This Week At Bungie - 5/16/2019

This week at Bungie, we are hosting Lord Saladin one last time in the Season of the Drifter.

The final Iron Banner for this Season rages on. This is your last chance to finish up any of the Triumphs—or maybe get that ridiculous emblem if you like to show off. We'll have some slight changes to Iron Banner next season. We'll give you the full details on what to expect the week before Saladin returns to the Tower in Season of Opulence

Season of Opulence Sandbox Changes

Season of Opulence is on fast approach and, similar to past Seasons, some sandbox changes will arrive with it. Last week, we set your sights on a new raid that begins on June 4—the same day that the new Season launches. We wanted to let you know what to expect from the new sandbox so you can plan accordingly. The Destiny Dev Team has the details.

Destiny Dev Team: For Season of Opulence, several notable weapons are being adjusted.  We want to ensure that encounters—raids and other endgame content, for example—remain a challenge. Some of these weapons have been overwhelming that challenge. Our first choice is to buff underused weapons, but if we continue to push every weapon up higher and higher, it will be impossible to maintain challenging experiences. This is not a full list of changes, but some of the most impactful.

Whisper of the Worm
Whisper of the Worm was already adjusted in Season of the Drifter, but an Exotic that can generate an infinite amount of Heavy ammo is still a gigantic outlier and renders many weapons irrelevant for certain encounters. While Exotics are intended to be powerful and novel, bypassing the ammo economy can tend to force us to adjust enemies to compensate. This effectively results in Sniper Rifles as a whole being punished because of Whisper's unique ammo ability. As a result, we're removing the ammo generation ability so that we can increase the effectiveness of all other Snipers that don't have an endless ammo supply. 

• White Nail pulls ammo from reserves rather than creating it
• Reserve ammunition increased to 18 (without ammo reserve perks)

Sleeper Simulant
The reduction of bounced shot damage for Sleeper Simulant is already present on several important enemies. We are now making this reduction part of the weapon. The difference in damage is too large between a single precision shot of Sleeper Simulant and an angled shot that pierces the target and then also hits the target again with the bounced projectiles. Much like Whisper, we've had to adjust enemies around that potential. By making these changes a permanent part of the weapon, we can get it into a more balanced position.

• Reduced ricochet/bounce damage on boss combatants
• Modified precision behavior—total damage is unchanged, but non-precision shots are significantly more forgiving

Lord of Wolves
Lord of Wolves received a massive increase in damage with the full benefits of the Shotgun changes in Season of the Drifter. This made it a lot more popular, but we got a significant amount of feedback that Release the Wolves activating on every kill made it difficult to control the weapon's ammo consumption. As a result, we're allowing you to swap between the two states to control the output, while also reducing its output slightly.

• PvE damage reduced by 20%
• Release the Wolves perk has been reworked:
  • No longer triggers automatically on kill
  • This effect is now triggered by holding reload, similar to "The Fundamentals" on Hard Light and Borealis
  • PvE damage and range bonuses on this effect has been removed and replaced with a universal damage bonus instead

Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades is pretty hot in the Crucible, and has been since its inclusion in Destiny 2: Forsaken. The number of perks on the weapon, combined with the semi-permanent effect of Memento Mori gives the weapon too many advantages compared to other weapons. Now that Memento Mori ends when you stow the weapon, you'll need to make a decision on whether or not you'll keep the weapon drawn to retain the bonus.

• Memento Mori now ends if the weapon is stowed
• The PvP damage bonus of Memento Mori was slightly reduced to prevent two-tapping Guardians while Vengeance (One-Eyed Mask) was active
  • Specifically, you need four resilience to survive this
• Memento Mori is active for six shots again (up from five)

Exotic Armor
Along with the weapons above, we will also be making some changes to some Exotic armor pieces. Primarily, we're paying attention to pieces of Exotic armor that grant back Super energy. We felt they are increasingly becoming "must-pick" gear choices. Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your Super generation. These Exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players' orbs.

Also, because these items are so overwhelmingly strong in situations where players face off against large numbers of enemies, some activities were designed considering the use of armor such as Orpheus Rigs, Phoenix Protocol, Skull of Dire Ahamkara, etc. This means if someone in your fireteam doesn't have these Super Exotics equipped, the activity becomes far more difficult.

We are making some changes to these armor pieces to try to preserve their power fantasy and still leave them as viable choices for difficult activities without making players feel like they must have them equipped or be at a huge disadvantage.

Super-Generating Exotic Armor Changes

• Skull of Dire Ahamkara, Orpheus Rigs, and Phoenix Protocol now receive Super energy back with diminishing returns, making it rarer to get a full Super back
• Shards of Galanor and Ursa Furiosa had their Super gain caps reduced to be in parity with other Super Exotic changes
• Gwisin Vest had its energy reduced from 15% to 8% for killing one to two Guardians
  • Still scales up similar to before when killing three or more Guardians
  • PvE energy return remains similar to before

We're sympathetic about the fact that the changes we make in the interest of balancing combat and game design can be jarring. It was important that we have this conversation before you read the patch notes. We know many of you have a lot riding on day one of Season of Opulence. Hopefully, this intel will assist you in building the perfect monster-killing machines for the next Season of play.

Repping TR3-VR

If you have ventured too deep into the old Tower, you may have awoken something in the darkness. A terrifying machine of unknown purpose, who now haunts our nightmares with a red glow.

Now you can memorialize this horror with a fancy new TR3-VR T-shirt from the Bungie store. Even if you haven't completed the Zero Hour mission and are just a big fan of killer robots, you can buy the shirt now.

We also have some other new additions to the store, including a Black Talon pin, Sundance Ghost vinyl, Comic Collection shirt, and more!

Support Class

Destiny Player Support is here to help. You can find them on the #Help forums answering your questions. This is their report. 

A Tale of Two Flashpoints

Last week, on the weekly reset of May 7, players who logged in to Destiny 2 immediately after 10 AM PDT were assigned EDZ as the weekly Flashpoint, but all players who logged in after 10:30 AM PDT received Titan as their weekly Flashpoint.

Following this week's weekly reset on May 14, we expect all players to be realigned, and everyone should see the same Flashpoint moving forward. Pardon our dust.

Iron Planner

Right now, Lord Saladin is in the Tower hosting the final Iron Banner for Season of the Drifter.

Players who have been pursuing the "Heavy as Death" emblem for defeating 2,500 Guardians in Iron Banner while affected by the Iron Burden have until the weekly reset on Tuesday, May 21. At that time, Lord Saladin will depart from the Tower, and Iron Banner will no longer be available for the remainder of the Season.

Only a few days remain to claim this reward, so players are encouraged to plan their matches now.

Clarification of the Nine

Tomorrow, Xûr's final Invitation of the Nine becomes available to eligible players in Destiny 2.

Unlike similar experiences that players encountered in the Dreaming City when completing weekly bounties from Petra Venj, players cannot miss out on any of Xûr's invitations.

Players who have fallen behind may resume progress by speaking to Xûr the weekend after they complete their current invitation. From then on, progress will continue at a weekly cadence for players until they have completed all invitations.

Destiny 2 Known Issues

In addition to the known issues described above, we'd like to touch on the following issue being investigated in Destiny 2.

• Riskrunner and PC BIRD Errors: We are investigating an issue where Riskrunner may sometimes cause BIRD errors for PC players in the Zero Hour mission.

For other known issues tracked by the DPS team, please see our Known Issues and Vital Information page.

Popped Corn 

Welcome back to Movie of the Week. This is where we pick a few of our favorite videos to highlight each and every week, except on weeks that we don't. If your video is chosen, make sure you add everyone who helped out in the description of the video, and we will give out a special emblem to everyone who worked on it. Let's see what we got. 

Movie of the Week: TR3-VR is waiting. 

Honorable Mention:  Just Listen

We are only two TWABs away from the start of Season of Opulence. We'll be sharing more on what to expect over the next few weeks

It's been awesome watching players in the community take the time to help others fight their way through the Zero Hour mission. I think I might help some players out on LFG tonight. Or maybe I'll just slow them down, we'll see. Until next time. 

<3 Cozmo