How are you playing with the poor performance?

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

I have a pretty potato PC for running BL3. For some areas I’m at a constant 15-10 FPS with frequent frame drops exceeding 4 seconds. Needless to say, precision aiming is just about impossible in these scenarios.

Luckily, I found a Tediore SMG with turret throw, a Torgue AR flamethrower, and a torgue shotgun with increased splash radius. I’m getting by with these weapons for now thankfully, but it certainly is a challenge to play a crit based character under these conditions. I thought about switching to a pet build until some sort of optimization patch comes, but my pet gets wrecked by AOE ground effects like lava pools, and if I don’t deal enough damage to kill enemies, I can’t heal it. I could always try the Jabber and see what happens, but without a pet to tank for me, I would get killed during the frame drops when my character is a sitting duck for 4 seconds.

For anyone having performance issues with BL3, how are you adjusting? Do you have any strategies or tips?

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#2

Have you turned off Gore? It’s in gameplay settings I think so you might have missed it, really helps avoid frame stutters with it off.
And have you tried the resolution scale option? Just touching it down to 75% has let me squeeze a pretty consistent 60 fps on very low graphical settings.

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#3

I have it on 50%, lowest possible resolution too.

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#4

i’m on Ultra on a GeForce GTX 1070 8GB and it’s perfect

#5

That’s good for YOU and doesnt help at all.

however alot of people including myself are beating our heads against the wall with this game. With a 1080ti I turned volumetric fog down to medium, turned off anti aliasing, DX11, Anisotropic Filetering x2. That helps with the frames at least.

#6

Just for reference, this is what I mean.


This is one of the better encounters I’ve had today. The game has been running for about an hour now, and I’m still getting frequent stutters and have barely been above 25FPS. At it’s worst, I’ll go through an entire fire fight at 7-10FPS with the stutters as well.
#8

Go Stalker, put your first 8 points in Self-Repairing System and All My BFF’s. This will give you a large health boost, substantial health regeneration, and let that regen apply to your pet.

The Master tree has its perks, but it’s probably FL4k’s weakest tree and, without those 8 points in Stalker, both you and your pet will be painfully squishy.

With those 8 points, any pet is a tank pet. If you use Fade Away, its regen will apply to your pet as well (with BFF), making it both a powerful offensive and defensive CD.

My personal recommendation from there would be to continue down the Stalker tree, picking up Eager to Impress on your way to Lick the Wounds.

Your pet now has all your health regen and can rez you if you go down. Eager to Impress will reset the CD on Attack Command every time your pet kills a target, which is great because jabber pets specialize in using those attacks. Once you get the Gunslinger Jabber, you can settle back into a target-painting role like Wilhelm for most mobs.

If you find yourself short on damage, line up burst damage windows with Fade Away. All weapons crit, even rocket launchers. The crit-based ricochet from Jakobs weapons will make them very good at clearing out groups and shotguns in general will be your friend.

This should be enough to get you through NVHM. If you want ultimate hands-off play, do a Master/Stalker hybrid once you unlock the Gunslinger Jabber. Plow everything into pet damage and watch him solo entire groups with a little bit of remote direction.

#9

Respecced that way 2 days ago, using the spiderant. It definitely helps big time, but still leaves me a bit vulnerable when my pet dies during frame spikes. If my pet dies with this spec, I am 100% screwed lol.

I just can’t bring myself to use Fade Away for general mobbing without headcount. At least with Rakk Attack, I can get some frequent use out of it, even if it does miss during frame spikes. Fade Aways just isn’t up often enough for my liking, though I certainly see the appeal for boss fights and switch to it then.

#10

I find spiderants to be pretty underwhelming as pets, nowhere near in the same league as jabbers. Jabbers do a lot of damage, more if you can use attack command well, they throw barrels (occasionally useful), and they’re ranged with the exception of the Beefcake. This helps them avoid a lot of unnecessary damage and pathing issues while mobbing while also increasing the overall DPS they contribute.

For pet death, they can either be rezzed with Gamma Burst (increases the CD, but instantly brings them back to life)or you can stealth-rez them with Fade Away.

Rakk-spam can be fun and do decent damage, even provide some OK-ish healing with the right augment, but it won’t turn the tide like the other two. Like you said, it’s game over when your pet dies and Rakk Attack offers you nothing there.

If you want to use the rakks for general mobbing, that’s fine, but I’d switch them out on hard fights. Given your limitations, I’d use Gamma Burst since it’s a guaranteed instant rez and Fade Away requires you to safely maneuver in close.

#11

Gammaburst also has double cooldown when you use it for reviving pets, and at least AFAIR you can’t switch out action skills while they are cooling down. I’ve switched to Gammaburst to revive the spider during boss fights, but being left without any action skill for a minute is painful.

Spiderants are incredibly useful for providing extra survivability. With BFF, they get their own 1% heal, as well as my regen, which helps to keep them alive when I can’t support them, which means they can revive me when I downed. They are also great tanks, which is vital for me since I have trouble keeping up with enemies when my frames drop.

I’ll try giving Fade Away a shot for mobbing, though I don’t know how people can stand a skill with a 45 second cooldown, even if it does insane damage.

#12

Spiderants can be situationally useful, I use the scorcher on my Hunter build, but if I was in a situation where I needed my pet to do a lot of heavy lifting, they would be my last choice. Imho, no pet comes close to a Gunslinger jabber in overall performance.

For 3 points, Turn Tail and Run can give you similar health regen as a spiderant pet while moving, with damage reduction, and gun damage/fire rate while standing still.

Fade Away is a painful ability to use while mobbing, I agree, but there are ways to improve it. With Guerrillas in the Mist and a good Jakobs weapon, you can wipe out whole groups in seconds just by hitting them with constant ricochet procs. Fade Away + Jakobs shotgun + Leave No Trace = everything is dead.

Not to be a broken record, but it’s aided by the jabber pet. Once you get the Gunslinger, his infinite rocket launcher spam can wipe out groups if buffed and managed properly.

I can understand the reluctance to use Gamma Burst if the pet isn’t your primary source of damage. I’ve never actually run a pure Master build, tbh, and I only used Gamma Burst on one boss fight for rezzing purposes. Solely because Fade Away was causing issues.

#13

What processor are you using?

Ever since Eden-6 I keep dipping down to 40 or 50 FPS which is bad in my book for an FPS. Can’t really enjoy it to the fullest. If I play on Very Low my GPU sits around 40% usage, my CPU doesn’t go higher than 55% usage at most. I don#t see any more optimization I could do on my side. I’m running a Palit GTX 980 SC /w a Ryzen 5 1500X and 8 GB of 2666 Mhz RAM. It’s driving me nuts