Nightstalker Way of the Trapper (Top)
Shadowshot: Fires an arrow that damages enemies and debuffs enemies nearby
- Damage sharing for the Nightstalker player specifically reduced from 100% to 50%
- Now all allied players have 50% damage sharing on tether
Nightstalker Way of the Wraith (Middle)
Flawless Execution: Headshot kills while crouched grant invisibility and truesight
- Truesight now lasts 3 seconds (down from 9)
Shattering Strike: After performing a Flawless Execution, your melee attacks have a longer lunge range and weaken enemies
- Advanced warning: When we made the change to Flawless Execution this also unintentionally nerfed this ability to only last 3 seconds (it was directly tied to the truesight). We have prepared a fix for the 4.6.1 patch to restore the weaken and lunge range increase to last the entire 9 seconds regardless of truesight and invisibility status.
Instant Reloading
Goal: In the beginning, Lunafactions and Rally Barricade did exist, but they were clunky to use. They still had dramatic impact on gameplay even in that state, but eventually we decided to make their effects easier to handle. The problems they introduced always existed in the game, but over time these have become magnified due to new abilities, perks, and weapons introduced into the Destiny 2 sandbox. The impact of something that takes all reloading out of the equation means that other perks or effects like the Hunter’s Marksman Dodge or the Sealed Ahamkara’s Grasps can simply fall to the wayside – Even swords take a hit in comparison, being one of the few weapons that naturally never needs to reload.
Reloading is one of those mechanics that are simple, but have wide ranging consequences. Because the effect on gameplay of removing reloading is inversely proportional to the size of your weapon’s magazine and how slow your general reload animations are, weapons like Rocket Launchers and Shotguns can benefit greatly compared to other weapons. This, alongside the increase in general access to damage bonus effects like Well of Radiance left us with the decision to remove this effect from these two sources, as they were causing things to quickly snowball out of control.
Titan Rally Barricade
- This ability now provides a large increase to reload speed for the duration of the effect
- This ability no longer automatically reloads your weapons from reserves
Warlock Rift/Well of Radiance
- Lunafaction Boots now provides a large increase to reload speed for the duration of Well of Radiance
- This exotic no longer automatically reloads your weapons from reserves
Super Energy Regeneration
Goal: These changes will reduce the speed with which players are able to earn their super which supports difficulty and reduces the current ability to trivialize certain content through excessively chaining supers. Systemically, we want to reduce base sources of supers on a large macro scale without diminishing the feeling that your actions are gaining you a worthwhile energy boost. By reducing the speed at which you gain super we can make mods and perks feel more worthwhile. We still want it to feel like you can make meaningful progress not only through normal play but by augmenting super energy through teamwork, class choices, gear, and skillful play.
New Energy Granted by Super Orbs:
- Super Orb: 7.143% (50% reduction)
- Masterwork Orb: 2.5% (50% reduction)
- Kills: (25% reduction)
- Minor: 0.6%
- Elite: 0.96%
- Mini-boss: 1.8%
- Boss: 3%
- Player: 3%
- Assists: (25% reduction)
- Minor: 0.3%
- Elite: 0.48%
- Mini-boss: 0.9%
- Boss: 1.5%
- Player: 1.5%
Damage Multipliers
Goal: At Destiny 2 launch, damage buffs were fairly sparse – There was Empowering Rift for a small increase, and you could combine it with a weakening effect such as Hammer Strike, but very little else. As time has gone on, we introduced Well of Radiance, Weapons of Light, Guiding Flame, Frontal Assault, etc, and combining these effects has resulted in player damage output far beyond what was previously available. Even with just a small amount of them, a player can go from 1x damage to 3x and beyond, causing there to be an extremely large gap between standard player output and theoretical output.
By preventing the larger effects from stacking, we are able to keep each of them around without having to do something in response like raise boss health to compensate for these tactics, as well as create more of them. As an example, Lumina would not have been created in world where the damage bonus effect of Noble Rounds stacked with other damage effects, and these changes are simply an extension along those same lines.
While the weakening effects never stacked, we also took a look at them and adjusted their values as many of our more powerful units would simply evaporate when touched by one of them, but we compensated for that in other ways, such as either extending the duration of the effect or in the case of Shadowshot, making it affect power weapons.
Player Damage Buffs
- Player Bonuses
- Bonus damage effects that apply to all of a player's weapons simultaneously no longer stack multiplicatively. The highest applicable bonus will be used instead
- This does not affect single weapon buffs such as Rampage, Kill Clip, or exotic weapons that increase their own damage. These will still stack multiplicatively.
- Buffs that provide bonus damage will still exist simultaneously on the player, so in the event that the one with the highest multiplier wears off the next highest will be used instead.
- This change affects the following weapons/abilities (Empowering Rift, Frontal Assault, Guiding Flame, Sun Warrior, Inertia Override, Well of Radiance, Lumina/Noble Rounds, Weapons of Light)
- Notable exceptions: Vengeance (One Eyed Mask)
- Frontal Assault
- Bonus damage is now +20% (Previously +25%)
- Sun Warrior
- Bonus damage is now +20% (Previously +25%)
- Well of Radiance
- Bonus damage is now +25% (Previously +35%)
- Weapons of Light
- Bonus damage is now +35% (Previously +25%)
Enemy Debuffs (Weakened)
- Shadowshot
- Incoming PvE damage is now +30% (Previously +35%)
- Incoming PvP damage is now +50% (Previously +55%)
- This effect no longer excludes power weapons
- Tractor Cannon (Repulsor Force)
- Incoming PvE damage is now +30% for all elements (Previously +33%/50% for Non-Void/Void damage respectively)
- Incoming PvP damage is now +50% for all elements (Previously +33%/50% for Non-Void/Void damage respectively)
- Hammer Strike
- Incoming PvE damage is now +30% (Previously +50%)
- Duration increased from 6 to 10 seconds in PvE
- Shattering Strike
- Incoming PvE damage is now +30% (Previously +50%)
- Duration increased from 6 to 10 seconds in PvE
Reduced Super Damage Resistance
Goal: Since the launch of Destiny 2 we have slowly introduced buffs to supers, especially roaming supers. While we believe supers should be powerful they should not be mindless. We want supers to be more risky in both PvE and PvP. We want players to think about positioning and timing more. Not so long ago we experimented with Spectral Blades by lowering the damage resistance substantially. These changes were generally well received and improved the experience of the super for both the person running it and the person who was running from it. In PvE players shouldn’t feel like their super makes them invulnerable and casting one should call for situational strategic thinking. In PvP players need to feel like they can challenge a super and that with skillful play there’s a chance they can beat it.
- Super Damage Resistance removed from masterwork armor
- Inherent Super Damage Resistance lowered by category (see below)
Low- 54% → 49%
- Nova Warp
- Thunder Crash
- Blade Barrage
- Nova Bomb
- Well of Radiance
Medium - 56% → 51%
High - 60% → 53%
- Fist of Havok
- Burning Maul
- Sentinel Shield
- Arc Staff
- Arc Lightning
- Shadowshot
Other (unchanged)
- Spectral Blades - 52% / 54.4%
- Golden Gun - 0%
- Chaos Reach - 40%
