Fl4k Ruins Critical Damage for Everyone

Borderlands 3 Borderlands 3 General Discussion
#1

I think between Fade Away and Megavore, Fl4k’s crit hit anywhere and everywhere nature sort of ruin critical hit damage in this game.

Critical strikes have always been a way to add lots of damage as a reward for skill, and has lead to some really neat weapons like the lady fist, but I feel like Fl4k’s abilities ruin critical hit damage for everyone. His near infinite zero skill crit hit potential means that weapons involving critical strikes scale to his world view of “critical hit” rather than what is a critical hit for everyone else. This means guns like the Lady Fist can’t exist while they exist.

My solution is remove the “critical hit” from fade away and megavore. Just give these two skills an increased damage modifier and stop ruining critical hits for every other vault hunter. This could even provide incentive for Fl4k to go for critical hits within fade away and just in general.

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#2

I oppose your suggestion entirely.
Fl4k is the closest we have to a sniper right now, which is already hard to do due to game mechanics*, the extra projectile patch, weapon scaling, etc.

*unseen threat is the only one that allows for long range combat due to not alerting enemies on kill, also long range is not always possible due to enemies not spawning until you approach the area, and some enemies don’t have reachable crit spots. Plus snipers are either op or useless as boss weapons.

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#3

I oppose this for a slightly different reason.

Crits are Fl4ks gimmick.
Asking for them to not have crits is like asking for Moze to not have splash or amara to not have elemental.

And as a side note Fl4k does have incentive to hit for crits. They stack. It is possible to get several crits with a single shot. At least 2 while using fade away, 3 when Mogavore procs and if a gun has returning projectiles or natural crits then even more. All of those damage numbers stack too.

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#4

That a weapon would be especially awesome for one VH to use is not a good reason for it not to exist.

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#5

This.
Literally any melee weapon comes to mind if you want to do decent damage.

#6

Fade away crits are not really critical hits so leave them alone. Thanks. Besides if I recall fade away was already tweaked.

What kind of argument is it even? if you absolutely want a Lady Fist just ask for one instead of asking to mess up a character.

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#7

That’s actually not quite right.

1: The Lady Fist has really low base damage, meaning that even if you are hitting crits consistently, your damage output is decent, but not great.
2: It doesn’t work like that. Go ahead, try it out. If you go into Fadeaway and you use an Unforgiven, you only get the Fadeaway crit bonus but not the guns inherent crit bonus unless you are in fact hitting a crit spot. It’s basically just a damage bonus that also activates on crit effects but doesn’t actually automatically apply bonus crit damage from guns. I think Megavore might count as true crit, but honestly, it’s a 20% chance, that’s not high enough to really make skillful play pointless. You are still better off just aiming for headshots and if you land a body shot instead, again it’s just a 20% chance.
This means

This does already apply anyways which you could have known if you actually bothered playing Fl4k instead of just complaining about them.

3: The true reason why we don’t have a Lady Fist is that this game doesn’t have Hyperion Pistols. I mean, I guess they could try to make it Dahl or Vladof instead, but it wouldn’t be the same.

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#8

This makes NO sense. If you don’t play as FL4K why in the world would you care? Are you saying my playing FL4K is having a negative effect on your game due to the devs programming somehow?

How about we let GB fix the console stability and MP issues first.

#9

I mean, Nisha had the same gimmick in TPS with Tombstone.

Also, at this point in the game’s life, I’d really hope that people know that “Fade Away crits” aren’t real crits, and you do still need to aim for crits in Fade Away. I think it’s been long enough for that to be common knowledge by now.

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#10

And Moze granade damage for everyone… You cant make them All the Same.

#11

In all fairness, with Nisha it was actually kind of obnoxious. I mean she also basically just had an aimbot on top of her free crits which was a little over the top.

#12

Exactly this. ^^^
The crits on FL4K are balanced in that a Crit based build can be very squishy, very little defense. He needs the DPS.

I do not believe there isn’t a Lady Fist because of FL4K.

#13

This is one weird way to ask Gearbox for a gun to return.

There’s plenty of guns in this game that have a high critical hit modifier, and attributing their poor balance due to a character’s existence is about as ridiculous as saying Splash is ruined for everyone because Moze has a percentage based Splash damage capstone that gets further x7 scaling from turning up a slider and then further double dips on-hit effects, or that AoE weapons are ruined because Ties That Bind exists.

The poor balancing of the high crit modifier weapons is purely Gearbox’s choice in making most of those weapons have absurdly low base damage. Low base damage + low fire rate in this game just means such guns are carried by Overkill, and that’s on anyone. I don’t see how FL4K relates to this. If you’re suggesting Megavore’s existence caused Gearbox to intentionally make these guns bad, read the first paragraph again.

Why does FL4K ruin critical hits for everyone else? Do you feel bad after hitting a crit spot with any other character? I don’t really understand…

This Fade Away thing you suggest already works like that. Fade shots receive a flat damage boost that counts as a crit for practical effects, but they don’t receive any form of crit boost unless hitting an actual crit. FL4K has all the incentive to go for crits in general (unless damage is something we just pass up on?). There is no reason to not go for a crit spot, unless it’s a very specific scenario or an enemy where it is impossible to do so.

Suggesting this without touching up on the consequences of it for the Hunter Tree intrigues me. Critical Hits and general DPS are FL4K’s strong suit (and not even the highest DPS in the current game state), with a clear downside in survivability compared to other characters. You realize that by making Megavore not a thing, at least 5 skills would be negatively impacted, some downright to uselessness when facing enemies that have no/few/unrealistic to consistently hit crit spots?

The only actual potential issue, one that you don’t even bring up, is crit swapping. Crit swapping is just an exploit that has made some rare appearances for actual full-fledged builds, besides its very niche and unnecessary bossing applications that always go around. If Gearbox wanted to balance around that in the first place, Megavore would have truly never existed, but so wouldn’t the guns that allow it. They chose the path of letting the character have good and cool things and not decide against it because of single isolated interactions.

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#14

Honestly, I get where almost all of you guys are coming from. Doesn’t really change my mind though. I still think Fl4k as is, is responsible for a lot of problems with BL3s balancing. If it weren’t for his gimic, the critical hit effects on a myriad of weapons could be stronger and the game as a whole would be more dynamic.

#15

The crit gimmicks in this game are mostly weak despite FL4K’s gimmick. If Megavor can’t make the Monocle good, then shouldn’t that speak more to the Monocle than Megavor? The gun wouldn’t do damage even if it crit every shot.

Aside from that, the premise of your OP

Was proven false since, as you were informed, you still need to aim for crits with FL4K. I wonder what your knowledge is on FL4K to be making these claims, since it seems you have some very base misunderstandings of how the character works.

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#16

What does this even mean? FL4K is arguably the closest thing this game has to a balanced character with clear strenghts and weaknesses and multiple viable action skills. If anything, they’re healthy for the game as a balance point, especially at the current state of things.

What provides any solidity to this argument? I saw nothing besides you complaining about the fact a Lady Fist doesn’t exist in this game, and apparently that’s because FL4K has crit related mechanics and skills, 1 of which you were wrong about on how it works (Fade Away).

There’s more guns with crit related mechanics and modifiers than in any previous game in this one. The fact a lot of them suck has no relation to FL4K. If you remember, most of them were both very usable and good on the endgame meta post-launch, and what caused their downfall was the way the game scaled, alongside the introduction of more powerful items.

If FL4K is such a problem for having these guns, how come we have so many of them? Wouldn’t that also validate the argument that FL4K is a reason for more guns like these to exist? Honestly this really looks like you’re trying to find something to blame for these guns falling off/your gun of choice not being in the game, but ended up choosing a character rather than the game’s scaling and the some of the gun’s overkill dependency that killed a lot of their effectiveness.

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#17

If it weren’t for his gimic, the critical hit effects on a myriad of weapons could be stronger and the game as a whole would be more dynamic.

Well this type of thinking certainly hasn’t stopped Gearbox from adding in extremely OP elemental weapons that Amara can take advantage of more than other characters, nor OP high magazine weapons that Moze can turn into infinite ammo doom machines so I don’t know why this logic would apply to FL4K’s relationship to critical hits. Honestly judging by how OP a bunch of the items from the last 2 DLCs were I’d say they don’t make these kinds of considerations at all, but that’s a bit cynical. Also just worth noting that without a Bee shield the Lady Fist’s potential would likely be a lot lower than it was in Borderlands 2. It was quite good on its own, but when matched with a Bee it became a world destroyer.

#18

Im opposed to the op.

Also flak now more than ever to me takes the most skill still.

Moze. A close second.

For the record i find borderlands 3 at m10 beyond easy with mininal setup.

Invulnerable except meele zane.

10 mega exploitable amara builds which pretty much insta stuff…

Fl4k is fine. I think pets need a buff but hes fine.

#19

Just throwing something into the ring here for “critical” comparisons:
Crit swapping, the only really relevant way to abuse crits, is probably the hardest to do with Fl4k (and Zane) as they actively cannot do it, except for the conventional way, by swapping to a high critical bonus weapon while the projectiles of another weapon are still mid-air. This is neither easy to do nor even practicable, except for very few select fights.

Moze on the other hand can just hop on her Iron Bear turret (Dakka Bear) while holding an Unforgiven and gets the critical bonus for all her turret shots, making it incredibly powerful. Amara can snipe enemies off the ground with Phasegrasp and use crit-swapping that way and basically transfer the increased damage with Ties that Bind. Zane has, just like Fl4k, no exploit unique to him for crit swapping, although the clone can double-dip in certain bonuses, but that doesn’t affect the critical damage.

Fl4k really is not offsetting any balance of the game in any way right now. And what has been said in this thread arguing against the idea of “Fl4k ruining critical damage” has been proven. It’s really no matter of opinion, we’re talking here about stuff that has been proven by the game itself, the data, the facts. It sounds harsh, but of all the vault hunters Fl4k has the least to worry about balance by far, because they have the least potential for unforeseeable behavior. Amara has probably the most access to mechanical exploits, just by the design of some of her skills and Moze has been at least partially responsible for grenade nerfs in the past.

As was stated above Fl4k in fact encourages critical hits, especially in Fade Away as weapons don’t actually get any critical bonuses, just the Fade Away bonus, which is just not much to be honest, especially when it comes to Guerrillas in the Mist. Hitting true critical hits during Fade Away let’s your damage skyrocket, as it should, but that’s still nothing other Vault hunters couldn’t keep up with. In terms of DPS Fl4k is not even on top, no matter the setup. Amara can one-shot a handful of enemies at once, Iron Bear nukes whole towns in a few seconds and Zane’s clone let’s Zane players go AFK. Fl4k has to coordinate the pet and even if done so flawlessly is often out-damaged by the others or the effort put into holding up with the others is just extremely high and not even worth it.

The one discipline Fl4k currently excells at is crowd control by drawing the aggro to their pet. That’s a cool playstyle I myself really enjoy, but you don’t need that playstyle if you have the damage to kill quick enough and the survivability to survive long enough. The other 3 vault hunters all have that (pretty much) without the need of a specific gear setup while Fl4k needs specific gear to not be a glass cannon.

Last but not least: Just look up the most popular builds for all Vault hunters and you’ll see that most Fl4ks don’t even really use weapons with high critical hit damage bonuses.

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