Borderlands 4 finally has its long-awaited nerf-heavy update after a couple of delays, and a little bit like going to the dentist, it's not as bad as you'd imagined. While there are some nerfs that are the result of Gearbox's admitted overtuning, most of the tweaks are aimed at taking down broken builds instead of simply making them less powerful for the sake of it.
With the game's first major balance update, Gearbox reiterates in the patch notes that the intent has always been "to provide you the greatest number of viable builds."
In the "gameplay and missions" category of fixes and updates, this is where you'll find most of the bug fixes and quality of life stuff. Gearbox says "Maurice’s Black Market Vending Machine is able to be interacted with reliably in multiplayer," "Legendary Vending Machine no longer closes unexpectedly during Vend of the Line," and there are some "general improvements to prevent enemies from getting stuck when spawning, and addressed various reported spawn point issues."
Just ripping this particular band-aid off quickly, the infamous crit knife has been rightfully shanked. "It had to happen, you knew it was going to happen!" Gearbox writes in the dev notes. But it's actually not so bad! The throwing knife, which has so far dominated build meta with its 100% critical hit rate, has had that crit rate reduced down to 30%. That's still a pretty badass weapon, it's just not utterly broken anymore.
Elsewhere in gear balancing, the San Saba Songbird pistol doesn't stack infinitely when swapping weapons, and using a Jakobs shotgun with torque sticky projectiles and the knife launcher underbarrel doesn't deal knife damage after switching fire modes anymore.
Meanwhile, the Vladof flamethrower underbarrel doesn't deal infinite damage or bypass bio armor anymore, and gadgets no longer reset to maximum uses after gaining second wind.
Assault rifles are having a good day with numerous buffs, with the Star Helix's fire rate increasing by 33%, Bonnie and Clyde's base damage increasing by 40%, Bugbear's base damage increasing by 40%, and Rowan's Charge base fire rate increasing by 100%.
Over in heavy weapons, the Gamma Void is having a field day with a buff to base damage of 450%, though that's somewhat offset by its singularity duration being reduced from 10 seconds down to 6 seconds and its cooldown increased by 100%.
Class mods across the board have been buffed "to make them more desirable," with melee damage and action skill damage on level 50 class mods increasing to 60% and skill damage on level 50 class mods increasing to 45%. Furthermore, Siren class mods, Forgeknight class mods, and Gravitar class mods have had their own unique buffs as detailed in the patch notes.
As for vault hunter-specific nerfs and buffs, welp, brace yourself, because all vault hunters have been tweaked to varying degrees. starting with Harlowe the Gravitar, who's had a number of bug fixes. Her Neutron Capture "now converts all gun damage into radiation and now only applies to gun shots, and not all instances of gun damage."
This is because, in Gearbox's words, "during testing, we found that this was erroneously applying to all instances of Gun Damage and was able to scale in unanticipated ways as a result. This new change will still see Neutron Capture being one of the best (if not the best) damage scalars in the game, but the power level will be much more in line with our expectations."
Up next is Amon the Forgeknight, whose Seeing Red skill will no longer increase in duration restored per point invested, and is now 4 seconds no matter the rank. Per Gearbox: "Seeing Red was always meant to have huge damage scaling potential, but was always meant to be hard to maintain. We didn't want to nerf this passive's power, but we're making the effect harder to maintain."
Amon's Blackout passive was also "overperforming a bit," per Gearbox, so it's now 15% per point instead of 21% per point.
Vex the Siren's bleed effect from Bloodletter, which has been exploited for "unintended damage loops," has been fixed so that it can't be used to recursively trigger itself. Otherwise, the Siren has been treated pretty well in the update, with her double trouble skill's illusion damage multiplayer increasing from 50% to 75%, its duration increasing from 5 seconds to 8 seconds, and her Apex Beast's damage increasing from 10% to 15%.
Rafa the Exo-Soldier has hardly been touched, and in fact technically hasn't really been nerfed or buffed. Gearbox says the "free grenade from Filantropo class mod now deals appropriate damage even when no grenade is equipped," and Rafa's APOPHIS lance has been "changed to penalize Gun Accuracy instead of Gun Handling, resulting in projectile speed being unaffected," and it'll now benefit "from cooldown reduction effects."
All of this is in addition to bug fixes and minor quality of life tweaks for each vault hunter, which should make things feel more polished, functional, and balanced overall. With Borderlands 4 setting multiple US records for Gearbox as the fastest selling game in the series, you can expect the studio to continue investing in these big, sweeping balance and performance patches as feedback continues rolling in.
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