THIS WEEK AT BUNGIE – 8/11/2022 > News

On Aug 11, 2022

This week at Bungie, we have Sandbox updates.

Happy TWABsday, Guardians! First off, how is it already the second week in August? Secondly, how are we almost to the next Season?! Good news is you still have time to wrap up your Seasonal title (I am only missing one more triumph) and think about what you are going to wear for Arc 3.0. I can’t choose between Geomag Stabilizers and Crown of Tempests, but sound off on socials and let us know what you’re trying out first!

Alright, I think we should get into the actual TWAB now, so let’s get to it, Guardians!

Weapons & Things

First up, we are going to jump right into the Sandbox changes, so let me hand it over to one of our associate designers on the Sandbox team, Mercules!

Hello everyone, Mercules here. We moved a good bit of the balance changes from Season 18 forward to the mid-Season patch of Season 17, so this will be a bit lighter of a weapons-Sandbox TWAB than usual. That being said, there are still some changes we’re really excited about, so let’s dive in!

TL;DR:

Buffed some under-utilized weapon archetypes:

Scout Rifles and Heavy Grenade Launchers in PvE.
High-Impact Auto Rifles.
Lightweight Bows.

Buffed multiple perks, fixed some bugged perks, and updated some perk descriptions to be more accurate.
Buffed multiple Exotic weapons.

Added intrinsic Anti-Champion functionality to some.

Reworked a couple of Exotic weapons whose functionality was causing issues.
Updated the perk pools for Dares of Eternity weapons and gave them a new origin trait.

Global Changes

Fixed an issue introduced in the 30th Anniversary update that caused too much Heavy ammo to drop when running double Special weapons.
Several weapon stats were previously hidden, which made fully evaluating weapons difficult.

Airborne effectiveness, recoil direction, zoom, and aim assist are now visible in the weapon inspection screen.

Weapon Archetypes

Scout Rifles – We felt they could still use a bit of love in PvE.

Increased damage of all Scout Rifles vs. Minor enemies (red bars) in PvE by 10%.

This change is in addition to the baseline damage buff given in the Solstice balance patch.

High-Impact (360 RPM) Auto Rifles – This sub-family of Auto Rifles has good damage output but low ease of use, leading them to under-perform compared to other options in the same engagement ranges.

Increased base stability stat of all non-sunset High-Impact Auto Rifles by 6-12, depending on the weapon (numerically this may seem like a small change, but it noticeably changes the feel of the weapons).

Lightweight Bows – This subfamily has languished compared to their higher damage counterparts for some time, in part due to difficulty hitting perfect draw shots, so we’ve made it a bit easier.

Reduced base draw time by 5% (from 612ms to 580ms).
Increased the “perfect draw” window (how long you can hold the drawn Bow before you begin to lose accuracy and damage, stability modifies this window).

From .30s to .50s on the low end.
From .55s to .80s on the high end.

Hand Cannons – Fixed Dire Promise’s zoom stat (got changed to 13 inadvertently, it’s now 14 again).
Glaives – Their interactions with some Exotic armor pieces can be confusing, so we’ve explicitly made some changes to align better with our stated goals.

Glaive melee attacks can now activate the Exotic armor perks on ACD/0 Feedback Fence, Karnstein Armlets, and Necrotic Grip.

Breech Grenade Launchers – Concussion grenades can no longer roll in the magazine slot (blinding grenades are a better option in the same slot that serves the same purpose).
Heavy Grenade Launchers – These don’t see a ton of support in PvE, so we hope this makes them feel a bit better as a DPS or yellow-bar clearing option.

Increased damage vs. Majors and above by ~10% (excluding Parasite, which does not need to do more damage).

Weapon Pools

Updated the perk pools for Dares of Eternity weapons and added an origin trait.
Addressed an issue where playlist (Crucible, Gambit, and strike) weapons weren’t randomizing individual perk column’s perk counts correctly based on number of resets.

Perks

The Gambit and Iron Banner origin traits were too specific to be generally useful, so they’ve both been redesigned.

Invader Tracker (Gambit Origin Trait)

Renamed Gun and Run.
Redesigned functionality to give a sprint speed increase on multi-kills.

Skulking Wolf (Iron Banner Origin Trait)

Redesigned to activate on kills while at low health (so it will work in all PvP now).

Ambitious Assassin has fallen behind perks with similar functionality (such as Overflow)—we’ve adjusted this to have a higher potential than before.

Increased magazine overflow from 10% to 20% per kill on Primary weapons only (Special and Heavy weapons are still 10%).
Increased overflow cap from 50% to 150%.

Wellspring had an internal cooldown to prevent it from activating too frequently—we no longer feel this is needed.

Cooldown has been removed,…