Borderlands 3 is back with a new DLC, Bounty of Blood, and while I think that some of the past DLCs have had underwhelming guns,
Borderlands 3, That would be the Complex Root, a Maliwan sniper rifle. I got this gun pretty early in my run after hitting level 60, and I was surprised to see that it was just destroying all bosses I came across, negating the fights entirely. And I was even more surprised to see that the DLC went live and it still had not been nerfed from my early playtime.
The Complex Root is a charge sniper that can swap between elements like any Maliwan gun. Its special perk is that it creates a little matrix of elemental damage on hit. If it’s a normal enemy, this kind of creates a little damaging cage around them. But bosses? I think something is up here.
What I believe is happening is that because the boss’s hitbox is so big, the matrix of damage that happens after shots hits the boss a whole bunch of times for multiple crits per shot. Combine that with any reasonably good anointment, 100% elemental after action skill damage, 200% during action skill, 150% radiation damage under 50% health, and this thing does truly astonishing damage.
Using Amara, I was able to farm the final boss of the DLC, The Ruiner, in about ten seconds. I “optimized” this for FL4K instead, and I’m now killing Graveward in just a few shots, and I bet I could do even better than that if I tried.
This gun drops anywhere in the DLC, it does not seem to be tied to a specific enemy or boss so you can farm it easier. I have gotten probably about 10 of them while playing, including a few very solid anointed ones that I have spread across my characters, as pretty much no matter what your build is, this is what you want to be using against bosses, at the very least, if not normal enemies and badasses, though I don’t think it’s quite as effective there.
This is one of those “it’s so good it might be bugged” sort of things like we saw with the Yellowcake that was just doing 100% more damage than it was supposed to, and so it was eventually nerfed. I am hoping Gearbox just sends up leaving this alone, but if you get a good one, boss farm as much as you can before anything happens to it. Trust me, it’s as good as I’m telling you.
This news was originally published at forbes.com