It is a sad day for me. I must say goodbye to my favorite BL3 character FL4K since it was decided that a single skill that was good at all must be nerfed to oblivion. Obviously I am talking about Leave no Trace. A skill that you can start investing in at level 2. It was just too good. A mid tier boss was roasted in seconds because people actually thought out how to make a glass cannon build. Today I had a critical choice. Finish my first full playthrough of the game with my favorite character, or start from scratch with any other Vault hunter (seriouly I have not seen the ending and I have 100+ hours on my first playthrough, mostly because I want to finish the Slaughter quests). I tried to persevere with FL4K. I was not even using the apparently “broken” Fade Away crit build. But even my very basic “Jakobs revolver” build must be destroyed because somebody said FL4K was the best BL3 vault hunter because of his DPS against the current loot farm. As if it was an E-sports event. Yes I am salty. I am saying my farwells to FL4K because I literally have more fun playing a LVL 5 Zane than I do the LVL 50 FL4k that I spent 4 golden keys on, without even finishing the first play-through.
Too often I have seen what happens with a nerf like this. The developer never admits that they went way too far. And so they slowly reintroduce minor buffs to the charactor and after over a year they get back to what they was supposed to be. FL4K was not too strong. The other characters were too weak.
Its not even just the Jakobs revolver build that was destroyed for me, but also the “Torgue double barrel” build that got ruined too. I could flip between the impact to blast through weak mobs, and sticky ridiculous sticky dart stacks and manually reload to see “badass” enemies go from 90% HP to dead in the ground and forgotten.
This is not a competitive multiplayer E-sports game. Why “balance” the game? Give people a reason to want to play a different build. Not destroy nearly every build for a character just because Forbes has an article saying FL4K is the “best” character.
My first character was Moze and i am not even specced into the splash/grenade tree and i have no problem killing any and every boss very quickly. I can see a slight nerf for LnT but they destroyed it and a lot of other skills/augments/builds right along with it.
I have made so many comments on this subject on this forum, and with each one i grow more frustrated and bewildered. The logic behind completely deleting a skill and in turn a play style in, like you said a non competitive game, is ridiculous.
I really really hope they admit they panicked and fix this.
At the time I felt like the GitM duration nerf was maybe a bit much but a few points in Persistence Hunter made that feel okay, so alright, that’s fine, Fl4k still has the same strengths and weaknesses, just not quite as strong. The day after that nerf I said Fl4k is still in good shape as long as they dont keep nerfing his crit builds and focus on buffing or reworking his pets/Master tree.
Well, now not only did they nerf his key crit build skill Leave No Trace, they effectively dumpstered the skill. It’s 3 points better spent almost anywhere, even in reload speed. LNT was an integral synergy for his crit builds in general, but also for using Jakobs weapons with the Jakobs specialist.
The main problem with LNT was its interaction w high pellet count weapons. This is an issue that Gearbox should be very familiar with, bc the most broken unintentional interaction in Borderlands 2 was the Bee shield and the Conference Call. How did they fix that? As I recall they made it work per shot instead of per pellet. If LNT worked per shot instead of per pellet then suddenly it would no longer be brokenly strong with Torgue shotgun stickies etc., but still do what it’s supposed to do with everything else. They didn’t do that. LNT is a skill that gives you a chance to regen 1 round, and that is not at all a strong mechanic on its own. It was only really useful bc of its synergy w Fade Away crits. GitM got a duration nerf, so it was more necessary than ever to not need to reload during that duration. LNT’s uses are now extremely limited, and Fade Away crit builds have been nerfed again.
My thoughts are a little jumbled right now, but at the end of the day LNT’s broken interactions could have been fixed with a retrigger delay of less than half a second or making it only trigger per shot, and I’m extremely disappointed that this is the way they decided to handle it. It didnt feel like it needed to be changed much at all, maybe tuned a little but not nerfed across the board. I’m sort of at a loss on how to distribute points in the same build on the same character I’ve been using for weeks now.
Crit Fl4k was the way I always wanted to play Zer0 but couldnt bc of how Deception worked, but his single most viable and fun to play specialization gets weaker everytime there’s a patch. I don’t like how rakk attack and gamma burst feel to use. I’ve tried both, using the rakks and lacking that stealth button just isnt fun for me or how Im used to playing Fl4k, and a pet buffing build isnt even endgame viable (believe me, I’ve tried). I like using GitM/UE Fade Away and that brief moment you get of being able to clear out one or two of the tough enemies that Fl4k just can’t stand toe to toe with. This is his big strength to offset his weakness as a glass cannon, and he just keeps getting less cannon and more glass. Instead of being excited for bugfixes and such I’m starting to dread seeing that there was a patch.