So some friends and I have been having a blast with Borderlands 2. While I didn’t play much of the first Borderlands, I do know that I am loving the new and tweaked classes, especially my preferred class, the assassin.
Of course, with these cool classes, and the upcoming mechromancer I began to think about what other cool classes Borderlands can come up with for the inevitable Borderlands 3.
1) The Rocketeer
While not all levels in Borderlands 2 utilize vertical levels, a good number of them have places where I have been like “man, how do I get up there?” So, why not introduce a class who can really use that vertical terrain. A rocketeer would basically be a guy with a jetpack who skill ability is to, at first have a jump pack where they can jump super high and a later upgrade to a more controllable flight.
Star Wars Bounty Hunter proved even more that Jetpacks are awesome.
At first I imagined this class focusing a lot in rockets and snipers, just a very high damage but low ammo kind of guy for anyone who likes to move fast and deal tons of damage. Of the three skill trees in this class, I can already think of two that would focus mostly on the jetpack itself. One could be more focused in distance and control, letting the player have their controllable jetpack and longer jumps. Perfect for anyone with a sniper who needs to get away really fast. The second tree could focus more on height, being able to go much much higher, and given abilities like to create shock waves upon take off or landing. A third tree could be more support, granting abilities that perhaps force enemies to be attracted to you, while maybe using your jetpack grants you some bonus shields. This way, the rocketeer can support teammates by drawing fire away from them. I know this is something I wish my friends would have when trying to revive someone.
2) The Free-Runner
While I love what the assassin, I guess one thing that does bother me is the fact that you can’t do what the trailers show him doing. My friends keep saying that when I melee I’m doing spins and flips and stuff like that, but to me, all it looks like is a sword swing.
That’s why, I think a tweak the assassin would be having his ability instead of being sending out a hologram would be going into third-person and becoming much faster and being able to jump higher. This is what I call the Free-Runner. The Free-Runner would go into his Free-Run mode, and from there his shots would auto-lock onto the nearest enemy (if they are within range) while the player runs up walls, does flips over enemies heads, and overall just looks really cool.
Make Borderlands look a little like this. Wouldn’t be all that bad.
Like the assassin, there would be a melee focus tree, that would allow the free runner to manage multiple enemies at once and maybe some other cool features like holding an enemy in front of you to use them as a shield and special stat increases if you’re running and meleeing. Another tree would make the Free-Runner more ninja like, such as making him invisible while running and dealing more damage if the hit is from behind. Maybe even a skill where killing someone in this mode wouldn’t alert other enemies in the area.
3) The Beast-Master
I love passive-aggressive characters and I never mind being weak if I could supply something to support me. Whether it’s mines, the turret, or just summoning minions, these characters are often very fun to play as. That’s why I hope that the next Borderlands game should include a Beast-Master type character, who has the special skill to summon, at first, low level creatures that go out to swarm the enemies and provide distractions while you shoot them.
Who needs guns when you have animals?
The tress would change perhaps the kind of monsters the Beast-Master’s ability can summon, and maybe one tree can focus more taking control of the enemies already out there, because nothing is more fun than watching the enemies beat each other up. That tree could even eventually take over enemy’s minds by shooting, of course bosses would be immune.
Well, that’s all I can think of right now. Borderlands 2, along with one, are special because they are wacky. The only problem I think it suffers from is that the mechanics are too conventional, everything is still based on point and shoot while a lot of cool things could be done with this, I think there is a lot more room for some more interesting mechanics and character classes.
