For those of you that are still playing Destiny, I know, we are few and far between these days, today a Weapons/Class Balance patch is being deployed at 10am Pacific (12 CST, my time). I will update this with the exact changes as soon as the patch notes go live. But as of right now, these are the known changes being made.

Shotguns

• Significantly decreased magnetism, and turned off aim assistance when firing from the hip.

• Decreased mid air accuracy.

• Removed all precision damage from shotguns.

• 20% buff to shotgun damage in PVE to make up for lack of critical damage.

• Chaperone and Universal Remote still does precision damage (unknown if and how this will effect Lord of Wolves as it wasn't mentioned).

• Aim down sight time takes 25% longer for shotguns that have the Rangefinder perk.

• Removed agility decrease when wielding a shotgun.

In my opinion these changes will have very little effect on the direct deadliness of Shotguns. As explained by Bungie, they think removing Precision damage actually makes Shotguns more consistent in PvP due to the way Critical Shots registered damage previously. Also, removing the agility penalty will give back normalized Shotgun mobility.

Pulse Rifles

• Reduced rate of fire for low impact pulse rifles (Clevor Dragon, Grasp of Malok) by 7.7% or 1 frame.

• Base Flinch from pulse rifles (not in patch notes, just High Cal) and High Caliber Rounds on pulse rifles both nerfed.

• Grasp of Malok and Clever Dragon have had their magazine size reduced by 6 shots. Clever Dragon magazine size reduced from 30 to 24 and 24 to 18 with Braced Frame.

• Increased rate of fire for high impact pulse rifles by 5.3%. (The Messenger, Spare Change)

• Pulse Rifles have had their in air accuracy increased.

I love the change to Flinch on Pulses. This in an indirect buff to Snipers and other Primary classes since a High Cal Pulse could easily flinch other Primaries off target for the past 5 months due to the Flinch changes added with Rise of Iron. I'm not a huge fan of the ammo changes to Low Impact Pulses though. They already suffered from low mag sizes, and this just makes that problem desperately worse. With a 1 frame slower TTK, roughly 0.85, it will barely be faster than Mid-Low Pulses, but requires 2 more precision shots to kill. Thus likely eliminating them from the Meta all together. Added in air accuracy is great though.

Auto Rifles

• Increased base damage of low rate of fire auto rifles (Suros Regime, Shadow Price)

• Increased critical multiplier from 1.25 to 1.3

• Auto Rifles have had their in air accuracy increased.

The crit multiplier could have been a tad bit higher, but this is at least something. I still don't see anything other than Suros Regime or Doctrine of Passing being used. Doctrine archetype goes back to an optimal (unlikely though) TTK of 0.8 and Suros Spinning Up will be considerable more deadly. Due to range issues, having to remain exposed, and the drastic changes to special ammo economy, I don't see Auto's returning yet though.

Hand Cannons

• Significantly increased initial first shot accuracy. (Year 1 values)

• Reduced base range by 5 meters. (Affects aim assistance and damage drop off)

• Currently at maximum damage falloff, hand cannon damage gets reduced by up to 50%. It will now reach down further, to 33% of the base damage, at maximum falloff distances.

• No changes were made for bloom on spamming shots. (You still have to pace your shots)

• High Caliber Rounds now affects Hand Cannons.

As this image made by Reddit user and Youtuber Sliq111 shows, currently Initial Shot Accuracy is horrendous. A Max Range Mid Impact HC has an ISA cone of 17px, which is easily enough to miss a shot aimed directly at the center of a head. The Last Word by comparison is even worse with an ISA of 27px. Bloom, the mechanic that will be remaining in Destiny is demonstrated by the 2px increase per shot on TLW and the 2px every other shot on a MI HC. Now, compare that to the actual horrific 17 and 27 ISA, that 2px per shot is absolutely nothing. So in essence, the thing the community has dubbed "Ghost Bullets" is almost solely due to unbelievably awful ISA. What is happening to HC's is they are completely removing the ISA penalties they introduced in The Taken King (hopefully down to between 0-5px ISA), keeping Bloom or the 2px penalty for successive shots, and adding far more dramatic Range Falloff when you are out of HC optimal Range. Shown in the Bungie stream, MI HC's will only hit for around 30ish Crit damage at Scout/Sniper ranges. This is by far the best change of the patch, in every way. It's more than a year overdue in my opinion, and honestly the change that should have happened in The Taken King originally.

Scout Rifles

• Scout Rifles have had their in air accuracy increased.

• High Caliber Rounds now affects Scout Rifles.

Scouts are barely touched, and only in the same ways both Auto's and HC's are. Each get a boost to in air accuracy and High Cal Rounds will actually work since a bug previously prevented them from actually working.

PVP

Special Ammo Changes

• Players start matches with special ammo, but you now lose ALL ammo upon death.

• Special crates spawn every 60 seconds.

• Reduced radius for special ammo drops for teammates when you pick up ammo from 100m to 75m. Players only start with special on the 1st round in Elimination.

• Invective and Icebreaker are affected, and will also lose their ammo upon death, but still regenerate as normal.

• Sidearms still spawn with ammo upon death.

• Special ammo timing in Mayhem is unchanged

In my opinion this is a terribly change. It negates many of the changes made directly above. It harshly punishes Fusion Rifles due to their low usage and nobody wanting to wait around for Fusion ammo. It indirectly buffs Sidearms (due to their ammo on Spawn ability), Icebreaker, Invective, and pushes all other Special Weapon usage to a camp for ammo playstyle, especially in Elimination where ammo will be wiped after every round, no matter who won. It also forced you to perform a reload every time you grab ammo before you can use it. The reduced radius change is good, because it limits ammo stashing, but I see the other changes being removed soon. This is meant to curb Shotgun use directly and promote Primary play, but it only hurts several classes of Primaries with low Range such as Auto's and TLW. It also creates a system of the Rich get Richer in PvP as living longer will create a massive snowball effect where those with Special will start dominating those without. This is not a good change for Destiny, so hopefully they figure this out before Destiny 2.

Elimination

• 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

Class Changes

Hunter Changes

• Hungering Blade for Bladedancer now immediately grants health instead of regenerating health. Shields no longer regenerate on kill.

Huge Note: *Hungering Blade changes were also inadvertently applied to the following Perks...

*Transfusion (Striker Titan)

*Cauterize (Sunbreaker Titan)

*Lifesteal (Voidwalker Warlock)

*Red Death Perk

*Suros Legacy Perk (Suros Regime)

*No Backup Plans

*Ward of Dawn cast

*The Ram

*Apotheosis Veil

*Embrace the Void (Voidwalker Warlock)

*****In other words, they royally forked up and broke the entire game. This is quite possibly the biggest blunder in Destiny's history. Why they didn't just remove this change is beyond me. I expect both the Hungering Blade change and all of these to be removed soon, but the entire game is rather broken at the moment. PvE is pretty shattered without many of these abilities. I don't know how they think this is in any way ok. I don't know what to say other than I'm shaking my head at this inclusion.

• Throwing knife now does solar damage.

• Quickdraw has been nerfed, it no longer instantly readies weapons, but rather increases weapon handling, thereby making it a garbage perk and drastically reducing Bladedance's Neutral Game.

• Blink will be adjusted in the next update but no details were mentioned. Though it appeared that during the Blink animation, radar and Hud will disappear for about a second. We will know more after the patch notes. (Blink does indeed disorient the player and disable radar and hud similar to going hudless for 2 seconds after Blink. Many of my Blink using friends claim it to be unusable anymore. Bladedance is now solely dependent on Bones Control Jumping.)

As if Bladedancer's Super wasn't bad enough right now... Well, I guess in the short term not having to content with as much Shotgun ammo (the bane of a Blade's existence), is a bit of a buff to them and other Roaming Supers. Maybe we will see more Encore builds. But with the added nerf to Quickdraw, only the Super is effective, and with all of the hit registration issues it already suffers from, it's pretty much a dead class. Look to the previously neutered Gunslinger and likely Nightstalker builds as the only usable playstyle now.

Warlocks

• Reduced Stormcaller melee range. (this hasn't been mentioned specifically yet but everyone assumes this is addressing Amplitude directly, not the standard melee)

• Landfall now reduces total time in Stormtrance.

• Blink will be adjusted in the next update but no details were mentioned. (see Blink on Bladedancer)

Landfall doesn't make any sense, cause nobody uses that, but whatever. Amplitude reduction is much needed but I'm afraid they may go overboard on it (they didn't, it seems fine now). It still needs to hit from further than a normal Warlock melee, but it's current 15m is obnoxious. Without special ammo contention though, Storms will be running wild in 6's and tearing through 3's as well. Voidwalker is absolute trash now, as what made it shine was it's Vampire health build, which has every aspect nerfed into the ground by the accidental change to Bladedancer. Also, the best Exotic Armor in Destiny, Ophidian Aspects are dumpsters now too, so take those off. Try Nothing Manacles, Claws, or Light Beyond Nemesis now. It really sucks to be a Warlock right now...

Titans

• Juggernaut disables quicker in mid air.

• Juggernaut can not be activated in mid air.

I have been specifically calling for this exact nerf for about a year now, since they made Jugg incredibly overpowered last December. This is exactly how it should work. It prevents Jugg from activating in air and drops after about 0.3 seconds while skating in air. Basically it forces you to use it from the ground, which is exactly where Jugg belongs. Strikers still remain the go to class, but look out for more Jolder's Shoulder Charges. Sunbreaker's Super can be extremely deadly now, even without Cauterize since there is nothing to challenge it so learn to Suncharge effectively and you will be golden.

Exotic changes

• Universal Remote: Precision damage only active when aiming down sights. No other changes mentioned.

• Truth: Max ammo reduced from 3 to 1, making it a useless weapon.

• Shinobus Vow: No longer adds an extra seeker.

• Ophidian Aspects: Quickdraw has been removed from the perk Viper Totemic just like Bladedancer. It effectively kills OA's, which were until now the best Exotic Armor in Destiny.

• Young Wolf's Howl: Will be cheaper to use. The same 5 ammo as other Exotics, as before it took 10.

Miscellaneous fixes and mentions.

• Fixed certain weapons getting a free kneepads perk. (Increased slide distance)

• No changes were made to the Skorri artifact. (though they have said the next patch will address all artifacts, but likely won't happen until the April Update)

• More adjustments will be made, and mentioned in the patch notes next Tuesday. (those changes have already been added to these notes)

Overall I think a fresh balance will be refreshing for the Destiny PvP community but in my opinion there are a lot better things that should have been the focus. Changes to Amplitude, Juggernaut, Pulse Flinch, and Hand Cannon Initial Shot Accuracy were all desperately needed though. Maybe we will see a few surprises later today in the patch notes. I hope so.

****Post Patch Summary: Wow, I don't even know what to say. I think Bungie has actually lost their minds. They completely destroyed PvE by including a bug that ruins every health related perk in Destiny. It also has a horrible effect on PvP. They completely neutered the best Exotic Armor for no reason, Bladedancer's neutral game, and Truth is now unusable. I don't get their logic with this update. They ruined their game. They did 3-4 great things followed by the worst 5-6 things I could even imagine them doing. It's two steps forwards and a giant leap across a cavern backwards. I don't even have words right now...

This was made by Reddit user Matt_Oishi. I thought it pretty perfectly describes the past 5 months of the crucible in a funny image so I thought I would share it.

For context if you don't understand, running full stop at another player without even trying to use your primary in Destiny is considered Aping them, which is why it's an Ape. It's also wearing a Twilight Garrison and using a Jugg Shield. The most common Crucible combo at the moment that makes it pretty much impossible to counter with anything other than just waiting until Jugg drops and getting a Shotgun shot first yourself. Without being able to Titan Skate with Jugg up, this strategy will be severely hindered after today.

I've only played a few games but I think the health regen bug that hit basically everything that procs health regen is what is a deal breaker for me. Breaking all those abilities is such a crazy thing, I'm surprised they went through with the patch with all that stuff being affected. As a Warlock main who used health regen Voidwalker in PvP, I feel pretty much forced into Stormcaller. Its harder to say what will happen to the weapon meta outside of Hand Cannons being everyone's default choice now, and I'm not sure if its just early matches with the patch or what, but I noticed it was a lot harder to combat zones in Control without a Shotgun/Fusion with the lack of special ammo but maybe I'm just not used to it yet. As far as the Pulse Rifle changes, I didn't really notice a change with my Hand-Laid Stock Clever Dragon outside of it missing 6 shots.

Overall, as someone who hasn't played Destiny in a few months really, this doesn't give me much reason to come back. I know its still really early in this patch but man, a lot of these changes seem just crazy. I recall them saying they'd be using surgical precision but I don't see much of that here at all.

Looking forward to all that stuff being burned to the ground for Destiny 2.

I haven't played in a month or so, I just can't anymore. But I do still follow the community and the game. I'm glad they made a change, getting killed by fast rate of fire pulses and the matador constantly did get kinda boring. I have moved on though, but as always I hope the changes help.

I am always amazed that Destiny has a following still, I can't even explain my love for it. Destiny 2 HYPE.

@pyrodactyl: Couldn't agree more. It seems like Bungie is just doing whatever they want based on this update and seeing what happens. None of those changes sound appealing in any fashion to me. Looking forward to a fresh start in Destiny 2. Because they royally screwed this game up.

@veggiesbro: Yeah, I'm one of the few in our group that has still held on. After several hours putting this update through its paces, and getting a horrific migraine because of it, I think I might be done for a good while outside of trying Trials once this weekend. The new meta that is forming just isn't any fun. It's 90% primary teamshot fights and grenade setups plus a rare sidarm kill. Every player has 10+ assists per game because Primaries still suck so teams stick on each others balls like nobody's business. Roaming Supers are completely unchecked outside of Fist of Havok and Shadowshots. Nightstalker, Gunslinger, Striker, and Stormcaller rule the day as far as classes go and Storms are basically unkillable without Special Ammo. Once a team gets on a roll, they easily lock down a map and it turns into a one sided bloodbath of Matadors. We played some Elimination as well and it's all Icebreaker and Sidearm rushes to prevent Special Ammo pickup. I played with roughly 12 different friends tonight, everyone hates it. It is zero fun, even when you are winning. I can't believe they ruined Destiny this badly.

@veggiesbro: That means the talks they had with Blizzard about how to run an mmo was actually true. Good to know it wasnt just pr crap.

12years later wow is still as badly balanced or even worse than at launch but they constantly change major things every patch just for the kicks. I wouldnt bet on anything changing in Destiny 2.

I only briefly got back into Destiny around Rise of Iron's release, just enough to poke my nose around (didn't even do the raid!). Glad to see I'm not missing much, these changes are confusing to put it lightly. All I can think of is that everyone's mental energy is 100% dedicated to polishing Destiny 2 to get it ready for an E3 showing this year (and release in the fall) and they can't really be bothered to worry too much about the current state of the game.

@mageknight: Rise of Iron's PvE was pretty great for about a month, I would actually put it up there as some of the most fun Destiny has ever been. But the PvP has been sub par at best for the past 5 months. Gutting Sniper Rifles as the only change for Rise of Iron was bad and lead to the massively Shotgun heavy problem they had. Then yesterday they lit the dumpster on fire so to speak, burning away any fun left in the Crucible, which was the only thing keeping the 1 million or so active Destiny players engaged still. I can't help but see this update bringing that number to a screeching halt, which is nothing but bad news for Destiny 2. How can Destiny as a franchise expect to survive when it alienates it's core base like this, only 8-9 months before it's sequel? It's nothing short of just a horrendous business practice. I hope Bungie gets there act together quickly, because the Destiny community at large, especially over at Reddit is outraged right now.

This patch will have absolutely zero bearing on the success of Destiny 2. Most of the Destiny community isn't playing the game at the moment. Even a good amount of the super hardcore, 2000+ hour players like myself stepped away from the game months ago with little intention to return until the sequel comes out. I will not play a second of this patch or any other for the remainder of Destiny 1, but I'm still hyped as hell for Destiny 2. There are way more players like me than there are players that somehow still play Destiny ever day.

Even for those that still play regularly, I just don't see a sandbox update in what is essentially Destiny 1's lame duck period before the sequel being the thing that drives people away. Everyone is just waiting for Destiny 2 at this point, even the people still playing Destiny 1. If someone is so fickle that a meaningless balance patch at a time when Bungie's focus is clearly on getting Destiny 2 out this year is enough to drive them away from the series altogether, I'd say their priories and expectations are out of whack.

The "Destiny community at large" is not outraged, but a vocal contingent of the small fraction that are still playing at this point. If someone is so invested in Destiny as to still be playing regularly, I can't imagine much that will drive them away at this point, let alone stop them buying the sequel which will potentially be a substantial leap forward if leaks are to be believed.

In general, I just don't see what is worth getting upset over. There are so many great games coming out over the next 2 months that Destiny potentially being maybe slightly less enjoyable in PvP is hardly a reason for major concern. If there's ever a time to experiment with weird changes to the sandbox, it's now. It's very unlikely that any of the current meta/balance/sandbox conditions will apply to Destiny 2 in any capacity, so really nothing in Destiny 1 matters right now.

People not playing Destiny at this point is not a concern for the potential success of Destiny 2. Most games are long dead by the time their sequels are coming out. The fact that Destiny has any semblance of a dedicated community with which to upset 2 and a half years after the game came out is only a positive sign towards the success of the sequel.

I was considering playing Destiny again, but after reading the Reddit, I think I'm good. Would still like to Raid and whatnot, simply because that's fun. But I'm kind of done with Trials.

Damn...there goes my loadout. Oh well, I was definitely using it BECAUSE it was overpowered

@hestilllives19: PvP in Destiny has been somewhat broken since day zero there's only ever been one way to play with the meta slightly changing after each patch, nobody ever uses a primary weapon and a handful of guns are only ever used with a few specific perks with most people run a special as a primary weapon. Plenty of games juggle PvP with lots of weapons and classes better Destiny 2 can't come quick enough burn it to the ground and start again and if your still playing Destiny almost three years in your buying Destiny 2.

@rethla: That's fair to say. I imagine Destiny 2 will ultimately follow a similar path regarding balance, however the stuff going on in Destiny right now won't be present at the launch of Destiny 2. Seeing as they are basically burning it to the ground to start over.

@ll_exile_ll: While I don't think this specific patch will directly effect sales of Destiny 2, Bungie's reaction to what they have done here very well could. Because it speaks volumes to how they are treating, and have pretty consistently treated their fanbase and customers over the past 2.5 years. Which is to largely ignore us entirely, do pretty much whatever they want, and purposely ship something they know is broken as hell. It leads back to the number one reason why many of those that bought launch Destiny will not return for Destiny 2 no matter what happens. All I'm saying is they need to nip this in the bud quickly and fix what they broke. Ideally this also comes with a realization that constantly making their game worse in every aspect for 2.5 years does nothing but remove what made it fun to begin with, but hey, that's just hopes and dreams talking, I don't expect them to all of a sudden develop common sense on us. Personally their philosophy with Destiny has me more and more worried about how good Destiny 2 will even be, but I still remain optimistic that Luke Smith, being seemingly the only person with half a brain at Bungie, is in charge of Destiny 2. Keep in mind 11% of all players that have played since the launch of The Taken King (barely over 20% of those same players even ever completed a King's Fall Raid), logged in yesterday, and even at it's lowest participation ever 3% of all players still continue to play Trials every weekend (which no longer includes PS3/360 players that the players since Aug. 2015 did), so Destiny isn't quite as barren as your making it out to be.

@thepanzini: Never once said I wasn't buying Destiny 2. If I claimed that, the majority of the people responding here (il_Exile_li, Veggiesbro, Pyrodactyl, Zevvion) would laugh because they know it wouldn't be true as I play/played Destiny will all of those guys regularly. But I have had several friends that like me are in the 2,000+hr club in Destiny that claim they are gone for good or gone until Destiny 2 because of this. On an untold number of occasions I've also seen many friends who played Destiny drop and never come back over far less drastic situations than this as well. So to say that those players will 100% return isn't necessarily the case, even if it is likely many will.

Now, as far as the PvP always being broken in Destiny, I just don't think that's true. Every Meta has always had it's frustrating features, of that there is no doubt. But the high Special ammo usage is something much more noticeable since December 2015 and especially since Rise of Iron. It directly correlates to an overnerfing of Primaries by Bungie since that time. Even now, with such high mobility that Destiny has, Primary Weapons just aren't effective at killing other players without teamshotting or setup by a grenade. It has less to due with Destiny not being a very good PvP game, and more to do with Bungie having terrible sandbox designers who don't understand their own game. And I think the thing that frustrates people like myself the most, is the fact that Destiny has the potential to be both the best PvE and PvP shooter on the market. But Bungie's has just failed to capitalize on that for over 2 years. The thing is the game doesn't need to be "burned to the ground", it just needs a Live Team that understands it's own game and it's issues even half as well as it's community of players do. Now that Destiny 2 is coming to PC, a testing environment that allows known quantities of the community to help Bug/Play test changes that are made frequently to the game balance would do wonders to help in this regard. Similar to how both The Division (for all the hate it gets, they have done balance and bug fixing as good or better than anyone, even if it's launch scared the vast majority of it's playerbase away) and Overwatch balance their games. This is more talking specifically about the gameplay side of things, as I want to clarify, since we all know they shipped one of the worst game engines and tools in the history of video games. That garbage has got to go with Destiny 2, as well as some major networking infrastructure changes to remove the horrific network lag and latency issues Destiny has always struggled with. Though if their current trend of ruining every Class/Weapon type in Destiny 1 continues I might finally agree that "burning it to the ground" will be the right call, as we are very near the point where everything that has made Destiny fun over the past 2.5 years has already been castrated and torched beyond recognition anyways.

Note: This is how many players stats looks, so here are mine for reference, as you can tell, it's not all special kills. It shows around 33.1% Special, 29.8% Primary, and 6.7% Heavy. Considering Primary Weapons have been in a pretty awful place for about the past year, I would say 30% usage is still pretty high.

Sniper - 11,662, Super - 8,293, Hand Cannon - 6,734, Grenade - 5,124, @pyrodactyl: Shotgun - 5,109 (see Pyro, I do Shotgun in PvP sometimes, I probably have almost as many kills as you),

Auto Rifle - 4,448, Pulse Rifle - 4,228 Melee - 3,258, Rocket - 2,311, Machine Gun - 1,370, Fusion Rifle - 1,181, Scout Rifle - 1,081, Sidearm - 366, Relic - 188 (no idea what this is), Sword - 42

Total - 55,331

Unknown - 3,182 (likely burn damage, barrel explosions, falls to death, sparrow kills, etc)

Can't see me going back to playing Destiny without any new content. I've played that game steadily since it launched, and I freaking love it. But at this point I need something new, and I imagine that will be Destiny 2.

That's just blatantly false. I'm going to guess the reason you posted that is because you are not very good at the multiplayer, and it's easier to blame the game than your own shortcomings. We've all been there.

I've been very critical of Destiny over the last couple of years, but that is because I see the potential in it (also I've played ~300 hours of it). These changes don't really make sense to me. It doesn't sound like fun to me. It seems like they've dug such a big hole for themselves with Destiny 1, that the best thing to do at this point is to keep digging. Although, at what point does all of this bad stuff affect Destiny 2? Bungie hasn't necessarily treated their loyal fans with respect. Their fans have stuck through some bad stuff and it just seems like they're ignoring them at times. With all of that said, I really feel like they're going to nail it with Destiny 2. I can feel it in my gut.

@bojackhorseman: Sorry but I'm more than decent at the game not that it matters anyway. Destiny is a great game and the PvP is super fun I never said it wasn't but Destiny has never gotten to the stage where not only most kills should come from primary weapons but all primary weapon types are equally viable.

@Hestillives19 post and stats back me up most kills from sniper behind super's which are another frustrating way to die.

Now you can disagree but primary should be at least half your kills in a shooter and Destiny has arguably the best shooting ever which is a shame. Clearly Bungie agree's as they've been nerfing special in nearly every patch to no avail, hence the somewhat broken statement.

Destiny 2 should fix this as it seems they way the guns deal damage Bungie can't fix one thing without breaking another which is often not their intent and mentioned in the following patch.

i know people don't want to accept this when it affects the way that they play the game but most of the stuff people were using was because it was so effective and the reason it got nerfed was because it became too prevalent in the meta. If they made these changes months ago, i'd be more interested but for now i just feel like i'm done with destiny until destiny 2.

@oldmanlight: The reason Shotgun usage was so insanely high is a very poor state Primaries were in coupled with the fact that Snipers are extremely hard to use now (they might as well not even do body damage due to the flinch change from Rise of Iron, it's far too high), and both Sidearms and Fusions aren't very good in comparison. Primary TTK is so slow and movement speed so fast, you can just ignore a player shooting at you and just run straight at them for an instakill. The most common two Primaries were Max Range Mid Impact HC's and Clever Dragon High Cal Pulses. A High Cal Pulse could actually flinch you off from another player already shooting you, giving you a huge advantage, something that should never have been able to happen. It wasn't that these two guns were overly powerful though in their own right, as they only had optimal TTK's of 0.8 (Clever Dragon) and 0.87 (MI HC), but they were two of the only guns capable of stopping that Shotgun Rush in under 30m of distance, something Primaries still after patch do not do. All the time keep in mind, Shotguns themselves are also in the most piss poor state they have ever been in, and are extremely inconsistent, even at under 8m, and frequently require a melee to finish kills. Even so, a Matador remains the least broken of all Special Weapons that no longer function as originally designed due to an unending series of nerfs to everything, and therefore was the most used. Combine that with really only two abilities that stood out from the crowd as being overpowered, Juggernaut and Amplitude, and that was more or less where we were before this update.

Now, here are the things the community was clamoring for, pretty unilaterally for months. Buff primary TTK a bit so that more guns can compete at that 0.8s Optimal TTK, like moving Auto Rifles Precision modifier to 1.4. Go back to Y1 Initial Shot Accuracy on HC's so that non Max Range HC's are viable. Reduce the Flinch to Snipers by half of what was added during Rise of Iron. Tone down the flinch of High Cal rounds on Pulses and fix it on other broken archetypes. Also, fix the flinch on all archetypes created by Explosive Rounds. Adjust special ammo inventories to match Impact (Matador 3 Round Mag from 5 and so forth), and it was also frequently suggested that only 1 Mag be given per spawn, instead of keeping ammo (which would have been much more understandable than gone completely). Reduce the Range of the Stormcallers Amplitude Melee from 15m to 10m, or just outside Shotguns 8m OHKO range instead of 2x that range. Create a fix for Strikers Juggernaut (my idea was always to just put it back on the ground, which is nearly identical to what they did). And that's it, that is what we wanted. It would have shaken the meta up again, but not blown up the whole game.

In all fairness they did several of these things. ISA on HC's, fixed. Reduce Flinch from High Cal on Pulses and fix it on others (odd that nothing was mentioned about broken Explosive Rounds, but whatever). Auto Rifle Precision modified to 1.3, not enough to make them viable, but whatever, better than nothing. Fix both Amplitude's range and made Jugg go away quickly after going airborne. All of this is great stuff, and nobody is upset over it. As far as the Special Ammo changes go, we all knew a direct inversion of what they tried and it failed miserable a year ago wasn't going to work, but we were fine with letting them try it for a month before they inevitably revert it as it will not have their intended effect, but rather break how the game works.

Here is where people started foaming at the mouth. They found a massive bug, that quite literally breaks nearly every Subclass in Destiny, and completely cripples Sunbreakers and Voidwalkers. They knew about, and decided screw everyone that plays our game and released the patch anyways in a this will be funny to see how people react to this change mentality. Add to that they further ruined one of the favorite Warlock Exotics in the game, Ophidian Aspects, and the only redeeming quality left standing for Bladedancers in Quickdraw, which literally nobody wanted to happen. The Truth also was nerfed back into non-existence and will directly be replaced for the same reasons by Gjallarhorn as the go to PvP Exotic Heavy, as it was already questionable which was better, and 1 Rocket was the only deciding factor giving Truth the edge. Blink, a perk very few people use, is now impossible to use because of the disorientation coming out of it causes. None of these changes were wanted or necessary for any reason. They made the game worse, less fun, and not really for any particular reason at all. These changes are why people are enraged right now and do not think Bungie's Live Team understands their own game, especially considering nobody wanted the nerf to Hungering Blade that caused all of this mess to begin with. If none of these changes happened, people would be happy as clams right now.

@thepanzini: You can't be that good if you think there are only a few viable guns out there.

For primaries: Grasp of Malok, Clever Dragon, Doctrine of Passing, Hawkmoon, Mida Multi-tool, The Last Word, Thorn etc. are all viable and widely used. That's not counting the primaries that actually fit in the special weapons mold, like Universal Remote. And let's not forget that the best weapon out there right now is the Distant Star, which is a scout rifle.

The same goes for the two other categories as well. I won't bother listing a ton of weapons again, but there certainly are many viable options in all categories.

I got sucked back into Destiny for a while right before and for about 2 weeks after the release of Rise of Iron. I don't do crucible at all because I didn't like it at launch.

I gave up completely when for 4 days in a row I would jump into PvE to do bounties and people would just try to troll me by following me around and stealing kills/trying to hit me for no reason.

I highly highly doubt I get 2 at all

@bojackhorseman: I'm not sure what you point is, that is a handful and I never said you needed only them to do well.

Year one hand cannons are the goto weapons nobody used pulse rifles, year 2 Bungie releases patch nerfs hand cannons buffs pulse rifles they are now the goto weapon everybody uses them.

No, that is literally wrong, and you are literally arguing against your own point. The weapons I listed earlier included everything; auto rifles, pulse rifles, scout rifles, hand cannons and even a primary shotgun. If you jump into any match in Destiny, you will see people using all of these, and using them successfully.

In your first post you said nobody uses primary weapons, and now you say everyone uses pulse rifles. Then you say not every primary weapon type is equally viable, and now you say that's not the case.

And I just have to ask, why should primaries be at least half of your kills? What about supers, grenades, melee etc?

@bojackhorseman: You've taken my first post too literally and the hyperbole went over your head.

PvP in Destiny has been nerfing special since day zero there's only ever been one way to play with the meta slightly changing after each patch, handful of guns (couple dozen) are only ever used with a few specific perks with most people run a special as a primary weapon. Plenty of games juggle PvP with lots of weapons and classes better Destiny 2 can't come quick enough burn it to the ground and start again and if your still playing Destiny almost three years in your buying Destiny 2.

Most kill in Desiny PvP come from special then supers followed by primary, the weapons most people tend to rely on lurches with each patch. When I say everybody uses pulse rifles meaning literally most players run shotty with the current meta pulse is the primary goto weapon.

Currently mostly every weapon type is viable but each has their own few best in class.

Primary weapon as the name implies should be your most used weapon, its far easier to get kills with special / supers therefore they should either be rewards for doing well (COD) or resources to be fought over (Halo).

@bojackhorseman: @thepanzini: It would be hard to just boil down Year 1 to Exotic Hand Cannons, even if they were extremely powerful for about 3 months during House of Wolves. Suros Regime reigned supreme for much of Y1, which is pretty much why Auto Rifles were single handedly slaughtered patch after patch. And don't forget the terror that was the Vex Mythoclast for about a month before it was nerfed. And lets not forget that Pulses were every bit as viable during House of Wolves as they were during the first part of The Taken King, just HC's were a bit more common. Year 2 was ruled by Pulses until December, and even still then by the grind for a great Grasp of Malok. For most of Year 2 Doctrine of Passing was also an extremely deadly beast, and high Range HC's were still viable at times. Also, there was a time where Mida Multitool was the #1 used Primary after it launched in December mainly due to it's insane flinch (on par with current Sniper flinch) before that was removed from it. There was a lot more diversity as far as Primaries go than credit is being given. There have also been many fluctuations in Special Weapons, from Fusions being strong, to Shotguns, to Snipers, and now back to Shotguns, but that has mostly been due to Bungie killing one or the other at times, and always making each worse than the last. Here is where I disagree with Bojack, last season was dominated by 4 primary weapons, which is why it wasn't fun. The Last Word, Palindrome/Luna, No Land Beyond, and Clever Dragon/Grasp. Between 60-70% of players were Shotgunning, even on Sniper maps. The reason it was like this, I can attest to, is that those other weapons were not at all viable. To that effect, here are the numbers as of yesterday.

Top 10 Most Kills Primary

• Eyasluna 5.08%
• The Palindrome 4.85%
• SUROS Regime 4.63%
• Hawkmoon 4.09%
• The Last Word 3.81%
• MIDA Multi-Tool 3.38%
• Parthian Shot 2.58%
• Hopscotch Pilgrim 2.23%
• No Land Beyond 2.12%
• Monte Carlo 1.76%

Top 10 Most Kills Secondary

• The Wormwood 4.40%
• Trespasser 2.52%
• Matador 64 1.77%
• Ice Breaker 1.39%
• Ironwreath-D 1.20%
• Party Crasher +1 0.71%
• 1000-Yard Stare 0.66%
• Y-09 Longbow Synthesis 0.64%
• The Binding Blaze 0.64%
• Havoc Pigeon 0.63%

Top 10 Most Kills Heavy

• The Silvered Dread 0.93%
• Unending Deluge III 0.34%
• The Titanium Orchid 0.30%
• Zombie Apocalypse WF47 0.24%
• The Ash Factory 0.22%
• Tormod's Bellows 0.21%
• Harrowed Qullim's Terminus 0.20%
• Iron Gjallarhorn 0.20%
• Steel Oracle Z-11 0.19%
• Truth 0.16%

These stats will likely change when Trials hits this weekend, but you can already see the trends. Hand Cannons are back in a big way, which is good. And the vast majority of Special kills are coming from Sidearms, simply due to them being the only Specials with ammo. I think what we will obviously start seeing is Pulse/Sidearm (Hawksaw and Blind Perdition), Scout/Sidearm (Mida and High Impact like Jade Rabbit), No Land/Sidearm builds vs HC/Icebreaker builds (Palindrome/Luna and maybe even a few Free Will's). That will be the new meta. No other special is really worth waiting on since it will be immediately wiped anyways. Maybe a Matador on occasion that camps Special or goes on tears with it, but I think that will be rare. And while The Last Word is great under 25m on it's own, unless you have Sniper ammo, it's pretty worthless as your engagements will be extremely limited. Same thing for Hawkmoon, while I love that gun, not having Sniper ammo kills it's effectiveness due to it's range falloff limitations. I don't think this will be a fun Meta, surprisingly even less fun that the awful last 5 months. Especially since both Shotgunning and Aggressive Sniping are effectively dead now.

Destiny really feels like Bungie lost all ability to make an effective and fun competitive multiplayer. Maybe they just lost too many people from the old team or maybe they are having a hard time doing competitive multiplayer along with items and abilities and keeping it balanced. Personally, I wish they did what they originally stated and just made all weapons have base stats in competitive so it is a purely even playing field in regards to everything but powers.

@ll_exile_ll: True. However, I would probably still be playing Destiny is it had more frequent balance updates and content surges. Even minor ones like The Dawning I would've appreciated. I love the game so much, even something as simple as a balance patch made me think I should probably play Trials again. Until I read Sunbreaker is essentially even less viable than before, because they made a pretty big error and then admitted to think 'whatever' about it. Then I went 'OK, no thanks then'.

I completely agree none of this hurts Destiny 2 though.

@thepanzini I don't agree with that notion at all. The only reason why primaries 'should' be the majority of your kills, is if you don't have special ammo. This isn't Call of Duty. Destiny, from launch all the way up to now, made it very, very clear that Heavy > Special > Primary. There is nothing wrong with it being strictly better when they have drawbacks. Shotguns don't work from any sort of range from medium onward, fusion needs charging, sniper requires precison and sidearm gets significant damage falloff. If you are in the intended role of your special, it should beat a primary if skills are equal among players.

By the way, most of my kills come from primaries anyway. Followed not even that closely by snipers. Then you can say: yeah but you're not one of the best players. Then I say: no, neither is anyone here. That doesn't matter one bit.

@zevvion: Yeah totally its personal preference agree to disagree its just the shooting is so good it seems a waste. Bungie have been consistant on one thing that's nerfing special they clearly don't want players running special as much.

@zevvion: Speak for yourself... Top 1-2% Trials Elo, Revives Performed, and DTR right here... I kid, I kid. I feel like a total scrub lately with how hard Trials has gotten, barely getting 1-2 Flawless some weeks. But I am up to exactly 40 in Y3 and I finally got a Vigilant Disciple a few weeks ago, as it took me a stupid amount of wins past 9 to finally obtain. I'll probably only do one run this weekend to see if it's as awful as I feel like it's going to be and then I'll be done with Destiny for awhile.

Also, Zev, there is nothing wrong with your stats. I'm sure it's littered with top 1-5% stats on DestinyTracker. And while I'm perfectly comfortable saying that I may not be among the best Destiny players, il_Exile_li is. Even after taking pretty much a year off during The Taken King he came back at Rise of Iron and we made some of the easiest Lighthouse runs I've had those first couple weeks. He is an absolute menace at range, Sniper or Scout Rifle.

"You've taken what I said and proven that it was wrong"

@hestilllives19: I doubt it. I probably have some decent sniper stats, but that's about it.

@thepanzini Sure, but Bungie is limiting special ammo which is OK in my book. But if you have special ammo, it should be a better weapon than a primary if you're in the intended role for that weapon. If you want to say: more kills should come from primaries so we should make sure you don't have special ammo all the time, then okay. But I thought you were trying to say: more kills should come from primaries, so we should make primaries better/specials worse. That's not okay.

@zevvion: Without a doubt special should always be stronger than primary with heavy trumping special, special/heavy ammo should be scarce a valuable resource fought over or rewarded to players.

That Special Ammo change is insanity.

Upcoming Health Regen Perk Corrections

There were some unintended changes applied to Health Regen Perks due to a change to Hungering Blade. You can read the full Patch Notes here and the further Explanation of what happened here. In the last 3 days since the Hotfix we have been listening to the feedback from the community and been working on some corrections . Our current plan is to roll back most of the unintended changes like Ward of Dawn cast, and Embrace the void. You can read the full list of rollbacks below. The other affected Perks are getting different changes that the Sandbox design team believes will be more beneficial to the game rather than simply rolling back to the old settings. Here is Sandbox Designer Josh Hamrick with an explanation of the changes.

Josh Hamrick: "When we talked about Regen earlier in the week I ambiguously talked about what and when we would be making changes because I wasn’t entirely sure. The majority of the change wasn’t intentional, but when I looked at the problem from afar, I could see how it may be beneficial in some ways after hearing feedback from the community following the Sandbox preview stream. For example, some of you had concerns that Hungering Blade was changing while other similar perks, such as Cauterize, were not. This unintended change was going to give us the ability to see what that would look like to make both of those changes. I wanted to make it clear that it was possible that we could find something that we wanted to keep. I didn’t want to say that we’d put it all back, when we might not.

Having an enemies ability or attack be able to completely erase any progress you've made and completely reset an encounter feels bad. Also, when 1 hit kill weapons are less dominant those abilities and attacks become more dominant, as they are much harder to stop. This change allows those abilities and attacks to still recover large portions of health and buy themselves more time without completely resetting the encounter and negating all cumulative damage that had come before."

We have watched and listened all week and this is the current plan moving forward. I’m going to give numbers so that you have all the info, but THESE NUMBERS MAY CHANGE:

For each of the elements below we are going to keep the change, but buff the amount of health you get back (+58%)

- Hungering Blade

- Red Death

- Lifesteal

- Transfusion (we are also removing the cooldown)

- Cauterize (we are also removing the cooldown)

For all the rest, we will be reverting the change entirely

- Suros Regime

- No Backup Plans

- Ward of Dawn cast

- Apotheosis Veil

- Embrace the Void

We do not have a date that these changes will take place but are currently working on them and conducting tests. It is early in the process, so all of this is subject to change. But as of now, this is the plan. We will give you more details about when you can expect to see these changes in the game as soon as we can.

This was posted by Cosmo, one of the community managers over the weekend.

How did they fuck up Ward of Dawn and No Backup Plans?

Infinite Cauterize though... hmmm... delicioussssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

@zevvion: No Backup Plans no longer regenerated your Shield... which was the entire point of it, so it's broken all together. Right now a Ward of Dawn Cast only gives you back 40hp instead of filling your entire 200hp, also basically broken, especially for PvE. The thing that doesn't make sense is the Cauterize change makes it useless as far as Grenades/Melee goes, and kinda extremely powerful in 6v6 PvP. Though less so for 3v3, especially Trials. It's a net bad change if you ask me, as it's much more balanced with full health on a 3s cooldown. It's the exact change they should have made to Bladedance's Hungering Blade and avoided all of this mess. They need to retain Special Ammo in the mag after death, bring back Quickdraw for Bladedancer and Ophidian Aspects, and give Truth 2 rounds instead of the now 1 and then all of their mistakes would be relatively fixed. I would be fine with a 3s cooldown on the same perks as Cauterize as well like Red Death and Lifesteal, but not full regen kinda kills them from their intended purpose. I also think the community would be much happier. Hopefully this would also come with a PvP nerf to Skorri's, as Trials is horrible right now. Seriously, Trials is the best thing about Destiny, and it's an absolute nightmare right now. Everyone just Skorri spawn camps with Roaming Supers until cap comes up. It not fun at all.