Since the launch of Borderlands 4, developer Gearbox has rolled out a PC-focused patch that addressed various crashes and other minor issues. But players have been eagerly awaiting news on the looter-shooter’s overall balance, especially with certain builds enabling players to one-shot bosses.
Gearbox has now clarified its short-term strategy: they plan to buff weaker gear and skills first, rather than immediately nerfing overpowered builds. This means those notorious instakill builds you’ve likely seen circulating online are safe for now. However, Gearbox firmly stated that these exploits will eventually be addressed.
This confirmation came directly from Borderlands 4 creative director Graeme Timmins, who took to social media to acknowledge the community’s discussions about what he termed “builds that use unintended interactions and/or the knife.”
His statement was clear:
“We’ve seen the discourse about builds that use unintended interactions and/or the knife. 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.”
So, what’s the big deal about ‘the knife’? Many Borderlands 4 players have stumbled upon an infinite damage build that’s so potent, it can obliterate bosses in mere seconds, even on the game’s toughest difficulty settings.
To execute this build, you need a specific item: the Vampiric Vivisecting Throwing Knife paired with the Penetrator Augment. Landing a hit with this knife grants automatic critical hits on the target for five seconds. When combined with bleed stacking, each tick of the bleed effect is registered as a critical hit.
Players have engineered incredibly powerful strategies around this knife, trivializing Borderlands 4 boss encounters and making the hunt for top-tier loot significantly easier. For instance, one popular Vex build utilizes the ‘Bloodletter’ passive, which gives gun and skill critical hits a chance to apply bleed, scaling with the initial damage. By adding Vex’s ‘Contamination’ passive, critical hits also boost status effect application chance up to 100%, leading to an infinite bleed re-proc. The result? Exponential damage. Simply throw the knife, land one major shot on a boss, and watch the damage numbers spiral out of control as the bleed effect whittles them down.
The community is largely celebrating Gearbox’s decision to prioritize buffs over immediate nerfs. Prominent Borderlands 4 content creator Moxsy hailed it as “such a huge W,” recalling the frustration caused by heavy nerfs in previous titles like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and Borderlands 3 at launch.
The next big question is how Gearbox plans to nerf this infamous knife. Will they completely rework its mechanics, or will they implement subtle adjustments to tone down its effectiveness?
While there’s no exact timeline for Borderlands 4’s next patch, Gearbox has confirmed other development priorities. PC performance improvements are at the top of their list, and console players can look forward to a Field of View (FOV) slider.
Console players are particularly eager for a patch addressing several glaring technical issues. Digital Foundry, a respected tech analysis group, recently verified that framerates gradually worsen with continuous playtime on PlayStation 5 Pro and Xbox Series X. Their findings, detailed in a recent video, showed performance dips occurring after just 30 minutes to an hour of play, an interruption they deemed “too intrusive on the overall experience.” Even a fresh boot doesn’t entirely eliminate these persistent framerate drops.
Randy Pitchford, Gearbox’s development chief, has acknowledged these problems on social media, assuring players that improvements are coming. As a temporary fix, Pitchford suggested console players simply quit and restart Borderlands 4. While Digital Foundry’s Tom Morgan confirmed this workaround does restore performance, he criticized the notion that “resetting the game every hour should really not be an expected solution for players.”
In related news, creative director Timmins also mentioned he’s keeping an eye on “cricket jumping,” a technique that allows Borderlands 4 players to bypass significant portions of the map.
For those diving deep into Borderlands 4, remember to check for updated hourly SHiFT codes. There’s also an extensive interactive map available and a powerful Borderlands 4 planner tool from our friends at Maxroll. Don’t forget to explore our expert player recommendations for choosing the best character (though opinions were split!).