This Week At Bungie – 7/01/2021

FateBreakers 

Beginning Tuesday, July 6, Vault of Glass Master difficulty will become available to all players. 

Shifting Sands – Mid-Season Sandbox Update 

Chris: Hey all, Chris here. I’d first like to set some expectations. Normally we wouldn't make large changes in a mid-Season patch, but with a handful of weapons sucking all the air out of the room, we decided to bring some changes originally planned for Season 15 into next week’s update. We'll follow this up with a big set of changes in Season 15. Moving these changes up to Season of the Splicer also gives us the option of doing some reactive tuning in Season 15’s mid-Season patch. All in all, we'll continue to make changes outside of Seasonal updates when we can, but they won't typically be this large or numerous. 

So, without further ado, the big-ticket items for PvP are (no surprises) Shotguns, 120 RPM Aggressive Hand Cannons and Dead Man's Tale. Combined, these dominate all forms of PvP, particularly Trials. We’ve also been getting large amounts of feedback about Special weapon usage in the Crucible, and this will be a first step towards addressing these player concerns. 

Ok, we can’t forget about Sleeper Simulant in PvE too. 

Intended Special Weapon Roles in PvP 

Most Special weapons should have one situation where they're a dominant choice - if caught outside of this you should be at a disadvantage.  

Moving towards these roles is a work in progress, some weapons are not where we want them to be, and we've made some changes in Season of the Splicer that we expect to need more adjustments later on.  

Note that Special ammo abundance in PvP distorts these roles, allowing play that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, and is something we’re looking to address. 

Here are the roles we intend each Special weapon to fill: 

• Sniper Rifles - Engaging at long range, with aiming skill, when not already under fire. 
• Shotguns - Engaging at point blank range, using skill at movement or positioning to get close enough to get a one- or two-hit elimination. 
• Fusion Rifles - Engaging at mid-range, but with careful positioning and pre-charging around cover required for success. 
• Trace Rifles - Strong at close to mid-ranges, at the cost of not being a one-hit elimination, making it possible to be outplayed by skillful Primary users. 
• Grenade Launchers - Useful for weakening an opponent, getting damage around corners with bounces, or getting a one-hit elimination with a direct impact, at the cost of projectile travel time and being in a bad place if you miss your shot with the single-round magazine. 

Let's talk about some weapons...

Shotguns are very dominant in PvP by any measure, and don't allow much counterplay with Primary weapons, particularly close-range Primaries like Sidearms and SMGs. We see frequent player feedback about their prevalence in PvP activities and how they make it difficult to use various weapon archetypes that otherwise feel good against players without Shotguns. We want them to excel in a narrower niche then they do currently, so this change aims to retain the reliable one-hit elimination, but at closer range, and push them to be slightly rangier than currently at getting two-hit eliminations. As with our intent for all Special weapons, if a player is caught out of position with a Shotgun, they should be at a clear disadvantage. 

With the ability to quickly follow up rising in importance, we expect faster-firing Shotguns to eat into Aggressive Shotguns dominance, and other Special weapons to be more viable. 

• Increased Aggressive Frame Shotgun cone angle from 4.0 to 4.25 degrees. 
• Reduced Shotgun damage falloff min by 2m. 
• Increased Shotgun damage falloff max by 2m. 
• Note: Slug Shotguns are unaffected by this change.

Aggressive (120 RPM) Hand Cannons were adjusted in Season of the Splicer, but this didn't make enough of a difference. We believe that they're still too rangy, and benefit way too much from a small damage buff (two-tapping). It's tricky because they're now not much different from their pre-Beyond Light form (they already had better range and a two-tap with Rampage), but people have latched onto their ease of two and two-tapping potential since the buff in Beyond Light and new 120s in Season of the Chosen encouraged people to try them out. With this change, we expect other Primaries to become viable where previously 120s ate their lunch, including Adaptive Hand Cannons, Pulse Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Auto Rifles, while allowing 120s to keep the advantage of hard-hitting peek shooting at range. 

• Reduced precision damage multiplier from 1.8 to 1.6, preventing a 10% damage bonus from allowing two-tapping in PvP. 
• Reduced aim assist minimum falloff distance by 1-2m depending on the Range stat. 
• Reduced damage minimum falloff distance by 1m (this reduces their damage falloff advantage over other Hand Cannons to 1m (as usual, this is 1m before the zoom scalar). 

We also have a few changes to perks...

• Drop Mag 
• Can no longer roll on new drops of weapons, will have functionality changed later. 
• There's a change coming next Season that requires adjusting this, and some perks with similar functionality - more on that later... 
• Pulse Monitor 
• Fixed an issue where the Handling bonus was no longer applying. 
• Rewind Rounds 
• Fixed an issue where the perk would not trigger if the last shot in a magazine missed, or if the player reloaded another weapon before firing the final shot. 
• Reservoir Burst 
• We've seen the complaints that the detonation on kills doesn't feel that reliable or impactful, so this has been updated with the same consistency and speed fix as Dragonfly. 

Two Exotics will get some tuning...

Dead Man's Tale is dominant on mouse and keyboard, receives frequent critical feedback from players in the Crucible, and is strong but not worryingly so on controller. We’re keeping the fast-firing in hip, which we believe is key to the feel of the weapon, but with this change it will no longer have ADS levels of damage falloff while hip-firing, and so will be subject to falloff much closer. It will also require better aim to land hits while hip-firing. We’re deliberately only lightly touching ease of use in this change with the goal of not making it harder to use on controller. 

• Removed hip-fire damage falloff scalar (was 1.8x to match zoom). 
• Aim Assist cone angle hip scalar reduced from 1.5 to 1.2. 

Sleeper Simulant didn't receive any custom tuning when we updated Linear Fusion Rifles (LFR), but because it has much higher body damage than other LFRs it didn't benefit as much as intended from the global buff to precision damage scalar. Sleeper will now be the clear winner for single shot LFR damage, edge out other LFRs for burst damage, and largely match others for total damage for reserves. Also note that Sleeper's penalty for hitting the body rather than the head is much lower, giving it an edge in real world damage. 

• Fixed an issue where Sleeper Simulant was benefiting less than other LFRs from the Season of the Splicer LFR precision damage buff. 
• Total buff is now 16.5%, compared to the 15% buff other LFRs received. 

The Near Future...

We have more changes than usual for a Season coming in Season 15, some as follow-ups to the above, and others that were too large for mid-Season. Here's a preview of some of the changes (of course, also expect a new batch of weapons and perks). 

Fusion Rifles: We've been wanting to tackle subfamily differentiation for a while, so we're planning on a large rework of Fusion Rifles, changes to Fusion Rifle perks/mods, and custom tuning to most Exotic Fusion Rifles (is Vex Mythoclast a fusion rifle? Let’s say yes). 

Breech Grenade Launchers: With the above Shotgun changes, we expect other Special weapons to increase in usage, and believe that Grenade Launchers have the potential to become more frustrating to play against as they become even slightly more common. So, we’re planning a small change that specifically touches priming and cleaning up targets. 

Scout Rifles and Hand Cannons in PvE: Players have wanted these weapons to be a bit more efficient in PvE for some time. We’ve found that minor enemies in high-end content take too many shots to kill with these weapons. 

Machine Guns in PvE: Through playtesting and player feedback, we’ve found they're not doing their intended job well enough, so we're planning a noticeable change for Season 15. 

Special ammo economy, particularly in PvP: While the above changes to Shotguns should help tone down Aggressive frames a bit, we've got a couple of small changes planned that should reduce the amount of Special ammo floating around to a degree, and have further changes in mind in case they’re needed. 

Anarchy has done too much too well for too many years (without even counting the boost it's gotten this Season, which is due to the sweet Grenade Launcher artifact mods), so we're making changes that make it great at a couple roles rather than being the jack of all Grenade Launchers. 

Exotic Primaries: We want to give players more reasons to use Exotic Primary weapons in high-end PvE content, and have changes coming to help with this. 

  

And The More Distant Future...

We'll keep a close eye on Special weapons and will make adjustments once we see how they perform in the wild, particularly Fusion Rifles and Grenade Launchers. 

We have an idea of what may need more adjustments as these changes shake out, but will wait to discuss them as our plans solidify. 

We also keep a close eye on feedback on Exotic weapons and which weapons are under/overperforming. We have some tweaks planned next week, in Season 15, and beyond which should shake things up. Note that we specifically look at catalysts as a way to buff underused Exotics (for example, this is why we made catalysts for Trinity Ghoul and Deathbringer, so expect similar reasoning moving forward).  

At the risk of being vague, we also have long-term plans to address the issues of Exotic Orb generation and kill trackers without making a catalyst for every Exotic in the game. 

Another Patch Note Preview 

Prep to Patch 

 

UPDATE 3.2.1 AND MAINTENENCE TIMELINE 

On Tuesday, July 6, Destiny 2 will undergo maintenance in preparation for Destiny 2 Update 3.2.1. Below is a timeline of events. Note, some times may be subject to change during this maintenance period:  

• 9 AM PDT (1600 UTC): Maintenance begins.     
• 9:45 AM PDT (1645 UTC): Players are removed from activities. Destiny 2 is brought offline.   
• 10 AM PDT (1700 UTC): Update 3.2.1 will be available across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2.   
• 11 AM PDT (1800 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.   

Below are some issues that will be resolved with Update 3.2.1. A complete list will be shared when the update goes live.  

• Resolved the issue causing players on PlayStation consoles to receive persistent BEAGLE errors. 
• Assassin’s Cowl no longer clips through a majority of Hunter cloaks. 
• Gunsmith weapons will no longer be missing masterwork slots. 
• Armor with glows will properly display their glow when transmogged over another armor set that also has glows. 

BUNGIE STORE BETA DELAY 

In last week’s PSR, we announced that the new Bungie Store beta would be rolling out beginning on July 1, however, this launch has been delayed until later in the month. We will provide updates on the new beta launch date when it becomes available. 

SOLSTICE OF HEROES 2021 

Solstice of Heroes begins on July 6 at the Weekly Reset, and will run until August 3. For event information and a list of known issues, players can view our updated Solstice of Heroes Guide here. 

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: 

• Players who die at the same time as they defeat the boss in Expunge: Styx will respawn outside of the boss arena and be unable to claim their rewards. 
• The Insight Rover Hunter vest has a slight texture overlap. 
• Emblems appear off-center when inspecting players while using an ultrawide monitor. 
• Crucible weekly challenges may occasionally not gain progress from completed matches. 

 

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. 

AC 

 

Formal Attire