Destiny’s Hotfix 2.5.0.2 — Sandbox Tuning

Bungie just released their lat­est hot­fix today, which has made quite a bit of changes to the game. The dev team had been work­ing on this patch for a few weeks now, where they men­tioned before they would be fix­ing shot­guns and some oth­er tweaks. 

It seems they have not real­ly done much in the way of mak­ing the shot­guns bal­anced. In fact they seemed to have made them more over­pow­ered than ever. They changed hand can­non accu­ra­cy back to its ini­tial Year 1 accu­ra­cy, but nerfed its dam­age falloff pret­ty hard. Auto rifles and pulse rifles got some minor tweaks, and the scout rifle lit­er­al­ly got one adjustment. 

Below is the full list of all mod­i­fi­ca­tions, includ­ing the class­es, Cru­cible, Exotics, and every­thing else:

Spe­cial Ammo

• Adjust­ed Spe­cial ammo econ­o­my in all gametypes 
  • Play­ers start Cru­cible match­es with Spe­cial ammo
  • Spe­cial ammo is now lost upon death 
    • Sidearms are not affect­ed by this change
  • Spe­cial ammo crates now appear every 60 sec­onds (ini­tial spawn and respawn)
  • Spe­cial ammo crates are shared with allies with­in 75m (down from 100m)
  • Spe­cial ammo tim­ing in May­hem is unchanged

Elim­i­na­tion Gametypes

• Round time lim­it has been reduced to 90 sec­onds (down from 2 minutes)
• Play­ers only start with Spe­cial ammo for Round 1 in Elim­i­na­tion gametypes 
  • Spe­cial ammo tim­ing is 30s ini­tial, then 45s respawns
  • Spe­cial ammo is wiped at the begin­ning of sub­se­quent rounds

Hand Can­nons

• Sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased ini­tial accu­ra­cy (returns to Launch / Year 1)
• Reduced base range to 35m from 40m
• Reduced Aim Assist and Mag­net­ism at longer ranges
• Reduced min­i­mum dam­age after falloff from 50% to 33%

Auto Rifles

• Increased Pre­ci­sion Dam­age mod­i­fi­er to 1.3x (up from 1.25x)
• Increased base dam­age of low rate of fire Auto Rifles by 2.5%
• Increased in air accuracy

Pulse Rifles

• Reduced rate of fire for very high rate of fire Pulse Rifles by 7.7%
• Increased rate of fire for low rate of fire Pulse Rifles by 5.3%
• Reduced Mag­a­zine Size of Clever Drag­on and Grasp of Mal­ok by 6
• Reduced the effect of High Cal­iber Rounds for Pulse Rifles
• Increased in air accuracy

Scout Rifles

• Increased in air accuracy

Shot­guns

• Shot­guns no longer deal pre­ci­sion damage 
  • The Chap­er­one and Uni­ver­sal Remote are unaf­fect­ed by this change
  • Note: Uni­ver­sal Remote only deals pre­ci­sion dam­age when ADS
• Shot­guns now have sig­nif­i­cant­ly less mag­net­ism when fired from the hip
• Shot­guns now have sig­nif­i­cant­ly less in air accuracy
• Shot­guns no longer have a move­ment penalty
• Shot­guns now deal 20% more dam­age to combatants
• Rangefind­er on Shot­guns now increas­es ADS time by 25%
• Reduced Uni­ver­sal Remote’s Mag­a­zine Size to 3 from 5
• Uni­ver­sal Remote now takes longer to reload

 

Exotics

Hunter

• Throw­ing Knife now deals Solar Dam­age on impact
• Hun­ger­ing Blade* 
  • Imme­di­ate­ly starts Health regen
  • Restores more Health per kill
  • Gives a flat amount of Health/Shield per activation
  • Does not imme­di­ate­ly start regen­er­at­ing Shields
• Bladedancer’s Quick Draw Perk no longer read­ies your weapons instant­ly, but now grants a large increase to weapon han­dling speed

War­lock

• Viper Totemic on Ophid­i­an Aspect no longer read­ies your weapon instant­ly, but now grants a large increase to weapon han­dling speed
• Storm­caller’s Thun­der­strike melee range reduced to be con­sis­tent with oth­er War­lock Subclasses 
  • Ampli­tude will con­tin­ue to grant small range boost to new base range
• Land­fall now reduces the total time in Stormtrance

Titan

• Jug­ger­naut is now dis­abled after being in the air for a short time and can­not be acti­vat­ed while in mid air