Borderlands 3 nerfed all your favorite guns

Borderlands 3 may not be a competitive game, but developer Gearbox Software certainly patches it like one. Everytime one gun or another proves a little stronger than the developer intended it kicks it down a few notches to make sure everything’s in line. In the game’s latest patch, which came out on Thursday afternoon, Gearbox set its sights on some of the most popular guns in the game.

Weapons like Crossroads, Lyuda, and Flakker have been Borderlands 3’s most sought after weapons since launch. And each of those three guns got nerfs in this patch. Crossroads now fires three projectiles instead of four — which sort of ruins the name if you ask me. Meanwhile, Lyuda had its bonus damage reduced by 30 percent and Flakker can now only fire one shot per magazine. The Hex and Firestorm grenade mods both got 70 percent damage nerfs as well.

For fans who have already spent hours farming these weapons, this kinds of patches can be more than a little frustrating. Reddit is already full of complaints that their hard earned rewards are now wasted.

As one Reddit user summed it up, “TLDR: every gun you left on the ground get a buff. Your inventory and bank are now your garbage bin.”

For other players, it’s brought up some larger questions about how Gearbox handles balance in Borderlands 3. Since Borderlands 3 isn’t a PVP game, one player argues, then Gearbox shouldn’t need to nerf OP guns, it should just make other guns better.

Borderlands 3 is only a little over a month old, and the way that the game is balanced will probably change quite a bit as Gearbox continues updating it. But for now, the game’s most hardcore players will just have to start their search for the game’s new best guns.

For a full look at all the changes from this Borderlands 3 patch you can see the notes below.

Borderlands 3 Oct. 17 patch notes

Weapon Hotfixes

Maliwan

• Westergun damage increased by 25%
• ASMD damage increased by 28%
• Cutsman damage reduced by 25%

Tediore

• Ten Gallon damage increased by 8%

Vladof

• Sickle reload speed increased by 25%
• Faisor damage increased by 15%
• Infiniti damage increased by 40%
• Magnificent damage increased by 25%
• Jericho damage increased by 40%
• Lucian’s Call accuracy and handling reduced
• Lyuda Critical Damage Bonus decreased by 30% and made a modification to address a reported bug that an extra bullet was spawned in the center

The Lyuda’s functionality is to split the projectile from 1 to 3 after a certain distance. It was reported that the original projectile was never destroyed in the process of splitting so 1 projectile actually became 4. Addressing this concern effectively removed a full shot’s worth of damage which auto-corrects the base damage of the weapon. Since we increased all sniper rifle critical damage bonus in a previous hotfix, we reduced some of the critical damage bonus on the Lyuda.

Torgue

• Try-Bolt damage increased by 25%
• Alchemist damage increased by 25%
• Devils Foursum damage increased by 13%
• Flakker now consumes the full magazine when fired and damage is reduced by 33%

Flakker was greatly outperforming other shotguns due to the number of projectiles and the high rate of fire. We initially believed the resulting projectile spread would cause most of the explosions to miss the target, however this turned out to be false, so we reduced the projectile damage and allowed the weapon to only fire once per magazine. This change encourages players to capitalize on different stat bonuses to maximize the weapon’s damage output.

• Laser-Sploder rocket projectiles spawn interval increased by 0.4 seconds

Jakobs

• Maggie damage increased by 35%
• Hellwalker damage reduced by 8%

Hyperion

We found that a couple of the Legendary Hyperion weaponry bypassed the Hyperion manufacturer playstyle too easily making their bonuses greatly outweigh the penalties. The Butcher was drastically outperforming all metrics and we chose to reduce the damage in order to keep the fast fire rate.

• Conference Call damage increased by 15%
• Crossroad accuracy reduced and it now fires 3 projectiles instead of 4
• Butcher accuracy reduced and damage reduced by 25%

DAHL

• Vanquisher damage increased by 20%

Children of the Vault

• Skeksis damage increased by 15%
• Linoge damage increased by 20%
• Pain is Power damage increased by 25%

Atlas

• Ruby’s Wrath damage increased by 10%

Grenades

Hex and Firestorm were calibrated to the wrong grenade modifier. These two grenades were envisioned to specialize by applying elemental DoTs to targets. Instead they were resulting in large amounts of damage and the elemental DoTs were minimal. We realize this is a drastic change on both of these grenades, but we did not want to remove the spectacle of the grenade (number of grenades spawned, number of targets hit, etc.) and focused on allowing their core identity to be emphasized instead of them continuing to just be high damage grenades.

• Hunter-Seeker damage increased by 25%
• Hex grenade damage reduced by 70% and duration reduced to 3 seconds
• Firestorm damage reduced by 70%

Artifacts

It was reported that the Legendary artifact, Elemental Projector, had a bug resulting in the max value being displayed at 183% instead of the actual max value of 113%. Therefore, we addressed the discrepancy and reduced the max value to 90%.

• Elemental Projector damage max roll reduced to 90%

Vaulter Hunter Adjustments

The current state of Moze’s Iron Bear, Zane’s Digi-Clone, and FL4K’s pets have made players focus on other elements besides those Vault Hunter’s fundamental action skills in the late game. While longer term solutions to scaling their damage is explored, we have boosted the health of Iron Bear, the Digi-Clone, and the pets to make them more viable. We will have more to say about long term solutions for these characters in the future.

• Iron Bear: health increased by 50%
• All pets’ health increased by 50%
• Digi-Clone: health increased by 100%
• Addressed a bug with Salvation where grenades were giving life-steal

Bug Fixes

• Psychos will now use their True Vault Hunter Mode name in True Vault Hunter Mode
• Removed the optional Rare Spawn missions from Galaxy Progress
• Addressed a reported bug where Completely Sane Sid didn’t always become hostile when using FL4K
• Addressed a reported bug where Ratch would not properly spawn during “Ratch’d Up”, which potentially blocked completion of that side mission
• Included a modification so Lilith would continue to move toward the door in Shiv’s confession chamber during “From the Ground Up”
• Lowered the chance for a weapon to drop from the Pachinko machine
• Included a modification so that Zane’s Digi-Clone will no longer spawn into the cage in Cistern of Slaughter
• Shield Boosters were modified and are now set for autopickup
• An addition was introduced so Eridium chests are no longer listed as Red Chests in the ECHOcast extension on Sanctuary III

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy.