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Gearbox has finally made the dreaded nerf… but it seems the fans are OK with it?
What Was The Crit Knife?
It’s been a little over a month since Borderlands 4 players found the dreaded Crit Knife. Originally, players went hunting for Knife with a Penetrator Augment.
For this to work, players also had to use Vex, activate her Bloodletter Skill, and pair that with the Specialization called Contamination.
Eventually, players figured out that they could make a similar build if they found a Jakobs knife with Crit Damage.
While fans were happy to get a powerful build almost immediately, that happiness flipped to a situation Gearbox was trying to avoid. Players were getting bored playing, especially after ending the main campaign the first time.
Gearbox Announces The Big Changes
In the patch notes for yesterday’s patch, they announced these changes to Vex:
Incarnate – Vexcalation
- Bleed from Bloodletter has been updated so it no longer recursively triggers itself, preventing unintended damage loops
They also shared this change under Gear
Reduced critical chance on Jakobs crit knife to 30%
- Dev Note: It had to happen, you knew it was going to happen!
As if to rub it in, Gearbox made this “RIP Jakobs Crit Knife” video and posted it to Twitter:
Is It Really That Bad?
Fans were quick to see how this worked out in game. Moxsy shared their findings on Twitter:
ATTENTION BORDERLANDS GAMERS!
The new crit knife sets your crit chance to a target at 30%, it DOES NOT ADD 30% Crit Chance. Meaning if you have above 30% crit chance throwing it will hurt your damage.
Chatter mentioned @Lazy_Data figured this out and I just tested to confirm.
Lazy Data also explained it in their own words:
Ok Gearbox are wilding for this one.
Crit Knife is 30% chance to Crit. Full Stop.
If you have crit chance boosts on gear, crit knife will OVERRIDE IT so the enemy is at 30% regardless.
Still very up in the air with testing rn so bare with but… whew
We went looking around for how the community reacted, and it seems to be much better than you would expect. There are people who are negative, but there are also players who are fine, even happy, about it.
EpicNNG said that this change was incredible. When some fans were wondering if he was being sarcastic, he explained what he meant:
It’s 30% crit chance. That is still insane. I would not be saying the same if it were 5%.
While 30 % is not 100 %, in practice getting one critical hit out of 3 is still a really high percentage. Vex remains a very powerful character, and players will just have to put a little more effort to keep dominating.
