Gearbox keeps trying to find the sweet spot
Borderlands 3‘s hotfixes have been sort of a bummer in recent weeks, mostly just nerfing exploits and overpowered character skills. It’s good for game balance, but it’s bad for absolutely melting bosses. The most recent hotfix, however, is almost universal good news.
Every Vault Hunter received some sort of buff or nerf-reversal that can be counted as a net positive. The range of Amara’s Phasegrasp was doubled, which hopefully encourages players to use long-range weapons (and a miss instantly returns the skill with no cooldown). A bug fix with Zane’s Death Follows Close ability makes it so kill skills correctly update — essentially serving as a buff because, even though it now works as intended, it’ll make him more powerful.
Moze is the only character whose changes are something of a mixed bag. Her Means of Destruction skill had its cooldown reverted from 2 seconds back to .3 seconds, so grenades will be returned much quicker again. However, Gearbox notes that it’s unhappy with the infinite splitting grenades effect this can cause, and that it’ll be addressed in a future patch. Also, Moze’s Bloodletter class mod was tweaked so that the recharge delay is 150 percent slower, but the recharge rate is 50 percent quicker.
Finally, fan favorite FL4K got some oomph back. Last week, the Leave No Trace skill (which has a chance to return ammo to the magazine on critical hits) was nerfed into oblivion. Gearbox put a 2 second cooldown on this skill, meaning a negligible amount of ammo would be affected. With today’s hotfix, that has been reverted to .3 seconds. Now, Leave No Trace is again a wonderful complementary skill to Fade Away and Guerrillas in the Mist.
Lastly, Gearbox has taken care to adjust a handful of underused Legendary weapons so that they’re more appealing. The Lob, Creeping Death, Carrier, and Gunerang all got significant damage buffs.
Here’s the full list of patch notes from today’s Borderlands 3 hotfix:
Amara:
- Putting points into Alacrity now awards a reload speed bonus per rank
- Phasegrasp can now be used on targets further away and the cooldown is now instantly returned if a player misses
Moze:
- Bloodletter Class Mod
– Increased the Recharge Delay by 150%
– Reduced the Recharge Rate by 50% - Addressed a reported bug with Close the Distance so the Action Skill Augment will now deal the intended Shock Damage
- Means of Destruction now has a re-trigger delay of 0.3 seconds
FL4K:
- Leave No Trace now has a re-trigger delay set to 0.3 seconds
Zane:
- Death Follows Close will correctly update several Kill Skills after unlocking this ability
Weapons:
- The Lob’s projectile tick damage is now 60% of base damage (up from 20%) and projectile speed decelerates faster to increase chances of hitting the same target multiple times
- Creeping Death damage increased by 200%
- Carrier damage increased by 60%
- Gunerang damage increased by 20%
- All Sniper Rifle Zoom Levels have been slightly reduced
- Long scopes on Jakobs, Children of the Vault, and DAHL Assault Rifles have also been slightly reduced
- Anointed Parts:
– When Zane swaps positions with his Digi-Clone, the damage gained is increased to 130% (up from 75%)
– When FL4K hits a target with Rakks, the target now takes 100% increased damage (up from 50%)
– The Anointed part “Increased damage vs Badasses” no longer heals the player and now correctly adds bonus damage to Badass enemies
Bug Fixes:
- Pain, Terror, and Agonizer 9000 have been adjusted to have an increased chance to drop higher quality loot
- Addressed a reported bug with Dynasty Diner that could potentially halt mission progress for some players
- Addressed a reported concern that some players fell through the floors in various boss arenas
- Modified enemy spawn level discrepancies reported in the later parts of the campaign
Borderlands 3 Hotfixes: October 10, 2019 [Borderlands]
