Gearbox Is Fixing Borderlands 4’s Issue With Rafa – But It’s Not Yet Ready

Gearbox is aware of the issue with Rafa’s Soltado in Borderlands 4… but the fix isn’t ready yet.

Creative director Graeme Timmins shared the news on Twitter today:

We have a fix for this coming, but it didn’t make it in time for tomorrow’s patch unfortunately. It will be addressed, but in a future patch instead.

We understand it’s frustrating and appreciate any patience you can afford.

As you will see after we explain it, this is the kind of issue that Gearbox needs to fix with a buff, not a nerf.

What Is The Soltado?

Soltado is a Passive Skill under Rafa’s Skill Tree. It comes with this description:

Double all Overdrive bonuses.

Duration: 8s

Understanding this Skill requires that you know what Rafa’s Overdrive Skill is. That comes with this description:

Whenever Rafa activates an Action Skill, he enters Overdrive.

While an Action Skill is active, Overdrive’s Duration does not decrease.

While Overdrive is active, gain increased Move Speed and deal increased Damage with all sources.

Damage: +10%

Move Speed: +25%

Duration: 12s

Overdrive is the first skill that Rafa can activate. So this is his most basic skill, and his daily driver for most of the game.

There are also class mods that can increase the effects of these skills, and that’s where the issue comes up.

What Is The Issue With Soltado?

This issue was brought up in the Borderlands Support Issue Tracker. Gearbox account user Templar once again raised this question to Gearbox:

Even when equipping a class mod like Devastating Dancer, which adds an additional point to it, the skill only provides a bonus with the first point.

Gearbox then gave this response:

This is planned to be addressed in a future update.

How Should Gearbox Fix This Issue?

If Gearbox changes Soltado’s behavior as intended, it will make Soltado become even more powerful with the proper class mod activated with it.

That seems self-evident. But it’s important to recognize what direction this change needs to go.

Gearbox has to keep making buffs, not nerfs, to balance the game out. We can’t predict if tomorrow’s patch will nerf the Crit Knife. But we’re sure making Rafa more powerful will do more to improve that balance.

This is definitely not the first time that Gearbox is not ready to deliver a long needed fix to Borderlands 4. But if you’ve been following them for two months, this is nothing new.

Of course, the game is still fun and hugely successful. But we may have to wait a while before Borderlands 4 is at the state that Gearbox originally intended.