Borderlands 4 Legendary Weapons Ranked: The Worst Legendaries You Should Avoid

Borderlands 4 is undoubtedly one of the best in the franchise, and the core of that is the extremely satisfying loot chase.

Purple Epic weapons and gear are extremely powerful, and Legendaries have been super satisfying to farm and use, dynamically changing the way you slaughter any and everything on Kairos.

However, a major point of discussion in the community right now is that there’s an abundance of Legendaries that are simply too underpowered or straight up “useless”.

Today, we’re taking a deep dive into the “worst” legendary weapons in Borderlands 4 right now!

A Glimpse at the Best Legendary Weapons in Borderlands 4

Before we get into the “worst” Legendaries in Borderlands 4, let’s check out some of the very best of the best Legendary weapons, and why they’re so sought after in the current meta:

• Hot Slugger: An extremely powerful one-shot Jakobs shotgun that provides a 30% damage increase for 10 seconds per kill, stacking up to 3 stacks. This gives you a massive 90% damage increase, perfect for clearing mobs.
• Wombo Combo: A Vladof assault rifle that automatically shoots rockets from the underbarrel. Can have elements, making it a powerful boss/mob melter. An essential for any build.
• Kickballer: A Maliwan shotgun that fires an exploding ball at enemies. By itself, not very impressive in terms of its accuracy. But paired with a Jakobs part, this causes ricochets with bajillions of explosive balls fired off, causing utter chaos and insane damage.
• Complex Root: A Maliwan sniper rifle that spawns additional diverging bullets with each shot in a pattern. This allows each shot to have a pretty large AOE, great for clearing out mobs. Plus, the mesmerizing pattern it sketches out looks fantastic on a portable folding monitor!
• Rainbow Vomit: Another Jakobs shotgun, which has one of the most unique perks in the game; it can have up to 3 random elements. The gun has a bit of an arc to its bullet drop, but the advantage of having multiple elements makes it phenomenal for handling enemies regardless of health type.

Those are the best, but let’s move on to the rest.

The Top 10 Worst Legendaries in Borderlands 4

10. Cold Shoulder – When Even Your Gun Ignores You

• Legendary Effect: (Iced Out) Deals AOE Cryo damage; bullets travel in random patterns and have a chance to home in on enemies
• Weapon Type: Assault Rifle
• Where it Drops: Mad Moxxi (Tip Jar)

First, we have the “Cold Shoulder” that you can get from Mad Moxxi if you tip enough in her Tip Jar. When we first got the Cold Shoulder, it seemed pretty good; a solid rate of fire Torque assault rifle, what could go wrong?

But the reality is the Cold Shoulder is pretty bad. Its damage is nothing to write home about, and that’s considering you actually land your shots in the first place. Each shot is skewed away from your reticle, and its trajectory is random.

We’ve seen that there is a chance for each shot to home in on enemies, but considering its lacklustre damage and hard-to-aim shots, you should give the Cold Shoulder, the cold shoulder treatment.

9. Prince Harming – This Prince Ain’t a Pal of Mine!

• Legendary Effect: (Pamplemousse) Damaging enemies causes damage to yourself & grants a stack of “Crulety”; Killing enemies with Cruelty stacks restores Overshield per stack; Max 30 stacks
• Weapon Type: SMG
• Where it Drops: Pango Bango boss (Tendercage Ripper Drill Site)

Prince Harming is a Ripper SMG, with the Legendary Effect, Pamplemousse. It works with its “Cruelty” effect, which basically damages you every time you hit an enemy. When you get a kill, you get Overshield restore.

The problem is that this damage is pretty substantial and can quickly stack up with every shot.

And the return on investment is Overshield recharge, which frankly, doesn’t do much besides maybe some extra survivability. But since you’re damaging yourself more often than getting the recharge, it kind of cancels out the whole point.

The Prince Harming SMG is more trouble than it's worth, so best avoid this one entirely lest you fancy downing yourself more often than a boss.

8. Chuck – “Chuck” it in the Bin

• Legendary Effect: (Pitcher) Instead of shooting, throws the “Chuck” assault rifle at enemies to damage them; uses the whole 10-clip magazine per throw
• Weapon Type: Assault Rifle
• Where it Drops: Fractis (The Crawlcroft Order Bunker) or The Pitted Stain (Ripper Drill Site)

The aptly named “Chuck” is a Tediore assault rifle. Tediore is known for its budget-friendlyness, but the Chuck “throws” that all out the window by literally “chucking” the gun with every shot.

That’s it. Chuck literally throws the weapon with each shot and spends the entire clip doing it. With a 10-clip magazine, this drains your assault rifle ammo reserves pretty quickly, for less than stellar damage.

Though there are certainly builds that use Chuck, like Rafa’s Peacebreaker Cannon tree, which has buffs to Indirect Damage, like from Tediore guns. With the right class mod, you could even overfill the screen with 4x MIRV drops, so you’ll need a 2K FreeSync monitor to keep up with all the destruction!

Otherwise, the range isn’t great, it’s hard to aim, and its damage isn’t good enough to handle bosses. Still a fun time for mobs though!

7. Star Helix – Shoot for the Stars, & Still Miss

• Legendary Effect: (Constellation) Projectiles can be fired vertically/horizontally
• Weapon Type: Assault Rifle
• Where it Drops: The Timekeeper (Final boss in Upper Dominion)

Star Helix is a Daedalus assault rifle, and honestly, it’s one of the better options on this list. Its main effect is “Constellation,” which fires 3x shots in vertical/horizontal directions. This ain’t bad at all, especially for large bosses.

However, Star Helix’s biggest flaw is its accuracy.

Since you’re shooting 3x shots in a cross pattern, this makes it hard to land every shot accurately, especially on smaller enemies. If you manage to land just one bullet, you’re doing far less damage than most other guns.

For bosses, a fantastic option, but for its lacklustre accuracy in most other situations, it’s not the best.

6. Roach – A Pest to Get Rid Of

• Legendary Effect: (Flesh Eaters) Shoots eggs that hatch flying roaches when attached to flesh, living or dead.
• Weapon Type: Pistol
• Where it Drops: Skull Orchid boss (Embossed Fault Auger Mine)

Roach is a Torque pistol and has the “Flesh Eaters” perk, which allows you to shoot at enemies with “flesh” (Rippers, creatures like Kratch, etc.) to spawn flying roaches.

These act as homing projectiles that track the nearby enemies to damage them.

Theoretically, Roach should be a decent enough Legendary. But in practice, the damage per shot, as well as per “roach” projectile spawned, is not great. It doesn’t do enough damage to warrant waiting for the homing roach to fly and deal damage.

Plus, against enemies that don’t have “flesh” like Order mobs, robots, turrets, etc., this thing is useless and doesn’t proc its Legendary effect.

5. Zipper – Backshots Only

• Legendary Effect: (Prison Rules) Hitting a target in the back gains +75% Damage & +75% Critical Damage
• Weapon Type: Pistol
• Where it Drops: Leader Willem in The Excrucible (Requires completion of Enter the Electi side-quests)

Zipper is a petite Daedalus pistol that has a unique ‘Prison Rules’ perk. This awards you a massive +75% damage & crit damage boost, which in theory, is fantastic. The caveat is that you need to hit an enemy from the back to proc the effect.

There could be situations where this would be useful, but they’re incredibly rare. Once you start a fight, everyone will be looking at you. You’ll find basically no opportunity to effectively use the Zipper, making it one of the worst pistols you could get in the game.

The worst part is you can get Zipper from Leader Willem, who you also need to farm to get one of the best shotguns in the game, Rainbow Vomit.

4. Frangible – Frangible, but not Tangible

• Legendary Effect: Combines multiple gun manufacturer parts in one
• Weapon Type: SMG
• Where it Drops: World drop (No known drop location)

The Frangible really doesn’t show you anything, including the damage and DPS. The only known effect of this gun is that it can spawn with a bunch of gun manufacturer attachment parts.

In our playthrough, we got the Frangible SMG with sticky Torque shots, fire element, Daedalus’s burst shots, and Tediore’s MIRV grenade reload. In theory, this should be a decent, albeit not game-changing gun.

But in practice, it was a horrible shot, barely did any substantial damage, and wasn’t worth swapping the coveted SMG slot. If you’re lucky, you could roll it with a bunch of great attachment combos, but since this is super random, it’s not worth using unless you hit the jackpot.

3. The Streamer – Stream yo’ Death!

• Legendary Effect: (Delegation) Launches stationary projectiles, each firing a piercing laser beam
• Weapon Type: Heavy Weapon Ordnance
• Where it Drops: Oppressor (The Killing Floors)

Streamer is a Heavy Weapon Ordnance with the “Delegation” effect, which launches mini-drone-like projectiles that fire piercing laser beams forward. Objectively, it’s a pretty powerful ordnance to use to melt big bosses if you manage to aim all the projectiles properly.

However, these projectiles are stationary and will only aim the laser beam forward. This means that if the enemy moves out of the way, they’re shooting nothing. And when you consider it’s using your ordnance slot, this makes Streamer a far less effective option.

Otherwise, decent damage, but its stationary aim and long cooldown don’t make it a viable option.

2. Sideshow – Not a Fan of this Clown

• Legendary Effect: (Juggler) Reload mini-game; shoot as many targets before hitting the ground to reload 2 ammo per target
• Weapon Type: Pistol
• Where it Drops: Divisioner boss (The Wireworks Order Bunker)

Ranking in second place on our list of the worst Legendaries in Borderlands 4, is the Sideshow, a Tediore pistol. Its effect, “Juggler”, is one of the most useless we’ve seen in the game, and we don’t think there are any viable builds for it.

All it does is when you reload, you’ll throw a “Shoot Me” orb, and you’ll need to shoot it before it falls to the ground, to reload the gun. When you’re in the action, it’s simply not feasible to concentrate on this ‘mini-game’ and keep it from falling just to reload.

It does explode with every shot, but so far, its cons far outweigh its pros, and since that’s the only ‘special’ thing about the gun, it makes it basically worthless for any build.

1. Kaleidosplode – Taste the Rainbow, Feel the Disappointment

• Legendary Effect: (Colorful Mess) Shoots a slow-moving multi-colored orb with limited range to deal elemental damage
• Weapon Type: Shotgun
• Where it Drops: Callous boss (Craven’s Nook Order Bunker)

Lastly, we have unequivocally the most useless and frustrating Legendary in Borderlands 4, the Kaleidosplode. Its Legendary effect, “Colorful Mess,” transforms bullets into a slow-moving, shiny, colorful disco ball-looking orb that deals elemental damage.

In retrospect, this thing shoots and feels like The Lob from Borderlands 3, which was one of the best shotguns in that game.

But here, Kaleidosplode is sorely lacking, with a frustratingly slow orb projectile enemies could just move away from, to incredibly abysmal damage output, barely doing anything to enemies, even if the elements matched their health type.

All it really does is have those colorful rainbow ball projectiles, but in every possible aspect, it just does not do anything for any build whatsoever. At least it looks good on a 120Hz gaming monitor, sigh.

The Good News: Borderlands 4 Devs Announce Incoming Buffs

But all is not lost, fellow Vault Hunters. Graeme Timmins, the Creative Director at Gearbox, the devs behind Borderlands 4, had this to say about the current state of the game.

He mentions that the team is aware of “builds that use unintended interactions” as well as the infamous crit knife. But instead of focusing on bringing down their viability, they will instead address “underperforming gear/skills first”.

This is great news for a greater variety of possible, viable, and powerful builds that currently, only skew toward a set selection of gear/Legendaries. Whether any on this list will get this treatment is still unknown.

But for now, we’ll have to wait and see how these balance changes affect the current meta to see if any of these guns get any substantial changes to make them feel better than their current state.

Some Final Thoughts

To wrap things up, for first-time players in the franchise, this is actually pretty normal.

There have been plenty of “gag” Legendaries before that weren’t meant to be viable. There are also many Legendaries that may actually require a very specific build to reach their full potential.

For now, these on the list aren’t the best Legendary weapons in the game, that’s for sure. But with an ever-shifting meta, balance changes, and the upcoming DLCs, they may end up being timeless, “best” Legendaries to seek out.

Except the Kaleidosplode. God, I hate that thing.

FAQs

How Much Does Borderlands 4 Cost?

Borderlands 4 costs $69.99 for the base edition of the game.

Which Borderlands 4 Character or Vault Hunter Should I Play?

It really depends on your playstyle.

Vex is a great option for a god-like summoner/necromancer style character. Amon is great for melee builds & his tankiness. Rafa is a ‘rogue’ archetype that’s agile & can deal a lot of damage. Harlowe is a support-style character with amazing crowd-control abilities.

Depending on your preference, the best Borderlands 4 character will vary. But if you just need one option, we recommend trying Vex, she’s currently one of the strongest in the game.

What Borderlands 4 Edition Should I Buy?

We recommend buying the base edition of the game for now. After the DLCs release, you can get the add-ons and season pass on sale. For now, the only differentiator between the Borderlands 4 editions are in-game cosmetics.

Which Legendary weapons are the best in Borderlands 4 right now?

Here are a few of the best Legendary weapons in Borderlands 4 right now:

• Hot Slugger
• Wombo Combo
• Rainbow Vomit
• BOD
• Kaoson
• Complex Root

Will weak Legendary weapons in Borderlands 4 get buffed?

Eventually, we expect Legendary weapons to get buffed in Borderlands 4. With the history of the franchise, we usually see massive changes in the meta from launch to the end of the game’s updates. Some Legendaries may still be weak, but a majority of them should be viable as the game ages.