Destiny 2 Brings Mega Adjustments in Season 17 – Is this the Glaive’s Salvation?

Those who enjoy reading long novels found fulfillment in yesterday’s Destiny 2 This Week at Bungie blog. Bungie summarized the upcoming adjustments for exotics, weapons and abilities in almost 9000 words in search of the perfect game balance. MeinMMO has dug through the information for you and summarizes the most important adjustments.

First of all, the good news: The Gjallarhorn escaped a direct nerf, and Bungie also embraced the Legendary and Exotic Glaives.

Furthermore, Bungie’s latest blog still contains a lot of changes for Destiny 2 that will change things for the players. Including not only the way you will fight in the air in the future, but also a number of nerfs and buffs for various weapon archetypes and certain exotics.

We have briefly summarized the most important changes for you. For all players who love to go into even more detail, we recommend Bungie’s original TWaB.

This is how Bungie wants to save the exotic glaives

Until now, the exotic glaives in particular have eked out a lonely existence in the keeper vaults, because they simply weren’t strong enough and have massively disappointed fans of the weapon type. However, Bungie has now launched a rescue attempt and polished them up. All three Exotic Glaives have received some skill buffs.

• The Titan Glaive Blade of Action now gains a Void overshield while in the bubble, and the Saint-14 Exotic Helm will also now work with this bubble.
• The Warlock Glaive Blade of Intent now fires noble missiles more frequently and faster.
• And the hunter’s glaive “Blade of Agreement” triples the damage of the arc wave and will now chain to nearby enemies 8x instead of 4x.

The legendary glaive is also being polished a bit: A glaive melee is still a basic melee attack, not a weapon attack, consumes no ammo but deals kinetic damage.

In addition, Bungie has increased the glaive’s projectile speed, reduced energy loss, and also increased melee damage against PvE enemies by 25% (excluding bosses and vehicles).

This positions the glaives as a hard melee damage weapon in Destiny 2, and as of Season 17 they offer you almost full protection (97.5% in PvE) when you draw the glaive’s shield.

Air combat will be revised in detail

The next big segment in the longest TWaB of all time deals specifically with combat in the air. In the future, air combat will have its own rules, because Bungie makes airborne precision a separate statistic for weapons and calls it “Airborne Effectiveness”. It will be a hidden stat, similar to aim assist and recoil direction.

• Airborne Effectiveness will affect the effectiveness of a weapon fired in the air starting in Season 17.
• This stat affects several aspects of shooting in the air at once, such as more dispersion of a shotgun with a low Airborne Effectiveness stat.

If you also like being a hunter with your St0mp-EE5 bouncing through the air like a bouncy ball to defeat your opponents with absolute supremacy in the air, then please be strong now. With the changes for the air combat, Bungie has also distributed a blatant nerf to this popular exotic.

• Starting in Season 17, playing the St0mp-EE5 exotic feet will reduce the Airborne Effectiveness of each of your weapons by -50.

On Twitter, Bungie’s community manager also commented in more detail on this nerf and shared:

Don’t forget that stompees increase sprint speed and slide distance. Do you understand the conflict here – do I jump and lose aim assist? We hope players will use this as a mobility tool to get around the map, rather than as part of each individual PvP engagement to force dogfights.

shared Bungie’s community manager dmg04 via Twitter With

The most important nerfs and buffs for weapons

We also have a lot to talk about when it comes to weapons. In addition to a few dusty exotics, which Bungie is returning to their old attractiveness with a buff, we also have some nerfs to work through.

• machine guns
  • Bungie continues to be dissatisfied with machine guns. Therefore, they now get a 40% buff against PvE opponents and 20% against bosses.
  • However, this buff does not apply to exotic machine guns such as Xenophage or Grand Overture. However, it’s likely that this should at least have given Rightful Heir and Thunderlord a substantial buff.
  • With the Exotic Xenophage, Bungie still has an understanding and restores its old state. The machine gun will revert to its old RPM and damage.
• rocket launcher
  • All adaptive and aggressive rocket launchers get a +10% buff initially, but also get a -10% nerf to precision tracking.
  • The Gjallarhorn, on the other hand, remains as it is and thus avoids a direct nerf.
  • The exotic “Eyes of Tomorrow” should live up to its reputation as a strong raid weapon in the future and will therefore receive a 30% damage buff against bosses and champions.

• Automatic rifles, pulse rifles, submachine guns
  • Auto Rifles get a better damage falloff, giving them a range buff.
  • Pulse Rifles will do slightly increased damage. For more kills with fewer critical hits required.
  • The Exotic Pulse Rifle Graviton Lance will be upgraded. His Catalyst now grants the Vorpal Weapon and Retrieve Perks instead of the higher Aim Assist value it previously had.
  • Submachine guns are undergoing major changes. You get extensive zoom adjustments. Including a nerf for the submachine gun “Multimatch CCX”, which should end the supremacy as “the best SMG in the Crucible”. In return, the exotic submachine gun “Huckleberry” gets a little more range.
• shotguns & Fusion Rifles
  • In particular, slug and pellet shotguns continue to be overly dominant in PvP, despite recent changes. They get a reduction in their range as a result, but should still be effective enough for acceptably short ranges.
  • Lord of the Wolves Exotic Shotgun damage falloff has been reduced by 25% in the beginning and end.
  • One hit kills from 20m+ with fusion rifles should be very uncommon in the future. To this end, changes were made in a combination of damage falloff and recoil changes.

• sniper rifles
  • Sniper gets a 10% buff to stow, ready, and aim through scopes. This means all snipers are faster. If you like sniping, you have to do without ammo, because sniper rifles have less access to ammo than shotguns and fusion rifles. There is a shortage of ammunition.

• Bows, grenade launchers, trace rifles and Co.
  • The “Arbalest” is now too strong because it is both an anti-barrier weapon and a shield breaker and boss killer. As a result, their damage is reduced by 25% against champions. However, she can still break through anti-barrier shields with just one shot.
  • The currently most popular Exo-Bow, Le Monarque, now deals 50% more poison tick damage in PvE but 25% less in PvP.
  • The damage of the Exotic and only Heavy Bow, Leviathan’s Breath, is increased by 50%. The added delay also allows his arrow to stun Unstoppable Champions.
  • The Lion’s Roar exo-grenade launcher will have an expanded explosion radius and its damage will also be improved.
  • The Lorentz Drive linear fusion rifle will be nerfed against players. A body hit will therefore soon deal 20% less damage.
  • The Skyburner Oath exotic scout rifle is getting an almost complete makeover. It gets an adjustment to projectile speed, hip fire, and projectiles no longer track targets. In return, the hipfire detonation then also burns targets. Catalyst now grants bonus reload speed instead of range. In addition, the Exotic gets the highest “Airborne Effectiveness” of all weapons in the game (35).
  • Increased the charge rate of the Trials Sword, Sola’s Scar, from 20 to 50.
  • Exotic Trace Rifles have been adjusted.
    • Coldheart now spawns Ionian trails that charge abilities.
    • Prometheus Lens gets more effective burn
    • And Wavesplitter’s damage is increased to the old medium level. An orb of power then gives 10 seconds of maximum power that stacks from 5 and 10 to 20. Suppresses targets if you pick up another orb while at max power.

The main adjustments to weapon perks and skills

• “First Shot” will no longer work as well as a range buff on shotguns, nor will it have a damage decay value.
• “Desperado” Rate of fire has been reduced so it can be applied to more weapons. In PvE, there is no longer a damage penalty.
• “Air Raid” will give you +60 to in-air handling in the future.
• “mulligan” grants you ammo on misses 35% of the time, up from 20%.
• “Adagio” is reduced from 30% to 20% on shotguns.
• “Icarus Grip” will give you +15 Airborne Effectiveness. The upgraded variant of the perk grants +15 Airborne Effectiveness and another +5 to Handling.

Here’s what to expect in Update 4.0.1.1 next week

While most of these adjustments will only come into play with later updates and patches for Seasons 17 and 18, Bungie has already confirmed the following changes for next Tuesday, April 26th in Hotfix 4.0.1.1:

• Axion Blitz grenade base cooldown increased from 91 seconds to 152 seconds.
• Titan Barricade with Bulwark aspect increased cooldown from 53 seconds to 82 seconds. Titans can use their overshield less often.
• Offensive Bulwark provides 60% less bonus grenade energy regeneration in PvP.
• Whisper of Chains grants 15% additional damage resistance against players near a Stasis Crystal (from 25% – unchanged in PvE).

Also expect changes to the Hunter Exotic Renewal Grip:

• When equipped, the Hunter’s Renewal Grasp Exotic Armguard increases the base cooldown of the Dawn Field Grenade from 62 to 152 seconds.
• Decreased the outgoing damage penalty on players in the dawn field grenade from 50% to 20%.
• Damage unchanged against PvE targets.

Why does Bungie keep making changes? Some players see the frequent and often extensive adjustments to the sandbox as an annoying evil. After seven years, a developer should actually have his game under control.

However, Destiny 2 is a shooter with one of the most complicated sandboxes in which weapons, abilities and perks can interact with each other. So there are a multitude of elements that have to be in harmony with one another and that also depend on one another. In order for the experience to always feel right for the players, it is necessary to establish a certain balance and to observe this.

Bungie uses sophisticated monitoring of your playing style to be able to quickly see what is ruining your gaming experience and also gave a look at the internal statistics charts in the TWaB.

What do you think of Bungie’s extensive customization? Are you satisfied with it and find it more than necessary or are there changes that you don’t like or understand at all. We would be happy to take part in your discussion in the comments.