Pandora's Box - Pros and COMs

This one's for ALL of you!

I'm back from The Vault with some extremely useful information for the rest of you Vault hunters, so listen up.

COMs or Class Optimization Modules (Class Mods) can be your best friends (aside from your guns of course) when you're trekking around, gunning down baddies and generally trying to keep your ass alive. some will only benefit you, where others will benefit your entire team in different ways from increasing accuracy, decreasing reload times, increasing magazine sizes, damage output... really, if you can name it, COMs will usually be able to have some effect or another on it. It's important to know what you're doing when it comes to these items though as they can make you almost invincible when wielded right, but are useless when equipped to a person with the wrong style of play. As an example, here's the "Ranger" COM made by Tediore and Hyperion:

Ranger COMs:

• +28% - 60% Team Accuracy
• 0-5 Predator Skill Boost: Decreases bloodwing cooldown time.
  
• 0-5 Bird Of Prey Skill Boost: Increases the number of enemies bloodwing will attack in a single deployment.
  
• 0-5 Focus Skill Boost: Increases accuracy with all weapon types and decreases sniper rifle sway.
  
• 0% - 84% Team Critical Hit Damage Boost
• 0% - 84% Team Accuracy Recovery (Though this may not be in effect in some patches).

If you have a well-levelled, or highly elemental bloodwing, this is the class for you. You should note that for ANY class mod skill boosts to work, you HAVE to have at least one skill point already attributed to the listed skill to gain the bonus. In this case though you'll see a bloodwing strike that can strike up to ten targets, or ten times when rotating between targets, and that can then be used just moments after bloodwing returns to Mordecai (literally only one second of 'cooldown' when a +4 boost from a mod, and a standard skill value of 5 are put together). With this set-up the player becomes almost secondary to Bloodwing as far as combat is concerned. You need only pull the trigger on your action skill button and let Bloodwing go to town on the enemies around you.

Now this class won't work for everyone, but it's a great start. It allows someone using the otherwise vulnerable Mordecai to inflict massive damage in a ridiculously short period of time, and allows them to do it over and over again. Also, if you have to choose between cooldown speed and number of enemies hit per send-out, choose cooldown. It's more effective to immediately send out Bloodwing than it is to get one extra attack, but spend more time waiting to send him out on another run.

Another favourite of mine, especially when playing alongside friends is Roland's Support Gunner classs. It incorporates team ammo regeneration with team magazine size and team accuracy, not to mention the boosts to his Stockpile, Impact and Barrage skills. Essentially you get a class that boosts everyone on your team so the more players you have at any one time, the more this class will do. It's not an offensive or defensive class really, just a balanced boost to everyone's potential leaving the players to make the most of the benefits rather than doing all the work itself (like with the Ranger class mod used on Mordecai).

So, what have we learned today?

• Put COMs to use at all times.
• Pick COMs that fit your style of play.
• COM skill boosts ONLY affect skills you've already given points to.
• Try to pick a COM that will also benefit your team.
• Mordecai is an absolutely devastating killing machine with a high-grade Ranger mod and an elemental Bloodwing.

Enjoy your swim, and best luck with the Borderlands!

Joshua J. Taylor