Dev Insights: Season 22 Weapons Preview

Happy Wednesday, Guardians! We’ve got a new Dev Insights article dropping in hot today, this time diving deeper into what the world of weapons will look like with Season 22. From the highly coveted Monte Carlo catalyst to overall balancing philosophy, here is a breakdown of what players can look forward to when the next Season drops.

First up, let’s look at balancing:

Weapon Balancing

Hello everyone, Weapons team here with your look forward at Season 22’s weapon's balance pass. But first, something different...

A Look Back at the Mid-Season Balance Pass

This is something we haven't done before, but in the future, we hope we can do it more often. We'd like to take a quick glance back at how the sandbox looked in the couple of weeks leading up to the mid-Season balance pass, and then compare that to how it changed in the weeks following it. Hopefully, this gives you a clearer picture of how things have shaken out and what we may be looking at tuning in the future.

Below, we have a few different charts representing high-skill PvP from the two weeks before patch released, showing usage on the X-axis and kills over expected (a measure of effectiveness we use that shows whether a weapon is over- or under-performing given its usage) on the Y-axis. On the top, we have the all-up combined numbers for the Primary weapon types. You can see that Hand Cannons are slightly edged out in usage by Pulse Rifles but are the most effective weapon type holistically (excluding Vex Mythoclast up in the top left corner [shakes fist]). Underneath that, we have the top 50 weapons broken out individually.

This breakdown shows that Immortal made up a high percentage of not only all Primary weapon kills, but also Submachine Gun (SMG) kills specifically, and the effectiveness was still elevated higher than we would want a weapon that far up on the scale to be. You can also see The Messenger (Adept) elevated to the right, No Time to Explain nearly dead on the line for kills over expected, and Graviton Lance sitting slightly negative. The news that we were going to nerf them preemptively began their moves downwards compared to the chart we showed in the mid-Season preview, as some players began to experiment with other options in preparation for the changes.

Now let's take a look at the charts from the weeks following the patch, again from high-skill PvP.

Note: For those who are curious, the dot just under Jade Rabbit is Shayura's Wrath (Adept), just missing the label.

You can see the difference a few weeks (and the patch) have made. Hand Cannons have moved upwards, while Pulse Rifles and SMGs have both trended downwards overall. Most importantly, there haven’t been any large shifts in effectiveness in either the positive or negative directions, which can potentially come from nerfing (or buffing) things too much and would indicate comparative imbalance between the main Primary weapons.

On the top 50 weapons chart, Immortal (Adept) still reigns supreme for the moment, but the usage has decreased without a corresponding increase in effectiveness. This primes the weapon for our move into Season 22, where its effectiveness will be further impacted by the damage falloff and zoom decoupling. Rose and Ace of Spades have surpassed No Time to Explain and The Messenger (Adept), and while Graviton Lance remains elevated in usage, the near-even effectiveness indicates that it is, at present, no longer a balance concern. You can also continue to see why we have been keeping an eye on Vex Mythoclast, which is wildly effective compared to other Primary weapons.

And here, just for comparison's sake, we have additional charts, this time from all-skill PvP with all Primary weapon types and the top 50 weapons. These charts show there is a solid balance among the mid-range weapons in terms of effectiveness heading into Season 22, with nothing notably out of band.

A couple of interesting things to note: Hand Cannons are comparatively much less effective when we add the lower skill levels back into our analysis (and if we remove high skill from the equation, their effectiveness is negative), and instead the Exotic Auto Rifles  are the ones highest up the chart. This is a good indication that we should keep a close eye on Auto Rifles, especially given most of them will be receiving a buff to range in Season 22. That said, we saw on the high-skill charts that they tend to drop dramatically in effectiveness as you get into the higher skill brackets, where peek shooting and playing cover is ubiquitous.

As always, we will keep our eyes on the numbers and our ears peeled for feedback from the community on how things feel, and we'll be out there playing alongside you. Now, let's get into what you can expect from weapons in Season 22.

Season 22 Weapon Balance Changes

Global

A while back when we made the swap to infinite Primary ammo, it unintentionally generated a bug that caused running double Special weapons to drop Heavy ammo at an increased rate. While we find some applications of double Special to be interesting, particularly builds utilizing Special weapons with custom ammo economies like Trace Rifles and Forerunner, providing a flat-out benefit to ammo was negating the tradeoff of running double Specials.

• PvE kills with two Special weapons equipped now generate Heavy ammo at the same rate as two primaries or one Primary one Special.

Reticles

We are continuing our mission to improve communication behind our hipfire reticles with a few quality-of-life changes.

• Replaced the perk active hipfire reticle element. The new one should work better at different field-of-view settings.
• Added a perk active indicator to Symmetry.
• Moved Grand Overture's charge meter further down the screen to reduce instances of overlapping other reticle elements.

Zoom and Damage Falloff Tuning

In case you missed it in the mid-Season patch, we are making some major changes to the way zoom and damage falloff interact, with three main goals:

1. Decrease the variance between the optimal engagement ranges of our mid-range weapons (Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles, and Hand Cannons) to reduce the instances of one weapon or another being the clearly advantaged choice, based on minor differences in engagement distance.
2. Slightly reduce the average engagement range in Crucible by pulling in the maximum damage falloff distances of many weapons.
3. Prevent individual weapons from overstepping their intended engagement ranges because of the multiplicative scaling zoom provided to damage falloff. This in turn allows us to buff the weapon archetypes themselves, since we no longer must be concerned about the top-end outliers.

To do this, we're going to be enforcing something called Range Compression, where the highest achievable damage falloff range on almost all weapons has been reduced to some extent (certain weapons have been reduced more than others). Then in many cases, the lower edges of their damage falloff ranges have been brought upwards.

Before we jump into that, let’s take a moment to explain what zoom does and how it interacts with damage falloff. Up until Season 22, the zoom stat has always provided four positive benefits when aiming down sights:

1. Scales damage falloff distance.
2. Scales aim assist falloff distance.
3. Increases accuracy.
4. Reduces recoil.

As of Season 22, we have removed the first benefit from that list, so the zoom stat will no longer scale damage falloff distance. (It will still continue to provide the other benefits.) In its place, we now have a new stat called the Aim Down Sights (ADS) Damage Falloff Scalar, which we have applied to all weapons that can experience damage falloff. 

Note: The following goes into deeper detail than some may desire digging into. If you want to go ahead and skip all the numbers mumbo jumbo, feel free to jump down to the Weapon Archetypes section.

Prior to and in Season 21, the ADS damage falloff distance was formulated when you aim down sights by multiplying the base damage falloff distance (the distance at which your weapon experiences damage falloff when hip firing) by the zoom of the weapon. From Season 22 on, the ADS damage falloff distance will be formulated by multiplying the base damage falloff distance by the ADS Damage Falloff Scalar stat value.

Below, you will find a handful of tables that will explain the changes and their effects on the various weapon archetypes. The first table shows the current zoom values for weapons at their base and with Rangefinder in comparison to the new ADS Damage Falloff Scalar value. Below that, we have a comparison with the Season 21 damage falloff start distances (with and without Rangefinder) for all Primary weapons, and then their values in Season 22 with the new changes. Then we also have the comparison data for Special weapons, which have all been tuned to keep them mostly in line with where they are currently, except where it is noted.

We do not expect these values to be final, but we wanted to start the mid-range weapons on a more even footing than they have been in the past. Keep in mind, even with their damage falloff start values being similar, weapons will perform differently once their damage falloff begins. As they currently do in the live game, rifle-style weapons will experience falloff more gradually, while handheld ones will experience it more quickly, but the differences should be much less extreme. In addition, we have also hand tuned a small list of Exotics and all Special weapons with the intention of keeping them near where they are in the live game, as opposed to allowing them to receive substantial buffs or nerfs with these overarching changes, and we’ll share those details below.

• Decoupled damage falloff from zoom.
  • Added a fixed ADS Damage Falloff Scalar to all guns with damage falloff. (In general, this matches the standard zoom value for the weapon type, with some exceptions as seen below bolded.)

Once we chose the new values for the ADS Damage falloff stat for each weapon, we went through and updated the base damage falloff values to fit into the new scheme, thus allowing players who invest into the range stat to offset some of the reduction caused by the loss of higher-than-average zoom.

Range as a stat is much more easily acquired on most weapons than zoom is, so this allows more weapons to get closer to the maximum values that were previously only achievable with high base zoom or Rangefinder, without allowing any of them to reach or exceed what the previous maximums were. In the case of aggressive Hand Cannons, with the base ADS Damage Falloff Scalar moving up to 1.5x, they were far too rangy, so we had to decrease their top end damage falloff a small amount. They still come out positive on the exchange compared to their base behavior before.

• Rebalanced the base damage falloff start on several weapon archetypes to account for the new ADS Damage Falloff Scalar values.
  • Sidearms - Increased at 100 range by 1.2.
  • SMGs - Increased at 0 range by 1.3, increased at 100 range by 0.8.
  • Auto Rifles - Increased at 100 range by 2.5.
  • Aggressive Hand Cannons - Decreased at 100 range by 1.0.
  • Pulse Rifles - Increased at 100 range by 0.5.

ADS Damage Falloff Start Distances in Meters (0 - 100 range stat)

Example of how this works:

• An adaptive Hand Cannon with a range stat of 70 would have previously had its damage falloff start at 31.2m when ADS, or 34.3m if it had Rangefinder.
• Now, regardless of whether it has Rangefinder or not, the damage falloff starts at 33.5m when ADS.

Special Weapons

Custom-Tuned Exotic Ranges

Like the Special weapons above, these have been set to keep the weapons near where they currently are, as opposed to massively buffing or nerfing them with the overarching range tuning.

1. Ace of Spades (when Memento Mori is active) previously had a 10% damage falloff range penalty. This penalty has been increased to 15% (a slight nerf to offset the buff it got in the neutral state).
2. Devil's Ruin (when firing the laser beam) previously had a 20% damage falloff range bonus. This bonus been reduced to 10% (a slight nerf to offset the buff it got in the neutral state).
3. Revision Zero (when Hunter's Trace is active) now has a 4.5x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar.
4. The Last Word now has a 1.1x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar.
5. Crimson now has a 1.3x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar. (It previously had an intrinsic 5% damage falloff range penalty. This has been removed.)
6. Vex Mythoclast  now has a 1.5x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar.
7. Forerunner now has a 2.0x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar.
8. Eriana's Vow now has a 2.4x ADS Damage Falloff Scalar.

Whew, that was a lot of info! If you’re still with us (or you just skipped it all) let's get into the more standard fare for a weapons balance update!

Weapon Archetypes

• Hand Cannons - We have heard the complaints that Hand Cannons feel underpowered in PvE, and we wanted to address that while also giving them a better use case to fit their hard-hitting fantasy. We decided that it made sense for them to be the "big game hunters" of Primary weapons, so we have massively increased the damage they deal to major combatants. Additionally, without investing in reload speed or perks that auto reload, Hand Cannons have often felt too punishing of missed shots or running out of ammo at critical moments. We buffed their baseline reload speed in a way that filters upwards to be a buff for all Hand Cannons (although it’s a smaller buff as you get to higher levels of the stat). We also built a new Hand Cannon subfamily for the first time in a while, adding Heavy Burst to the list of intrinsic traits. Warden's Law will deal increased precision damage, but it comes with the challenge of needing to land two bullets on target instead of one, providing an extra reward for players who have great aim.
  • General
    • Increased reload speed at 0 stat by 15%.
  • PvE Damage
    • Increased damage against minor combatants (red bars) by 20%.
    • Increased damage against major combatants (orange bars) by 75%.
  • Heavy Burst

    • Changed Warden's Law to be the first member of a new sub-family, Heavy Burst

    • Fires a 2-round burst.
• Bows - As we mentioned previously, Bows have had issues with hit registration at longer ranges due to the velocity of the projectiles sometimes preventing them from registering as hitscan. We have increased the base velocity of precision Bows and brought lightweights up to match, which has done wonders for how they feel at a distance. We've also increased the maximum speed that the reload animation can play out, so that reload perks and scalars will continue to have an effect even at high stat levels.
  • General
    • Reduced the minimum reload animation duration from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds. (This means that applying reload speed scalars on top of a high reload stat will still have an effect.)
    • Increased the projectile velocity at full draw so that the projectiles will continue to perform as if they were hitscan at longer distances at higher frame rates.
  • Lightweight Bows
    • Equalized the full draw projectile velocity with precision Bows.
• SMGs - Corrected a longstanding visual bug that prevented the RPM stat from displaying correctly. This does not change the actual RPM of the weapons; they have always fired at 720 RPM.
  • Aggressives
    • Fixed the RPM stat display to correctly show 720 RPM.
• Sidearms - When we changed the range values for Sidearms it became apparent very quickly that aggressives, with their current extremely forgiving body shot time-to-kill (TTK), were far out of band. We have reduced their base damage so that they can no longer kill in three bursts of only body shots, making them less forgiving in exchange for the increased damage falloff distance they received.
  • Aggressives
    • Reduced base damage from 32 to 30.
• Pulse Rifles - The BxR Battler never felt right with its zoom not at 20. Now that it will no longer be a balance concern in terms of engagement ranges, the time has come to put it back to where it belongs.
  • BxR Battler
    • Increased zoom back to 20.
• Shotguns - Fixed a visual bug that was causing the impact stat to display incorrectly. This is cosmetic only; damage per pellet is unchanged.
  • General
    • Fixed the impact stat on The Comedian.
• Fusion Rifles - Players have noted that the Enhanced Intrinsic perks and Adept Masterworks felt like they were making their fusions worse by reducing the damage per bolt. We made a change to prevent that from happening, and allow those alterations to strictly improve the weapons, as intended.
  • General
    • Fixed an issue where Adept Masterworks and Enhanced Intrinsic perks were decreasing the damage dealt by fusions when they changed the charge time stat.
• Wave Frame Heavy Grenade Launchers - It always feels bad to kill yourself with a slightly misplaced Heavy shot, so we have reduced the lethality of these weapons to the user, so that you can be a little bit less careful when using them.
  • General
    • The size and damage of the self-damage AOE is now reduced.
    • This should make it much safer to fire the projectile closer to your feet.
• Swords - At present, Swords don't hold much value to players because, although they excel in ease of use and are ammo-rich, they require users to put themselves directly in harm's way. Sword guard could mitigate this, but the guard's duration is difficult to predict with incoming fire and disables the Sword's primary means of offense, the full-charge heavy attack. The guard also mitigates a very small amount of damage when compared with our other existing defensive option, the Glaive. Further, while numerous sword-guard-related perks are already in place within the game, they don't see much play. So, we decided to undertake a rework with the aim to increase the viability of blocking to advance on enemies, increase the value of sword-guard-related perks, as well as allow guardians to use their fully charged heavy attacks more often. Our intent is that Swords now occupy a niche where they provide both better staying power and survival.
  • Sword Guard
    • Energy now recharges after a short delay when used, but recharges much faster.
      • The delay before recharge and the recharge rate are both governed by the guard charge rate stat.
      • This delay ranges between 2.7 seconds and 1.05 seconds, decreasing with charge rate stat.
      • We’ve massively increased the rate energy returns after the delay to compensate, and they increase even more at higher charge rate stats. Even after the delay, Swords now return to full energy from empty faster than before this rework.
    • Full-power heavy attacks can now be used with any nonzero amount of Sword energy, rather than requiring full Sword energy.
    • We massively increased Sword guard damage resistance, >giving it between 82.5% and 95% damage reduction, depending on guard resistance stat.
      • This damage resistance value is sharply reduced against other players, like Glaives. Then it provides between 52.5% and 65% damage reduction, depending on guard resistance stat.
    • Sword guard no longer loses energy when taking damage.
      • As a result of the above, guard efficiency has been removed as a stat.
    • Sword guard duration is now increased across every guard type, with those with shortest durations benefiting most.
    • Sword guard talent nodes have had their stats squished down.
      • Combined with the above, even though their stats have been reduced, their damage reduction, charge rates, and guard durations are now increased across the board.
      • This allows origin traits and other Sword perks more room to increase these stats and allow performance beyond their previous maximum.
    • Sword guard talent nodes now visually affect the "charge rate" bar on the inspection screen when you hover over or select them, similar to other stat-affecting nodes.
    • Sword movement speed while blocking has increased from a 0.75x multiplier to 0.85x multiplier.
    • The Lament Exotic Sword has been special-cased so its charge rate and delay are unaffected, but it still benefits from the increased guard damage reduction and duration.

Exotic Weapons

• Monte Carlo - We finally did it. It was mechanically the most complex catalyst we have ever done, requiring a host of custom animation work and a lot of things we have never done on a weapon before, but we hope you enjoy it!

• Quicksilver Storm – Players have been reporting that it felt like the ammo was not being loaded into Quicksilver Storm at the correct time. We investigated and discovered a misalignment with the animation and the ammo loading that has been corrected.
  • Fixed an issue where ammo was loading into Quicksilver Storm slightly too late in the reload animation.
• Dead Man's Tale
  • Fixed the displayed impact stat. This is cosmetic only. Damage per bullet is unchanged.
• Two-Tailed Fox - Reworked the catalyst perk, Third Tail. The performance of this weapon was just a little bit off, so we have changed it to fire the third rocket following the second rocket instead of at the same time, which helps it lean harder into the Three Tails fantasy.
  • Two-Tailed Fox now fires a three-shot burst with the catalyst, instead of firing three rockets in a two-shot burst.

• Verglas Curve - We have fixed an issue where, if Whisper of Fissures gets the kill, it does not count for Hail Barrage stacks. We've also buffed the weapons performance in PvP when using Hail Barrage. 
  • Whisper of Fissures detonations now generate Hail Barrage stacks if the Stasis crystal was created by this weapon.
  • Shiver Quiver now activates when slowing enemies.
  • We increased the slow stacks from 40 to 60 when hitting players directly with Hail Barrage arrows. This allows for a freeze if two Hail Barrage arrows hit the same player.
• Le Monarque - Lemon has long been a thorn in the side of many high-end PvP players The massive chunk damage hit hard, and the long damage-over-time (DoT) duration kept you out of the fight for what felt like an eternity. We have decided to address both facets of this problem at the same time by shifting Lemon to use the same damage profile as a lightweight Bow. It now deals 85 damage on impact to the body and 136 to the head against players. We have also reduced the DoT duration from 3 seconds down to 1.75 seconds, which makes it feel significantly less painful to be hit by this weapon. The DoT deals the same total damage as before against players, divided into 6 ticks instead of 8, but we have increased the DoT damage in PvE by 50%. In PvE, this should result in a slight DPS increase, with the reduced impact damage being offset by the faster draw time and the increased DoT.
  • Reduced draw time from 684ms to 612ms.
  • Reduced body shot damage from 100 to 85.
  • Increased critical hit multiplier from 1.5x to 1.6x (crit damage against players goes from 150 to 136).
  • Changed the poison DoT effect.
    • Reduced poison DoT duration from 3 seconds to 1.75 seconds.
    • Moved from 8 damage ticks to 6, but poison deals the same total damage to players.
    • Poison damage increased in PvE by 50%.
• Vex Mythoclast - Vex Mythoclast has been very, very strong in PvP for some time, having secretly benefitted from a number of buffs to Auto Rifles that have increased its usability. With Auto Rifles getting another bump to range in Season 22, we felt that Vex had been pushed up a notch too far in our playtests. We reduced the RPM from 390 to 360 to match other Auto Rifles in its subfamily. At the same time, we wanted to make sure this was not a DPS decrease in PvE, so we have increased its damage to compensate.
  • RPM reduced from 390 to 360 to match other high-impact Auto Rifles.
  • Increased damage against minor combatants (red bars) and major combatants (orange bars) by 25%.
• Tommy's Matchbook - The previous setup wasn't working as expected, so the new behavior gives the same end-result but front-loads more scorch onto the base behavior.
  • Updated Scorch value
    • It was previously 14 + 7 (with the Ember of Ashes fragment equipped). Now it’s 15 + 5.
• Touch of Malice - Touch of Malice is a strong weapon, but the usability of the gun was just too low in any content where it mattered. This was due in large part to how easy it was to unintentionally kill yourself. When we brought back Touch of Malice, we increased the amount of self-damage the final round dealt to the user because there are far more ways to self-heal in Destiny 2 than there were when the gun originally made its appearance in Destiny 1. But we believe we may have gone too far. To make it up to you, the final round now deals 20% additional damage in PvE. Additionally, we have reduced the damage it deals to the user, and it can no longer kill the user. This isn't to say that you can't die when you're at low health, but the weapon itself will not be the thing that kills you. (It will just hold you at 1 HP if you continue to fire it for too long.) We also set up the Touch of Malice perk to be a lot more useful and easier to activate, and we have fixed the ball of Darkness to correctly deal arc damage, blinding PvE combatants.
  • Increased final round damage in PvE by 20%.
  • Decreased the self-damage from the final round from 10 to 7.
  • Final round damage can no longer kill the user.
  • Increased the health awarded by the Touch of Malice perk from 30 to 75.
  • Set up Touch of Malice to work like Unrelenting. (Guardians and major combatants give more points towards activation, and we increased the time allowed between kills.)
  • Ball of Darkness now appropriately deals Arc damage and will blind combatants and stun Unstoppable Champions.
• Malfeasance - Malfeasance does a lot, and we wanted to make sure you knew when you were getting the effects of the catalyst.
  • Fixed an issue where the Vorpal Weapon catalyst wasn't displaying the status buff text.
• Cloudstrike - Cloudstrike has been a very strong weapon flying under the radar for quite some time. Recently it has become more prevalent, but getting killed by the explosion because your semi-nearby teammate chose the wrong lane to peek feels bad. We want to maintain the Exotic fantasy of the weapon and the core strength, but we felt the actual lethal distance itself could come down a bit. Players within the radius will still take damage, so in the hands of a skilled player, the weapon will still be a highly effective tool. But now you'll be much less likely to die if you aren't within a much smaller radius of your teammate when they get killed.
  • Reduced the lethal kill distance of the lightning strike against players.
• Wicked Implement - We took a conservative approach with this Scout Rifle out of the gate. We wanted to avoid creating a lousy experience for those on the receiving end of a long-range Primary weapon with the ability to slow targets in PvP. Now that it's spent some time in the live game, we can give its intrinsic perk more uptime by making it easier to keep active. We also improved its utility by providing more opportunities to generate Stasis shards. With Headstone added to the catalyst and the ability to create tracking shards from destroying Stasis crystals, you can keep your mag full and your powered melee up more easily. Shard generation will continue to have a brief cooldown, as with all other shard sources.
  • The timing window for Creeping Attrition has been increased from 3.5 seconds to 4.5 seconds.
  • You can now also active Tithing Harvest by destroying Stasis crystals.
  • The Wicked Implement Exotic catalyst now also includes the Headstone perk.

Perks

• Bipod - We were a little over-cautious when we made this perk. We wanted to see how people were able to combine it with other perks and effects in the wild to improve their DPS. After reviewing, we believe we can safely reduce the damage penalty by a substantial amount.
  • Reduced the damage penalty from 40% to 25%.
• Envious Assassin - This is already a strong perk, but the mental overhead of remembering to swap to your weapon before the invisible time limit expired—combined with it no longer working once your magazine was overflowed by any amount—made it slightly less fun to use than was originally intended. We've made some changes that should retain all the strength of the perk,while also making it less cumbersome to utilize in combat.
  • There is no longer a time limit after kills within which you must activate the perk or get another kill.
  • The perk will now activate even if the magazine is overflowed. (It will stop activating once you hit maximum magazine size of 2.5x or greater.)
  • Enhanced Envious Assassin now provides fractionally more ammo per kill, instead of a longer window of time after a kill.
• Under-Over -  Under-Over was a little too niche for its own good.  It was strong, but opportunities to utilize the perk were too few and far between. To address this, we have increased the already existing damage bonus and added two more. We hope that the perk can find more of a place in endgame PvE builds, particularly for activities which feature Dark Cabal and Lucent Moths.
  • Now provides bonus body shot damage against players with Woven Mail.
  • Increased the bonus damage against combatant shields.
  • Deals significantly increased damage to enemies who are enhanced by Dark Cabal overshields in addition to enemies shielded by Lucent Moths.
• Under Pressure - Under Pressure has long been a perk that offers a lot of upside reward for comparatively little risk in PvP, as it often triggers neutrally during combat and sees nearly 100% uptime on Special ammo weapons. (It is especially potent on Fusion Rifles.) As such, we have reduced the maximum accuracy bonus that can be granted by Under Pressure, while allowing it to retain the full strength of the stability bonus.
  • Reduced the maximum accuracy cone scalar from 0.5 to 0.75.
• Shoot to Loot - It seemed a shame that pairing Shoot to Loot with perks like Explosive Payload and Kinetic Tremors didn't allow the splash damage to interact with orb collecting—so we did some custom tuning behind the scenes to make it happen! We also removed an unintended interaction that allows Shoot to Loot to continuously grant ammo to overflowed magazines... without actually consuming the ammo brick on the ground.
  • No longer triggers the reload when shooting a Special brick that could not be picked up while also having an overflowed weapon equipped.
  • Explosive damage now interacts with Orbs of Power.
• Valiant Charge - This perk now deactivates as intended after a single swing. 
  • Perk now deactivates after the initial Sword swing.
• Ambush - There were certain unintended damage impulses that were causing the Ambush origin trait to deactivate, so we excluded those from the list of potential triggers.
  • No longer deactivates from healing, fall damage, or being shot by allies.
• Explosive Light – There's no more free explosive damage, but don’t worry, there are more than enough Orbs of Power to go around.
  • Fixed a bug where the enhanced version of the perk was granting two stacks on the initial Orb pickup.
• Chill Clip - Chill Clip has been something of a must-have multi-tool, and it was a little too easy to deal with all three types of Champions at once. We have made it slightly more difficult to get the full freeze effect, which should move it back to being closer in line with other perk options.
  • Reduced the slow stacks from 60 to 40.
  • Wolfpack Rounds no longer trigger this perk.

To Craft or Not to Craft: Here’s What’s Changing

Weapon crafting is a large part of Destiny 2, and with a new Season on the horizon, we’ve got a few things to look forward to. From changes to how weapon progression works to overall crafting economic changes, here’s a brief overview of what types of changes are coming down the pipeline for Season 22.

Weapon progression earning, what’s changing?

While Shuro Chi-style weapon level farming is not ideal, instead of nerfing that type of behavior and taking the option away from players, we've decided to buff the weapon level progression obtained through more meaningful methods like activity completions and PvP kills. We’re also adding a currency-driven method of directly advancing a weapon's level.

Since the opportunities to get kills in PvP is far lower than what is possible in PvE, we will be increasing the amount of progression earned by defeating Guardians in PvP activities beginning with Season 22.

We’re boosting activity completion progression across several activity types:

• Crucible
• Trials of Osiris
• Dares of Eternity
• Wellspring
• Gambit
• Platinum score completions of Legend and Master Solo Lost Sectors

We’re also adding the capability for progress that exceeds the current level to rollover to the next level.

• This issue has been a prominent talking point when looking at crafting for a while because of the way weapon level progression functions. Due to the necessity to store weapon level and progress on each individual weapon, the weapon leveling system could not be set up in a similar fashion to how the Season Pass level works or how character level worked in the past. The system we're currently using can be a bit… fragile—it was a key part in the Revision Zero API mishaps that occurred in the Season of the Seraph.  
• Due to the risks and some technical gremlins, we deprioritized this work in favor of the Deepsight changes we made in Seasons 20 and 21; however, you'll finally be getting this rollover behavior in Season 22!
• As a result of this rollover change, weapon leveling through completing activities should see a large overall increase in efficacy, not just limited to the specific activity types we're explicitly modifying for Season 22.

To round out the weapon progression changes, we're also adding the capability to directly increase a weapon's level through currency expenditure:

• Crafted and enhanced weapons will both receive a new mod slot in their weapon details, where you can spend Glimmer and Enhancement Cores to boost the level of the weapon. This mod will increase the weapon's level directly, leaving your existing progress towards the next level untouched.
• While there is no cap to how far you can boost the weapon's level to, the costs of this boosting will increase relative to the level of the weapon.
• Weapon usage is meant to be the main path for increasing a weapon’s level. However, with the restrictions of how many weapons you can level at a time and the always increasing expansion to the amount of weapons that have a level, we wanted to provide an alternative method of leveling that allows for both the jumpstarting of a crafted weapon and also the ability to level a larger amount of weapons stockpiled in your inventory. We do not want the level boosting costs to feel prohibitive. However, we do want players to have to make choices over which weapons they want to boost.

Crafting economy changes

Another change we are making is that Resonant and Harmonic Alloys will be deprecated as a required material and will no longer be obtained during a dismantle starting in Season 22. We are planning on removing these materials entirely from the game at some point in the future, but until then, your remaining materials will be available to be exchanged for Glimmer at Rahool in the Tower. Tell him “hi” for us.

Neomuna weapon pattern acquisition

While there have been modifications to the reward behavior of these weapons, the changes haven't had the desired impact and the weapon patterns remain elusive, even for those that are highly engaged.

In Season 22, we'll be making some additional changes to help tackle the scarcity problem:

• The Neomuna weekly pinnacle story mission score challenge will provide guaranteed Neomuna weapon pattern progress the first time it is completed each week.
• The Neomuna vendor engram upgrade will increase the drop chance of Deepsight Neomuna weapons. This is retroactive if you have already claimed the vendor upgrade.
• The Throne World vendor engram upgrade will also receive the same behavior for the Throne World Deepsight weapons, and again this will be retroactive.
• Season 22 will also include a bug fix in the underlying Deepsight drop system that manifested from the major overhaul we did for Lightfall. This bug could decrease the Deepsight drop rate as you neared the completion of a pattern set. Although this Deepsight bug on its own would normally have a low impact on Deepsight behavior, the problem was exacerbated when coupled with the lack of deterministic Deepsight sources for Neomuna weapons.

While we believe crafting is more in line with our original vision since the launch The Witch Queen, we're still making necessary changes to the system and are in the middle of developing a large crafting-related feature targeted for The Final Shape year. We'll provide more details about these upcoming changes after they've spent a bit more time in the oven. We’re excited to share more!

And that’s a wrap on our latest developer insights entry. We hope you enjoyed the information shared, and we can’t wait to share even more of what’s on the horizon with our Showcase on August 22! (And please, for the love of the Traveler, please send us those epic clips of Monte Carlo in action. We’re very excited to see what sort of chaos ensues.)

Have any thoughts about what’s been discussed thus far? Be sure to hit us up over on Twitter @Destiny2Team and our Feedback Forums right here.