LogFAQs > #962883386

At least until getting into the higher OP levels (which just didn't scale well, a consequence of trying to tack on extra difficulty scaling beyond what the original formulas were meant to accommodate without adjusting those formulas), I didn't find enemies were really too spongy unless I didn't have a good build for dealing with them. That, in turn, runs into the issue with targeted farming and build-enabling legendaries: If you balance the game around having great builds, builds that aren't great or are missing the legendaries that enable them are going to suck. That means you don't really have a choice but to look up min/maxed builds and devote specific time to farming certain items (sometimes with pretty poor drop rates), which is not everyone's cup of tea.

Slag was also, indeed, a questionable mechanic. It's an interesting concept, but it very strongly favours the idea of having somebody playing support in multiplayer games, and even that isn't really a good fit for the "EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE AHAHAHA" sort of theme Borderlands goes for (which means nobody wants to be the slag bitch). For solo play, there aren't nearly enough options for applying slag that don't consist of "switch to a worse weapon for a couple shots," which is pretty boring, thematically. Building skill-based or automatic slag application into each skill tree would have been nice, and some characters did that, but even then, those skills tended to become must-haves (because tripling your damage output for a single point is huge), and must-have skills that don't somehow define the feel of the build (like adding a new ability, or something like Anarchy that changes how you play) just aren't a great concept in a game where customization is supposed to be a major thing.

The_tall_midget posted...

It sure was one of the biggest appeal, but gunzerking though.

And that's where Rubi comes in. Constant slag application, plus lifesteal on whatever other gun you're using at the same time? Win-win (except for not getting to use a second fun gun at the same time).