As a seasoned Guardian with countless hours spent battling through the Crucible and exploring the cosmos, I must say that this update brings a breath of fresh air to the game. The tweaks to weapon balancing are well thought out and address some long-standing issues without disrupting the core feel of each weapon class.
As the year draws to a close, Bungie has revealed their plans for the upcoming year, ensuring that Destiny 2 players are well-informed about what’s in store as the clock chimes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Among the new additions next year is Revenant Act III, and Bungie has announced significant adjustments, both positive and negative, coming to Destiny 2, shortly after the commencement of the third act.
Bungie enthusiasts can anticipate some exciting updates in the times ahead! The game Marathon is still under construction, with further information expected to be unveiled next year. Additionally, Destiny Rising might also launch next year. Speaking of Destiny 2, Bungie has revealed the Year 11 plan, which encompasses a wealth of new content scheduled from 2025 through 2026.
Although the Year 11 plan looks hopeful, Bungie has just unveiled some enhancements and adjustments that are set to ignite Destiny 2 in 2025.
Bungie confirms incoming buffs and nerfs for Destiny 2
According to the latest ‘This Week in Destiny’ blog from Bungie, they’ve shared their plans for early next year. Specifically, Revenant Act III is set to begin on January 7th, and a balance adjustment is scheduled for January 14th.
For this balance update, Bungie will deliver the following buffs and nerfs:
Weapon Archetypes
- Sidearms
- Heavy Burst – We preemptively nerfed Heavy Burst Sidearms before we made the Destiny 2: Into the Light sandbox changes because they had one of the most forgiving body shot Times to Kill in the game. We have not walked back those changes entirely, as that goes against the spirit of the current PvP sandbox, but we do feel that increasing the strength of some close-range Primary weapons is a worthwhile endeavor given the relative power of other close-range engagement options.
- Increased body shot damage from 30 to 33.
- Increased critical hit damage from 48 to 52.8.
- Heavy Burst – We preemptively nerfed Heavy Burst Sidearms before we made the Destiny 2: Into the Light sandbox changes because they had one of the most forgiving body shot Times to Kill in the game. We have not walked back those changes entirely, as that goes against the spirit of the current PvP sandbox, but we do feel that increasing the strength of some close-range Primary weapons is a worthwhile endeavor given the relative power of other close-range engagement options.
- Submachine Guns
- General – SMGs are currently struggling in both high-end PvE and PvP, where combating more resilient enemies is making their small magazines feel overly punishing. We are bringing their magazine sizes up a small amount globally and will also be slightly increasing their damage versus Minor combatants in Heresy.
- Increased magazine size by approximately 10%.
- General – SMGs are currently struggling in both high-end PvE and PvP, where combating more resilient enemies is making their small magazines feel overly punishing. We are bringing their magazine sizes up a small amount globally and will also be slightly increasing their damage versus Minor combatants in Heresy.
- Auto Rifles
- Rapid Fires – Increased damage slightly to remove a resilience gate from their optimal Time to Kill.
- Increased body shot damage from 13.5 to 13.6.
- Increased critical hit damage from 23 to 23.1.
- Rapid Fires – Increased damage slightly to remove a resilience gate from their optimal Time to Kill.
- Pulse Rifles
- High-Impacts – We have heard your feedback that, in the hands of highly skilled players, High-Impact Pulses can feel oppressive. We are removing their last bit of baked-in forgiveness, requiring them to hit six crits to achieve their optimal Time to Kill against all resilience levels over one. At the same time, to reduce their top-end effectiveness, we are decreasing their range via the aim down sights damage (ADS) falloff scalar, which will bring them more in line with Adaptive Hand Cannons and reduce their range below all other Pulse Rifles.
- Reduced body shot damage from 22 to 21.5.
- Reduced critical hit damage from 39.6 to 38.7.
- Reduced ADS damage falloff scalar from 1.7 to 1.6.
- Lightweights – Lightweight Pulses can feel too difficult to use for their Time to Kill and Time on Target requirements, so we are bringing their optimal TtK forgiveness up through all resilience levels.
- Increased body shot damage from 17 to 20.4.
- Increased critical hit damage from 31.45 to 31.6.
- High-Impacts – We have heard your feedback that, in the hands of highly skilled players, High-Impact Pulses can feel oppressive. We are removing their last bit of baked-in forgiveness, requiring them to hit six crits to achieve their optimal Time to Kill against all resilience levels over one. At the same time, to reduce their top-end effectiveness, we are decreasing their range via the aim down sights damage (ADS) falloff scalar, which will bring them more in line with Adaptive Hand Cannons and reduce their range below all other Pulse Rifles.
- Hand Cannons
- Precisions – Precision Hand Cannons have seen a small bump in usage and effectiveness with the recent buff to body shot damage, but we wanted to lean harder into the fantasy of the intrinsic perk. This change will affect Luna’s Howl, Not Forgotten, and Malfeasance.
- The intrinsic Hand Cannon Precision Frame now reduces your ADS movement speed penalty by 10%.
- Precisions – Precision Hand Cannons have seen a small bump in usage and effectiveness with the recent buff to body shot damage, but we wanted to lean harder into the fantasy of the intrinsic perk. This change will affect Luna’s Howl, Not Forgotten, and Malfeasance.
- Scout Rifles
- Lightweights – For a brief period we buffed Lightweight Scouts to bring down their body shot Time to Kill (which is among the slowest in the game) and to make them more forgiving in terms of their optimal Time to Kill, but these changes were quickly undone when we moved to the Into the Light Crucible sandbox. We have re-implemented these changes, tuned for the new health values in PvP.
- Increased body shot damage from 32 to 38.
- Increased critical hit damage from 64 to 64.6.
- Lightweights – For a brief period we buffed Lightweight Scouts to bring down their body shot Time to Kill (which is among the slowest in the game) and to make them more forgiving in terms of their optimal Time to Kill, but these changes were quickly undone when we moved to the Into the Light Crucible sandbox. We have re-implemented these changes, tuned for the new health values in PvP.
- Sniper Rifles
- General – We are continuing with our work to reduce the visual flinch experienced by Sniper Rifles in Crucible to a more reasonable level. The intent is to maintain the difficulty of shooting through flinch to allow for counterplay, without it feeling too jarring to be damaged while scoped in.
- Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 20%.
- Whisper of the Worm – We have further reduced the flinch experienced by Whisper of the Worm to compensate for it being a Heavy weapon.
- Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 50%.
- General – We are continuing with our work to reduce the visual flinch experienced by Sniper Rifles in Crucible to a more reasonable level. The intent is to maintain the difficulty of shooting through flinch to allow for counterplay, without it feeling too jarring to be damaged while scoped in.
Weapon Perks
- Skulking Wolf (Iron Banner Origin) – We felt like the Iron Banner origin perk could use an effect to make it worthwhile in PvE, and we think this addition is in line with the fantasy of the perk itself. The perk description string will be updated in a future release to reflect the new functionality.
- Now activates in PvE, and makes enemies slightly less accurate in targeting you when active (this is like the effect Manticore has when airborne).
- Target Lock – With the increased magazine sizes on SMGs, keeping this perk in its nerfed state rendered it effectively useless. We will keep an eye on how this perk changes the strength of SMGs in Crucible, and we are interested to see how it performs alongside the multitude of other very strong CQB options that currently exist.
- Removed the custom tuning to make the perk less effective on SMGs.
Exotic Weapons
- Graviton Lance – Graviton Lance is arguably the strongest Primary weapon in the game when viewed across both the PvE and PvP sandboxes. While it is not proving to be too problematic in high-skill Crucible lobbies, it is dominating lower- and middle-skill lobbies to an unhealthy degree, as well as seeing extremely high uptime and potency in all levels of PvE content. As such, it needs to be brought more in line for both sandboxes. One option we considered was bringing down the stats to be closer to other Heavy Burst Pulse Rifles, but that felt like too much of departure from the spirit of the weapon. Instead, we settled on reverting the RPM back to its previous value of 300. In PvE, the RPM reduction will effectively be a small DPS nerf, while in Crucible it will move the weapon back to how it was performing pre-Episode 2.
- Reverted its RPM to 300.
- Malfeasance – This gun feels noticeably different to shoot compared to other 180 Hand Cannons because it was missing some of the intrinsic benefits provided by the Precision perk.
- Added the remaining intrinsic effects from the Precision Hand Cannon perk, including accuracy bonuses and the new ADS movement speed penalty reduction (the airborne effectiveness was already baked into the stats).
Exotic Armor
- Stoicism
- Spirit of Alpha Lupi – The healing impulse was tuned around barricade, which has significantly less uptime than Thruster. Now that Alpha Lupi can work on Thruster, we needed to branch the effect’s strength accordingly.
- Reduced heal impulse when using Thruster to 30 HP that can roll over into shields.
- Spirit of Alpha Lupi – The healing impulse was tuned around barricade, which has significantly less uptime than Thruster. Now that Alpha Lupi can work on Thruster, we needed to branch the effect’s strength accordingly.
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2024-12-16 16:10