Bungie Releases A Weapons Balancing Patch For DESTINY 2 Along With The CURSE OF OSIRIS Expansion

Many Destiny 1 players were not a fan of the PVP changes in Destiny 2 that transformed the Crucible from a landscape that inspired creativity and rewarded individual achievement to an arena where "group shooting" is the only surefire way to victory. 

Crucible matches often devolve into one team getting coordinating and moving out in a 4-man kill squad that mows down opposing players foolish or cocky enough to go it alone.  But will the first Weapons Balancing Update that accompanied the launch of The Curse of Osiris DLC on Tuesday change all that?  

Here's what was tweaked (there were some PVE improvements as well):

Guardian Abilities

General

• • Increased the damage dealt to bosses from Super abilities
  • Adjusted the output of the Recovery stat so that characters with the lowest Recovery totals will start regenerating slightly faster

Grenades

• • Reduced Pulse Grenade damage slightly and toned down the intensity of camera shake and controller rumble associated with each pulse
  • Reduced the recharge rate of additional grenade charges beyond the first
  • Normalized the recharge rate of Arcbolt and Firebolt Grenades to match the other grenade archetypes
  • Increased damage inflicted to combatants by Flashbang Grenade, Magnetic Grenade, Suppressor Grenade, Incendiary Grenade, Fusion Grenade, Skip Grenade, Flux Grenade, Arcbolt Grenade, Swarm Grenade, Tripmine Grenade, Storm Grenade, Firebolt Grenade, Axion Bolt, and Scatter Grenade.

Titan

• • Fixed an issue allowing the Titan’s Rally Barricade ability to generate infinite ammo for certain weapon types
  • Fixed an issue allowing players to chain Fist of Havoc abilities indefinitely
  • Decreased the distance traveled in the air with the shoulder charge ability when it is executed without a target
  • Increased the number of solar hammers that can be thrown during the duration of the Hammer of Sol Super ability
  • Extended the timer for the Hammer Strike’s weaken debuff by 1 second and corrected an issue that was causing the visual effects not to represent the duration properly
  • The Sunspot health regeneration buff now lingers for 3 seconds after moving through a Sunspot
  • Tempered Metal and Sol Invictus no longer trigger off combatant solar shield detonation kills

Hunter

• • Arcstrider dodge now briefly breaks tracking
  • The base duration of Golden Gun is now the same for both paths
  • Shadowshot now suppresses targets immediately on a direct hit
  • Shadowshot no longer tethers dropships
  • Increased the amount of time available to fire arrows while using the Moebius Quiver upgrade of the Shadowshot Super ability

Warlock

• • Explosive rounds no longer receive bonus damage from Empowering rift
  • The Heat Rises perk no longer triggers on destructible objects 
  • Updated the Devour perk description to correctly indicate that the ability is triggered on kills
  • The Nova Bomb created by the Cataclysm upgrade maintains its initial speed for longer before slowing down

 
Armor
General

• • Hunter leg armor with Survivalist stat package now grants Recovery

 

Exotic Amor

• • Mask of the Quiet One no longer grants energy when the wearer takes damage from friendly players
  • Shield Bash now triggers the Dreaded Visage perk on Mask of the Quiet One
  • Slightly increased the damage dealt by ACD/0 Feedback Fence
  • Kills with the Fury Conductors perk on ACD.0 Feedback Fence now show correct icon in the kill feed
  • Adjusted the grenade recharge granted by Starfire Protocol to compensate for the global decrease in the second grenade recharge rate
  • Improved ready and stow speed on Peacekeepers
  • Added an additional perk to Lucky Pants that loads a single bullet to the chamber of a stowed Hand Cannon whenever the player scores a precision hit with any weapon
  • Reworked Karnstein Armlets in two ways: on a melee hit, the armlets now provide heightened Mobility and Recovery and highlight low-health targets; and scoring a melee kill immediately restores a significant amount of the wearer's health
  • Fixed an issue with Dunemarchers where the Linear Actuators perk was not triggering consistently

 
Weapons
General

• • Increased the base damage and reduced the precision modifier of Precision Auto Rifles
  • Slightly reduced the aim deflection of High-Caliber Rounds on Auto Rifles and Scout Rifles
  • Reduced the effectiveness of Aim Assist at higher ranges on Scout Rifles
  • Reduced severity of recoil on Hakke High-Impact Auto Rifles
  • Hand Cannon accuracy recovery now scales with rate of fire
  • Improved base Aim Assist on aggressive Hand Cannons
  • Slightly increased the rate of fire time between bursts on all Omolon Sidearms
  • Slightly increased impact damage on lightweight single-shot Grenade Launchers
  • Fixed an issue with the Tireless Blade Sword perk where players could sometimes get sword ammo from an unpowered sword attack
  • Fixed an issue where the Infinite Guard perk would drain ammo when guarding in a Healing Rift
  • The Relentless Strikes sword perk no longer returns ammo on heavy attacks
  • When comparing Sniper Rifle stats the UI correctly updates for maximum magazine values
  • Fixed an issue with Ambitious Assassin to make it more consistent

Exotic Weapons

• • Increased Fighting Lion damage and changed Thin the Herd perk to now grant bonus ammo rather than pulling ammo from the player inventory
  • Shooting destructible objects with Graviton Lance, Sunshot, Merciless, Sturm, and Drang no longer trigger the Exotic weapon perks
  • Fixed an issue with D.A.R.C.I's Target Acquired perk to make it more consistent

Activities

Raid

• The Leviathan raid now has a recommended Power of 300
• The Prestige Leviathan raid now has a recommended Power of 330
• Fixed an issue causing Cabal corpses to float in mid-air
• Fixed an issue in the nightmare realm of the Calus encounter 
• Fixed an issue where Raid Keys could be removed from inventory when players create a new character
• Raid Keys will once again reset alongside Checkpoints each week
• Players traveling to the Leviathan now see proper spaceflight

PvP

• Fixed cases where players could get out of the intended playable area on a number of maps

• The Hot Streak challenge no longer progresses for the opposing team
• The Capture 5 Zones challenge now progresses for zones captured by allies and requires increased numbers of captures for completion
• Advantage and Domination stats now accumulate on assists
• Fixed an issue causing previous kill to repeat in the kill feed prior to a new kill when a player obtains a kill streak
• Increased the rate of Rare rewards upon match completion in Quickplay and Competitive playlists
• Increased the rate of Legendary rewards upon match completion in Quickplay and Competitive playlists
• Increased XP rewards upon match completion in Quickplay and Competitive playlists

Strikes

• Nightfall strikes now have a recommended Power of 270 
• Prestige Nightfall strikes now have a recommended Power of 330
• Fixed an issue in Savathun’s Song where a crystal would fail to spawn blocking progression
• Fixed an issue in the Inverted Spire where in some cases players who died had no valid spawn location
• Increased Glimmer earned from strike completions
• Increased XP rewards earned from strike completions

Public Events

• Fixed an issue where sometimes the Prime Ether Servitor would not spawn during the Ether Resupply public events
• Fixed an issue where the Cabal Gladiators would sometimes have horrific arm elasticity when being defeated during Cabal Drill public events
• Reduced the XP rewards of some public events to bring them more in line with other activities
• Reduced Glimmer earned from some public events to better balance them with their counterparts
• Reduced the rate of Rare rewards to bring them more in line with other activities
• Increased the rate of Legendary rewards from public events for level 20+ characters

 Guided Games

• Leviathan Guided Games now have a recommended Power of 310
• Nightfall Guided Games now have a recommended Power of 270
• Improved clarity on Guide selection screen in Guided Games
• Full clans can now queue as guides for Guided Games

 Faction Rallies

• Fixed an issue where the Tower would not properly load Faction Victory Flags for players who were in orbit when the flags were applied
• Fixed an issue preventing some players from pledging to a faction during Faction Rallies
• Fixed an issue where faction tokens stored within the Vault were not properly wiped between Faction Rally events

 Iron Banner

• Fixed an issue where Lord Saladin would sometimes refer to Guardians by the wrong class

Trials of the Nine

• Fixed an issue where players could sometimes become stuck in the Third Spire when attempting to visit the Flawless space
• Fixed an issue where the Trials of the Nine tooltip displayed the wrong fireteam requirements
• Fixed an issue where some emotes would not play correctly during the intro cinematic

General

User Interface

• Fixed the missing buff icon when “The Floor Is Lava” challenge is completed
• Fixed an issue causing level-up notifications to persist on-screen during Crucible matches
• Fixed an issue preventing eligible Exotic infusion material from displaying properly in the infusion screen
• Reduced the frequency of the “HUD Disabled” warning shown when the HUD is turned off via the HUD Opacity setting
• Fixed an issue causing the player indicator on the destination map to be incorrectly positioned while the player is dead
• The flashing nameplate indicator for a player who is unable to launch an activity now displays appropriately to all fireteam members
• Fixed an issue where notifications could be dismissed by bringing up the character screen
• Fixed legibility issues with waypoint icons and text that were using the same color
• Fixed an issue causing “No Kinetic Ammo” to briefly appear when a player was swapping weapons
• Fixed an issue where loot stream notifications would hide Challenges
• Orbit PGCR correctly displays player tooltip information
• Fixed an issue where players would be told they owned the Sturm Symbiosis ornament, even when they did not
• Fixed an issue where "Competitive" was misspelled on the Give Them War emblem
• Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be prevented from dismantling gear

4K and HDR Support

• Upgraded resolution to adaptive 4K with high dynamic range on the PlayStation 4 Pro
• Upgraded resolution to 4K with high dynamic range on the Xbox One X

Audio

• Fixed an issue causing music to fail to play when players were completing the same adventure back-to-back
• Fixed firing audio for the Hoosegow Rocket Launcher
• Fixed an audio issue in the Memorialization replay sequence

 PC

• Players can now exit the game using a controller
• Players can now keybind to the NumPad when NumLock is active
• The scroll wheel now works on gear lore tabs
• Fixed crashing in the New Pacific Arcology area of Titan
• Fixed a source of random crashes
• Fixed an issue that prevented fullscreen mode from working properly in rare situations
• Improved the accuracy of the in game framerate counter under fluctuating framerates on PC
• Fixed an issue where Destiny 2 would crash upon shutdown
• Improved font texture handling to address cases of stuttering or hitching
• Fixed an issue where some SLI configurations would cause framerate stuttering

Miscellaneous

• Fixed an issue where open-world vendors would not load properly, resulting in a crash
• Fixed an issue where two players on the same network could crash when leaving an area simultaneously
• Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be launched into the wrong activity
• Fixed an issue where hitching would occur when traditional Chinese language was selected
• Added secondary and tertiary sorting methods for the Vault
• Fixed an issue that could result in Beetle errors
• Fixed an issue where Loot-a-Palooza and Dance Party keys did not recover to the Postmaster
• Fixed an issue causing improper lighting on player ships when flying to destinations
• Fixed many cases where players could get out of the environment in various destinations
• Fixed an issue causing Louis to jitter erratically
• Fixed an issue where the camera would rotate awkwardly upon character respawn
• Added missing Omolon emblem to Gunsmith rewards

Destiny Companion

iOS / Android

• Updated for the Curse of Osiris expansion
• Players can now see and share Game History details from their profile page
• Added the ability to retrieve items from the Postmaster and Gear section
• General bug fixes
• Improved localization

In short, Pulse Grenades have been nerfed a bit and all other grenades have received a buff. Recovery across all classes to be nerfed a bit as well. On the weapons side, Auto-Rifles now do more base damage and Hand Cannons have received an accuracy boost.