Bungie Update: 11.04.16
The third and final Twitch stream on the April Update explored The Crucible and Sandbox changes. Guardians will see Special and Heavy Ammunition appearing less frequently on the battlefield, when reviving a teammate more strategy will be required, and weapons will be going back to the workbench. Catch up here before the April Update goes live on Tuesday, April 13th, 2016.
BASE WEAPON CHANGES
AUTO RIFLES
High Rate-of-Fire (RoF) bullet hoses have been leading the pack in terms of competitive viability. Low RoF auto rifles are slightly behind their faster firing brethren. We’re tipping the scales ever so slightly on these weapons to try and create more options.
Changes:
- Low RoF (Suros Regime, An Answering Chord, Anguish of Drystan): 2.3% increase in base damage
- High RoF (Doctrine of Passage, Arminius-D): 2.5% reduction in base damage
- Improvement to hip fire final accuracy
PULSE RIFLES
As with the auto rifles, the lowest RoF pulse rifles aren’t quite as effective as the faster firing models. The damage increase here doesn’t reduce bursts to kill against high Armour players in PVP, but it will provide more damage per burst which will help when team shooting and getting clean up kills.
Changes:
- Low RoF (The Messenger, Spare Change, Lyudmila-D): 3% increase from previous base damage
HAND CANNONS
Hand Cannons were running lean on ammo inventory during PVP streaks and lengthy PVE encounters. We are increasing their ammo inventory amounts by a bit to not leave you scrounging for white bricks too often, but not so much that you don’t need to worry about making shots count.
Changes:
- Increase ammo inventory for all Hand Cannons
FUSION RIFLES
The changes made in the last patch were somewhat more in depth than a blanket stability reduction: changing the ADS/Hip bolt spread paradigm as well as charge rate/damage tradeoffs. Rather than continue to play with nuance, this time we’re just going to do a blanket stability improvement.
Changes:
- Fusion rifles are more stable across the board. The maximum stability for a fusion rifle has not changed much, but the baseline minimum stability is much stronger (40% recoil reduction), and we linearly ramp up from there.
- Fixed bug where some outlying fusion rifle scopes had unintended increased zoom that was removed in Year Two.
SNIPER RIFLES
The intent for Sniper Rifles has always been lethality at a distance using a measured approach. There are a few scopes and models of Sniper Rifles that are pushing the limits of “distance” and allowing for pretty effective twitch combat shooting at what many would consider medium range. These changes aren’t intended to remove that style of combat, but they are intended to put the player at slightly longer ranges for that style to be as effective as it is currently.
Changes:
- Increase base zoom distance on the lowest range sniper scopes. Medium to long range scopes are untouched
- Increase base zoom distance on Sniper Rifles that did not have Optics enhancing scope nodes: Hereafter, Black Spindle, Patience & Time, Stillpiercer
PLAYER RESURRECTION
Ally resurrection is a huge strategic factor in high intensity PVP and PVE, with many Guardians meeting a grizzly fate when assisting downed teammates.
Changes:
- Reduce interactive radius of resurrection prompt by .5 meters
- Increase base time to resurrect by .25 seconds
- Re-prioritize Overshield so that it takes precision damage modifiers (previously it did not) which allows more Sniper archetypes to get res-kills
Only a few PvE combatants deal precision damage so aside from a few exceptions this only affects the PVP mechanic
- Adjust resurrection invincibility frames so that the moment a player can move and take damage are more consistent in most networking conditions
- Reduce resurrection time bonus on exotic armour (Crest of Alpha Lupi, Light Beyond Nemesis) to 30% (down from 40%)
- The Bungie Foundation are donning kilts to raise funds and reduce distress and suffering for causes such as Ronald McDonald House.
- Plus Movie of the Week…
To read more about the news, check out the full announcement by heading over to Bungie.net
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