(For the important part, go to the 7th paragraph, not including this one. TLDR, they’re probably gonna buff him again in a week or two, and Zane’s skills are gonna be fixed in at most a month.)
So, I’m a FL4K guy and obviously I’m not happy with the most recent nerf to the “Leave no trace” skill, and from what I’ve seen, I’m in the majority on this one. R.I.P. crit FL
This nerf was at least an enlightening experience for me, as it made me want to try other builds with him. It made me realize that without his crit build, FL4K actually feels pretty underwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s still usable, but it showed me how lopsided the power of his skill trees really are. Keeping that In mind, this nerf kinda makes sense.
Borderlands is Gearbox’s baby, it’s Cash cow, and arguably it’s biggest success. Everthing that they are doing is to try to make Borderlands 3 better. They’re not being malicious or trying to spite players in any way because they genuinely care about this game and it’s success, if for nothing else then at least because of it’s whopping monitary potential, because they know that if they drive players away, they’ll make less money on dlc’s. I’d like to think that this game is more than just a check to them, and I really think that it is, but I digress.
FL4K needed changing, and still does. The big thing is, what happens when you finish one shotting grave warden and getting every legendary in the game? You might want to try other builds with FL4K or heck, maybe even other vault hunters, but in the back of your mind you’ll always be like “crit FL4K is way better than this build” or something of the sort. After playing around with a master build and a rakk attack build, all I wanted to do was go back to the crit build so I could do some damage, and I think that’s not ok. Eventually, oneshotting everything gets stale, and since his other stuff is way worse in comparison, your eventually left with a vault hunters with no variety that you don’t want to use.
Balancing FL4K is good for the longevity of the game.
Now for the most important part of this whole speil, why you shouldn’t worry about all the changes going on in the game right now, at least in the long term. It’s because we complain. AND PLEASE, KEEP COMPLAINING!!! Keep discussing what you like and don’t like - on here, reddit, YouTube, twitch, or wherever. In the first few weeks of launch, Borderlands 3 likely has more active players than will ever be on the game again, and thus, Gearbox has a HUGE population to test stuff on.
Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be a borderlands game if it wasn’t broken from day one, and that is one of my favorite things about this series. I think it gives the game even more character lol. There are still more out of map glitches in borderlands 2 than I can count! And remember the conference call bee? Absolutely crazy! But I think most everyone can agree that the bee nerf did more good for the game than harm, and became an awesome memory for those who got to enjoy it, and infamous in the eyes of everyone else. That’s how I see FL4K’s leave no trace skill with a torgue shotty ending up.
If everything I said above is true, then they are trying to balance the game for the good of the game: make every vault hunters distinct from the others, while at the same time making them all equal in power; Make every build distinct from other builds, while at the same time, keeping the builds equal in power. When they succeed, the game will be a lot more fun as a whole because there will be so much more variety in it. Everything’s gonna be broken and unbalanced at the start, and the biggest changes to the game are gonna generally occur within the first couple months to try to get everything on its way to being balanced. Because they care about keeping us happy, they are gonna listen to us. Things like FL4K’s leave no trace skill are probably gonna be changed multiple times from here on out, alternating between too overpowered from the developers point of view to too underpowered to the players point of view, until it eventually situates itself in a happy medium that is BALANCED, which like I said before, is good for the longevity of the game.
Everything I just said for FL4K is also true for every other vault hunters, and probably for every other aspect of the game. Moze’s Iron Bear is gonna eventually get buffed to do more damage because we talk about it being useless in late game, FL4K’s other action skills are gonna get buffed to be competitive because everyone knew how weak they we’re compared to the crit build, freaking ZANE is gonna get buffed to make his skill tree actually WORK because we COMPLAIN about it. It’s ALL gonna happen sooner rather than later, because we as a community want it to happen, and voice our opinions. So keep complaining, there’s probably stuff that gearbox doesn’t even know about that needs fixing, and it ain’t getting fixed unless they know it’s broke.
Thanks for reading, I hope this eased some of your concerns and encouraged some of you to hold out rather than leave the game to die. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride at first, but I’m sure it’ll be smooth sailing soon. Let me know if you agree with anything, or disagree with everything, or if you think there’s anything I missed. In the mean time I hope you’re luckier than me in getting the creeping death from Aurelia!
