for the weapon types themselves, note that there are already specific weapon types that each class is geared towards, even if anyone can “master” any weapon type. Some classes have skills or abilities that allow them to get more value out of a particular weapon type, so in the interest of fairness and creating a rule system, you may want to consider the following:

Rocket Launchers – Brick gets first pick
Combat Rifles -  – Roland gets first pick
Shotguns – Roland gets first pick
Sniper Rifles – Mordecai gets first pick
Pistols/Revolvers – Mordecai gets first pick
SMGs – Lilith gets first pick
Alien Rifles – open since it depends on the weapon itself and which class can make the most use out of it

If you want to master a weapon type that is not among your primaries, it is more polite to allow the primary class for that weapon to decide first whether or not he will use it. If not, it’s all yours – just make sure you disclose early on to the other players what weapons you want to use outside of those that your class prefers. And if there are multiple players playing the same class in your party, if one player gets first pick on the weapon drop, then let the next player playing the same class get the first pick on the next drop. This brings me to the next refinement in handling loot drops…

Rarity Threshold
All of the gear drops in Borderlands falls into a certain rarity type molded after World of Warcraft, with the most rare color, orange, at the bottom of the list:

White – Common
Green – Uncommon
Blue – Rare
Purple – Epic
Orange – Legendary

When playing with your friends, it’s helpful to agree upon a rarity threshold, which basically determines if a friend should bring something to your attention that he’s picked up or about to get rid of. The threshold generally is set at Green or Blue, so that often means that if a player is about to sell a green or blue item (or higher), he should ask the corresponding class that can use that item if he wants it or not. If you and your pals set rarity threshold to Blue, it means anyone that picks up anything white or green can just sell it without telling any of the other party members, but anything Blue, Purple, or Orange you have to disclose!

Gear Is Not As Important Early On
If you’re not level 50 yet, don’t worry about not getting every little item as you’ll always find something better as you continue to level up. Your goal should really be to level to 50, so you can find the endgame loot. That’s when it’s probably time to make sure the agreed upon loot rules and who gets what weapon types are in place. If a level 20 orange weapon drops and for some reason or another you aren’t able to get it, don’t sweat it too much. You’ll most likely find a blue item or even a green item a few levels later that will already be better than it. But if an orange weapon drops at level 50, then is the time to raise a fuss if you aren’t given it when you should be.

Utilizing the MMORPG “pull” Strategy
This is something to consider if you wish to play conservatively due to the area being more difficult, your team is underleveled, etc. The MMORPG “pull” strategy involves the party of four setting up in an area that is safe for them, and having just one player (most likely either Mordecai, due to his long range, or Lilith, due to her speed and cloaking) attacking one enemy and running back to the group. This pulls the enemy towards the group, and the group can take the enemy out very quickly and efficiently without having to engage extra enemies. Then the party advances and the puller grabs the next enemy group. If you don’t do a “pull” strategy, it’s possible that your party may simply be triggering all sorts of enemies nearby during your fighting, and you may get overwhelmed and killed. Perhaps Borderlands isn’t that difficult, but considering switching to this tactic when needed if you are outmatched or things look tough. Have the enemies come to you, not the other way around!

Parting Thoughts
This is all the advice I have on the topic for now. When I get into it more and make my way to the endgame, I’ll add more tips I’ve learned or revise what I’ve written above accordingly. Please feel free to share your tips as well!