Bungie’s weekly blog post about what’s going on in the studio is important reading for Destiny 2 gamers, so much so that several YouTube creators are preoccupied with just reading things up. Tonight they are going on a long shift, for the latest edition is one jokker. This week’s handover breaks down a number of changes to the way airborne combat works, details of significant inbound weapon-fine adjustments, and nerves / buffers a lot of weapon sheet types and specific exotic items. It runs up to almost 9,000 words and is very much a juicer in the language of young people.
For very obvious reasons, I will not list all the changes – most of which will go live next season – but here are six highlights that stood out to me:
1. Airborne matches get a total rework
1,200 words are devoted to this topic alone, so it’s hard to sum up, but tl; dr is that all weapons get a new (hidden) statistic called “Airborne Effectiveness”, which will affect how reliable they are when fired in the air. Note that there have traditionally been significant penalties for using your weapon when jumping. My understanding is that this is because in very early playtests, Destiny 2’s potent jumping abilities led to players spending a disproportionate amount of time in the air. At any rate, for those of you – hello hunters – who still love to take a trampoline-style approach to combat, you will now be able to specify it accordingly.
Bungie, however, slipped a very remarkable nerve into this section. Airborne Effectiveness will also now be altered by certain pieces of exotic armor. From season 17 St0mp-EE5 will give a huge -50 hit to the airborne effectiveness of any weapon. These boots, which provide higher jumps, have been stapled to most hunters’ feet in PvP, so it’s a big and many will say due change. Especially like every other exotic listed gives a buff – for example Ophidian Aspect is +10 for all weapons, Peacekeeping is +40 for SMGs and so on. Expect the hunter to tear to pieces r / DestinyTheGame to be biblical.
Do not forget that stompees increase the sprint speed and gliding distance. Understand the conflict here – do I jump and miss goal assistance? We hope players use this as a mobility tool to get around the map, rather than part of every single PvP engagement to force air combat.April 21, 2022
2) Trace Rifles gets another (big) buff
Bungie noted that in hard PvE content, other than Divinity, Trace Rifles does not see much use. Therefore, they all get a damage buffer of 20% against non-minor enemies, in addition to the previous buff they received against rank-and-file (ie red bar) enemies. In addition, the exotic Cold heart, Prometheus lens, and Wave splitter everyone gets finishing work. For example, Coldheart will now create Ionic Traces that charge your abilities.
3) A lot of other exotic weapons get spicy buffs
Graviton Lance is already nut with Volatile Rounds perk added with Void 3.0, but apparently not nuts enough. Its catalyst will now provide Vorpal weapons and Turnabout perks instead of Hidden Hand. Another invalid weapon, Le Monarque, will now inflict 50% more poison tick damage against AI enemies, but the cross has been toned down against players. Speaking of buer, Leviathan’s breathing‘s version of Archer’s Tempo is being improved, and a delay is added so the arrow can shock Unstoppable Champions before delivering the majority of its damage, which is also polished by ~ 50%. It should hit hard now. Huckleberry gets added some range, The eyes of tomorrow gets 30% damage buffer vs bosses, and Fighting Lion gets fiddled with again.
4) Arbalest, Lorentz Driver and Renewal Grasps will all eat big nerves
To the surprise of no one who has played the playoffs PvE, Bungie will try to tone down Arbalest‘s ubiquitous. It will now deal 25% less damage against the Champions, but still break the barrier shields in a single hit. Honestly, I still think it will be a must for content with the Match Game modifier (which I personally am very much over, but that’s a story for another day). Another linear fusion rifle in the firing line, but this time for PvP dominance, is Lorentz driver. Its bodily injury to players is curbed by 20%.
Bungie also mentioned that a hotfix coming next week will see Hunter’s Renewal grip nervous. The Duskfield Grenades will now take 152 seconds to charge (up from 62) while wearing gloves. The damage reduction on enemy players will now drop from 50% to 20%, but remain unchanged in PvE. It’s a shame you will not be able to throw so many ‘nades in PvE as a result, but spam in PvP was insane, so this is not a surprise either.
Virtually unloved since their Forsaken heyday, all LMGs get a huge 40% damage against most enemies. This will be reduced to 20% compared to bosses, to prevent the archetype from becoming too much of an expert thanks to their range and ample ammunition. The exotic Xenophage and Large opening will get the basic buff but not the boss. Xeno also gets its previous RPM change returned, while Grand Overture’s all-four missile is adjusted (so hopefully it will not feel so rough). There is no mention of whether other exotic LMGs like Heir Apparent or Thunderlord get the basic buff, but I would assume so.
6) People can actually use the exotic glaives
It is fair to say that the exotic glaives introduced by The Witch Queen have been whistling hard. I have kept writing about what’s wrong with them because I was expecting a major overhaul, and here it is: Titan’s exotic glaives bubble will now give a Void shield, Warlock’s healing tower will more often fire faster projectiles, and the hunter arc wave gets its damage tripled and will link to more enemies. These are big changes, but whether they are enough to offset the fact that you need to use the glaive’s shield less – the shield is the best part of equipping a glaive – remains to be seen. There is a lot of further talk about how glaive perks work and their design philosophy, and if you are a glaive enjoyer, that seems to be pretty good news.
Bungie also noted that it’s cutting back on cheesy one-hit kills in PvP that rely on damage buffers like Inertia Override and Empowering Rift, but I was surprised to see no mention of the Titan Sunspots or Lorely Splendor helmet , which generates them as needed. The community manager who wrote the leviathan of patch post clarified as follows:
Do not have the statistics at hand, but they will also be toned down to reduce 1-shots. And to be clear – lorely will be treated in S17!April 21, 2022
There’s plenty more on the blog that you would expect from a blog post as far as my college dissertation, including remakes of the Shotgun and Fusion Rifle archetypes, complete removal of PvP Scavenger mods, and perks adjustments, including Snapshot Sights , Full Choke and Desperado. But we are already far out in the weeds.
A colleague of mine asked me how Bungie could even have so much to say about a game that is now in its seventh year of life. The answer is that I do not think there is a single shooter with such a complicated sandbox of weapons, abilities and perks that all interact with each other. By my count, Destiny 2 has 18 weapon sheet types, ranging from the obvious (handguns and car rifles) to the more esoteric (bows and glaives). And each of these has several subfamilies.
Start including perks and gameplay features, and it’s an incredible amount of moving parts that require balancing across divergent modes. The fact that society is getting excited enough to justify this kind of granular navel-gazing – there are several graphs here – actually speaks to how healthy the sandbox side of the game is.
If you are aware of a longer balance sheet item, please let me know in the comments for archiving purposes.