2025 sees the first major update for Destiny 2, following the onset of Act 3 of Revenant. Towards the end of last year, Bungie unveiled a mix of enhancements and adjustments that will be incorporated in this update, and they’ve just announced a long-awaited solution. Here are the early details for Destiny 2 Patch 8.1.5.3, including the scheduled time for when the balance tweaks and fixes will be implemented.
Early Destiny 2 update 8.1.5.3 patch notes
Currently, details about the complete patch notes for Destiny 2’s update 8.1.5.3 are yet to be disclosed, but it has been confirmed that Bungie is working on a fix and some adjustments to weapon balances.
According to the official BungieHelp X account, Bungie is working on a solution to tackle the Guitar-related issues that have been popping up in Pale Heart, Neomuna, and the Dreaming City. They’re optimistic that this fix will clear up many of the problems players have been encountering, but they’ll keep an eye on things because Guitar errors can stem from various underlying causes.
In the last blog post of 2024, details about the adjustments (buffs and nerfs) for update 8.1.5.3 were disclosed along with the announcement of a previously unmentioned fix in the same update.
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.
Destiny 2 update 8.1.5.3 release time
The scheduled release time for the Destiny 2 Update 8.1.5.3 patch has been set for 9 AM Pacific Time (PT), which is equivalent to 12 Midnight Eastern Time (ET) and 5 PM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), on January 14th. This information was confirmed by Bungie through their game’s server update and status webpage.
Hey there fellow gamers! Just a heads up from Bungie: The Destiny 2 API will be going offline at 7:45AM PT/10:45AM ET/2:45PM GMT. During this time, you might find yourself in a queue when the update drops because they’re still doing some background maintenance. Don’t worry, everything should wrap up by 11AM PT/1PM ET/7PM GMT. If you’re having trouble downloading Update 8.1.5.3 on your console, just restart your device and try again. Happy gaming!
We’ll revise this article once Bungie releases the patch notes for Destiny 2 update 8.1.5.3. This is the first major update of the year, according to their 2025 roadmap, and it will be followed closely by Bungie’s annual Game2Give charity event. There have been leaks about an impressive cel-shader for this fundraiser.
To learn about future updates for Destiny 2, take a look at the 2025 plan and the recently leaked cel-shaded armor, which marks the upcoming revival of Bungie’s annual charity event, Game2Give.
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2025-01-14 13:40