This Week At Bungie – 11/11/2021

• 30 seconds after the round starts, a capture zone is enabled. Players can capture this zone to win the round, or just eliminate the other team like normal.  
• The capture zone has a waypoint from round start, including a countdown timer, so everyone will know exactly when and where it will be.  
• The capture zone starts in the middle of the map in the first round and changes location each round.  

• We are using a stronger Trials Map: Endless Vale. 
• Rather than rotating through points that give one team a significant location advantage, we are rotating through three neutral zones — one at Temple, one at Mid, and one at Shrine. 
• Players no longer get Super energy when capturing a zone, either before or after the round ends. 

Linear Fusion Rifles - In Season 14 we bumped these up but believe that while their potential damage output competes numerically, and they’re extra hot right now because of the sweet Particle Deconstruction artifact mod, they can't compete with the ease of use of other damage options. Last time they got a precision damage buff, this time it's a flat damage buff. 

• Increased PvE damage by 10%. 

Caster Swords - We shipped this with a high Heavy attack ammo cost to offset a great melee weapon that also has a good ranged attack, but now believe it's safe to reduce the ammo cost. 

• Reduced Heavy attack ammo cost from 8 to 5. 

Bows - In Season 11 we bumped Bow damage up 10% vs  rank-and-file enemies, having seen this in game for a few Seasons it seems safe to nudge them up again. 

Increased damage vs rank-and-file enemies by ~10%. 

Sidearms and Fusion Rifles - Due to an ancient data entry error, Sidearm and Fusion Rifle projectiles were non-hitscan. Behind the scenes, the engine does math converting a projectile from non-hitscan to hitscan if it would cover a specific distance in one frame, so this would only occur running at 60fps or higher – shoutout to a specific community that provided us with evidence on this issue, you know who you are. 

• Increased Sidearm and Fusion Rifle projectile speed from 999 to 9999 (which makes them hitscan regardless of framerate). 

Exotics 

Vex Mythoclast - Yeah we over buffed this, and while it's kept in check by the peekshot potential of Hand Cannons etc., it's definitely melting faces. In playtests we feel it’s still strong enough to be desirable, without feeling free. 

• Reduced Aim Assist stat by 25. 
• Reduced the Linear Fusion Rifle mode Aim Assist Cone scalar from 1.1 to 1.05. 
• Now requires 3 eliminations for full Overcharge instead of 2. 

Fighting Lion - This wasn't a specific problem, but given increasing frustration with breech Grenade Launchers in Crucible, it seemed like a misstep to say "we hear you" and "here's an infinite ammo version of that thing you're frustrated about" in the same patch. It should be clear to everyone that a full nerf isn't needed, so we're adjusting it. (Note: This is not a full rollback — there's still a difference between "almost infinite ammo" and "actually infinite ammo" in how weapons are used, and in playtests where we tried to abuse infinite ammo, it was extraordinarily oppressive, much more so than we expected given that it had a ton of ammo previously.) 

• Removed the multi-hit requirement  
• I.e., dealing any damage will grant the buff. 
• Increased the buff to the reload stat from +50 to +70. 
• I.e., reload will still be slow if you miss, but if you land any damage, Fighting Lion will reload faster than it did before the nerf. 
• Increased the buff duration to 7s. 

Arbalest - We always wanted this to have utility in high difficulty PvE, but its lack of Champion mods prevented that, and it's all about shield breaking already, so we're fixing that.  

• Now has intrinsic anti-barrier. 

Sleeper Simulant - The delta between Sleeper and the best Legendary Linear Fusion Rifle wasn't large enough to make this a compelling option, so while it benefits from the 10% damage buff above (really, this time), we've given it some additional love. 

• Increased magazine size from 3 to 4, increased PvE damage by 6%. 

Suros Regime - Dual Mode Receiver always made Suros a worse 360 RPM auto rifle but fixing that is a straightforward stat bump. This may not make this mode dominant, but at least makes it do what was intended: turn it into a high-impact Auto Rifle. 

Cryosthesia 77K - Given the state of Stasis in PvP at the start of Season 14, we deliberately shipped this weapon in a weak state (which almost physically hurt us, but was the right decision), not wanting to contribute to the problem. Now that we've had more time to evaluate the state of the sandbox, we've reworked this Exotic to address its weakness in PvE. Specifically, the following pain point: Fire on release with the charge trigger, losing all ammo on firing the freezing shot. 

Leviathan's Breath - This Bow is underused, so we wanted to give it a bump, while also making its catalyst more interesting (expect this type of catalyst tweak to become more common moving forward). 

Whisper of the Worm - The original DPS king has fallen out of favor, with the delay before the damage buff kicking in making the weapon less usable in short damage phases, and optimal sustained damage requiring all critical hits but not sufficiently rewarding precision. 

D.A.R.C.I. - This Sniper Rifle's damage has fallen behind as other options have been buffed, and its damage is dependent on crits, while also requiring 100% time on target, so we've improved its ease of use and bumped the damage up. 

• Reduced flinch, recoil, and accuracy degradation by 50% while Personal Assistant is active. 
• Personal Assistant now has a 1s delay before deactivating when off target (was instant). 
• Increase damage in PvE by 20%. 

Malfeasance - For a weapon all about explosions, this Hand Cannon's explosions were a bit underwhelming. 

• Increased explosion damage by 50%. 

Dead Man's Tale - We've seen this Scout Rifle's usage drop dramatically on console since the recent nerf.So we spent some time tuning it in a way that benefits controller much more than mouse and keyboard (i.e. we don't believe this buff will improve the weapon much on mouse and keyboard), specifically touching hip fire with the catalyst. 

• Note: This isn’t actually branching the tuning between input devices, but the bits we touched are either only present or are much more impactful on controller: 
• Increased reticle friction falloff distance (no effect on mouse and keyboard). 
• Less recoil (reduced effect on mouse and keyboard). 
• Improved accuracy (reduced effect on mouse and keyboard). 

Heir Apparent Catalyst - There was a data error in the Heir Apparent catalyst resulting in it granting too much damage resistance against players, this has now been corrected. No effect in PvE. 

• Reduced damage resistance against players from 75% to 25%. 

Lorentz Driver – The bonus ability energy feels extraneous when the damage buff is so strong, and we’re limiting certain weapon sources of ability energy. 

• Removed ability energy regeneration on picking up a telemetry. 

Traveler’s Chosen – The ability energy granted from the perk was on a curve that isn’t intuitively understood. Similar to Lorentz Driver, it seemed appropriate to adjust this in PvP. These changes aren’t noticeable in PvE. 

• Now grants 10% ability energy per stack on activation (was previously more generous on low stacks, less generous on high stacks, the average and amount for 10 stacks are unchanged). 
• Reduced stacks granted on a Guardian defeat from 3 to 2. 

Perks 

Adrenaline Junkie - This perk wasn't performing as well as intended, and the path of least resistance was making it live up to its dev name (grenadebuckler). 

• Eliminations with the weapon can add single damage stacks or extend existing ones. 
• Grenade eliminations boost the stacks immediately to x5. 
• Lowered the duration to compensate for weapon activation. 

Vorpal Weapon - A perk that grants 15% bonus damage against all targets I'm going to use my Heavy weapon on? This was a non-choice and sucked the air out of the room for other damage perks. At the same time, it was failing its original role: giving players a reason to run a primary weapon against tough targets. 

• Was 15% damage on all weapons. 
• Now 10% on heavy weapons, 15% on special, 20% on primary. 
• No change to damage vs players in Super. 

Whirlwind Blade - This was too obviously the best Sword damage perk around, so while we're fine with it being good at sustained damage, we've pulled it back for shorter fights. 

• Increased number of stacks needed to hit maximum damage from 5 to 10. 

Pulse Monitor - What if instead of activating on what feels like a fail state, this activated on a state you'll be in in almost every encounter, even if you're winning? 

• Changed threshold for activation from 90% health to 30% shield (i.e., this now requires much less damage to trigger). 

Mods 

Quick Access Sling - The usage on this mod is very telling — it's extensively used on Bows and breech Grenade Launchers, and barely used at all on other weapons. At the same time, we've pulled down some options players had for improving their swap speed, and wanted to make an option available for building towards that on all Legendary weapons. 

We'll be watching how this feels in the wild and may revisit it later. 

• Functionality changed: 
• Was: +100 handling, 0.9 * ready/stow/aim down sights time for 0.4s after running out of ammo. 
• Now: 0.9 * ready/stow time all the time. 
• This change also applies to the Swap Mag perk, as they use the same perk behind the scenes. 

Full Auto Retrofit - We've seen plenty of requests for an accessibility option allowing full auto fire, particularly on fast-firing semiautomatic weapons. We have a settings option in the works for a season after The Witch Queen launches but decided to put in a stopgap to help players until we are able to ship it. Please keep these types of suggestions coming! 

• Added a Full Auto Retrofit weapon mod that enables full auto while the trigger is held, usable on Legendary Hand Cannons, Sidearms, Scout Rifles and Pulse Rifles. 
• This is unlocked by default for all players. 

The second I saw the #seasonofthesplicer trailer I knew what I had to #cosplay @Bungie @DestinyTheGame thank you for the inspiration and for bringing #smallen into our lives 🙏❤🥺#destinycosplay #Destiny2 #cosplayphotography pic.twitter.com/2iJ9yHIUVn

— Claire Corcoran (@firmamenttyrant) November 7, 2021

"Every single time, no matter whom she sees or what she hears, Micah-10 wakes up, feeling something in her tug towards space."#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art @A_dmg04 pic.twitter.com/1VGCAOQ9at

— sjur eido lives 🏳️‍🌈 (comms closed!) (@ninerivens) November 3, 2021

Riven of a Thousand Voices, the last Ahamkara. 😊 #destiny2 #destinyfanart #destiny2art #bungie pic.twitter.com/5hOEhynFSE

— echovectorbravo (@echovectorbravo) November 6, 2021