Just to get it out of the way, yes I’m a FL4K main. I loved his design when Gearbox first released him, and loved the concept of his action skills. Once I got to endgame though, it was pretty clear that two out of three of these weren’t viable. So Fadeaway it was.
This wasn’t a problem for me, as 1) I knew there would be balance changes down the road and 2) I really enjoyed the playstyle of GiTM. I’m not much of a sniper, but was a fan of the invisibility and regen, so the fact that Gearbox would accommodate that by having an augment like GiTM was cool. It quickly became obvious however, that the damage was waaaay out of line with the rest of the Vault Hunters, and so I waited for what I considered a pretty deserved nerf.
50% down to 25%? I’ll admit, it looked like a lot to me on paper, and I had my reservations. In practise it was pretty ok though; going from insta-gibbing mobs to actually having time to see their health bars move feels good. But holy skag balls, slashing the skill duration like that…
3 seconds is a long time in TVHM M3. This actually becomes over 4 seconds when you factor in the use of Persistence Hunter, which is pretty much mandatory to retain as much regen/aggro relief as possible in the clusterfunk of those mayhem modifiers. Factor in that you were already taking roughly HALF of the healing/aggro relief as a tradeoff for GiTM (which is MORE than fair enough IMO), and this duration reduction feels even more crippling.
I guess my overall point is that the damage reduction is fair but the duration was fine where it was. I heard someone at Gearbox (Paul Sage I think? Correct me if I’m wrong) say that they were really focusing on fleshing out these existing VHs, as their data showed that people usually stick with their main and only try out the others? I’m not a game dev, but if that is the case then drastically altering the feel and survivability of a player’s preferred playstyle just seems counterintuitive. Especially when you can bring it into balance with a damage reduction, which they have done on top of this.
I know it’s early days, and that this is just the first step in finding a balance, but I don’t think I’m the only one that is a bit concerned with the heavy-handedness of this nerf.
Edit: typo