• We have another preview of the hip-fire reticle rework for select exotics and weapon types here

• Currently, the two cones shown on hip-fire reticles illustrate the cones for aim assist (bullet bending), and accuracy, using crosshairs and moving circles respectively.
• The size of these are capped to avoid them becoming too big, and at higher FOV they don't shrink enough to show the current angles, so they remain fairly static.
• The following weapon types have had their reticles reworked to move more visibly at high FOV, while still conveying the current weapon state accurately:
  • Fusion Rifle
  • Hand Cannon
  • Sidearm
  • Trace Rifle
• Other weapon reticles are planned to be updated in a future release
• Shotgun reticles also now scale with FOV, such that the reticle will closely match pellet spread regardless of FOV.

• Fusion Rifle reticles now have a charge meter built in
• Sword reticles now show current guard energy

• Hip-fire reticles are built with technology that scale with weapon aim assist and accuracy, but aim down sights (ADS) reticles are usually hand built for each specific weapon and don't necessarily show this information.
• They've been experimenting with an approach that keeps the hand built aesthetics of weapon sights or scopes, but replaces the center crosshair or dot with a variant of the hip-fire reticle.
• They're going to apply this new reticle to Shayura's Wrath specifically in the new season, to see how players feel about it before pushing the change to more weapons.

• They've added info about several exotic weapon perks and states to their reticles where the exotic state wasn't immediately obvious from the gun:
• Charge meter added to Exotic weapons whose base weapon type doesn't typically have a charge meter
  • Devil's Ruin
  • Salvations Grip
  • Grand Overture
• Perk counter shows pips for perked shots
  • Quicksilver Storm grenade count
  • Ace of Spades Memento Mori shot count
  • Lumina Noble Rounds shot count
  • Traveler's Chosen Gathering Light stacks
• Perk progress meter shows perk buildup
  • The Manticore
• Perk active shows when the Exotic perk is active
  • Hawkmoon
  • Ager's Scepter
  • Tarrabah
  • Touch of Malice
  • Cryosthesia 77k
  • Trinity Ghoul
• Charge meter and perk counter
  • Vex mythoclast

• Next season they are going to overhaul how weapons and other items are shown in the inspection screen, you will now be able to:
  • Rotate them around the same way you would a Sparrow or piece of armor
  • Show ambient VFX on the weapons that have them
• This applies in inventory and when inspecting weapons in Eververse.
• These improvements additionally allowed them to rotate ships and show their contrails.
• They also removed the depth-of-field blur on all inspect screens, to show the whole gear more clearly
• See a preview of this new system here

• Tyranny of Heaven's stats were weirdly low, so they're updating its state to be more inline with other bows
• Submachine Guns
  • Aggressive submachine guns have surged in PvP, and need to be brought back into band, they're doing this in a way where more precision hits will be required to hit optimal TTK
  • Base damage 15 -> 14
    • Precision hit multiplier 1.45 -> 1.5 (crit damage 21.8 -> 21)
  • The Immortal has such high stats that no other Aggressive SMG can compete, so they're nerfing its range by 10 while allowing it to still compete in all other areas.
• Sniper Rifles
  • Snipers are a very safe option, and they don't want to make them dominant, but there's room to bring ut their damage to improve their feel in PvE. Note that rapid-fire Sniper Rifles already got a large reserves bump and reduced recoul in Season 20. They'll keep an eyey on this change and might bring them up more if this doesn't move the needle
  • PvE damage +10%
    • Izanagi's Burden's Honed Edge perk specifically does not receive this buff, all other exotic snipers do
• Scout Rifles
  • Long Arm inadvertently received damage bonus vs minors like exotics have, so they've removed that effect.

• Eyes of Tomorrow doesn't have the ammo economy to be an add killing weapon, so they're giving it a buff to make this a more viable strategy
  • Killing 4 targets with a missile volley will refund one ammo
• Graviton Lance's feels great, but it was easy to not reach a burst's fill damage because it was back-loaded, so they're adjusting the burst to be more like Revision Zero.
  • Increased RPM 257 -> 300 (same as Revision Zero)
  • Increased first shot damage 9.5 -> 19 for body, 15.7 -> 31.4 for crit
  • Decreased second shot damage 35.6 -> 25.6 for body, 58.7 -> 42.3 for crit.
• Jade Rabbit is string on PvP, but it's difficult to keep stack of the perk, and refunding a single ammo wasn't impressive enough for an exotic.
  • Added buff text to show when Fate of All Fools increased body shot damage is active
  • Quickly hitting 3 critical hits now refunds 3 shots, up from 1
• Flying around with The Manticore is fun, but they wanted it to be more rewarding, mobile, and sustainable.
  • Increased catalyst's damage resistance from tier 3 to tier 4
  • Increased movement speed during hang time
  • Activating the catalyst perk (through airborne kill or sustained damage after an airborne kill) now partially refills magazine
• Lumina's cap on Noble Rounds was 5, but when working on exotic reticles they decided to buff it to 6 to match Ace of Spades for consistency, and to give Lumina a bit of a buff
• Heartshadow wasn't quite hitting the fantasy they wanted, so they're making it easier to use the exotic perks
  • Damage increase now activates quicker when invisible, now 0.25s down from 1s
  • Heartshadow now weakens upon dealing any damage while the damage increase is active
• They want to differentiate Worldline Zero from Eager Edge, so they're making the following change:
  • The sprinting Heavy attack can now be chained into itself once, sword guard cost for each attack down to 50% from 100%, and damage per heavy attack increased 8.3%
• They wanted to increase the fun factor of Sweet Business, so they're making it fire explosive rounds every 20 shots, and even less shots when fully spun up
• Legend of Acrius has some of the highest single shot damage in the game, but its reserves run out too quickly, and you have to be too close to reasonably use it, so they're increasing total ammo from 12 to 16, and buffing the maximum damage distance 9m -> 12m
• Tommy's Matchbook now scorches upon sustained fire while overheated. Every 5 shots applies 14 scorch stacks, 21 with Embers of Ashes.
• No Time to Explain's drone now has anti-barrier, works with Feeding Frenzy. This also fixes a bug where the Feeding Frenzy feedback would play once when the player first spawns.
• Skyburner's Oath's Solar 3.0 pass was too conservative, so they're increasing scorch stacks 3 -> 5, and 5 -> 10 with Embers of Ashes.
• Salvation's Grip is entertaining and situationally useful for utility, but as a heavy weapon it really needs to do some damage without losing that utility.
  • Now has two firing modes. Charged shots create a pattern of Stasis crystals (number of crystals is no longer dependent on charge time). Uncharged shot is a normal grenade launcher shot, which does more damage to Stasis crystals and frozen targets.
  • Added a new perk that reloads the magazine from reserves when you quickly chatter at least 3 crystals with the uncharged shot.
• Bad Juju has always had hard to control recoil, turn out that's because it's had autorifle recoil this whole time, so they're fixing it to perform like other pulse rifles.
• They're fixing the Fighting Lion bug where it does a significant amount more than other exotics to red bars.
• Thunderlord has surged in popularity with its catalyst and the Season 20 machine gun buff, but it has a bug where lightning strikes hit divinity bubbles twice. They're fixing that bug, nerfing its combo with divinity as a result
• Winterbite currently has an exploitable damage bug, now will have its impact damage removed and shifted into the detonation damage. Self-damage scaling has been tuned to account for the increased damage from detonation.

• Fragile Focus is fairly potent, but too hard to activate. Now lasts until your shields pop, and returns when your shield regenerates to 100%
• Thresh, Demolitionist, and Pugilist have not actually worked with Glaives, but that's fixed in Season 21.
• Reconstruction has been simplified so it can be placed on more weapons without breaking anything, but now the amount of time before the perk activates and between rounds being added is the same: 4 seconds at base, 3.5 seconds for enhanced.
• Shoot to Loot will now pick up Orbs of Power, but currently only when shot directly. Detonation pickups will be added in a future patch.

• They're working on redesigning how zoom interacts with damage falloff. Weapons with "standard zoom" for their weapon type will be unaffected by this change, but weapons with lower zoom will have better damage falloff, and higher zoom will get worse damage falloff. Bonuses to aim assist, accuracy, and recoil will still apply. They will also make a pass on weapon type base damage falloff ranges for several weapon types to make sure that no weapons are significantly affected by this change.
• There's also a big sword update coming, with a focus of making guarding substantially more valuable
• In the more distant future they are working on a sparrow update that will allow players to use their favorites instead of Always on Time (without touching Always on Time itself).

Did we miss anything? Let us known on Twitter or in the #tips channel on our Discord.

Sources:

• Season 21 Weapon Changes Preview