As it turns out, Gearbox is still not done with Borderlands 4’s infamous Crit Knife.
Let’s Go Through It Once Again
The Crit Knife was an early exploit found during launch. Using a Jakobs knife with Crit Damage, Vex’s Bloodletter skill, and the specialization Contamination, you could down even Immortal bosses in a matter of seconds.
This build would create damage that repeated upon itself. As a result, players don’t really need to put any effort into playing after they get it set up.
That may make some players, especially casual gamers, happy. But in the long term, games that are too easy will also bore players, making them less likely to come back for Gearbox’s roadmap.
What Changes Did They Just Make?
Last week, Gearbox published the big patch that came with multiple nerfs and rebalances.
Of the abilities we mentioned above, they nerfed Bloodletter so that it no longer repeats attacks upon itself. They also described this change to Crit Knives:
Reduced critical chance on Jakobs crit knife to 30%
- Dev Note: It had to happen, you knew it was going to happen!
However, as we now know, the change is a lot more drastic than gamers initially expected.
Gearbox Promises To Change It Again
Ratore aired their complaints on the Crit Knife rebalance on Twitter:
Crit Knife does not increase crit chance. It sets crit chance. Here is it setting 100% guaranteed crits to what one assumes is 30%
Gearbox creative director Graeme Timmins got asked about this directly. Thankfully, he gave a clear answer:
This is not intended and we’re looking at addressing it in a future minor patch. A timeline is not established yet, but it’s a high priority.
Was This Rebalance Bad?
As we reported last time, some players didn’t really feel that the rebalancing was that bad. Moxsy explained their take on Twitter:
Bleed vex is so much more fun to play after the changes. Yes it technically is weaker but now your build and gear actually matter vs just 1 shotting everything with a pistol. Really satisfying to still be getting 2M+ bleed ticks without the infinite scaling.
Moxsy even shared this video proving that Vex can still one-shot bosses after the rebalance. Vex herself isn’t necessarily neutered after everything is said and done.
Gearbox’s concern was really about players avoiding or favoring Jakobs crit knives. While they didn’t want crit knives to take over the meta, they also didn’t want to make it completely undesirable.
So if you have a Crit Knife in your build, you may want to move it to your Bank Vault for now. It may not be a viable option weapon now, but it could be sometime in the future.
