New Borderlands 3 patch buffs pets across the board, FL4K is spared a nerf (this time)

‘We have boosted the health of Iron Bear, the Digi-Clone, and the pets to make them more viable’

FL4K has been spared the wrath of another Borderlands 3 patch. All is right with the world.

As players try their best to create instant boss nuke builds and Gearbox tries to snuff those out, the battle for balance continues. Many legendary weapons were buffed across the board in a new patch deployed today, but the main points of contention are the Butcher and Lyuda weapons, very popular endgame weapons that were both nerfed fairly heavily. Hunter-Seeker, Hex and Firestorm grenade damage were also hit with the nerf bat.

The reason the aforementioned gun nerfs are so contentious is because Gearbox has been playing a dangerous game with endgame balancing, nerfing weapons after they become well-worn and grinded for. Some players are getting frustrated by the practice of grinding out a new cool gun in a game known for emphasizing that very concept, then having the rug pulled out from under them. Given that Borderlands 3 has no PVP element of any kind, some of the nerfs are puzzling.

And for the good news: Gearbox opted to improve the health value of the Iron Bear, Digi-Clone, and all pets by 50-100%.  Speaking as someone who primarily plays pet-based classes in Borderlands 3, this is a pretty nice change. In a game as wild and crazy as Borderlands 3, that’s only a good thing. Just like the last patch, FL4K is safe: this has been your weekly episode of “FL4K Watch.”

You can read the full patch notes below.

Borderlands 3 Hotfixes: October 17 [Gearbox]

Weapon Hotfixes

Maliwan

• Westergun damage increased by 25%
• ASMD damage increased by 28%
• Cutsman damage reduced by 25%

Tediore

• Ten Gallon damage increased by 8%

Vladof

• Sickle reload speed increased by 25%
• Faisor damage increased by 15%
• Infiniti damage increased by 40%
• Magnificent damage increased by 25%
• Jericho damage increased by 40%
• Lucian’s Call accuracy and handling reduced
• Lyuda Critical Damage Bonus decreased by 30% and made a modification to address a reported bug that an extra bullet was spawned in the center

The Lyuda’s functionality is to split the projectile from 1 to 3 after a certain distance. It was reported that the original projectile was never destroyed in the process of splitting so 1 projectile actually became 4. Addressing this concern effectively removed a full shot’s worth of damage which auto-corrects the base damage of the weapon. Since we increased all sniper rifle critical damage bonus in a previous hotfix, we reduced some of the critical damage bonus on the Lyuda.

Torgue

• Try-Bolt damage increased by 25%
• Alchemist damage increased by 25%
• Devils Foursum damage increased by 13%
• Flakker now consumes the full magazine when fired and damage is reduced by 33%

Flakker was greatly outperforming other shotguns due to the number of projectiles and the high rate of fire. We initially believed the resulting projectile spread would cause most of the explosions to miss the target, however this turned out to be false, so we reduced the projectile damage and allowed the weapon to only fire once per magazine. This change encourages players to capitalize on different stat bonuses to maximize the weapon’s damage output.

• Laser-Sploder rocket projectiles spawn interval increased by 0.4 seconds

Jakobs

• Maggie damage increased by 35%
• Hellwalker damage reduced by 8%

Hyperion

We found that a couple of the Legendary Hyperion weaponry bypassed the Hyperion manufacturer playstyle too easily making their bonuses greatly outweigh the penalties. The Butcher was drastically outperforming all metrics and we chose to reduce the damage in order to keep the fast fire rate.

• Conference Call damage increased by 15%
• Crossroad accuracy reduced and it now fires 3 projectiles instead of 4
• Butcher accuracy reduced and damage reduced by 25%

DAHL

• Vanquisher damage increased by 20%

Children of the Vault

• Skeksis damage increased by 15%
• Linoge damage increased by 20%
• Pain is Power damage increased by 25%

Atlas

• Ruby’s Wrath damage increased by 10%

Grenades

Hex and Firestorm were calibrated to the wrong grenade modifier. These two grenades were envisioned to specialize by applying elemental DoTs to targets. Instead they were resulting in large amounts of damage and the elemental DoTs were minimal. We realize this is a drastic change on both of these grenades, but we did not want to remove the spectacle of the grenade (number of grenades spawned, number of targets hit, etc.) and focused on allowing their core identity to be emphasized instead of them continuing to just be high damage grenades.

• Hunter-Seeker damage increased by 25%
• Hex grenade damage reduced by 70% and duration reduced to 3 seconds
• Firestorm damage reduced by 70%

Artifacts

It was reported that the Legendary artifact, Elemental Projector, had a bug resulting in the max value being displayed at 183% instead of the actual max value of 113%. Therefore, we addressed the discrepancy and reduced the max value to 90%.

• Elemental Projector damage max roll reduced to 90%

Vault Hunter Adjustments

The current state of Moze’s Iron Bear, Zane’s Digi-Clone, and FL4K’s pets have made players focus on other elements besides those Vault Hunter’s fundamental action skills in the late game. While longer term solutions to scaling their damage is explored, we have boosted the health of Iron Bear, the Digi-Clone, and the pets to make them more viable. We will have more to say about long term solutions for these characters in the future.

• Iron Bear: health increased by 50%
• All pets’ health increased by 50%
• Digi-Clone: health increased by 100%
• Addressed a bug with Salvation where grenades were giving life-steal

Bug Fixes

• Psychos will now use their True Vault Hunter Mode name in True Vault Hunter Mode
• Removed the optional Rare Spawn missions from Galaxy Progress
• Addressed a reported bug where Completely Sane Sid didn’t always become hostile when using FL4K
• Addressed a reported bug where Ratch would not properly spawn during “Ratch’d Up”, which potentially blocked completion of that side mission
• Included a modification so Lilith would continue to move toward the door in Shiv’s confession chamber during “From the Ground Up”
• Lowered the chance for a weapon to drop from the Pachinko machine
• Included a modification so that Zane’s Digi-Clone will no longer spawn into the cage in Cistern of Slaughter
• Shield Boosters were modified and are now set for autopickup
• An addition was introduced so Eridium chests are no longer listed as Red Chests in the ECHOcast extension