• The following is a preview for the 7.3.5 patch coming on March 5th.

• Uptime in PvP is currently too high, owing to the low cooldown of hunter dodge and two Threadling Grenade charges from Widow's Silk.
• Changes
  • Will get the same class ability regeneration penalty that gets applied to Ensnaring Slam.
  • Both Ensnaring Slam and Threaded Specter's penalties are reduced by 50% in PvE, to ensure they still feel useful in PvE
  • Threaded Specter's detonation damage +25% in PvE to make up for the still reduced uptime in PvE.

• They believe that Threadlings are currently too difficult to clear off the battlefield, and do enough damage to have too much influence over the outcome of an engagement
• Changes
  • Increased aim assist size from 0.41m -> 0.5m (making them easier to shoot)
  • Reduced base damage vs enemy players 40 -> 35
    • Damage with Thread of Evolution reduced 45 -> 38.5
  • Fixed an issue where groups of Threadlings did not reliably chain detonate when one was destroyed
  • Fixed an issue where Threadlings sometimes didn't play their non-damaging destruction animation when killed by enemy fire, making them look like they blipped out of existence

• To compensate for the above Threadling nerfs, they are buffing Arcane needle to offset the nerfs to Threadlings and make sure Broodweaver doesn't feel too much weaker.
• Changes
  • Increased aim assist angle (size of aim assist cone) by about 50%
  • Increased aim assist falloff distance (distance at which aim assist begins to decay) from 30m -> 45m
  • Increased tracking angular velocity (speed that the projectile can bend towards a target) by about 5%
  • Increased the length of the tracking shape (the shape in front of the projectile that it uses to lock on to targets)
  • Fixed an issue where uncharged melees with Arcane Needle made the player appear to be frozen in a melee pose

• They're reworking these buffs to resolve some issues with how applications of the buffs while already having the buff applied would reset the buff timer to a lower time, instead of adding to it.
• Changes
  • Restoration and Radiant
    • Fixed an issue where buff timers would get reset to their initial duration instead of their maximum when the buff is reapplied
    • This also resolves similar issues with shorter sources of Restoration like Sunspots with Sol Invictus.

• They're also nerfing Ember of Empyrean and Ember of Mercy, which would have been vastly over their power bar after the consistency fixes to Restoration and Radiant.
• Changes
  • Ember of Mercy
    • Now extends Restoration by 2 seconds when a Firesprite is collected, or grants Restoration for 2s if no Restoration is active.
    • Restoration duration increased to 3 seconds with Ember of Solace
  • Ember of Empyrean
    • Increased the maximum duration extension from 12s -> 15s
    • Reworked the duration extension granted with a Solar defeat
      • Previously it would always grant 4s. Now it grants a variable duration based on the strength of the defeated target. Elite or weaker combatants will give less than 4s, Champion or stronger combatants will grant longer.

• They're improving the consistency of Consecration, to better catch floating targets or enemies that jump too late
• Changes
  • Increased the travel distance of the initial ground wave 18m -> 20m
  • Increased the height of the ground slam after the detonation by about 1m
  • Increased the travel distance of the ground slam follow up wave 16m -> 20m
  • Increased the speed of the ground slam follow up wave 16m/s -> 24m/s (50%)

• They heard that Gunpowder Gamble's self damage resulted in too many misadventures, so they're making it less risky
• Changes
  • Reduce maximum self damage 144 -> 80

• Heavy Burst Hand Cannons (Warden's Law) inadvertently were made to be harder to control while playing on mouse and keyboard, so they are removing this nerf.
• Changes
  • Remove 25% aim assist nerf compared to other Hand Cannons when hip firing or airborne and using mouse and keyboard

• Bows have always been strong, and recently have gotten easier to use, so they are making them harder to use at longer ranges
• Changes
  • Reduced the auto aim falloff distance stard and end by 15%
    • e.g. aim assist will be less effective at long range
  • Reduced the maximum auto aim cone size by 5%

• Add Breakneck's missing 4th column perk, Target Lock.

• Lightweight scouts are too unforgiving when missing crits, so they are making a change that will make optimal TTK 3 crits 1 body, instead of 4 crits
• Changes
  • Increased base damage by 5%

• While snipers are less popular than other special weapons, they are disproportionately oppressive to play against. They are nerfing aim assist to make them slightly harder to use
• Changes
  • Reduced the auto aim cone size by 10%

• Rocket Launcher meta is more set than they would like, with Adaptive and Aggressive outperforming the rest. They're giving the other frames more reserves, and some other unique strengths.
• Changes
  • Precision
    • Increased reserve ammo by 2
    • Reduced damage penalty from -10% to -5%
  • High-Impact
    • Increased reserve ammo by 2
    • Now deals more detonation damage and less impact, for roughly the same total damage. This should make them more effective against groups, or near-miss shots.
  • The above changes apply to Deathbringer, Gjallarhorn, and Truth

• Heavy Grenade Launchers are strong "mathematically" after several recent buffs, but they still are not seeing use, so they are going for more substantial changes.
• They're pushing them more into sustained damage and add clear, and nerfing Spike Grenades to make them less dominant.
• Changes
  • Increased reserver ammo by a minimum of 6 rounds, maximum of 10 rounds, depending on the Grenade Launcher
  • Reduced Spike Grenades damage buff from 50% to 12.5%
    • With the below changes, the overall damage buff for Spike Grenades goes from 8% to 3%
  • Increased direct hit impact damage by 10%.
  • Increased detonation damage by 5%.
    • In PvP, this is offset by a reduction to detonation damage, for no overall change.

• Heavy Wave Frames have struggled to find an identity, with not enough ammo (addressed above) and not as much single target damage as other Grenade Launchers.
• Changes
  • Increased damage by 20%
  • Increased wave width by 40%

• The trade off for being the only sword that can maintain distance was damage, but the reduction was more extreme than necessary
• Changes
  • Reduced heavy attack energy cost 5 -> 4
  • Increased heavy attack damage by 16%

• How has a deterministic recoil pattern, to offset it being harder to control with its 5 round burst

• Vex Mythoclast fires like a High-Impact Auto, but doesn't have the same damage falloff scalar as them, so it's being brought up to match
• Changes
  • Increased ADS damage falloff scalar from 1.5x -> 1.7x

• True-Sight is a core part of the exotic's identity, but it was too strong in PvP, especially with Oathkeeper's.
• Changes
  • True Sight will now deactivate if you leave ADS or hold it longer than 3 seconds. Only fully redrawing the bow will reactivate it.

• Edge of Action's bubble isn't intended to compete with Ward of Dawn, but with the glaive changes in Season of the Wish its health was nerfed too hard in PvE.
• Changes
  • Increased its damage resistance in PvE against all combatants against bosses to 85%, and against bosses to 15%

• Manticore has several usability issues to address, like the need for a reliably way to drop out of the air, survivability in PvE, and synergy with Void overshield builds.
• Changes
  • Players must now be airborne for 0.5s and deal damage to activate the perk.
    • Should prevent accidental activations while running down stairs or doing small jumps
  • Now has a special reload to quickly disengage antigravity thrusters.
    • Swapping weapons will continue to disengage as well
    • Tarrabah will now also have this special reload animation
  • While antigrav thrusters are engaged, combatants will be less accurate when targeting the player, like Always on Time.
  • With the catalyst, final blows and sustained damage while airborne grant a Void overshield and return ammo to the magazine.

• While it nailed the Boomer Knight fantasy well, ultimately it wasn't hitting hard enough in PvE to be competitive.
• Changes
  • Increased impact damage against PvE enemies by 50%
    • Detonation damage is unaffected, so the total damage increase is about 20%
  • Increased the maximum rate of fire by 17%

• Heal Clip wasn't valuable enough to the activating player
• Changes
  • Now grants Cure x2 to the activating player, while still giving Cure x1 to nearby allies

• Trench Barrel was originally designed for a world with very few ranged melee attacks, and letting those melees proc the perk would have been too strong. That's no longer the case in the current sandbox.
• Changes
  • Can now be activated by dealing damage with ranged melee attacks.

• Barrel Constrictor was pretty experimental, so they released it undertuned. They're now removing some of those limits.
• Changes
  • Once activated, it no longer deactivates upon firing a shot, and lasts for 7.5s.
  • Enhanced Barrel Constrictor lasts for 8.5s

• This perk is strong in a PvE subclass build, but not particularly interesting in PvP, so they're adding some buffs to help.
• Changes
  • Applying a subclass 3.0 debuff now grants +20 aim assist and 20% reduced ADS movement speed penalty, in addition to the existing +50 reload stat.
  • Applying another debuff now refreshes the buff duration.

• Dual Loader takes up a 3/4 column perk slot, which is sufficient enough that it doesn't need a penalty. The wording of the perk also restricted it to Shotguns, so they've reworded it to let it be applied to more weapon types in the future.
• Changes
  • Removed the reload speed penalty
  • Changed the wording to make it more clear that it just increases the number of shots reloaded.

• This origin perk wasn't really landing the hip-fire fantasy of the foundry.
• Changes
  • Now grants +20 range and +1.5 degree hip-fire precision cone angle in addition to its other effects, making it easier to land follow-up crits with hipfire.

• The extra damage against Stasis crystals is no longer needed, so they're removing it to reduce the perk's complexity
• Changes
  • Damage bonus vs Stasis crystals reduced from 85% -> 60% to match other constructs
  • Now works against Void Souls, Strand Clones, Cabal Projection Shields, and Brigs

• Having a perk themed around "breaking stuff" not have very high uptime outside of Warlord's Ruin (with all the eyes) felt like a missed opportunity.
• Changes
  • Can now trigger on shield break in addition to final blows on vehicles and constructs. They added a small reload speec scalar while reducing the charge rate benefit to account for the higher uptime.
  • Now works against Void Souls, Strand Clones, Cabal Projection Shields, and Brigs

• Weapons that can only "technically" crit but aren't great at it suffer from precision kills being the only option for this perk.
• Changes
  • Activation requirements are no longer locked to archetype with precision vs non-precision kills.
  • Now can always activate with either a precision kill or 3 non-precision kills.

• Target Lock is a large reason why SMG popularity has remained high despite nerfs to the weapon archetype. They're nerfing it to be much less oppressive in PvP.
• Changes
  • Now activates later in the magazine for SMGs (20% instead of 12.5%) so the damage buff will swing Primary fights less often.

• For some weapon types, the payoff of this perk was much too high for the amount of effort involved. For example, with the above changes to Heavy Grenade Launchers, it was possible to put all your reserves into the magazine.
• Changes
  • Each activation is now capped at 100% of magazine size instead of 150%, and th maximum overflow is now 3x the magazine size instead of 4x.

• A little too strong in its current form, outpacing most other options.
• Changes
  • Reduced damage bonus from 35% to 30%

• Now correctly deactivates after dealing damage with a powered melee.

• Updated the perk description to correctly state that it pulls ammo from thin air, not reserves.
• Now works against Void Souls, Strand Clones, Cabal Projection Shields, and Brigs
• Fixed a bug preventing the perk from triggering when shooting an enemy Titan barricate (and other similar targets)

• Bonus damage against minibosses should have been a part of Boss Spec, not Major Spec. This has been fixed.

• Into the Light will still have a number of small but exciting changes, touching content many players haven't though about in several years.
• In The Final Shape, many weapon types will be rebalanced in PvE, buffing underperforming weapons, and leaving most high performers untouched.
• Over the course of The Final Shape year they'll be looking at weapon mods that feel mandatory, and will make some changes that will increase player choice particularly in PvE.,
• They'll also be making substantial changes to several of the least used Exotic Weapons, and adjusting some perks, such as making Chill Clip more viable on slower-firing weapons.

• The Crucible strike team is making changes to begin addressing some of the issues facing the sandbox currently.
  • These changes will not apply to Momentum Control, Mayhem, or Checkmate. Checkmate will have its sandbox effects tweaked to differentiate it more strongly from base Crucible again.
• These first changes have the following goals
  • Help players to more clearly understand the sequence of events that led to their death, so that they can more easily learn how to improve
    • As the prevalence and strength of sandbox elements have increased, it's become harder and harder to understand what is happening from a target's perspective.
    • It's become common to be defeated near instantly, with so many things contributing to your death that it's nearly impossible to tell what events led to your death.
    • This creates a situation where it can feel like there was nothing the player could have done, making it hard to learn how to improve.
  • Alter the weapon sandbox to account for the increased average skill of our player base by reducing the amount of high-reward low-risk options.
    • It's become much more common for players to be able to hit optimal time-to-kil with SMG, peek-shoot with Hand Cannons, or blint with Wish-Ender than it was several years ago.
    • Many of these weapons have some forgiveness built in, to make it easier for players to utilize them at their full potential. This made sense when the average player skill is lower, but now far more players can take advantage of the benefits.
    • This can lead to a compression of skill gaps in the higher end, and new players struggling to find their footing in a game with so many veteran players with mastery over the game systems.
  • Encourage primary weapon mastery to be an aspirational pursuit for players
    • Currently, things like high body shot damage, generous aim assist, primary weapon flinch, and low critical hit requirements contribute to the feeling that time spent improving primary weapon skill is not necessary.
    • Hitting optimal time-to-kill can feel less like mastery of a weapon and more like an expectation of standard play at high levels. And at low levels players can still lose quickly to an inaccurate opponent, making it harder to learn the sandbox.
• These goals are blocked by a handful of root causes.
  • There are certain ability builds with higher uptime or higher potency than they believe is healthy
  • To keep those builds in check, there is a near-constant availability of special ammo, meaning a surplus of one-shot-kill weapons
  • To keep primary weapons competitive, they have been made highly lethal, fast killing, and very forgiving.
  • All this leads to a high percentage of deaths where, from the target's perspective, it feels like nothing could have been done differently.

• There are two goals with increasing player health:
  • More granularity to balance current and future sandbox elements
  • Decrease the relative lethality of multiple sandbox elements
• Changes
  • Players health will be increased by 30HP in base Crucible. Players will now have 100 health (up from 70) and 116-130 shield, depending on Resilience.

• Melee, Grenade, and class ability cooldowns now have a 15% penalty applied to them in Crucible only.
• Super cooldowns now have a 20% penalty applied to them in Crucible only.

• To account for increased player health, and reduced uptime, they are adjusting ability damage so that the general rule of supers killing in one shot and most melees killing in two still holds.
• Changes
  • Increased base Super damage by 31%
  • Increased base melee damage by 16%
  • Increased Arc Flux Grenade damage by 16%

• To maintain the same optimal time-to-kill rates as the current sandbox with the new HP values and increased emphasis on precision, all Primary weapons except Bows will have their critical hit damage increased.
• Hand Cannons are also having their flinch reduced, and they've been a consistent outlier even compared to other similar primaries like scout rifles and bows.
• Changes
  • Pulse Rifles, Auto Rifles, Sidearms, Scout Rifles
    • Increased critical hit damage by 14%
  • Hand Cannons
    • Increased critical hit damage by 10%
    • Reduced body shot damage by 5%
    • Reduced flinch dealt to players by projectile impact by 12.5%, and by Explosive Payload by 10%
  • Submachine Guns
    • Increased critical hit damage by 12.5%
    • Reduced body shot damage by 3%
  • Bows
    • Reduced base damage by 15%

• They are moving the Special ammo meter from Checkmate into the wider Crucible, with several tweaks.
• Changes
  • You start every game (including round-based modes like Dominion) with two kills worth of Special ammo for your chosen weapon
  • Instead of two kills worth of Special ammo being granted every respawn, you earn more ammo by filling up a Special ammo meter. Points are given for getting kills, assists, and completing objectives. 100 points grants you two kills worth of Special ammo.
    • Base point values:
      • Kills: 23
      • Assists: 10
      • Deaths: 10
      • Control zone capture: 14
      • Heavy ammo pulls: 8
    • Elimination/Dominion Point Values
      • Kills: 38
      • Assists: 16
      • Deaths: 16
      • Heavy ammo pulls: 10
    • 3v3 Respawn Modes (Survival, 3v3 Clash, Countdown Rush)
      • Kills: 26
      • Assists: 12
      • Deaths: 11
    • Rumble
      • Kills: 30
    • Countdown
      • Chard armed: 20
      • Charge defused: 40
      • Charge detonated: 70
  • Kills from Special or Heavy ammo weapons do not grant points
  • Jumping off the map will substract progress from the Special ammo meter
  • Ammo is not dropped on death, you will not lose Special ammo when you are defeated or revived.
  • Earned special ammo will carry over between rounds
  • Swapping from double Primary weapons to a Special ammo weapon will reset your Special ammo meter progress

• To offset the increased health and reduced uptime, the base damage of several Special weapons are increased
• Changes
  • Trace Rifles, Shotguns, and Fusion Rifles
    • Increased base damage by 20%
  • Glaives
    • Increased projectile damage by 20%
    • Increased melee damage by 16%

• Heavy ammo grenade launchers have been the meta pick for a long time, and machine guns have been underperforming, so they are adjusting as appropriate.
• Changes
  • Heavy Grenade Launchers
    • Reduced detonation damage by 5%
  • Machine Guns
    • Increased base damage by 20%

• Some exotic weapons can bypass the Special ammo economy changes, and rose to the top of the list of annoyances. Crimson also has long been dealing extreme amounts of flinch, exacerbated by the burst fire.
• Additionally, some exotic weapons are getting buffed up that were underperforming
• Changes
  • Fighting Lion
    • Decreased damage versus players in Crucible by 20%
  • Devil's Ruin
    • Decreased charged beam damage against players by 15%
  • Crimson
    • Reduced flinch dealt to players by projectile impact by 17.5%
  • Forerunner
    • Increased damage versus players in Crucible by 20%
  • Symmetry
    • Increased Revolution damage versus players in Crucible by 16%

• Destiny 2 expansions are being offered by Humble Bundle until the 27th on steep discounts, with 5% of the proceeds going to the Bungie Foundation.
  • For $8 you can get Shadowkeep and the Forsaken Pack.
  • For $12 you can get the above, as well as Beyond Light, the 30th Anniversary Pack, and The Witch Queen.
  • For $20 you can get the above, as well as the base version of Lightfall.
  • For $40 you can get the above, as well as the annual pass version of Lightfall. This would essentially include all currently available content in the game.
• An emblem to celebrate the Lunar New Year has been released, redeemable using this link. The emblem is shown below.
• The Trials map for this weekend is Dead Cliffs, winning the email poll with 43% of the vote.

 

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

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Sources:

• This Week In Destiny - 02/15/2024