Borderlands 4 Vault Hunter Tier List After Update 1.10

Version 1.10 landed on Borderlands 4 on September 10 as the biggest single drop the game has had since launch: a free level cap increase to 70 for every player, a full balance pass across all four launch Vault Hunters, and a paid half built around the new playable character Loveless the Hacker. Nineteen days later, the skill-tree math from Gearbox's own Update 1.10 patch notes is settled enough to rank how the four launch Vault Hunters stack up against each other right now.

01How We Ranked These Vault Hunters After Update 1.10

Every number below — cooldown seconds, damage percentages, stack counts — comes directly from Gearbox's published change notes for Version 1.10, not from third-party damage calculators or unverified community testing. We weighed how far each Vault Hunter's signature tree moved this patch, not just how many bullet points appear under their name, since a long list of small tweaks to a secondary tree matters less than one tree getting reworked into a build-defining engine.

This is an opinion ranking, not a spreadsheet of win rates — Gearbox hasn't published matchmaking or completion-rate data for Borderlands 4, so nobody outside the studio can back a tier list with hard numbers. What we can verify is exactly what changed and by how much, and rank Vault Hunters by how much stronger their best build got relative to where it stood before September 10.

Where Loveless the Hacker Fits

Loveless the Hacker, the new paid Vault Hunter who arrived in this same update, isn't ranked here. She wasn't part of the balance pass — she's brand-new content, not a rebalanced launch character — and there isn't enough verified build data on her skill trees yet to place her fairly. Her kit is built around a shared psyche with a digital virus that can digistruct into a Wyrm, RAM that empowers her melee attacks once filled, and Corrosive and Radiation damage from cybernetic gear. Treat any tier list ranking Loveless this early as unconfirmed.

02S-Tier: Vex the Siren

Vex came out of Update 1.10 with the patch's most aggressive numbers, and both of her trees got hit at once. In The Fourth Seal, Specter Health rose by roughly 20% and Specter Damage by roughly 66%, while Blight Attunement's cooldown was cut in half — from 40 seconds to 20 — and its damage increased by 240%. Prismatic Ichor's cooldown dropped all the way to 1 second, and Cursed Blades damage rose by 200%.

Here Comes Trouble got the same treatment. Trouble's default attack damage is up roughly 33%, its damage multiplier while Phase Familiar is active doubled from +50% to +100%, and its health increased by roughly 42%. Deadwire's cooldown fell to 1 second and Tail Whip now deals 100% more damage. Vex's Living Weapon Class Mod also benefits from a wider buff that isn't tied to one tree: its chance to gain a Kill Skill on Skill Damage rose from 2% to 5%, and it can now trigger every second instead of every five.

Stack those changes together and Vex stopped being a Siren who had to babysit cooldowns to keep her board full. Specters and Trouble now survive longer, hit harder, and come back faster, which turns her from a strong pick into the patch's clear standout. Between the two trees, a summon-heavy Fourth Seal build and a Trouble-focused Here Comes Trouble build both got meaningfully stronger at the same time — that double-barreled buff is the reason she sits alone in S-tier this time around, rather than sharing the top spot with Amon.

03A-Tier: Amon the Forgeknight

Amon picked up a universal quality-of-life buff before anything tree-specific: every Crucible Forgeskill's cooldown dropped by 5 seconds, every Scourge Forgeskill by 10 seconds, and every Onslaughter Forgeskill by 15 seconds, regardless of which tree you're built around. On top of that, his Vengeance tree got a genuine rework — Scourge's own cooldown fell from 60 to 45 seconds, Icy Rage, Burning Rage, and Thunderous Rage now stack 10 times instead of 5 and last 60 seconds instead of 30, and Forgeaxes, Forgeswords, and Forgehammers all deal 100% more damage while moving and responding faster than before.

His Calamity tree, by comparison, got exactly one change in these notes: Onslaughter's cooldown dropped from 50 to 40 seconds. That lopsided split is why Amon lands in A-tier instead of alongside Vex — a Vengeance-focused melee build is now one of the strongest things in the game, doubled weapon damage and all, but a Calamity build barely felt this patch at all. If your Amon is built around Vengeance already, this is arguably the single best update he's had; if you're a Calamity player, don't expect much to change.

04B-Tier: Rafa the Exo-Soldier

Rafa's changes read less like a headline rework and more like Gearbox sanding down rough edges across his whole kit. In People Person, the APOPHIS Lance action skill's cooldown fell from 38 to 25 seconds with roughly 30% more damage, and Marked Enemy Damage now stacks 40% per mark instead of 20%. PROJECT: Raiju's damage-per-second rose from 12% to 17% per point, while PROJECT: Basilisk and PROJECT: Gorgon both got flat 50% damage increases.

Remote Agent got a similarly broad spread: Sitiar's Gun Damage per point rose from 5% to 6%, Vitriol nearly doubled from 11% to 20% per point, Concentrated Build Up now gives 4% Gun Damage while aiming — up from 2% — plus 1% per second while aiming instead of 0.5%, and Temerario, Per My Last, El Catrín, First Impression, and El Soldado all saw their per-point bonuses climb several percentage points each.

None of that is small, but none of it is transformative either — Rafa was already a consistent, well-rounded pick before September 10, and Update 1.10 mostly made the build you were already running a little better rather than opening up a new one. That consistency, without a single standout headline change like Vex's cooldown cuts or Amon's doubled melee damage, is what keeps him in B-tier just behind Amon rather than pushing him into A.

05C-Tier: Harlowe the Gravitar

Harlowe's entire set of changes landed in a single tree, Seize the Day. Zero-Point's status cooldown dropped from 35 to 30 seconds, Cold Plunge's cooldown fell from 40 to 35 seconds with damage up 100%, and Falling Bodies now costs 3 seconds of duration instead of 4 on a shorter 35-second cooldown. Ground State's per-slam damage doubled from 30% to 60%, Parallel Circuit's Gun Damage per point rose from 6% to 8%, Unstable Ice-otope's damage climbed from 7% to 10% per point with a longer 12-second duration, Freeze Frame's damage rose from 20% to 30%, Endothermic Reaction gained a flat 50% damage increase on a faster cooldown, Experimentation's damage climbed roughly 66%, and Indiscrete Math's splash damage rose from 7% to 12% per point.

Those are real numbers, and Seize the Day is a genuinely stronger tree today than it was before September 10 — read in isolation, it's arguably the most-buffed single tree in the patch. But Harlowe's kit is still built around setting up freezes and slams rather than the kind of sustained, low-maintenance damage Vex and Amon can now put out, and her second tree wasn't touched at all this patch. Relative to how far the other three Vault Hunters moved, she's standing still — which is why she rounds out the bottom of this list rather than climbing it.

06How to Adjust Your Build for Update 1.10

Whichever Vault Hunter you're running, the buffs above are worth checking against your actual build before you decide whether to change anything. A Vengeance-tree Amon or Fourth Seal or Here Comes Trouble Vex should feel noticeably stronger without touching a single skill point; a Calamity Amon or a build leaning on Harlowe's currently-untouched second tree won't feel much different at all, even though their Vault Hunter technically got buffed somewhere.

Quick Checklist for Update 1.10

1. 1Open your skill tree and check it against the changes above — every buff in Update 1.10 landed in Vengeance (Amon), Seize the Day (Harlowe), People Person and Remote Agent (Rafa), or Vex's Fourth Seal and Here Comes Trouble.2 minutes
2. 2If your current build sits in an untouched tree, like Amon's Calamity or Harlowe's second tree, this is a good moment to test the buffed side before assuming your Vault Hunter fell behind.5 minutes
3. 3Reset every skill point and augment slot at once at a Respec Machine if you want to try a newly buffed tree — there's no cost beyond the trip back to one.2 minutes
4. 4If you run a Living Weapon Class Mod on Vex, its Kill Skill proc chance and trigger rate both improved this patch, so it's worth re-testing even on an existing build.3 minutes
5. 5Run a story mission or an easy Mayhem-level fight to feel out the new cooldowns and damage numbers before spending real time farming gear around a specific build.10 minutes

Update 1.10's other half is worth knowing about even if you're only here for the balance changes: the same update added Loveless the Hacker as a new paid Vault Hunter, plus Story Pack 2: FL4K and the Last Resort and Bounty Pack 5: Amara and the Vile Shadows. Gearbox previewed both expansions on an official DevCast ahead of the September 10 launch.

Gearbox's August 20 DevCast previewed Story Pack 2 and Bounty Pack 5 ahead of the September 10 Update 1.10 launch that also rebalanced every Vault Hunter.

None of that DLC content changes the tier list above — it's separate from the free balance pass that reshaped Amon, Harlowe, Rafa, and Vex — but it explains why Gearbox pitched Version 1.10 as the game's biggest single update rather than a routine balance patch.