Everybody only does Graveward to show off... instead you should look at Slaughter Shaft to balance classes

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

Looking at all these 2 sec kill videos on Mayhem 3 and nerfing the ■■■■ out of builds because of this is just overreacting. I think Kings/Queens Call was fine. The weapon is kinda useless out of boss fights, nerfing Fl4kS skill down to 5sec makes it really tedious doing anything else.

Graveward is the easiest boss to kill. Aim at the crit spot and he dies. You can do that with any class. You just need to throw your points into the right skills and use one of the many weapons/combos out there.

What is so bad about it? Looking at Borderlands 2 you could kill many bosses with (not raid bosses) at the same speed. We currently don’t have any raids. The current bosses are meant to kill solo, they are not hard at all.

When people watch streamers and they see that they kill a boss in 2 sec they are like “LMAO OP BROKEN” please…

Zer0 can kill BNK3R with a white pistol with a single shot.
Gaige can do that too with some stacks a simple Bee shield and a Fibbr.
Sal can do even creazier stuff. Krieg has bloodsplotion. Maya does beehawking.

They never nerfed that ■■■■. There are records of boss-speedruns for BL2, some of them only take 1-2 sec. Even raid bosses.

Mayhem mode also is really done bad. They should have done it like in Destiny 2 Nightfall runs where you have to select your positive or negative perks for a run and gain bonuses with them.

This way we could increase the loot and rank up the difficulty. A win-win situation for everyone.
But no, they give us a random system that sometimes makes us even more OP for the same loot.

Back to topic, I think the Devs should balance classes with benchmarking them in proving grounds or the Slaughter shaft, multiple runs with different Mayhem 3 perks. Balance them so every class can do a Mayhem 3 solo in 5min. That doesn’t mean that it should be easy but it should be doable.

I even struggle with Moze to do them in 5min, sure they don’t kill me, but the dps even with spamming nades and stuff isn’t always good enough.

I guess the problem here is, that streamers only show 2sec boss kills. I only see Moze doing Slaughter Shaft because of her great survivability and the devs try to balance the game while watching these streams. But Moze can’t do anything else. She has a useless action skill, her annoited perks are one of the worst.

So if you really want to show of then show some solo Slaughter Shaft or 5min proving grounds runs and if they are too easy balance the class or weapons around it. Killing a boring boss is not the main activity in BL3 since loot can drop from everywhere and I rather do some Slaughter Shaft than 8 hours of Graveward spawnkills.

There will also be always META Builds. There always have been and there always will be. Looking at you BL1 Lilith, Borderlands 2 or even looking at TPS Nisha Maggie build. Some items will always stand out, some will always be trash.

Please Devs don’t make the mistake and nerf everything because of the streamer and youtube videos just because someone says “LMAO 2sec TVHM boss kill broken OP”. We still want to do other stuff in the game.
I am sure there will be more content, you will probably add UVHM or just harder Mayhem modes and we still want to be able to do them solo.

Also legendarys drop a lot in the Slaughter Shaft. But guess what. After 8 hours of farming you can go out, the floor has turned into glowing stars, and haven’t gotten a single good annoited item for your build.

Sorry the post became longer than I wanted.

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#2

All good points.
Your comment about FL4K’s nerf really hit home. Doing any content with fade away, besides killing bosses is pretty annoying now. I’m lucky if I manage to kill 1 mob while stealthed. All the nerf did was make killing bosses on FL4K even more optimal.

#3

i’m sorry, gonna be up front and say that i didn’t read everything. (been a long day for me on this forum lol).

But, just wanna say that kings / queens call is absolutely not useless outside bosses. i’ve been using it quite a lot for mobbing with great success. i really like the gun because it really rewards precision shots and it’s a over all badass looking gun… anyway, i went through the entire slaughter star only using queens call on M3 with no major issue, last couple of waves got intense, but not impossible… i just wanted to point this out because i’ve seen a lot of people lately saying how terrible it is and how the nerf made it the worst gun in the game when it’s not really true.

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#4

Queen’s call is actually pretty useless outside boss farming as 1 critical hit would bring random mobs down to 35%hp (tvhm/m3), meaning the balls spawned usually only takes 1 to kill em off and the rest of the balls don’t search for a new target and just explode on a dead target, I literally vendored 3 queens before patch because I like trials/circles more and my ice variant is enough for bosses.

The gun wasn’t really rewarding outside boss farming when you do insane crit damages to begin with. (doesn’t even matter the fire rate out side boss farming either lol)

#5

Gearbox has been in this game for a while. I find it ridiculous that people think they are basing their balancing simply off of YouTubers solo an easy boss and/or complaints left on the forums here.

The most likely scenario (as proven by pre-luanch Zane and Maliwan nerfs) is that they are still dialing in balance based on their own internal data and have been for quite some time.

Balancing, especially fine tuning is one of the last thing done to polish a game and they likely just didn’t get it done in time.

Also their will inevitably be skills/interactions that they miss(that may or may not be brought to their attention by YouTubers) and end up balancing for some time to come into the future.

I’m just thankful that they are taking the time to do balancing right this time around.

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#6

Being in the game a long time doesn’t mean you know everything and are doing things based off your internal testing. I’m sure Gearbox even admitted that Graveward was too easy by making his attacks do more damage, and debuffing the elemental damage multiplier on his damage. If they were proficient with their internal testing they would have known this before.

Anyway they still made a lot of mistakes they made in BL2, like for example a weapon like The Unforgiven, having sniper rifles that consume 2 ammos per shot when snipers only have an ammo pool of 144.

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#7

Yeah, keep mind that the bosses we currently have are intended to be easy. They are just story bosses that everyone is meant to go through with ease. We don’t have any actual raid bosses yet.

Also, weapons like the Unforgiven and snipers consuming 2 ammo per ■■■■(the examples you used) aren’t indicative of mistakes. There are a lot of variety of legendary weapons and you can have them all be the absolute best, otherwise there would be nothing to contrast the good ones too.

Besides the Pitchfork consumed a lot of ammo in BL2 and it had niche uses for me(my Krieg carries a Corrodo double Saturn’s while soloing the Peak).

Also the Unforgiven could turn out to be super broken(not likely but possible), as we haven’t discovered all of the interactions between skills and weapons yet. Also Gearbox may add more skills or chacayers that could break a seemingly worthless item in the future.

Take it easy and let it happen man. Just let it happen lol.

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#8

The pitchfork consumed two ammo per shot to give you 5 shots per trigger pull if I remember correctly. I’m talking about E-Tech snipers in BL 2 that consumed two ammo per shot but were inferior to regular snipers in most cases but still took two ammo for 1 bullet.

I would hope the unforgiven only takes one ammo for a single bullet with that pitiful firerate. The mistake isn’t that snipers are consuming 2 ammo per shots, the mistake is that snipers consume two ammo per shot while only having 144 in the ammo pool.

lol You seem to be extremely hopeful for changes that will improve the Unforgiven…don’t hope for it, it was a bad gun in the last game and would likely be one in this game. There are too many better options available for me to think that this gun will turn out to be in any way shape or form OP.

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#9

I’m honestly not super hopeful for something to come along and make Unforgiven(or any inferior weapons) better. I just realize two things:

First, some items are always gonna be inferior. Every item simply cannot be equally awesome. Otherwise nothing would be awesome…er sumpthin :rofl:

Second, we both might play at a higher skill level than some folks and even though we might realize that certain items aren’t comparable to others doesn’t mean your average casual player just rolling around in the game can’t enjoy them.

And there is still always that possiblity that there will be some unforseen interaction that will make a useless gun into a game-breaking gun (evil smasher glitch for example).

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#10

Just tossing this one here for fun.

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#11

Why are we always assuming the “nerfs” even have anything to do with Graveward?

That just happened to be where some broken mechanics revealed themselves. The K/Q call weren’t meant to be fired super fast, as they only have two shots in the mag. They launched with basic Jakobs parts and it was realized that, in certain situations, they became Hammer Fly Havok and they weren’t intended that way. So they fixed them.

Jakobs and Torgue pistols were being used in place of other things and the trade offs weren’t really coming through, so some alterations were made there to line the pistols up as less lopsided

Guerillas was designed to allow fast fire rate, low damage guns a chance to be used in Fade Away. It’s a first tier augment and is just an alternative for if you just wanted to fire off a lot of bullets while invisible, instead of taking full advantage of the fadeawayFl4k option of disappearing, setting up a shot, taking it, and repeating, while healing downed partners on your way. They realized after play that it wasn’t trading off enough to make up for the differences, so they fixed that.

I think someone posted that, as long as you can get 8 shots off in the time of GitM, you’re doing more damage than you would in Vanilla FA. Most “High RoF” guns can exceed that very well.

Again, I don’t think it was GeeDubs who got the “nerfs” made, it’s just where you see them most easily

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#12

You were doing so well up until this point.

I find it ridiculous that someone has to point out how ridiculous that notion is, but hey if someone has to lol.

Yes. This, and meta data. When the devs notice a huge spike in level 50 FL4K players running around murdering everything with the King’s/Queen’a call, they get suspicious that there’s an imbalance.

People have been asking “Why didn’t they nerf Moze then” well the answer is that she’s probably not as popular. There are a lot of good gunner (lol) Moze builds, and the Hex isn’t as exclusive or polarising as the lame FL4K build that was going around. That build was dominant in week 1, so it got nerfed in week 2. Maybe Moze and the Hex will be next, if the meta data reflects overusage and dominance.

Then we arrive at one of the OP’s points. Bosses. While I disagree that FL4K instakilling bosses was the only reason for his nerf - His mobbing proficiency took a hit too, what does that tell you? - it was certainly a contributing factor. The thing is, in this early stage a lot of people are still hard farming, and that means boss slaying. Should we not nerf the ability to kill soloable and exploitable story bosses? No. We know that raid bosses are a big part of the Borderlands endgame, and we know there are at least two coming, some people believe as many as five. Yes raid bosses are intricately designed and specifically made to be fought by four players, but if one character can walk all over every current boss in the game far easier than the others, then that needs to be checked before the raids get released, lest we have another Salvador on our hands.

So, back to mobbing. I agree. Arenas and trials need to be looked at to distinguish who the dominant mobbers are and find a balance between the characters and gear. This is only week 3, some people are already complaining about too many nerfs (LMAO seriously :joy:) and others are saying that we need more. Once the boss rushing calms down a bit there will be more data on mobbing builds. To assume that the game is being balanced according to the obliteration of one particular boss is nonsensical, that was just phase one.

TBH, I’m an Amara main and I laugh at these silly grenade spamming Mozes, how inefficient and skill-less. They’re far from immortal and don’t just instakill badasses and anointed like everyone who’s seen it once on YouTube seems to think. It’s actually a very gear dependant setup and it’s a lot more clever than FL4K’s point and click build, even if it is just as lame. Have you met my Indiscriminate Binder? :wink: The general consensus in BL2 was that Sal was the best mobber, but he looked like Krieg running a gun build with no guns next to Maya.

Anyway, I got off topic. Point is, I agree but I disagree, and I agree to disagree so long as we agree about the things we disagree on. It’s week 3, give it a bit more time before condemning the balancing team who quite frankly, whether you agree with their decisions or not, are doing their jobs. One thing at a time, they can’t balance everything overnight and this community loves to break ■■■■ so they’re gonna be busy for a while. So let’s keep 'em busy, eh? :wink:

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#13

Then we arrive at one of the OP’s points. Bosses. While I disagree that FL4K instakilling bosses was the only reason for his nerf - His mobbing proficiency took a hit too, what does that tell you? - it was certainly a contributing factor.

I agree with you there, considering the nerf barely affected FL4K’s boss killing ability and instead heavily nerfed his already subpar mobbing ability. That must have been their target… for… some reason…

This is only week 3, some people are already complaining about too many nerfs (LMAO seriously :joy:)

I don’t know why you’re laughing, any nerfs were too many this early on. It’s always a mistake to start nerfing or buffing skills/items before the player community has stabilized.

#14

“Point is, I agree but I disagree, and I agree to disagree so long as we agree about the things we disagree on.”-

Epic Gonzo speak right here! :rofl::purple_heart: ■■■■■■■ amazing!

@Slif_One do you mind if I borrow this quote?

#15

Only if you tell me what Gonzo speak is.

Valid point, but again I only agree to a point. That aside, most of these “REE NERFS REE” posts that are flooding every forum board right now haven’t even mentioned that. They’re all just, nerfing takes away all our fun I like being overpowered blah blah easy mode click to win rhetoric. I wish there were more discussions about the timing rather than just REE.

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#16

Nope. Absolutely not.

As I pointed out above, game balance, especially when it comes to fine tuning character skills and particular items is one of the final polishing touches to be added, after everything else is in place.

It’s obvious from the pre-launch Zane and Maliwan nerfs(just to name a few of the more obvious) that Gearbox has been really focused on fine tuning game balance recently.

They were most likely already aware of certain outliers(Fl3k nerf, Pipe Bomb, Moze pollution, erltc) before the game launched and we’re already planning on making some adjustments.

I would rather them stay proactive with balancing before actual raid bosses and UVHM are released than to put it off (or neglect it entirely as with BL2).

Edit: Also, dealing with balance sooner rather than later will help prevent power creep later on, which we all know from Borderlands 2 can get out of hand very quickly.

Although, I will 100% agree is can be jarring, especially for people that are investing a lot of time while using something that ends up being balanced(or teh nerf bat be a swangin!)

#17

Maintaining game balance is healthy for longevity and replayability, particularly with games that allow online co-op play.

In BL2 there was absolutely NOTHING more disheartening than doing an op8(or10) DigiPeak or MurderlinsR5 or whatever run but then suddenly a wild Salvador appears and due to broken and unbalanced game mechanics he is able to pimperhab enemies in a single hit while the rest of the group is just standing around like, “Umm, yeah, great time whatching you jerk off mate”.

Sure, I can play Sal too. Sure, I can kick Sal from the group.

But isn’t a better option simply having a somewhat balanced playing field that is inclusive to whatever character you decide to play? Hell yeah it is!

If you need personal glory that much then take some boxing lessons. Or go vigorously masterbate into a sock while watching ‘300’ and listening to Kid Rock.

Nobody likes to feel like their character choice is invalidated at the title screen because of some broken ass mechanic or weird unintended interaction that another class has access too.

#18

It’s obvious from the pre-launch Zane and Maliwan nerfs(just to name obvious) that Gearbox has been really focused on fine tuning game balance recently.

Which they’ve already admitted they made mistakes with. It’s good they’re attempting to fix them now, but it would have been better to do more testing beforehand.

They were most likely already aware of certain outliers(Fl3k nerf, Pipe Bomb, Moze pollution, erltc) before the game launched and we’re already planning on making some adjustments.

I feel like you’re giving Gearbox way too much credit here, I’ve seen no proof that they have a plan with the balancing they’ve done already to this point. The pipe bomb thing was a bug, it shouldn’t be included in a discussion about balance.

#19

Gonzo is a word that was popularized by one of my heros, the late great Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson was the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Gonzo speak is a highly intelligent stream of conscious style of speech(and writing) that is often simultaneously comical and profound.

Edit to add:

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#20

That, I take as a compliment, thank you sir or madam! Or, non-binary them/they.

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