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
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
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs
New art of Harry and Kim from Disco Elysium, with Harry holding a lit molotov cocktail.
Despite Disco Elysium Mobile aiming to 'captivate the TikTok user,' it looks surprisingly decent—but it's still insulting to Disco's ousted creators
A cold-looking gameplay shot of Fate: Reawakened
Fate: Reawakened gives the nostalgic 20-year-old action RPG series a new lease on life
Henry from KCD2 wearing nice outfits
'Diversify your fashion endgame' with this Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 mod that gives Henry fly new gambesons, pourpoints, and caftans
Latest in News
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Go ahead and complain the discounts aren't as steep as they used to be, but Steam just had its biggest year ever for seasonal sales
Valve Steam Deck OLED handheld PC
'The future of hardware at Valve is bright': Valve celebrates the success of Steam Deck and Steam OS
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
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Still image of Bastion holding a bird, taken from Microsoft's Copilot for Gaming reveal trailer
Microsoft unveils Copilot for Gaming, an AI-powered 'ultimate gaming sidekick' that will let you talk to your console so you don't have to talk to your friends
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs