Can we just chat?

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

Compared to the Moze section, this place is so barren. Everywhere is barren compared to Moze, but still, let’s just talk about FL4K stuff. There has be some cool stuff people are doing, or some cool cosmetic schemes or Lore theories or other stuff.

IDK just talk about FL4K stuff. I need my fix.

8 Likes
#2

I will start with something I know you’re very passionate about.

How do you think GBX will go about fixing Fl4k’s pets? Will they let their damage scale evenly with enemy HP? That would be a flooring 12500% damage buff ATM. Or do you think they will do a flat rate across all Mayhem levels? Say 25% per Mayhem level, so 250% at M10.

#3

fl4k is cute!!!

4 Likes
#4

I play all 3 AS builds but Rakk was my most played set up in M4. I’m afraid newly introduced anointments and bugs have made Rakk build considerably weaker offensively relative to the other 2 builds.

I am not worried too much about the Head Count bug as it’s an obvious bug and they will fix it pretty quickly. What I’m worried about is the anointments.

150/50 and 300v90 are 2 of the most desired anointments now, and they are passives. They don’t need to be activated via Rakk firing. With most players including myself opting to use action skill activate defensive anointed shields, the only damage boost you can get via Rakk is 50% elemental from the grenade mod. If you are using 300v90 weapons, there is not much reason to fire off Rakks in terms of DPS.

I know the new shield anointment has improved the survivability, but Rakk builds have always been about damage dealing. I really don’t think it is a fair trade off.

What do you guys think?

#5

As so many are bummed out about the steep scaling of Mayhem 2.0 I have a little feel-good story for you:
When I first got my hands on Mayhem 2.0 I wanted to test how my characters held up in the higher Mayhem levels, especially with the modifiers that spam the screen with damaging beams, puddles or Death herself. I started with my “easy mode” character, Amara, as she is pretty unkillable and had a shitton of damage output. Or so I thought. My good old Nothingness barely did anything to my enemies even with all those damage bonuses stacked on top of each other. It was a slog. Next character: Zane was absolutely unkillable due to his Barrier, but he felt off, very off even. He basically had to stay in front of his targets for what felt like minutes while getting hit from all sides and barely doing anything to the enemies health bar. I’m pretty confident in my abilities as a Moze player, so I switched over to her and did the Jack-Bot with an infinite ammo build featuring a Green Monster com and my trusty Soulrender. It took me almost 20 minutes due to how incredibly immense those health bars are on Mayhem 10.

And then I tried Fl4k, the Vault Hunter I started my BL3 journey with. I started with them as I just didn’t knew who I wanted to play most, I just liked all the characters and still do to this day. So I let RNGesus take my hand and rolled a die. It landed on a 4, which was Fl4k’s number.

Now I took them to the test to Athenas and once I switched on that Guerillas in the Mist I felt that I did actual damage. It was still very slow as I went to it with Gear from the original Mayhem 4, but I did damage. It was a really good feeling to see that the Vault Hunter that always was the biggest murder machine was still capable of overcoming the steep curve of Mayhem 2.0’s enemy scaling. It was risky as Fl4k was pretty squishy in that build, but they did damage and funnily enough, even my pet was useful in this instance as I could direct it towards enemies to get a bit more breathing room.

On that day I realized that all the survivability and ammo in the world isn’t important as you as the player have to feel good about playing a character and in a Looter Shooter like Borderlands there is little that feels as good as just doing a ton of damage with the snap of the trigger finger. That’s the essence of what Fl4k is.

8 Likes
#6

I think it’s a combination of some things. The game is in a bad spot right now, and FL4K hasn’t really gotten anything of sizable benefit since maybe R4KK P4K. St4Kbot turned out to be a bossing COM, but FL4K didn’t really need help with bosses, and TR4INER was a stinker. So there hasn’t really been anything big for FL4K in a while. He’s had little things like the frozen heart/stop gap interaction and some of the nitche deathless setups with the new anointments, but nothing that would rival driver, seeing dead, or the kind of buffs that Moze has gotten recently.

1 Like
#7

I think they’ll adjust the Mayhem scaling overall to make the intervals more even. I can imagine that M10 will be brought down to 10k so that every Mayhem from 7-10 increases by 1000% only instead of 2500.

I think they’ll probably just scale the pets as if you were gaining additional levels (7.5 * 1.105^level). That way you would actually need to take the new action skill anoints and bonuses on gear to build around them, which is what I imagine they’d like for us to do.

The Cutest!

I don’t think much has actually changed in that regard. You’re still using Rakk to activate an anointed effect. It’s just that now you’re using it for a defensive bonus, which is traditionally where Rakk was weakest among FL4K’s builds. Since you can get the damage from other sources I think it’s a fair trade.

Yeah. As someone who hasn’t gotten any of the DLC, I haven’t really been excited about FL4K since October when we got the BY buff. It was nice when GB fixed Furious Attack, but most of the excitement I’ve gotten from FL4K has been the result of my own experimentation, not anything new that FL4K received in game.

BTW, how does everyone feel about swapping some of the pet bonuses around? I feel like the pets would have far more interesting choices if Eridian skag buffed crit damage and Gunslinger buffed fire rate. A bonus and crit damage buff would be awesome, and would provide a real challenge to Horned Skag since you would need to invest further down the tree for it. Most people don’t care about Gunslinger’s passive, and the 5% crit is so tiny that I don’t think it would be missed if it was replaced with a source of easy fire rate, especially since the Stalker tree has both of FL4K’s other fire rate skills.

2 Likes
#8

I still want my 3 passives for tier 3 pets… lol

#9

I know lol. It would be great if we could expect a rework, but we’ll have to make do with what we have.

In all honesty I’m starting to come around to the idea of Dominance giving us 3 pets. I was doing some napkin math earlier, and in all honesty even getting all of the tier 1 pets, depending on how it worked, wouldn’t be insanely OP. It would definitely be capstone worthy, but it would be in line with Megavore and TPI.

1 Like
#10

I can only imagine my frustration when tryna look at loot lmao

#11

I’ma roll the dice until they come up FL4K, and play that. Please hold. (mashes F9 key)

…

The dice are coming up: Jakobs FL4K at Desolation’s Edge. Let’s get him loaded in Steam and see what’s on the docket. (noisy ass videos)

…

He hasn’t started the Cartel event, so we’ll enable that (check).
I see a few side missions and some still-fogged map areas, let’s load him up. (opens bank)

…

Let’s see… I haven’t used the Little Yeeti since I got it, so I’ll see what that’s like. Ooh, the Nimble Jack is fun AF, so we’ll grab that. A Hunt(er) - this place is crawling with critters, so I’ll take that damage buff, and a Clairvoyance if I get in trouble. These are all mid- to upper- Mayhem, I think, so we’ll dial that up to match. (rolls for modifiers)

…

We’ll go halfway and set it to 5… that should fit these weapons’ damage. I like Galaxy Brain for an easy here, but let’s try to get it without Floor is Lava… ok, Totally Radical and Pool Party will be fine. (Fast Travel to Typhon’s Place)

…

Both of those robots have missions on deck, but I did those with other characters within the last week, so let’s see what else is on the map. I see Transaction Packed as yet undone, and that area is still fogged, so off we go! I will report back as events warrant. (Tally ho, Spiderant! We ride. But first! We go back to Sanctuary and grab the mission from Maurice so we don’t waste our cartel kills. :stuck_out_tongue:. (brb)

1 Like
#12

I’d rather have 2 passives on all pets to not make the tier 1 pets totally obsolete. If people want to use the base pets, let them, without making it an obviously bad decision.

2 Likes
#13

THEY BROKE MY BOY’S ARM! (quick detour to Ascension Bluff to get this party started)

…

There’s no coherent “build” here, just whatever sounds fun (and I apparently rolled More Than Okay Boomer for my easy). I’ll be packing a Nova Version 0.M, Cosmic Stalker, Atomic Exploder (double Nuke to take advantage of all the loose grenade ammo from the Mayhem Modifier), and a Hot Drop relic. (A few kills in Ascension Bluff later, some surprise at how hard Pool Party can hit, and we’re back to Nekrotafeyo.)

#14

There’ve been times that I’ve been tempted to use the base spiderant so I could have the damage flexibility of the skag, and the health regen of a spiderant. But without a passive to balance it out, I can never seriously consider it.

#15

@boombumr I was just thinking the same thing earlier today. The Fl4k forums are pretty dead and I am afraid that Fl4k is kind of struggling as a VH right now in terms of the number of players playing them. I would be interested to see what GBX’s SHIFT data shows these days about who is the most played VH, because I do believe that upon the game’s release it probably was Fl4k. I very much doubt that these days.

#16

Oooh, a third passive on the Tier 3 pet to reward you for going all the way down the skill tree would be dooooooope. And an easy change to make.

10/10 would recommend.

#17

Me too. Usually the soldier class is the most played, or whichever character is the default on the character select screen, but I can’t even begin to guess who would be the most played in this game. It might honestly still be FL4K.

#18

If you looked at the game’s history from inception, yes I would agree. But I bet if you looked at only the last 90 days, that would not be the case. Just IMO.

#19

I see 3/4 of my friends playing Zane. A few Fl4k mains here and there.

#20

Honestly, I don’t see many of my friends playing BL any more. I have about 5-10 hardcores like me whom I have met on here and that kind of thing, but no one else.