Gearbox finally shows FL4K some love in latest Borderlands 3 patch

(Image credit: Gearbox Software)

Gearbox has finally stopped nerfing Borderlands 3's robot vault hunter FL4K. After two nerfs in as many weeks, the developer has decided it went too far, and is partially rolling back a recent change to FL4K's Leave No Trace skill, which has a chance to return ammo to the player's magazine when they land a critical hit.

In a Borderlands 3 update last week, Gearbox added a two-second cooldown to the skill because it was "returning much more ammo than intended". Now, it has reduced the cooldown to 0.3 seconds, which might be a good middle ground. The new cooldown should "retain the promise of the ability" without making it super-powered again, it said in patch notes this week.

Gearbox also nerfed Moze's Bloodletter class mod, which converts healing into shields. It was creating "overwhelming synergies", so Gearbox has increased the delay on Bloodletter by half and dropped the recharge rate of Bloodletter shields by 50%. "This should help encourage the intended use of this class mod, which is to heal shields manually, not automatically," the developer said.

Just like with FL4K, Gearbox also partially rolled back last week's big nerf to Moze's Means of Destruction skill, which gives you a small chance of recovering a grenade whenever you deal splash damage. The nerf, intended to stop Moze spamming infinite grenades, added a two-second cooldown—that's been reduced to 0.3 seconds. "The infinite grenade bug will be addressed in a future patch but we wanted to enable other builds that use Means of Destruction so we dramatically reduced the re-trigger delay to a reasonable number," Gearbox said.

Elsewhere, Amara got a couple of buffs. Her phasegrasp ability, which summons a giant fist to hold an enemy in place for a few seconds, now has double the range, and will cooldown immediately if you miss with it, letting you try again. Her Alacrity power, which nets you a reload speed bonus for each stack of Rush, now gives you an extra bonus when you rank it up: previously players were only receiving one point worth of bonuses even if they ranked up the skill.

The patch also made a number of bug fixes, including adjusting the drop rates for the Pain, Terror, and Agonizer 9000 bosses to make them drop higher quality loot. You can read the full patch notes here. If you're grinding through the endgame, check out our updated list of every Borderlands 3 Shift code that works right now.

Samuel Horti

Samuel Horti is a long-time freelance writer for PC Gamer based in the UK, who loves RPGs and making long lists of games he'll never have time to play. 

Latest in RPG
Alligator skull with glowing eyes on human body and cords coming out sitting at piano with "The Norwood Etudes" ready to play
My new most anticipated RPG let me be a kleptomaniac gourmand set loose in a noir city on a quest to make 'the perfect sandwich'
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
Wyrdsong concept art
Wyrdsong, the RPG from ex-Bethesda talent, isn't dead—but it's no longer an open world: 'We're down to a skeleton crew'
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Latest in News
A woman with an arcane slingshot uses it to light a distant fire
Deconstructeam's next game is about training to shoot a single fireball at an impossible target
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw
Mechs fight on the outside of a spaceship
MechWarrior 5: Clans is getting DLC with playable Elementals and a fight on the outside of a spaceship
Aloy - Horizon
'I feel worried about this art form:' Unsurprisingly, the real Aloy from Horizon isn't a fan of AI Aloy
Crying laughing emoji with disturbing realistic elements for REPO
REPO's first update will add a new map and a 'duck bucket' so we can finally give that pesky quacker a time out
Man facing camera
The Day Before studio reportedly sues Russian website for calling infamous disaster-game a 'scam'