Yeah, so wow. I'm just now level 7 mechromancer and I haven't even started the Capt Flynt mission yet because I did a couple of the first side quests (that I skipped the first round in a rush to get to Sanctuary), so I got Deathtrap at lvl 5 and then got Anarchy at lvl 6.
Let me tell you guys something who, like me, thought this game was a bit different than the first one. The Mecromancer brings it all back to BL1 terms, especially those of us playing Zer0.
The Mecromancer is Mordecai from the first game, not Zer0. Deathtrap is Bloodwing, the only difference is that he gets in your way (you can't shoot through him) but on the other hand, he seems to last longer. He also gets even more potent bonuses later on (or so it seems looking at the skill tree) than Bloodwing did.
Also, this Anarchy thing is freakin rad. Essentially, any time you empty a weapon into an opponent you get a stack of anarchy that increases your weapon damage at the expense of weapon accuracy. But this is the thing.. the anarchy stacks don't have a timer. They stay with you from level changes and everything, they just stack and stack and stack.
The only difficult part is remembering not to reload... if you reload, you lose all your anarchy stacks (damage bonuses). That's reload manually. You also have to remember not to pick up items or open crates with a weapon that isn't fully loaded because the same button (on the xbox) will reload your weapon first. So you have to switch to a fully loaded weapon before picking up items or opening crates, or just fire off the remaining rounds so you don't accidentally reload.
But it's friggin awesome. I'm having so much fun playing this Mecromancer character, I can use my ability (Deathtrap), and I'm looking forward to leveling up because the skill tree is awesome.
For example, I can't wait to get four more levels so I can buy bloody shields, which regenerates my shields (20% per point so if I put in 5 points it will regenerate full shields) at a cost of 1% of health each time I kill something. So for a 5% loss of health, I'll get 100% shields.
There's also an ability called discord, so if I reload, I don't lose all my anarchy stacks they just slowly getting eaten away until I "turn discord off", and in the mean time you get all sorts of bonuses like health regeneration and faster fire rate, etc (I'm not sure exactly on those, but they're awesome).
Oh, and the Anarchy thing about losing weapon accuracy? First, it's great to just get one of those one or two shot weapons. You're constantly reloading but you're also constantly increasing your damage each time. And the accuracy penalty doesn't effect zoomed snipers.
Yep. You can build up a huge anarchy stack and then use your zoomed sniper rifle just fine to focus on the boss or the biggest threat while Deathtrap takes out the rest of the foot soldiers.
Just like how we use to use Bloodwing to clear up the garbage while we focused on the main target. Only now, it's not because we put points into making our sniper skills high.. it's because we put points into Anarchy and just remembered not to manually reload.
This game is a blast again. I'm still having a bit of a struggle, I'm not overpowered like using the Bee shield, you still have to play with strategy and tactics, but it's a lot more fun than playing Zer0 with his worthless deception skill.