This Week At Bungie – 5/21/2020

Decrypting the Future

Today we’re going to talk about some changes that are coming in Season 11 to the way the world loot pool works.  Because the world pool serves as a baseline of legendary gear that can be earned across different activities, we want to update and refresh it seasonally with meta relevant weapons, some of which were previously exclusive to specific activities like Gambit or Crucible. 

This shared pool can also be unwieldy -- if you're looking for a specific roll of a specific weapon, a pool too large can make it statistically challenging to find, much less with the roll you want. Starting in Season 11, it will be curated both for relevance and overall size, to strike a balance between number of rewards and the chance to get a sought-after drop. Every season gear from previous seasons will be added, and any gear that would no longer have a Max Power Level greater than or equal to the current Season cap will be cycled out to ensure that drops are Power relevant in the current Season. 

The World Pool for Season 11 will consist of the following weapons: 

• Uriel's Gift 
• Elatha FR4 
• The Old Fashioned 
• Mos Epoch III 
• Hawthorne's Field-Forged Shotgun 
• Last Hope 
• Timelines' Vertex 
• Interference VI 
• Dire Promise 
• True Prophecy 
• Jian 7 Rifle 
• Enigma's Draw 
• Distant Tumulus 
• Escape Velocity 
• Honor's Edge 
• Gnawing Hunger 
• Arsenic Bite-4b 
• Main Ingredient 
• Outrageous Fortune 
• Truthteller 
• Nature of the Beast 
• Last Perdition 
• Bad Omens 
• Night Watch 
• Toil and Trouble 
• Wishbringer 
• Last Dance 
• Lonesome 
• Long Shadow 
• Steel Sybil Z-14

If you still need a weapon or weapon roll from the current Vanguard, Crucible, or Gambit playlists that isn’t on that list, go grab it now! 

Lock and Reload

Reload Perk Updates 

We’ve observed that players lean towards picking perks that increase their damage (e.g. Kill Clip) or reduce weapon downtime (e.g. Outlaw). 

The damage perks were adjusted quite a while back, but reload perks still don’t feel like choices. This tuning pass aims to keep them feeling powerful without being so dominant that no other choices seem viable. 

First, some information on the stats that impact reload: 

• Reload Stat: 0-100, and maps onto an archetype-specific reload animation speed. 
• Reload Duration Scale: Most reload perks also apply a small multiplier to the reload animation, so that if reload stat is capped, you still see a small speed bump.
• Reload Empty Duration Scale: As above, but only applies if the magazine is empty.

Note that because most weapons have fairly high reload stats, decreasing a reload stat bonus from +100 to +50 will still max out the reload stat most of the time, and so doesn’t slow down the actual reload as much as it seems. 

The following perks that alter these reload stats are being updated: 

• Outlaw – Slowed this down a little bit. 
• Reload stat from +100 to +50.
• Reload Duration Scale from 0.8 to 0.9.
• Feeding Frenzy – This was strictly better than Outlaw, so we’re changing functionality to be based on number of rapid kills.
• Functionality changed to increase reload speed based on number of rapid kills, up to 5.
• With 2 kills, reload speed is equal to updated Outlaw. 
• With 3+ kills, is faster than Outlaw. 
• With 4+ kills, is the fastest reload in the game (except Alloy Mag). 
• Max possible reload duration scale from 0.83 to 0.8.
• Max possible reload stat unchanged at +100.
• Rapid Hit – Gave a huge amount of reload and stability for very little work, front-loaded onto the first precision hit. We have updated it so that it still feels good, but isn’t quite as powerful.
• Adjusted stacking bonus to give less benefit for the first hit and more with subsequent hits.
• Max possible reload stat from +100 to +60.
• Max possible reload duration scale from 0.8 to 0.925.
• Max possible stability stat from +50 to +25.
• Drop Mag – Situationally really powerful without a massive drawback, as good as a perk, but in a magazine column. 
• Reload duration scale from 0.85 to 0.9 (just brings it in line with Outlaw).
• Field Prep – Unchanged, but for reference:
• Reload stat +50.
• Reload duration scale 0.8.
• Alloy Mag – Unchanged, but for reference: 
• Reload empty duration scale 0.6666.

Additionally, we’re fixing an issue where perks that grant partial weapon ammo did not respect shot count for burst weapons. This means that these perks will now work correctly on Pulse Rifles, Fusion Rifles, and Burst Sidearms, so these perks will be more common on those weapon archetypes in the future:

• Slideways  
• Slideshot  
• Ambitious Assassin  
• Subsistence  
• Overflow  
• Lead from Gold  
• Clown Cartridge  

General Perk Retuning 

With opening up space by adjusting reload perks, we also retuned some other, underused perks, based on our internal testing and perk popularity and effectiveness data from our internal analytics. 

• Dynamic Sway Reduction -- Adds 10 Stability over time in addition to accuracy (this is way more powerful than it sounds).
• Reduced reticle movement from Stability should now tell players this is working. 
• Pulse Monitor -- Take critical damage and you can quickly switch to your now-fully loaded Shotgun!
• Reload amount from 0.35 to 1.0.
• +50 Handling.
• 5% faster swap speed.
• This works on stowed weapons too, which was already the case but makes it a lot more useful.
• Hipfire Grip -- Now helps you hit shots closer to ADS ranges, still doesn't affect damage dropoff or magnetism.
• 1.2x aim assist falloff.
• +15 aim assist.
• +1.7 degrees precision hip fire angle threshold.
• By default, when hip-firing a weapon, the center of your reticle must be over a target in order to get a crit, otherwise aim assist will give you a body shot. This change gives you a little leniency, so if the center of your reticle is not directly over a target you will still get the crit if you’re within this angle.
• Has no effect on Sniper Rifles. 
• Sneak Bow -- Actually makes you sneaky now. Stealth buff! 
• Now doesn't ping radar when shooting. 

New Perks

Next Season, we’ll have new perks rolling exclusively on the Season of [REDACTED] weapons. Additionally, Iron Banner will be receiving two new perks on two reprised weapons. In future Seasons, these perks will begin to roll on other weapons.

While we don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering and testing new perks, we will leave you with the names of upcoming Iron Banner perks: Iron Grip and Iron Gaze. We are excited to see the community break these perks down when the new Season begins.

Upcoming Archetype Buffs 

Next Season, we’re taking a quick pass on a few weapon archetypes that have been underperforming.

• Slug Shotguns are underused in PvE, because they require crits to maximize damage, and didn’t reward that precision with higher damage per second.
• Slug Shotgun PvE Damage + 30%.
• High-Impact Pulse Rifles are underused in Crucible. While they have a very fast optimal TTK, that TTK was very hard to achieve, so we decided to soften that a little. 
• High-Impact Pulse Rifle damage per bullet from 21 to 22. This changes it from 6 crits to 5 crits/1 body to kill a Guardian in PvP at most Resilience values. 
• In analytics we see Bows are underused in challenging content, and locally we’ve observed that it feels terrible when a Bow leaves a red bar enemy at low health. 
• Bow PvE damage VS minors + 10%.

Future Archetype Updates 

We’ve been evaluating feedback and our analytics data, and while we’re not done yet, we wanted to touch on three community pain points. Our current goal is to touch on these in Season 12, but we’ll be sure to let you know if plans change. 

• Sniper Rifles – Community feedback has been that Revoker and Beloved dominate, and looking at analytics they account for 86% of Sniper Rifle usage in the Crucible – and if we include other low-zoom Sniper Rifles, the number gets even higher.
• We’re specifically looking at how zoom translates into ease-of-use for Sniper Rifles. We’re investigating changes that make choosing a Sniper Rifle zoom more of an interesting choice. 
• Hand Cannons – We’re evaluating the Hand Cannon subfamilies.
• As an example, we’re breaking out Aggressive Hand Cannons to let us tune their range independently of the others.
• Adaptive Auto Rifles – Auto Rifles in general are highly represented in Crucible, but generally feel balanced. Adaptive Auto Rifles are a little higher, so we’re looking at them. 
• We’re not rolling back the Season 10 buff, but we’re adjusting the tuning a little to give other Auto Rifle subfamilies a chance to shine. 

Moving forward, we plan to make more regular weapon balance changes, we’ll have more to share on cadence and scope later.

In the know

HOTFIX 2.8.1.3

Earlier today, May 21, Hotfix 2.8.1.3 was released to players. This hotfix was designed to resolve the issue with “The Lie” quest not progressing, and the bunker door should now open as expected.

As a result of today's hotfix, the Felwinter's Lie Shotgun will not appear in player Collections once acquired. This will be resolved in a future update.

If players are continuing to observe issues with the quest “The Lie”, please report them to the #Help Forum.

ITEMS LEAVING AT END OF SEASON

As the end of Season of the Worthy approaches, several items will be removed from Destiny 2 on June 9, 2020, at the weekly reset. Some of the items leaving at the end of the season include:

• Access to the Seraph bunkers on the EDZ, Moon, and Io.
• Warmind bits.
• 4th Horseman Exotic quest.
• The Lie quest.
• Legendary Lost Sectors.
• The Warmind Khanjali Seasonal Artifact.

For a comprehensive list of items, please visit our article on items leaving at the end of Season of the Worthy.

CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• We are continuing to monitor increases in BEETLE, RABBIT, BEAVER, and ANTEATER error codes. 
• Some players still have the Guardian Games milestone visible on their characters.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

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