Destiny 2 Gets Its First Major Balance Patch

And the people rejoiced, for grenades had become more powerful. Except pulse grenades. Because fuck pulse grenades.

Along with the new Curse of Osiris expansion, Bungie has released the first major balance patch for Destiny 2. You can read the full 1.1.0 update notes at Bungie’s website. There’s a large collection of “sandbox” tweaks, which change the weapon balance, along with a bunch of tweaks to activities and other more general changes.

Here are all the sandbox tweaks:

Abilities

General

Increased the damage dealt to bosses from Super abilities

Adjusted the output of the Recovery stat so that characters with the lowest Recovery totals will start regenerating slightly faster

Grenades

Reduced Pulse Grenade damage slightly and toned down the intensity of camera shake and controller rumble associated with each pulse

Reduced the recharge rate of additional grenade charges beyond the first

Normalized the recharge rate of Arcbolt and Firebolt Grenades to match the other grenade archetypes

Increased damage inflicted to combatants by Flashbang Grenade, Magnetic Grenade, Suppressor Grenade, Incendiary Grenade, Fusion Grenade, Skip Grenade, Flux Grenade, Arcbolt Grenade, Swarm Grenade, Tripmine Grenade, Storm Grenade, Firebolt Grenade, Axion Bolt, and Scatter Grenade.

Titan

Fixed an exploit allowing the Titan’s Rally Barricade ability to generate infinite ammo for certain weapon types

Fixed an exploit allowing players to chain Fist of Havok abilities indefinitely

Decreased the distance traveled in the air with the shoulder charge ability when it is executed without a target

Increased the number of solar hammers that can be thrown during the duration of the Hammer of Sol Super ability

Extended the timer for the Hammer Strike’s weaken debuff by 1 second and corrected an issue that was causing the visual effects not to represent the duration properly

The Sunspot health regeneration buff now lingers for 3 seconds after moving through a Sunspot

Tempered Metal and Sol Invictus no longer trigger off combatant solar shield detonation kills

Hunter

Arcstrider dodge now briefly breaks tracking

The base duration of Golden Gun is now the same for both paths

Shadowshot now suppresses targets immediately on a direct hit

Shadowshot no longer tethers dropships

Increased the amount of time available to fire arrows while using the Moebius Quiver upgrade of the Shadowshot Super ability

Warlock

Explosive rounds no longer receive bonus damage from Empowering rift

The Heat Rises perk no longer triggers on destructible objects

Updated the Devour perk description to correctly indicate that the ability is triggered on kills

The Nova Bomb created by the Cataclysm upgrade maintains its initial speed for longer before slowing down

Armor

General

Hunter leg armor with Survivalist stat package now grants Recovery

Exotic Amor

Mask of the Quiet One no longer grants energy when the wearer takes damage from friendly players

Shield Bash now triggers the Dreaded Visage perk on Mask of the Quiet One

Slightly increased the damage dealt by ACD/0 Feedback Fence

Kills with the Fury Conductors perk on ACD.0 Feedback Fence now show correct icon in the kill feed

Adjusted the grenade recharge granted by Starfire Protocol to compensate for the global decrease in the second grenade recharge rate

Improved ready and stow speed on Peacekeepers

Added an additional perk to Lucky Pants that loads a single bullet to the chamber of a stowed Hand Cannon whenever the player scores a precision hit with any weapon

Reworked Karnstein Armlets in two ways: on a melee hit, the armlets now provide heightened Mobility and Recovery and highlight low-health targets; and scoring a melee kill immediately restores a significant amount of the wearer’s health

Fixed an issue with Dunemarchers where the Linear Actuators perk was not triggering consistently

Weapons

General

Increased the base damage and reduced the precision modifier of Precision Auto Rifles

Slightly reduced the aim deflection of High-Caliber Rounds on Auto Rifles and Scout Rifles

Reduced the effectiveness of Aim Assist at higher ranges on Scout Rifles

Reduced severity of recoil on Hakke High-Impact Auto Rifles

Hand Cannon accuracy recovery now scales with rate of fire

Improved base Aim Assist on aggressive Hand Cannons

Slightly increased the rate of fire time between bursts on all Omolon Sidearms

Slightly increased impact damage on lightweight single-shot Grenade Launchers

Fixed an issue with the Tireless Blade Sword perk where players could sometimes get sword ammo from an unpowered sword attack

Fixed an issue where the Infinite Guard perk would drain ammo when guarding in a Healing Rift

The Relentless Strikes sword perk no longer returns ammo on heavy attacks

When comparing Sniper Rifle stats the UI correctly updates for maximum magazine values

Fixed an issue with Ambitious Assassin to make it more consistent

Exotic Weapons

Increased Fighting Lion damage and changed Thin the Herd perk to now grant bonus ammo rather than pulling ammo from the player inventory

Shooting destructible objects with Graviton Lance, Sunshot, Merciless, Sturm, and Drang no longer trigger the Exotic weapon perks

Fixed an issue with D.A.R.C.I’s Target Acquired perk to make it more consistent

Quick reactions: the pulse grenade nerf was inevitable, and I hope that the buffs to other grenades make everything feel more balanced. The recovery nerf might even the playing field, but I sort of wish they’d just given non-Warlock classes more ways to get recovery (I guess the Hunter boots change/fix counts), or boosted high-mobility armor running speed. I was expecting some sort of buff to the Hunter’s class ability, and I’m surprised they didn’t at least reduce its cooldown.

Hammer of Sol needed a buff, so hopefully it’s more competitive now. That Karnstein Armlets adjustment sounds great, I think? (Nevermind, I was thinking of a different exotic.) I’m not sure what to make of the Hand Cannon accuracy adjustment, so we’ll have to see how that one plays out.

Bungie has made a lot of other non-weapon-balance changes to the game at large, which you can read over at the official site. Many of those changes are things they detailed last week—increased XP and rewards on strikes and crucible matches, that sort of thing.

We’ll be playing Curse of Osiris all week and reporting back, so stay tuned.