I mean, we all knew it was coming. Bungie had already mentioned that they felt that Destiny‘s auto-rifles were overpowered and too accurate, and that a “fix” was coming. I guess I just started telling myself that they’d forgotten or something. They did not forget.
Starting tomorrow, a Destiny hotfix will make a number of tweaks to how the weapons in the game work, along with a few other things. The complete list of changes, via the Destiny blog, is below.
General
- Fixed a bug where the Valkyrie-O5X Ship was the same as the Aurora Lance
Classes
- Titan
- Unbreakable: Fixed an issue with the perk granting more agility than intended
- Warlock
- Brimstone: Perk can now activate if player is airborne
Weapons
- General
- Fixed some issues related to quick weapon swapping
- Auto Rifles
- Base Damage decreased by 2%
- Reduced Precision Damage multiplier from 1.50 -> 1.25 (head shot bonus)
- Stability decreased by 4% – 17% (driven by stat value)
- Hand Cannons
- In-air accuracy now increased
- Scout Rifles
- Base damage increased by 6%
- Damage vs. Combatants increased by 6% – 25% (based on tier)
- Improved target acquisition, plus additional recoil tuning.
- Shotguns
- Decreased base damage at maximum range (falloff) by 20%
- Shot Package Perk now has a slightly wider cone of fire
- The Rangefinder and Shot Package perks are now mutually exclusive
- Exotic Weapons
- Vex Mythoclast
- Base Damage decreased by 34%
- Increased Precision Damage multiplier from 1.25 -> 1.50 (headshot bonus)
- Pocket Infinity
- Enhanced Battery Perk has now been replaced with the Speed Reload Perk
- Perks
- Metal Detector: Fixed a bug that prevents this perk from actually providing additional ammo
- Lightweight: Fixed a bug that allowed additional agility to apply even when a weapon was stowed
Activities
- Strikes
- Engram rewards from strikes now appear in the post-game Activity Summary
- Raid – Vault of Glass
- Templar Encounter
- Kill volume added to sniper platforms to prevent players from sitting on top of them
- Relic is now removed and respawned if the holder leaves the playable area
Destinations
- The Fallen have also retreated from their hold over the Rocket Yard to discuss a new takeover plan
I’m super bummed that my humorously large stock of legendary and exotic auto-rifles will be less powerful than it was, and it also sounds like we won’t be able to rely on that “hide on the sniper pillar” method of beating the Templar in the Vault of Glass. Well, shit.
I’m also curious to know whether “The Fallen have also retreated from their hold over the Rocket Yard” is code for “we nerfed that second loot cave“. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
Comments
56 responses to “Great, Destiny’s Auto-Rifles Are About To Get Worse”
Wow thorn and bad juju untouched, disappointing. Mythoclast nerfed totally warranted and expected, will be interesting to see how the AR and SR changes impact PvP, pretty happy with the change, means i have to stop crutching on Suros
Saved my juju for nothing so far.
Apparently the full patch notes states that the other exotic balances will come with the next major patch that is coming “soon”
Awesome! My Vanquisher VIII does a pretty good job anyway as it is in PvP. Be nice to go Scout or Juju when it buffs. Got so many Exotics to level I usually just rotate when its needed
What’s wrong with Bad Juju? I haven’t levelled it up yet but it seems alright, and it’ll get a damage boost along with the other cout rifles, won’t it?
It’s a pulse rifle, so no buff here, it has pretty terrible dmg and the magazine is pretty small, also the particle effect can be more hindrance than benefit, all around it just under performs. If it had kept it’s elemental dmg from pre-release it might get situational usage but currently pretty much any legendary or above pulse rifle beats it
Oh yeah, I believe the particle effect remains visible when you’re cloaked doesn’t it, a la the Bungie-exclusive flaming helmets from Halo 3/Reach?
I thought Pulse rifles were getting a buff this patch but reading again I guess that’s just scout rifles, my bad. Bad Juju was better than any other pulse rifle I’ve used but prior to Juju I’d only ever had Blues. My wife has Red Death (I think that’s it’s name) and seems to prefer it but finds it quite slow.
I recently pulled a legendary Dead Orbit hand cannon out of blue engram and bought a legendary auto rifle from the Vanguard quatermaster to keep me happy while I level up Super Good Advice (exotic MG) so I haven’t used Juju a great deal.
It’s more that it obscures a good deal of your view when scoped, not sure about the cloaked thing, wouldn’t surprise me, then again cloaking is not all that stealthy in Destiny
Agreed.
Iron Hammer tournament should have been renamed to Super Happy Mythoclast Hammer time.
As soon as I saw an enemy player with one, I didn’t bother sticking around.
Good. There’s a lot of things that require balancing in the game that I guess they can only figure out from live data. Auto-rifles feel so cheap that you can empty a clip into someone’s head and not suffer any recoil. That said, it doesn’t look like a massive drop in damage and I was also hoping more for a nerf for auto-rifles over long range distances. Scout rifles are obsolete while you can still snipe across half a map with an auto-rifle. Hoping now I can run around with a Scout rifle and do some damage but I’ll wait and see whether this actually affects gameplay.
Speaking of obsolete weapons, with auto-rifles as they are, what exactly is the point of pulse rifles? In the beta I found it so much easier to use a pulse rifle because auto-rifles were recoiling lots. Hopefully this brings it back to what it was so each weapon has a distinct advantage over each other
There’s still the glaring omission of end-game stats when you complete a Raid though. It would be nice to see how you actually did in the mission
Hopefully this makes my Red Death exotic a more viable weapon for pvp.
Red Death is already fantastic, I have been using it as my main PvP weapon for weeks.
Whelp, there goes my pvp playstyle.
Wow… Nerfing my only Legendary weapon, lol. Guess I’ll need to save up and get that Scout rifle from Dead Orbit.
what will become of my beloved Doctor Nope!?
Cool. I have been focusing on scout rifles and felt they were just sightly underpowered.
One of my scouts has explosive rounds. That’s fun.
I was using explosive rounds but realised after some testing that it appears to make the initial shot do less damage. I think it takes some damage off the initial shot and applies it as area damage – but im not sure area damage does crits on weakpoints. This makes headshots slightly less effective while making you better against weaker groups. I want max headshots.
I am now levelling up a legendary to the point at which headshot kills make the victim explode. I think that might be the ticket.
Woohoo! Always preferred the SR which forces me to ease up on drinking from the bottle of spray’n’pray… Nerf on!
I do okay on PVP but I didn’t think the auto rifle was over powered but under powered. I woupd waste a clip and then sum sometimes to get a kill but they snap me with one shot with a shotgun from a small to medium distance. Or get raped from two shots from a pulse rifle. Oh well. Surprised the Vex is getting a 34% decrease. It is only obtainable from doing VoG on hard. I think the perks justify the gun. Or maybe at least a 10% decrease.
could just be a result of lag or off aim, the auto rifles were definitely op
Could be lag. I played last night and it was hard to get kills. Getting shotgunned and plasma rifled all over the place. But there were kills where I wasted a clip and then just after I reloaded I got a kill notification. But it doesn’t seem laggy to me.
Have you seen vex in action? It could 3 shot you in pvp
I haven’t, but the Golden Gun is a instant kill. As I said, I reckon the work justifies the gun. Maybe cap it a bit in PvP but it shoulf still reign supreme in PvE. If not, why bother.
Vex is a primary weapon, Golden Gun is a super ability. How did you come up with that comparison? Thing is they don’t have such a system that caps weapon in PvP so they had to do nerf and adjustments to it.
Pulse Rifles and Shotguns are still the best guns you can use no matter what you are doing.
My fave weapon – that ground blast I can unleash as my special as a Titan. Works a dream every damn time.
…especially if I’m low on health and doing a mega-lift EJECT-ESCAPE!!! as can fire the ground pound from any height, land safely AND clear an area to allow running away…
Running away! It’s a tactic!
Shotguns are for children.
Find the Scout Rifles much more appealing anyway but yeah this makes sense. Increase to scout is very much appreciated!
It’s a 2% damage nerf and a drop in the critical damage. Big deal. This article makes it seem like they’ll be completely useless – well that might seem like it, only because they were OP for purpose compared to the Scout and Pulse rifles which should have been dominating at range.
You’re looking at the wrong stat. It’s the stability decrease that’s really going to fix ARs. Doing reasonable damage with your first shot doesn’t help that much if you can’t put the next five anywhere near your target.
Always preferred scout rifles anyway, hopefully this will help make them even more fun.
This was needed. If you had a scout rifle, you could be outgunned by an auto rifle at a huge distance, even sniping distance. Precision rifles should dominate fully automatic auto weapons at any distance larger than a medium sized room.
Why Hunter get no love…
Stoked with the Mythocast – fuck that was OP
I can’t say I’m super keen on losing my enhanced battery on Pocket Infinity, I was looking forward to using it as a suppression weapon in multiplayer when friends and I were working on exotic bounties that had crucible components and the ability to have 8 rounds rather than the rather tiny 3 was pretty much the key to that plan. Even if missed shots are returned to the mag more often than not it’ll still have to be a lot more precision and a lot less suppression.
As someone who’s not done the vault of glass yet, can someone explain the sniper platform kill volume thing? Is it something like you can stand on a pillar and only get a dozen kills whilst standing there before they get set on fire and you have to move or something?
yea if you stand on a sniper platform it’ll give you the screen popup of return the the battlefield in 5 seconds otherwise you’ll die.
Hard mode raid just got a lot harder.
Oooh that’s a bit nasty then! Wonder why they called that kill volume instead of just “made it out of bounds”
I’m skeptical that this is enough of a buff to scout rifles. Anyone who’s ever tried to use one in VoG can tell you how pointless it is to have a scout compared to auto. The improvements to stability and target acquisition are a little puzzling, considering they were already superb for that. Damage could’ve done with more of a boost. Bashing the trigger with a scout is far, far worse base damage on pretty much any raid mob compared to an auto. Especially since so much of its damage-balancing appears to be tied up in its higher crit bonus.
And if a lot of the enemies are minotaurs who don’t have a crit zone…
I guess the fact they’re getting a marginal buff while auto rifles get a marginal nerf is supposed to fix the gulf between them, rather than making either one a lot better or worse.
I don’t think that is exactly true, I tend to carry my VoG runs, while I may be a relic carrier I run a scout rifle that causes explosions on critical kills and has increased damage on the lower half of the clip. I found it really good and won’t lie, I was only more infatuated with them after getting scout rifle from VoG itself. That said, it is absolute garbage when being fired upon by another guardian so a damage buff is more than welcome.
Yeah, I completely maxed out the multi-tool in all possible areas and the vanguard scout, and neither of them were cutting the mustard in VoG compared to similarly-levelled autos in my arsenal. Just in terms of how many seconds it was taking to drop oracles, minotaurs, harpies and supplicants… it was easily taking double or longer to the point that as much as I love scouts, they were a fucking liability. Decent against goblins/hobgoblins/fanatics, but that’s their only use in the raid.
It helps that mine has a fire element and does extra damage to oracles (three shot).
Ah, I have that one… haven’t levelled it though. I’m not really playing outside of the raid anymore, so I don’t expect to get much use out of it in a hurry.
Have lost interest in bounties/dailies/weeklies. 😛
I enjoy it in bursts, but I can’t hard push for days on it. Right now all of my weapons are from the raid and with the exception of ice breaker there is nothing I really need/want.
Still waiting for a nerf on charge times for fusion rifles, shotgun fire rates, bladedance’s duration and the buff to ward of dawns health.
This is one of the problems when PvE and PvP mix – it’s near impossible to balance. I like the feeling a maxed out, somewhat over-powered weapon I’ve spent time acquiring and upgrading gives me in PvE at times. PvP isn’t something I generally partake in yet it dictates PvE and how the weapons perform. Sometimes it could be said to work the other way, but all I can say is that I’d love to see maybe different stats or limitations for PvE and PvP so they don’t affect each other.
Am I the only one who thinks Auto Rifles suck balls anyway? Now they’re gonna be even less effective? I always found them inaccurate and done fuck all damage. Maybe because I only had uncommon ones early on and haven’t used one since.
Nah the auto’s dominate in crucible becuase they are so damn accurate and the fire rate is maxed on the exotic version. So if you’re don’t have it you are already losing…. well as far as I tell
I’ve never liked ARs, except Suros Regime in PvP, where it dominates, will be interesting to see how it performs after the patch.
I have a rare one that I still use over any legendaries I’ve found, just due to the high fire rate and ridiculous stability. Totally amazing in PvP so it’ll be interesting to see how much this changes it.
Ah! A fellow Shurigen-E brother! I’m going to miss having a 50/50 chance against snipers at long range 🙂
Great, an update that makes me even less inclined to go back to the game. PvP was a joke.
This article should not have the Suros Regime displayed. That will be the least affected AR in this patch. Due to its upgrade of slower shots and increased damage the recoil increase for this AR will be almost non existent. Not much happening unless your firing from the hip. Head shots with this weapon will still be far more attainable then your standard AR even with the decrease. Sorry Suros AR haters, this exotic will still be mopping the floors in pvp. It may just take 1 extra bullet in my already 3/4 full magazine to take you down with the 2% damage loss. Hunting season is still open! Thanks Bungie!