The announced “big” patch in Borderlands 3 will also not spare two popular weapons. Why Gearbox is taking this path is explained by developer Grant Kao in the stream.
These are the weapons: Two legendary weapons that are quite popular in the community will be affected. The “Hellwalker” and the “Lyuda.”
- The Hellwalker is a shotgun that you can grab in Borderlands 3 as a world drop or from Traunt, and it was particularly popular in combination with FL4K builds.
- The Lyuda is a sniper rifle that you can both find and earn by completing the Zer0 targets.
Especially the Lyuda was extremely widespread in the community, as it was very suitable for farming bosses. This is especially true for the boss Graveward, who is a popular farming spot. With the help of the Lyuda, some players managed to take down the boss within seconds.
The variety of builds and playstyles should remain large
That’s why the weapons are being nerfed: In a stream, combat designer Grant Kao commented on the weapons: “They definitely over-perform.” The problem is that too strong items in combination with certain builds cause other combinations to fall behind.
And that contradicts the goal of the Borderlands 3 crew: “We want to increase the variety of playstyles and build diversity,” Kao said: “When an item is much stronger than the others, build diversity is limited, and players start to focus on individual builds or items. When that happens, we try to correct it. Overall, we want to create fun, crazy combinations.”
How exactly the nerf of the two popular weapons will look is not yet entirely clear. However, Kao reassured that they are not aiming to “completely destroy their gameplay.” The Lyuda and Hellwalker should remain usable in the future.
Strengthening is the focus: Kao promised that the changes to the Lyuda and Hellwalker will be relatively minor, and other weapons will be strengthened instead. “When we adjust ‘Hellwalker’ and ‘Lyuda’, you can be sure we will boost other weapons,” Kao said. It’s not about making them useless.
“We don’t want to remove this playstyle. But we want to bring others up to its level. It’s a back and forth.”
This is also offered by the patch: In the stream, combat designer Grant Kao spoke of a larger patch coming soon. This patch will also adjust the classes again – so there will be a focus on changing the balance in the game.
Many parts of the community view the changes related to builds and balancing as rather detrimental. This criticism was particularly intensified by the fact that Borderlands 3 is still suffering from performance issues. Some players wish that Gearbox would rather fix these.
The patches have partly sparked a lot of discussion in the community. How the overall mood around Borderlands 3 is, you can see here:
