Destiny's New Weapon Balance Patch is Live
By Weston Albert 11 February 2017
Destiny’s new balancing patch makes changes to Special Ammo, weapons, and classes, and unintentionally changes how Health Regen perks work across the game.
The latest Destiny patch, numbered 2.5.0.2 is now live in the game, providing a shake up to the game’s five-month-old PvP meta. Many of the changes were previewed last week in a stream held but Destiny’s developer, Bungie. But now that the patch has hit, the full patch notes have been released, giving a full look at the changes implemented.
The changes to Special Ammo is active, with more details on how the change will affect Trials of Osiris matches. While in a normal match the Special Ammo spawns every minute, in Elimination matches Special Ammo will spawn initially 30 seconds into a match and then spawn more every 45 seconds. Speaking of Elimination, the round time limit has been reduced to 90 seconds, which is down from two minutes.
One change that was not talked about before the patch notes was to the exotic rocket launcher, Truth. That exotic, which is a favorite heavy weapon for PvP, had its magazine size reduced from three to one rocket. Another exotic, Young Wolf’s Howl, which is not used by many players, had the ammo cost for using its special perk ability reduced. As for exotic armor, the Bladedancer’s Shinobu’s Vow gauntlets no longer add an additional Seeker to Skip Grenades.
In addition to making changes to weapons, this also patch affects some of the classes. While it was already known, for example, that Stormcallers were getting their melee range pulled back to be comparable to other Warlock subclass melees, there are some previously unknown alterations. One of those changes was spotted on the patch’s preview stream, but it wasn’t confirmed, as using Blink now disables the entire HUD including radar for a short time.
A few other changes to classes include reducing the health of Guardians with an armor value about 10 and increasing the damage of Flux Grenade, Magnetic Grenade and Shoulder Charge to ensure one-hit kills even against higher armored opponents. Class perks that granted Quick Draw (readies a weapon instantly), which includes the Bladedancer’s Quick Draw perk and the exotic Warlock guantlets Ophidian Aspect, no longer readies a weapon instantly but now grants a large increase to weapon handling speed.
And, as can happen in many patches, while some things are fixed, the patch itself can break something else. That was the case here, as the intended change to the Bladedancer’s Hungering Blade perk has spread to every other Health Regen perk in the game. Bungie says it will monitor the unintended changes and decide if and when to fix it in the future.
Have you played Destiny after the patch? How are the changes feeling? Let us know in the comments below.
Destiny: Rise of Iron is available now on Xbox One and PS4.
