Bungie Announces a Ton of Buffs Coming to Destiny 2 Update 1.1.4, Precision Auto Rifles Are Getting Nerfed

I hope you didn’t get to comfortable using auto rifles like Uriel’s Gift that are essentially a laser beam of high precision damage. Bungie has been hard at work fixing criticisms that players have had with Destiny 2. One of those big updates was detailed at the beginning of February, nicknamed the “Go Fast” update. It’s a sandbox update that will increase the speed of nearly everything about the game. In this week’s Bungie blog post, they got a bit more granular with the details of the coming Destiny 2 update 1.1.4, including sandbox changes that are overwhelmingly buffs to just about every weapon, along with some abilities and perks.

By current plans, there are only two items in the entire game being nerfed. The Hunter dodge and invisibility are getting adjustments that won’t break tracking quite as easily, and precision auto rifles aren’t going to be the meta anymore. While the full Mods 2.0 rework has been delayed out to September, this update will issue a number of buffs to existing mods to ensure that ability recharge times are significantly lower.

You can check out the full list of newly detailed changes on the way below. Things that were previously mentioned that are unchanged have not been included in this list.

Dawnblade has been improved:

  • Reduced cost for throwing swords, allowing for one additional throw
  • Increased super duration extension gained from “Everlasting Fire”
  • Removed all in-air accuracy penalties while “Swift Strike” is active
  • Reduced the Icarus Dash cooldown
  • Increased the Grenade and Melee energy “Heat Rises” gives you per kill

Invisibility on Dodge / Smoke Updates (PvP Only! No Changes to PvE):

  • Invisibility on Dodge no longer breaks Aim Assist or Projectile Tracking in PvP (unchanged in PvE)
  • Dodging still breaks both Aim Assist and Projectile Tracking, but only for the duration of the actual dodge
  • Increased the duration of Invisibility on Dodge by 1 second
  • Increased the duration of Smoke Bomb Invisibility by 1 second

Supers recharge faster for everyone!

  • Supers now recharge 1:40 faster, a cooldown reduction of 25%.

Mods that reduce Grenade, Melee and Class Ability cooldowns have been buffed to allow for up to 2x faster cooldowns.

  • This is NOT replacing Mods 2.0, which was recently delayed.

We’ve buffed several weapon archetypes (including, but not limited to, Hand Cannons, Pulse Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Shotguns) and a few specific perks, as well. A key goal here is to make Shotguns, Snipers, and Fusion rifles more prevalent in the game.

Pulse Rifles

  • Increased PvE damage for all pulses
  • Increased rate of fire for adaptive and high-impact pulses
  • Increased base damage for adaptive, high-impact, and rapid-fire Pulses
  • Increased precision multiplier for lightweight pulses
  • Decreased precision multiplier for adaptive pulses
  • This keeps precision damage close to where it is now, putting most of the buff into body shots, though it is still an increase in precision damage overall.

Scout Rifles

  • Increased PvE damage for all scouts
  • Increased base damage for High-Impact Scouts

Hand Cannon

  • Increased PvE damage for all Hand Cannons
  • Increased precision multiplier for precision hand cannons
  • Increased hip fire accuracy on consoles
  • Increased ADS accuracy on consoles

Sidearms

  • Increased PvE damage for all sidearms
  • Increased hip fire accuracy
  • Increased ADS accuracy
  • Increased inventory size (allowing more reserve ammo to be stored)
  • Increased minimum range
  • Added an ADS movement bonus

SMG

  • Increased PvE damage for all SMG’s
  • Set Optics to 1.3x
  • Increased inventory size (allowing more reserve ammo to be stored)

Linear Fusion Rifle

  • Increased PvE damage for all linear fusions
  • Increased precision multiplier
  • Increased aim assist
  • Reduced flinch multiplier

Shotgun

  • Increased PvE damage for all shotguns
  • Increased inventory size (allowing more reserve ammo to be stored)
  • Increased aim assist for Suros precision shotguns

Sniper Rifle

  • Increased PvE damage for all snipers
  • Increased precision multiplier
  • Increased aim assist
  • Increased inventory size (allowing more reserve ammo to be stored)

Grenade Launcher

  • Increased blast radius

Assault Rifles

  • Decreased range and aim assist stats for precision autos (Uriel’s Gift). Base damage is not changed.

A few weapon perks are also getting some updates:

High Impact Reserves

  • Increased PvE damage

Kill Clip

  • Increased PvE damage

Rampage

  • Increased PvE damage
  • Increased duration

Dragonfly

  • Increased damage
  • Increased radius
  • Stronger visual effects

Grave Robber

  • Reloads .5 magazine instead of .3

Timed Payload

  • Splits damage 55 Explosive / 45 Direct instead of previous split which was more direct damage

Explosive Rounds

  • Decreased PvE Explosive Rounds damage
  • This decrease has been compensated for with an increase in PvE damage for the base weapons – your weapons with explosive rounds will not do less damage after 1.1.4

Overall, I’m happy to see Bungie going with buffing and making players more powerful, while still staying humble enough to know that balance comes with nerfs as well. Precision auto rifles were definitely overpowered and used excessively, so it’s nice to see Bungie exploring options that might bring other weapons into play. Hunters also have an overpowered ability in being able to completely break tracking and aim assist, though I’m not certain that removing that is the best answer without buffing other Hunter options to make them viable players on the field.

Destiny 2 update 1.1.4 is scheduled to release on March 27, and will bring with it the above mentioned sandbox changes, heroic strike modifiers, and a number of other major changes. This will be the last major update before Expansion 2 releases alongside update 1.2 in May.

[Source: Bungie]

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