Summary
- May 6 unveils upcoming sandbox changes to Destiny 2, including exotic armor and weapons updates.
- Significant adjustments to weapons like Lord of Wolves and exotic armor like Hunter's Radiant Dance Machines.
- The new Edge of Fate expansion for Destiny 2 is also being revealed on the same day as the May 6 update.
Bungie teases a new sandbox upcoming coming to Destiny 2 on May 6, revealing a few changes coming to exotic armor and weapons like Lord of Wolves. It's an exciting time for Destiny 2 fans as May 6 aims to be a very important date to keep an eye on, bringing a new reset to the game and now a major update.
May 6 is also a special day for players as Bungie will be revealing the first-ever details for Codename: Frontiers, the next chapter of the franchise. Kicking things off will be the Edge of Fate expansion for Destiny 2 and Bungie is set to reveal the upcoming expansion next week, likely a release date as well. Just this week, players finished a community event in the game, unlocking a cinematic featuring the Drifter and teasing even more story details. As fans continue to wait, the latest blog post from Bungie highlighted big sandbox changes coming to Destiny 2 next week.
Destiny 2 Adding New Feature Called Event Home
Bungie announces the arrival of a new Destiny 2 feature called Event Home, which will debut in May alongside a unique Crucible mode.
A big sandbox update is scheduled to arrive on May 6 and with the weekly Destiny 2 blog post, Bungie provided a few previews of what players can expect. As expected, there appears to be numerous weapon and gear changes, including various exotics, like Alethonym, Truth, Two-Tailed Fox, and Riskrunner all getting buffs. Lord of Wolves is seeing a nerf to its hip fire damage in PvE activities, while Sundered Doctrine's unique exotic known as Finality's Auger will likely be much smoother to use after a bunch of quality of life improvements.
In terms of exotic armor, the Hunter's Radiant Dance Machines are seeing more changes after previous tweaks. Specifically, the exotic performs differently for Mouse and Keyboard players versus controller users, something which Bungie is keen on addressing. Lunafaction Boots are also being adjusted and the Lion Rampant is seeing a buff to help it become less niche than it currently is.
In addition to these exotic changes, this update also takes aim at another weapon that has already seen numerous changes. Even after past changes to Redrix's Estoc pulse rifle in Destiny 2, Bungie is once again poised to make adjustments as the weapon continues to be an issue in middle and lower skill lobbies. Instead of targeting Redrix's Estoc directly, Bungie announced changes to all weapons with the Legacy Frame Origin Trait, reducing the ADS damage fallout scalar by 0.1, putting them in line with High Impact style pulse rifles.
Destiny 2 Update 8.2.6 Exotic Gear Changes Preview
Lord of Wolves
Lord of Wolves has been an absolute beast within the realm of PvE for many months now. Both Atheon and Templar have been shaking in their proverbial boots whenever Guardians readied their weapons for DPS phases.
While we found Lord of Wolves was far outperforming where we wanted it to be, we decided to let this ride for most of Heresy for a fun little “meta” time period.With Rite of the Nine arriving soon, it is time to rein it in.
- Reduced hip fire damage in PvE by 30%.
Riskrunner
Riskrunner has long been a low-zoom outlier as far as SMGs go, so we wanted to bring it more in line with other options alongside the buff it will be getting to range as part of the Adaptive SMG changes listed above.
- Increased zoom from 13 to 14
Truth and Two Tailed Fox
Rocket Launchers rarely compete in Crucible as viable Heavy options against LFRs and LMGs but giving them more ammo from crates is not a decision we would make lightly. To test the waters, we have selected two Exotic Rocket Launchers that will get additional ammo from Heavy crates in PvP.
- Increased the amount of ammo picked up from ammo crates in Crucible from 1 to 2.
Alethonym
Creating an ammo brick drained all of the weapon’s energy which prevented the player from creating two special ammo bricks when at 100% energy. We’ve adjusted the cost of the special ammo brick to 50% to allow the player to create another special brick if they desire.
- Creating a special ammo brick now only costs 50% energy.
- Reworded the Vestigial Alchemy trait description to be a little less confusing.
Finality's Auger
We’ve added some quality-of-life changes that should make using this weapon an overall smoother experience.
- Increased the duration that a target is painted to match the duration of the turret.
- The environmental target marker now marks additional targets that enter the zone after its initial creation.
- Now grants an automatic reload from reserves after deploying a turret.
- Reduced the turret's self-damage by 85%.
- Increased the turret's damage by 10%.
Hunter
Radiant Dance Machines
The goal of the RDM’s rework was to introduce a new style of gameplay into PvP, centered around aggressive, close-range play with Primary weapons. While this has happened in practice, and we have received a large amount of feedback that the playstyle itself is fun to use, we need to make sure that at its peak it is still in band with the other playstyles that exist in high-end Crucible gameplay.
Unfortunately, due to differences between the input devices, the current tuning for RDM continues to remain problematic on mouse and keyboard (MnK) while being significantly less effective on controller (The Last Word excluded, which has been addressed in the tuning specifically below). The usage reflects this, with RDMs seeing 45% higher usage on mouse and keyboard. MnK already benefits from having significantly higher aim assist, accuracy, and stability while hip firing than controller does, and stacking those benefits with the ones from RDM is allowing some weapons to perform outside of their intended bounds.
Long term, we want to investigate moving the two inputs to be more equal in terms of hip firing efficacy at base, but for now, we are going to significantly reduce the benefits granted by RDMs. We believe these values will still allow players to engage in hip fire combat, albeit at a more limited range window and with additional investment needed in the form of perks or mods to achieve a similar level of strength.
In addition, so that Hunter’s don’t have all the hip firing fun, we are going to grant the hip fire range and accuracy benefits for Primary weapons (post-reduction) to an Exotic each on Warlock and Titan, which will be discussed below.
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Reduced the bonuses granted to Primary weapons when hip firing. Aligned the hip fire bonuses to range and accuracy with the values granted by the Hip Fire Grip perk, instead of the Legacy Frame intrinsic perk.
- Reduced accuracy bonus for standard weapons by 60%.
- Reduced aim assist falloff distance bonus by 60%.
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Further reduced the accuracy bonus for the custom tuned Exotic weapons (including The Last Word) by an additional 25%.
- As a note, based on the feedback we have received from mouse and keyboard players using The Last Word with RDMs, we are looking into tuning the specific penalties for that input device down a bit in a future patch to make the weapon more usable without requiring an Exotic.
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Although dodge uptime is already lower on RDMs than it is with some other Hunter Exotics, we want to reduce the class ability refund benefit just a bit in PvP to make it less of a focal point of the Exotic.
- Reduced the amount of energy refunded for defeats against players when you do not have full class ability energy from 33% to 20% to align it with the upper tier of the Strategist perk.
Titan
Lion Rampant
Lion Rampant has long been a niche Exotic, and since it already dealt with hip firing effectiveness, we thought they would be a great candidate for this buff. For a second buff, we are also allowing the Airborne Effectiveness bonus provided by the Exotic to be active even when ADS, so it is no longer limited to hip firing while airborne.
- Added the accuracy and range hip fire bonuses from RDMs to Lion Rampant for Primary ammo weapons only. These hip fire benefits are always active, not just when airborne.
- The +50 Airborne Effectiveness bonus is now always active, not just when you are hip firing while airborne.
Note: The description will be updated to reflect the new functionality in a future patch.
Warlock
Lunafaction Boots
Lunafaction Boots similarly sees low usage in Crucible, and when it does it is almost always to show off an extremely long-range Slug Precision Shotgun or Fusion Rifle kill. While those instances are funny, we don’t believe they are generally acceptable for PvP play, so we have reduced the range benefits while standing in an Empowering Rift for Crucible only. In its place, we have added the benefits to hip firing Primary ammo weapons, which are always active.
- Added the accuracy and range hip fire bonuses from RDMs to Lunafaction Boots for Primary ammo weapons only. These hip fire benefits are always active, not just when in a rift.
- Decreased the range bonus granted by the Empowering Rift by 50% in PvP only to reduce occurrences of extremely long-range kills with short range weapons like Fusions and Slug Shotguns
Note: The description will be updated to reflect the new functionality in a future patch.
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WHERE TO PLAY
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