Leave no Trace was one of the skills that really made Fl4k who he is - giving him powerful ammo mitigation and the ability to hence break certain weapons. And such skills are crucial to a class, they give them character and specialisation, and make them unique. There was also no denying that it was a little too strong, giving multi-pellet weapons the ability to fire infinitely.
But the nerf to LnT has been extremely heavy-handed, and I think basically everyone agrees it is terrible right now. By gating the ammo refill behind a timer, it is absolutely worthless with any weapon with a fast RoF, and any weapon with a low RoF does not benefit from it very much to begin with. Right now, the skill is just a much worse version of Moze’s Cloud of Lead (which gives 25% ammo mitigation with no cooldown) and Amara’s Dread (which synergizes with high and low RoF weapons by refilling your magazine on kill).
If something is too strong and gamebreaking it definitely needs a nerf, but after the nerf, it should still be one of the class’s best abilities, not one of their worst.
There were many ways to balance LnT without actually ruining the skill (I can guarantee almost no Fl4k players are gonna spec into it anymore). Here are some suggestions and I hope Gearbox will look into it and implement them instead:
Give asymmetric buffs for different weapon types. LnT was obviously broken with shotguns, but I feel it was clearly working as intended with your snipers and smgs. So something along the lines of 12% for snipers and heavies, 10% for pistols, smgs and ars, 5% for shotguns etc.
Gate it behind a timer of 1.5s, but allow it to refill your entire magazine instead of refunding 1 bullet.
Make it a critical kill skill to balance it - and also because it will proc by shots fired, it will not be broken by multi-pellet weapons - all weapons have equal chance. “Hunter skill. Critical kills give you a 12% chance not to consume ammo for 5s”.
I really hope Gearbox takes up these suggestions, because LnT was really one of the skills which made Fl4k who they are. I totally understand it needed a nerf, but just wish it was less heavy-handed. Maybe @Noelle_GBX could help bring these suggestions up?
It’s the exact same mistake they made with GiTM, in my opinion anyway. Reduce percentages, do not inflict time reductions/cooldown. Making a skill completely unviable does not equal “balancing”.
I am i am done with this game peace out GEARBOX!!! Again if they can butcher one toon they can butcher them all. Never payed a game that was nerfed so much. I will never play a game by gearbox again.
And who knows what 2 seconds actually means. Could be like the GitM nerf, where the notes said 6 seconds but it turned out to be 5. Maybe this one will work out in our favor, though I doubt it will.
2 seconds for a 36% chance to get a single round back is not only weak but practically useless.
Look at it this way- with reload bonuses (or even without) most guns take at least close to or even faster than 2 seconds to reload.
Reloading gives you a 100% chance to get a full magazine back, LnT gives 36% chance to get a single round back for roughly the same amount of time/cooldown.
Thats not a good analogy. The skill was never a replacement for reloading… it delayed how long you can go before reloading which increases dps. Regardless of the odd choice in comparison… its a terrible skill with the cooldown. Id prefer a proc rate adjustment with no cooldown, that can be overdone but the current approach just guarantees its minimal benefit at best and worse with bad rng.
It will vary from gun to gun… but if the clip emptys quickly, the benefit of the skill goes down. God forbid the clip emptys in around 2 seconds, in that case 36% of the time you get 1 extra shot per clip. 4 seconds… 2 rounds… etc. Flakk has fire rate buffs too so this is worse. Maybe it helps sometimes with slow shooting gun with a long reload time but nothing jumps out that ive used.
I doubt itll change ttk on bosses like Graveward a lot but its another skill that is now filler at best with no new skill buffed to give a good replacement.
I dont understand their approach on balancing. They really need to focus more on boosting the underwhelming and bad skills. BY and Rakk elemetnal procs lack strenth or synergy to make them more viable or fun builds and others they havent even tried to address… i.e. Iron Bear in endgame.
Before nerf for any gun that consumes 1 ammo per shot hitting a crit would negate the cost of that bullet. GitM or Consistent critical hits would give it an effective magazine increase of 1/(1 - Proc chance) bullets.
About 56% larger mags or 250% more when boosted +3 on a com. 56% is very strong for 3 points but I don’t think out of reason given the restrictions. 250% is arguably too strong, but that’s because skills like this shouldn’t be boosted in the first place; They clearly understood this with cloud of lead since it caps out its free shot effect at 5/5 even though it can be boosted.
For guns that fire about twice in the cooldown period this will maybe be 20-30% more, which isn’t the worst but is very limited to a select few weapons. For most automatic weapons there will be no functional difference between 1 point and 6, you’ll get your free shot a few bullets sooner with 6 but your overall consumption won’t change.
Why are people acting like graveward is a raid boss? Is it because they didn’t play BL2 and don’t understand what being a raid boss actually is? Graveward is analogous to BNK3R or bloodwing who are not supposed to be anything special. Why are people placing so much importance on a mid story boss dying fast? I straight up don’t get it.
