It's almost a month since the release of Borderlands 3 and players have been tearing through it! Most of the people who got in on release have blasted through the story and are now farming for Legendaries in either True Vault Hunter or Mayhem Mode. And for good reason, the Legendaries in this third iteration of the Vault Hunters are the most inventive yet! Although there are a few that prioritize their gimmicks over actual damage. And it's always a bit hard to tell because that dastardly red text never explains what the gun does. So, we're here to help! Follow us as we go through the absolute greatest and lamest of Borderland 3's Legendary Pistols.
Disclaimer: 99% of these weapons we used on a Level 50 Amara on both base TVHM and TVHM + Mayhem 3, so while their strength is obviously relative based on Vault Hunter, we did some extensive testing on this. Yes, all the Legendaries can be broken when used correctly, this is just our own personal opinion.
10 Best: The Unforgiven
Before we can even go into the pistols, we have to talk about FL4K. FL4K is the most played VH and has an incredibly strong build centered around critical damage through Fade Away. Therefore, a lot of Jakobs weapons are insane on him, the Unforgiven is one of the best. This long-barreled Pistol honestly works better as a sniper than it does a side-arm. That's because it has a +400% damage increase to critical hits, which is insane! But, in exchange, it fires slowly. Still, with any Vault Hunter that has good aim, this pistol is fantastic, and with FL4K, it's a god-killer.
9 Worst: The Superball
We must have had this dumb Legendary Pistol drop for us over 5 different times throughout our first playthrough and we hate it. First of all, it's a basic Mario Bros. reference and isn't even very creative. Secondly, it's annoying to shoot! Much like the Boring Gun Shotgun, the Superball has an odd projectile path where each shot bounces and sounds like the fireballs from the Super Mario franchise. And while that is cute, it's not fun in the least. This gun is absolutely another example of "gimmick over mechanics" and we can't stand it. We know we're being childish about it, which is why the RNG Gods blessed us with five of them as punishment.
8 Best: The Flood
People who liked Nisha's rapid-fire playstyle from The Pre-Sequel will love The Flood Legendary Jakobs Pistol. Why? Because this thing fires like a machine gun. It'll fire as fast as a human can possibly click their mouse, and it reloads quite quickly too. The Flood isn't super exciting and doesn't do anything crazy, but it is strong and dependable. The only problem is its accuracy, which is poor, which makes this handy hand cannon much more useful at low to mid-range as opposed to the Unforgiven's long-range prowess.
7 Worst: Hyper-Hydrator
This might not necessarily be fair, considering these Toy Box weapons were specific to people who got the Special Edition of the game, but we're only going to include one of these, so hopefully that will balance it out. Basically, these Weapons are available in the in-game mailbox as soon as a player creates a Vault Hunter. But, they'll scale to the level of the player when they're withdrawn, meaning that if some crazy person waits til 50 to finally grab them out, they'll be a level 50 Legendary. Well, we're crazy, and we did that, and it wasn't worth it. These are obviously just fun gimmick guns for people to use for the first couple hours, and not at all viable for late game, as we found out by squirting water in a skags face before it viciously ate us alive.
6 Best: The Duc
Some people will say this gun sucks, others will swear by it. Personally, we say that the Duc is fantastic all the way up until level 50. It's a Jakobs pistol that acts like a Torgue gun after all! It shoots a sticky projectile that'll explode regardless of whether it hits an enemy or not. Though it also has a small magazine with a super-quick reload to balance it out. And, if a player knabs a headshot, that critical hit will cause two more projectiles to spawn and stick to the closest enemy. Honestly, we forgot the Duc was a Jakobs gun until just now. It feels like a classy Torgue gun, and we love that. We used ours religiously from level 37 to 48, but once we got a level 50 version, we noticed that it didn't quite stack up to the other pistols anymore.
5 Worst: Gunerang/Bangerang
It just doesn't work! It's like they thought up a gimmick but didn't fully program it right and still shipped the game out! Sorry, we got a little ahead of ourselves, let's explain. Both the Gunerang and the Bangerang are Tediore Pistols that spin when thrown and are supposed to come back to the player when they're reloaded. Now, that sounds like they'll fly around and hit enemies before returning home to the Vault Hunter. And that'd be sweet! But, what it actually means is that the VH throws it, pulls out a new one, and the old one hits nothing and explodes in the background, wasting the ammo left in the clip. It just never really did anything for us. Even the Bangerang which fires bullets while spinning missed half the time and when it did hit, it was for low damage.
4 Best: Wagon Wheel/Moar Linoge
There's a couple of entries on all of these lists where well talk about two weapons at once. That's because while the effects are slightly different, there are a few Legendaries that essentially do the same thing, the Wagon Wheel and Moar Linoge are one of those examples. The Linoge is a COV weapon that fires insanely fast, and it's bullets ricochet everywhere. Its great, but only at close range. While alternatively, the Wagon Wheel is a Jakobs Pistol with a low Magazine Size but has bullets that spawn more ricocheting bullets after hitting an enemy. This can be used at any range. Both of these guns are great for crowded rooms and high-accuracy players.
3 Worst: Night Flyer
Ahh, we've finally arrived at the penultimate example of the "gimmicks over mechanics" we mentioned earlier. The Night Flyer, the Legendary drop that spawns from the Rakkman who is a secret encounter in the Carnivora zone. Fans of the franchise will remember this Batman homage from his other appearance in The Fridge area of Borderlands 2. This time around, we're in the Rakkcave and it's a neat little secret. But, his Legendary drop is just dumb. The red text is "I have one rule" and all this means is that the gun literally can't kill things. It'll get them to 1 HP and after that, the enemy will just show "IMMUNE" whenever they're hit by Night Flyer. So obviously a gun that doesn't kill has to be on the worst list.
2 Best: The Companion
There's not a day that goes by that we don't miss Firefly, Nathan Fillian and space-sci fi at its best! So, we might have just a bit of bias for this next pistol that quite obviously is a reference to the 2002 niche classic. But, even aside from that, the gun is just good! On every crit it lights the enemy aflame, giving it a 100% status effect chance in the hands of an accurate player or a Fade Away FL4K. The gun has no sight and its accuracy isn't great at a far range, but it's fast fire-rate and quick reloads are perfect for wearing down red health bars on any difficulty. I mean the burn damage it does is almost as much as its bullet damage! Seriously, just watch that fire...fly. Oof, even we cringed at that one.
1 Worst: Devil's Foursum
And finally, we're giving an F-grade to the A-Team inspired weapon, the Devil's Foursum. It's obvious to just about anyone that this pistol is an A-Team reference after reading the red text, but it's even sweeter because the gun fires 4 projectiles that come together in the middle, just like the four members of the A-team! It's an incredibly clever gun with a neat effect, but it's just not great compared to the other Legendaries. The bullets come together at mid-range so aiming at anything past that means it won't hit, they spread out almost immediately so players can actually miss part of the spread if they fire not close or far enough, and its damage isn't insane.