Although the release of Borderlands 3 has been a bit controversial, it was still very successful. Gearbox hasn’t been resting on their laurels though, as the developer has continued to put out more content for the cooky shooter. One of the problems that many players point to, is a lack of substantive challenge in some areas, while other areas were way too hard. Gearbox has been deploying hotfixes for a while now, with different focuses on various areas of gmaeplay that needed attention. Early game bosses got nerfed after being too hard for some to complete, while other areas got more challenging. Overall, Gearbox seems to be doing a pretty decent job.
This latest patch continues that trend, and this time its the Vaulthunters themselves getting their turn in the spotlight. Health and DPS buffs are on the table for various weapons, and in some rather unpredictable areas as well.
The patch adjusts a bunch of gameplay elements across multiple areas of the game. One area of focus for this patch was the pets. Moze’s Iron Bear, Zane’s Digi-Clone, and FL4K’s pets are all a new addition to the franchise. They’re very fun to goof around with, but the gameplay element posed a bit of a problem pre-patch. Despite being a pretty integral part of combat in Borderlands 3 these buddies were very weak. Gearbox is fixing that by buffing all of these pets in a pretty big way. A bundle of specific weapons also got tweaks across the board this update.
Here are the full patch notes, for those interested:
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 on Sanctuary III
