Borderlands 4 is focusing on buffs, not nerfs—opting to 'start with underperforming gear/skills first' rather than its infinite-bleed god-knife

Borderlands 4 is an FPS, sure, but first and foremost it's an ARPG—with all the intersecting build shenanigans you'd come to expect. Players have already started uncovering a few of these—for instance, if you get the right knife, you can basically instagib anything.

See, throwing knives can have the "Penetrator Augment" rolled on them, which causes all damage to be critical damage for a few seconds. Vex, in particular, can combine this with her Contamination skill, with critical hits causing 100% status chance, stacked on top of her crits already being able to cause bleeds. You bleed someone, the bleed is now critically hitting, causing more bleeds, which themselves cause more bleeds, which then—you get the idea.

With such an overpowered build on the table, you might think Gearbox would be winding up to take a swing for the kneecaps with the nerf bat, but you'd be wrong. Per creative director Graeme Timmins on X, the studio will be going buffs first, nerfs later:

"We've seen the discourse about builds that use unintended interactions and/or the knife," Timmins writes. "We're not going to act on those immediately, instead, we're looking at our first round of buffs. Those will get addressed but we're going to start with underperforming gear/skills first."

Honestly, that's all sensible to me. Busted builds like this might be more of an issue in a sweaty live-service game with season passes—but the juice in most Borderlands games is just in pure buildcraft. You come up with an idea, you grind the gear for it, and you sit back, satisfied as you turn bandits to paste.

Not to say "the knife" (as Timmins ominously dubs it) shouldn't be nerfed at all; There's a difference between something that's merely strong and something that's so much more powerful than all the other options it kinda makes the game boring.

But the real holes to patch are indeed the underperformers. Variety is vital to a game like this—and there's nothing more disappointing than chasing down a cool interaction only to discover it basically doesn't work. I don't need a knife, anyway—I'm content with the Rainbow-melt Rafa build I've devised.

Borderlands 4: Everything you need to know.
Borderlands 4 Shift codes: The new key connection.
Borderlands 4 Black Market location: New legendaries, no grind.
Borderlands 4 characters: Meet your new Vault Hunters and find out who's strongest.
Borderlands 4 Harlowe builds: The amped-up Gravitar.
Borderlands 4 Rafa builds: The speed-demon Exo-Soldier.
Borderlands 4 Vex builds: The spooky Siren.
Borderlands 4 Amon builds: The fierce Forgeknight.