Today’s Destiny livestream brought a fair number of surprises for what players can expect for the meta changes the PvP gameplay. As reported yesterday, today’s livestream would bring announcements of new PvP modifications, sandbox changes, and quality of life improvements — but no specifics were announced. Today we learned about new and substantial PvP revival changes, heavy/special ammo modifications, an increase to loot drops and expected level from doing Crucible. Additionally, there have been changes made to most major classes and popular exotics as well as changes to the Warlock subclasses.
First line of note, Bungie announced revive changes coming to Crucible. Revives take longer, players will have to be much closer to their fallen counterparts, the revival shield is less powerful, and players can no longer sprint-revive Trials will also have an added two seconds to their revival timer on first death (totaling seven seconds), fourteen seconds (total) on a player’s second death, and so on incrementally. The inspiration of the changes was made to add more risk to reviving a player in combat meta.
Next, DeeJ talked about the heavy/special ammo economy (which was substantially changed a few months ago). In the latest economy update, players did not have special ammo in the beginning — a decision that was quickly subverted with specialized Exotic weapons like icebreaker. In the update, players will always first spawn with special ammo, however ammo will spawn much later — by two minutes. Heavy, meanwhile will only come once a match at the five-minute mark. None of these changes will be applied to Mayhem, which is designed to be, well, mayhem.
Legendaries will now be more easy to get through Crucible, with the drop rate increased more than any other mode in the game. Meanwhile, completing Shaxx weekly bounties will bring up to 335 rewards. Therefore, Crucible joins the rank of Trials as a way to get 335 rewards. Additionally, Iron Banner is also getting 320 artifact and ghost in the next for getting up to rank 3 and rank 5.
There were major changes added to all of the game’s weapon types as well as many exotics — check the list below for all the modifications:
Auto Rifles
- High rate of fire
- Base damage coming down
- Low rate of fire
- Base damage coming up
Pulse Rifles
- Low rate of fire
- Base damage coming up
Hand cannons
- Increasing ammo inventory
- Deeper pockets, not more ammo in the gun
Fusion Rifles
- Blanket stability increase
Sniper Rifles
- Short Range scores
- Zoom distance is being taken out further
- Increased accuracy
- 2 frames have been added to zoom time
- Snapshot perk only decreases 20% instead of 30%
- Reduces stability
Exotic
MIDA Multitool (most played PvP primary weapon)
- Removing high-caliber rounds
SUROS Regime
- Buffed as mentinoed above
- Spinning up perk kicks in later in the magazine — four bullets later
- Focus fire perk gives substantially more range — can now max out
Hawkmoon
- Increased range
The Last Word
- Damage decrease on “The Last Word” perk — still a 3-shot kill
Thorn
- No attack value increase — still Year 1
- Minimized the damage to pulse
- Increased pulse amount
- Not as blinding flash
Icebreaker
- No attack value increase — still Year 1
- When switching from Icebreaker, players will lose their special
- Zoom has been taken out
Dreg’s Promise
- Projectiles will be tracked
Telesto
- Projectiles have been fixed, will attach to friends but will not hurt them
The Thousand Yard Stare (Most popular PvP Special weapon)
- Less bullets in inventory
Quillim’s Terminus/Harrowed Quillim’s Terminus
- Decreased ammo inventory
King’s Fall Weapons
- Increase reload spped
Sidearms
- Same Icebreaker nerf — switching will make players lose their special ammo
Heavy Weapons
- Heavy weapons will carry less ammo
Next on the stream, Bungie talked about changes to the Warlock class. The changes are very patch note-y, so they are listed as such below:
Sunsinger
- Lower shield
- Reduce frequency of flame shield
- Brimstone has a new damage boost
- Radiance
- Fireborn won’t last as long
- Non-Fireborn will last longer
Stormcaller
- Storm trance
- Unable to blind
- Unable to pop bubbles
- Decreased Super time
Voidwalker
- Vampire-esque abilities damage increased
- Vampire-esque abilities refresh rate increased
For those out of the loop, two weeks ago Bungie showcased that the April 12 Destiny update will include an increased level cap, new bounties, new quest lines (some exclusive to PlayStation), a new strike, a revamp of the Winter’s Run strike, a new end-game challenge mode, and (most notably) a revamp in the Prison of Elders. Additionally, last week’s live stream previewed the new chroma system, armor sets, Taken equipment, and modifications to the infusion system.
As mentioned above, Destiny‘s April update comes to all players on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on April 12, 2016. More definite patch notes will be released by Bungie tomorrow, so make sure to check back then.
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