Guerrillas in the Mist was nerfed pretty badly in the most recent patch - it lost abit of crit, but more importantly, it lost almost half of its total duration. While I can definitely see the intention behind the nerf, it hasn’t achieved what it has intended and has instead really hurt Fl4k as a class.
If I am to understand correctly, GiTM was nerfed because when paired with stuff like the KC/QC (RIP), Torgue shotties or Lyuda, it absolutely melted bosses. And hence it was nerfed for being a little overpowered. As a brief aside - Fl4k’s ungodly bossing ability was a myth propagated by the vast number of players who used him in the game’s early life cycle. Amara and Moze have shown themselves to be at least his equal - if not superior, in this respect. And GiTM was overrated as Fl4k’s ‘boss-killing’ ability as players rarely exploited the auto-crit ability and went for crits anyway to maximize their dps anyway. And lastly, the bosses currently in the game are simply not healthy enough to make any conclusion about a class’s bossing capability - even Zane can shred Graveward in under 1s because he isn’t a Raid boss.
But that’s not the main point of this post. The main point is that the GiTM nerf hasn’t achieved what it has intended, but instead really hurt Fl4k where he was already pretty mediocre at. While the crit nerf has definitely toned down his DPS, Fl4k can still totally obliterate every single boss in the entire game even within the nerfed duration. This is because, like Amara and Moze, Fl4k has a ton of inherent dps, and the current boss roster in the game just isn’t enough to challenge them with optimal loadouts.
On the other hand, Fl4k has never been very good at mobbing. He was designed to be a glass cannon - lots of dps, but not much survivability. In theory F4de Away was the solution to this - weave in and out of combat, exploiting invisibility to make-up for your inherent squishiness (much like Zer0 in BL2). However, F4de Away was paired with a crazy long cooldown of 45s, presumably to balance it to Rakk Attack and Gamma Burst. But this meant Fl4ks weren’t able to integrate FA very smoothly into combat, which is why Amara and Moze always stomped him in mobbing and arena situations.
But at least with GiTM being from 8 - 11.5s, you were able to kill maybe 30% of enemies within F4de Away if you had a good loadout that was optimised with Head Count. But now that number has drastically reduced since its duration is now 5s. One cannot look ast this mathematically, 5s duration is actually significantly worse than 8s for mobbing because you have to contend with alot of other things in mobbing compared to bossing, namely looking for enemies, reloading, wonky AI etc. Now, unless you are exploiting certain weapons like the Crossroad or Butcher, you are gonna be spend 80% of your time outside F4de Away, and kill 1-2 enemies in one duration. Effectively, Fl4k has become a Krieg, Moze or Brick, having no action skill if using a gun build. Except Fl4k isn’t built like those classes - he isn’t a self-sufficient, DPS invincible tank. He is built to be dependent on his Action Skill, whether Gamma Burst, Rakk Attack or F4de Away (more on that later). Majority of Fl4k players now find him extremely tedious to play on TVHM M3 without optimised loadouts, and this just shouldn’t be the case.
Even with the nerf to GiTM’s duration and crit, players will stick to GiTM instead of base F4de Away. Why? Because base F4de Away is inherently flawed. You have 3 supposedly ‘high-power’ shots in 15s. Except there are a few issues. Firstly, that 15s is disengenuous, as well, you only have 3 shots. Which means that you are only gonna be able to kill at best 3, more likely 1-2 enemies in that duration. With the nerfed duration, GiTM is only capable of the same - which means base F4de Away must be better right? This is not the case because the weapons that excel in base F4de Away are the same weapons which tend to synergise terribly with Head Count. Conversely, the high fire rate shotties and smgs which have great synergy with GiTM also have great synergy with Head Count, allowing you to shave off at least 1/3rd of its cooldown - and at least try and incorporate FA into your playstyle, even though the nerf makes this very difficult now.
Instead of nerfing GiTM’s duration to make base F4de Away competitive, what Gearbox should have done is give base F4de Away a cooldown refund for ending the action skill early, much like Decepti0n, Digi-Jacks, Axton’s Turret etc. And given it a augment or classmod that favored playstyles which COULD end duration early (like maybe your last shot or last 3 shots does bonus damage or something). That way base F4de Away could be truly competitive with GiTM.
I am completely okay with the nerf to GiTM’s crit, but the nerf to duration has really made him not just alot less effective, but honestly alot less fun. In view of this, I have several suggestions.
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Give Base F4de Away a cooldown refund mechanism. And when the next roll of Legendary Class Mods come along, give a special effect which favors this high single-shot playstyle.
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Keep the crit nerf to GiTM, but do something to make it blend more seamlessly into mobbing situations. This can be done by any of the following:
A) Bring the duration back to 8s.
B) Keep the nerfed duration of 6s, but half the cooldown to 20-25s.
C) Significantly buff Eager to Impress and Head Count - though I think this is a less desirable suggestion because it would be very broken with Rakk Attack.
D) Significantly buff Persistance Hunter to 33% per level. I actually quite like this suggestion because it forces Fl4k players to spec into Persistance Hunter - but unlike right now where it barely makes GiTM viable, they feel rewarded for it.