Borderlands 4 players have uncovered an insanely powerful infinite damage build that melts bosses in seconds—even on the toughest difficulty settings.

As showcased by YouTuber NickTew, this Vex build completely trivializes Borderlands 4’s most fearsome enemies, according to PC Gamer. With the strategy gaining popularity, the community is certain Gearbox will issue a heavy nerf soon. So take NickTew’s advice: “exploit it while it lasts.”

To pull off this build, you’ll need the Vampiric Vivisecting Throwing Knife paired with the Penetrator Augment. Hitting an enemy with the knife guarantees all subsequent damage becomes automatic critical hits for five seconds.

The real trick lies in combining this with bleed stacking: every tick of the bleed counts as a critical hit. Yes, every single one.

This works wonders for any class, but it’s especially strong for Vex thanks to her Bloodletter passive. This ability lets your gun and skill critical hits have a chance to inflict bleed, which counts as gun damage and scales with the initial hit.

Vex's Contamination passive further fuels the chaos by increasing status effect application chance up to 100% on critical hits. That makes the bleed re-apply continuously. So toss the knife, land a heavy shot on a boss, and watch the damage numbers skyrocket as the bleed eats away at its health.

NickTew demonstrated the build’s power by shredding a boss with a level 32 weapon on Ultimate Vault Hunter Level 5 difficulty. Even with enemies having 350% extra health at this level, the boss was defeated in mere seconds.

Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked

Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked

     

There's a catch, though: a knife with this augment is pretty rare (so hopefully you didn’t sell or drop one you found earlier!). You’ll likely need to farm for it—Splashzone is a solid spot to try. Once you get it, the build is pretty much ready to go.

If you're diving into Borderlands 4, stay updated with our hourly SHiFT codes list. We also offer a massive interactive map and a powerful Borderlands 4 planner tool from our friends at Maxroll. Also, check out our pro players’ picks for which character to choose (opinions varied wildly).

Note that there seems to be an issue when running this build in co-op, though the exact cause isn't clear.

Gearbox is expected to review this tactic, even though creative director Graeme Timmins stated the team won’t “knee-jerk react to anything.” Many in the community feel a nerf is justified, since the build clearly breaks intended game balance.

“I honestly think this has to get nerfed,” one YouTube commenter wrote. “There’s OP, and then there’s this. It reduces the game to a point where guns become irrelevant. Just apply the penetrator debuff and a bleed, then watch the damage scale exponentially. Probably something the devs missed during balancing.”

Gearbox has plenty on its plate right now—from performance optimizations (as Randy Pitchford continues tweeting) and adding an FOV slider on consoles, to developing post-launch content.