So at gearbox's PAX panel they announced quite a few new additions that will be coming in the following months to Borderlands 2. I haven't seen anyone make a thread on it yet so I figured I'd summarize it here.

First of all, on April 2nd a level cap increase and a 3rd playthrough will be made available. This will raise the current level cap of 50 to 61 meaning more skill points and higher level guns. The 3rd playthrough is called Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and it will feature the return of pearlescent rarity guns exclusive to levels 51-60. It is confirmed that you do get a skill point for every new level. In addition to this there will also be an update which gives more storage capacity, more ammo SDU's to get, and an increase in max eridium. This extra content will be free to season pass holders, and $5 for everyone else.

Next, the new dlc character is a psycho bandit named Krieg. His action skill is a buzzsaw melee attack that can be thrown as a ranged attack as well. When you get a kill while in his action skill mode your health instantly refills. He's supposed to be an aggressive high risk, high reward, playstyle. They tried to focus on making abilities you've seen psychos use available to you with his skill trees. If you want to be a burning psycho, now you can by taking a skill that gives you a chance to ignite yourself when dealing fire damage and gain bonuses from doing so. An overall theme of his class is negatives becoming positives. He has one skill that gives you bonuses for taking damage for example. He'll be available sometime in May, cost $10, and is not included in the season pass. Below are two videos of his gameplay reveal.

Next up, there will be a fourth story dlc coming "before June is over". They said that it is the biggest add-on they've done yet including those made for Borderlands 1. This will be included in the season pass. They didn't have much to show for it except for a teaser of Tiny Tina, Brick, Mordecai, and Lilith playing a table top rpg called Bunkers and Badasses.

Finally, a new version of the Loot Chest will be available on the gearbox store. It's similar to the one that came in the limited edition, but with some different stuff inside. It'll have a goliath replica mask and a code to get this mask in game, vault hunter wanted poster, playing cards (these are legendary loot cards, have codes on them to get legendary items in the game), window decals, and a certificate of authenticity. That'll be available for $99 in May if any of that interests you.

Always down for Moarderlands

Krieg looks really fucking fun. I wasn't particularly impressed by the last class they did, but Krieg might be enough to get me to finish Borderlands 2.

The reason I quit playing Borderlands 2 being that Zer0 is completely fucking broken and if you max out melee on him all loot becomes irrelevant in the loot game.

Level cap increase AT LAST. Can't wait to finally play through DLC #2 and #3.

Kreig looks like a blast. Can't wait to play him.

Already finished it on 360, but I picked up a steam key on sale at GMG with the season pass, because I love it so much. Any PC duders that wanna play some Borderlands 2 should add me on steam. My name is planetfucksquad. :)

Dude, level cap increase finally!

This will severely increase the variety of synergistic builds possible with classes. Especially for sirens and soldiers.

Don't know how to fill about the 3rd play through. It will depend a lot on how they handle it, second play through already raised enemy damage through the roof, which lead to a very different combat dynamic (ie you could die in seconds). If they raise the difficulty like they did from playthrough 1 to 2 this will be kinda nuts. But if they keep it on a more level/steady increase it should be fine.

Great to hear that the last season pass DLC will be the biggest one as the other 3 have kinda left me wanting content wise (altho they were imo great quality wise).

Two, dual, shielded, rocket, slag turrets mmm.

The enemy damage isn't really a big deal at level 50. If you got one shot you could just as easily pull out your rocket launcher and one shot the guy who killed you. It's the reason why everyone always carries a rocket launcher at level 50.

@golguin:

Against normal lvl35-50 enemies yes. Against badasses and above, not so much, even a rocket launcher won't scratch a playthrough 2 badass. (unless you're cheese stacking certain dmg builds). Most deaths is playthrough 2 and 2.5 come from when you get downed and there are no regular enemies left.

I'm not saying that that game got overly hard on playthrough 2 (altho it does get much harder). Just that it completely changes the viability of many skills, making many useless, other incredibly useful. Same goes for gear. Shield and health levels. And how you mitigate damage in general. In comparison playthrough 1 is a cakewalk even blindfolded. Basically you went from feeling like a total badass at the end of pt.1, to feeling like you were made out of tissue paper in pt.2. with fight for your life state becoming a constant companion. It's the sudden jump in just how much incredibly faster enemies chew through your shield/life that was jarring. Even more so then in Borderlands 1.

(personally I can gunzerk when in downed state, so it affected me even less with my main character when I was playing it, but I had a much rougher time with a siren)

Just to make something clear I am specifically talking about playthrough 2. NOT 2.5 - lvls 50+. Levels 50+ and playthrough 2.5 are not so much of a problem because you start to get ahead of the curve via gear upgrades (and cheese combinations) while relative power of enemies is static.

I kind of agree. Playing alone at high levels can be a huge pain in the ass. I'll almost certainly take my Commando to level 61 at some point, but I hope the difference between PT 2 and 3 isn't as staggering the difference between 1 and 2. I don't feel like an unstoppable badass that can at least hold his own in most fights like I did in the first game, the exact opposite in fact. Hopefully the added skill points will give the characters the push over the edge they need to become that.

Also still waiting for the fucking loot drop rates to get fixed. Finding nothing but guns that say 'Level 50' but clearly do not have stats that reflect that always makes me stop playing.

I will say that Krieg looks like a lot of fun, though. I liked the Mechromancer quite a bit even though I haven't leveled her up that much, but Krieg looks even better.

I don't know what to tell you. My level 50 siren rocks everything and I only need to modify her build when raiding and I switch to my healing/reviving build. My level 45 Mechromancer is already able to fight the dudes in the replayable mission of the Torgue DLC.

I should probably mention that I have top level legendary gear and weapons.

After playing through the main game to completion twice, once in normal and once in TVHM, the last thing I want to do is play through it a third time just for better loot :(

Like I already said: My comment on the difficulty spike only applies to playthrough 2, ie levels 35-50 (especially solo). Not pt.2.5 and level 50s.

If you are a lvl 50 in legendary gear, of course the game isn't hard at all. I didn't have any issues chewing through lvl 50+ enemies in any DLC or main game with my Gunzerker or Siren either, they rock everything too. That's not really what my comment was about.

And when your other characters have hand me downs from their sugar daddies it's not as hard either :P

True, my other characters all used hand downs from my Siren throughout levels 10-50, but my Siren had to do it all by herself while ignoring sidequests (level up to 50 in 2.5) and using mostly her gear from the first playthrough.

Remember that the Siren is probably the best class at controlling the field of battle and she controlled the hell out of it by killing from far away.

i loved that late 30s difficulty spike, got to really figure out the skill trees in detail, was the highlight of the game for me, so i hope there is some serious thought put into the challenge of the third leg.

This will be damn awesome. By the way, does anyone know if there are any new skills, or will it just be 11 additional points to put into your existing skill tree?

@cincaid: I would assume no new skills for the moment. There's nothing to really indicate that and we're only a week away from when its going to hit. Apparently the community manager on their forums is going to reveal some new details during the week, but I think that something as big as new skills would be announced at the panel.

@mentaldisruption: I assumed as much! Interesting with additional news, though I guess you're correct when thinking it won't be about new skills. Either way; a third playthrough, increased level cap, and a new rarity on weapons is good enough for me. :)