Alongside the Gambit quality-of-life changes, our Sandbox Team will be fine-tuning some weapon archetypes to refresh the gameplay experience in Destiny 2. The following is a quick preview of some changes coming with Destiny Update 2.2.0, with developer commentary from
Sandbox Designer Victor Anderson:
Linear Fusion Rifles
These Energy weapons have dominated Gambit for quite some time. First came Sleeper Simulant. Then came the Queenbreaker. We've made them less forgiving so we can enjoy a change of pace.
- Linear Fusion Rifle aim-assist values will receive an adjustment to reduce effectiveness at very long ranges.
- While Queenbreaker has high aim-assist values by default, we discovered an issue where it was not honoring aim-assist values that applied to other Linear Fusion Rifles of the same archetype. This resulted in Queenbreaker having over double the intended aim assist.
- Linear Fusion Rifles will receive a 10% damage increase in PvE to compensate for the above changes.
Shotguns
In Season of the Drifter, we're making a few changes to rapid-fire Shotguns, and the Full Auto perk. We're doing this for a few reasons, one of them being that the Full Auto perk feels far too important to Shotguns in PvE. This perk effectively doubles the damage output of any given Shotgun due to the rate of fire increase.
While we believe it is important to have useful perks on your weapons, the efficacy of this was so impactful that rapid-fire Shotguns became the only Shotguns worth considering for PvE. When the following changes release in Season of the Drifter, we hope you might be inspired to equip an aggressive Shotgun or maybe even take a slug Shotgun for a spin in a PvE activity.
- Shotguns will receive a damage multiplier in PvE activities, effectively doubling their damage.
- The Legend of Acrius is an exception to this.
- Full Auto rate-of-fire bonus for Shotguns is now +10%, down from +100%.
- In addition, it no longer increases the Shotgun pellet spread.
- Default rate-of-fire values for have also shifted:
- Aggressives are 55 RPM, up from 45 RPM
- Precisions are 70 RPM, up from 55 RPM
- Lightweights are 80 RPM (they were erroneously stated to be 90 RPM previously)
- Rapid-Fire 140 RPM, down from 200 RPM (they were previously natively 100 RPM, but due to the intrinsic full auto, actually had 200 RPM)
- Also reduced base damage for Shotguns across the board to align with their new rates of fire on a per sub-archetype basis.
- Ammo reserves for Shotguns were re-evaluated due to the increased efficiency of having more damage per shot.
We also took the opportunity to slightly adjust Shotguns for the Crucible. While Shotguns will remain effective in the Crucible, we have toned down the range at which Shotguns could secure a one-shot kill.
Additionally, the team has some information regarding balance changes for the One-Eyed Mask Exotic, which will release with Update 2.2.0:
One-Eyed Mask
In various combat situations, One-Eyed Mask has been too effective, and has become a non-choice Exotic for Titans in PvP environments. After implementing the following changes, we believe the Exotic will still be potent if used well, but there will be more opportunities to counter it.
- The duration of the Mark of Vengeance has been reduced from 15 seconds to 8 seconds
- The way players refill health after a successful kill has changed. Before, it restored all of your health and the overshield refilled over time. Now, the health refills over time alongside the overshield. This should give a leg up when encountering situations where multiple people are fighting one person with the One-Eyed Mask equipped.
- Vengeance will no longer trigger for players in Super. This was making Supers far too potent.
A new season means a new reality in combat. Keep up the chatter, and we'll keep curating the Sandbox so that Destiny adapts to the way you play!
