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[bombshell]

In preparation for The Taken King.

Hello everyone!

This update has been a long time coming, but I’m very happy to be here again to talk about some pending weapon changes. This time around, we’re hitting a lot of stuff so I hope you’re wearing your reading pants.

A small selection of the weapon changes:

Thorn
Thorn has had an interesting journey. It started as a weapon that was perceived as an unworthy reward for one of the most contentious exotic bounties in the game, and has slowly dug its way into players’ flesh as one of the most popular exotics among the Destiny population.

We want to preserve the functionality that makes Thorn such a compelling weapon, but its effective range and lethality are one of the most hotly contended items by the PVP player base. The base changes to Hand Cannons and weapon stats address Thorn’s range.

Changes

• Reduce base damage of Thorn’s Mark of the Devourer DoT (Damage over Time) to roughly 1/3 of what it was in PVP and PVE
• Allow DoT to stack up to 5x across multiple landed projectiles
  This is a net buff for Thorn’s DoT, but reduces the lethality of the weapon in PVP

Equipped Primary Weapon Popularity (PVP)

Gjallarhorn
If Destiny had a nuke it would be the “Ballerhorn.” We definitely intended to have a high damage Heavy Weapon that was ideal for PvE destruction. What we did not intend, and what we unfortunately saw, was pick up Raid and Nightfall groups gating participation based on whether or not players had this weapon. Gjallarhorn was so strong that for many people it had become the only answer to getting through tough encounters, and therefore they were less willing to spend time with other players that didn’t have it.

We strive for Destiny to be a place where a single weapon or strategy does not dictate how, or with whom, you spend your time. In the new world Gjallarhorn is still worthy of its legacy as an exotic Heavy Weapon, but we hope it promotes inclusive behavior rather than exclusivity.

Changes

• Reduce damage of Wolfpack Rounds

Equipped Heavy Weapon Popularity (PVE)

Read the FULL run-down of the many weapon changes here: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/News?aid=13147

--------------------------

From Eurogamer:

Numerous exotic weapons - such as Gjallarhorn, arguably Destiny's most powerful gun - will see specific changes. Most - again, like Gjallarhorn - are being nerfed.

The gun's secondary Wolfpack Rounds detonation will now have its damaged reduced as a result.

Other popular weapons getting a nerf include PVP favourite Thorn (which will have its poisoning status effect reduced) and Ice Breaker (which will have its ammo-recharge effect slowed).

All gun types are being tweaked, but hand cannons are probably hit the hardest - their long-range damage, accuracy and magazine size will all be decreased.

Meanwhile, shotguns are being nerfed for PVE and will have their long-range buffs significantly reduced.

But it's not all bad news - auto rifles are getting buffed, after being nerfed too heavily in Destiny's earlier gun balance changes. Their base damage is being increased, although will now falloff faster for enemies that are further away.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...-to-be-nerfed-in-huge-balance-changing-update

 

[glaurung]

I just got my Gjallarhorn and now they're tuning it down.

Oh well, surely there will be new exotics in The Taken King that will render even Thorn and the Horn obsolete.

 

[Aztechnology]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

 

[Stacey]

"Gjallarhorn nerfed"

There's a shit storm coming...........

 

[Skele7on]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

It's a major change to the dynamics of the game, of course it does.

There were similar thread for WoW re-tunes so why not this?

Destiny is an extremely popular game, no matter what GAF like to think/say.

 

[Wurdfurd]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

New news new thread, no?

I'm more bummed about the Black Hammer nerf than anything....mostly because I don't have a ghorn.

 

[pizzacat]

I just got my Gjallarhorn and now they're tuning it down.

Oh well, surely there will be new exotics in The Taken King that will render even Thorn and the Horn obsolete.

I just got mine too.


Goddamn it

 

[doomquake]

I really liked this update - nice long ass article open for discussion.

I'm only bummed about the shotgun stuff for pve, but since I've only discovered Dry Rot.

I am also interested of how adding MORE weapons to TTK will be a fun thing.. They said that they will essentially double the amount of weapon loot...so basically it will be identical weapons with different skins?

 

[bombshell]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

Salty Gjallarhorn owner?

 

[Mengetsu]

It's for the best honestly.
Blackhammer I saw coming they don't want people abusing it with the new expansion enemies/bosses. The gun should of always been an exotic it's to good for legendary status.

Ice Breaker just hurts lol it's a long charge for a shot enough as it is.

Ghorn after skolas I saw that happening,The community was locking people out who didn't have it.


Thorn had to be nerfed along with The Last Word overall with pistols.

These changes wouldn't of hurt as bad if they would had regulated the patches over the year but, since all the weapons stood the same with no change everyone got attached and now it's time to let go friend..new stuff awaits.

 

[Gattsu25]

They're nerfing all hand cannons?

Yeah...not sure I want to see that happen

 

[Jinjo]

Seems like a solid set of changes, some were desperately needed. The only ones that stump me are Hawkmoon and Black Hammer. BH already got nerfed last patch too. They pretty much negated everything that was unique about the gun, white nail is nothing more than a buffed outlaw now.

 

[kiguel182]

Nerfing shotguns for PVE is a bummer. There goes my escape plan for most situations.

 

[DryvBy]

All the guns are so nerfed, they're going to fire foam bullets now.

Seriously with the Gjallarhorn? Don't ruin the beast.

 

[Dynedom]

Thorn nerf is welcome. PVP balance needed a serious overhaul. No diversity in weapons at all.

Gjallahorn nerd was an inevitability and I call BS on the "inclusive" argument. People were blowing through raids, strikes and bosses with it and Bungie wanted to fix that. End of story. It's a lazy fix for a thin and largely boring mission/boss structure. The upcoming content had better be extremely rewarding to make people forgo the Gjalvantage.

edit: Wait, no more infinite bullets on the Black Hammer? Wow.

 

[BokehKing]

After playing Elder Scrolls Online for weeks now, I realize just how much Destiny is lacking in game and it's God damn depressing.


My g-horn is getting nerfed because the LFG community is pricks, I never seemed to notice because I always had every major exotic and gjallarhorn in my post and was my selling point.

With that said, we wouldn't need LFG sites if we had matchmaking.

Yes, I'm finally on the give us matchmaking train, the average dungeon in ESO is more challenging than a crota raid, and those could be completed with level appropriate random. (won't lie, sometimes they can't be)

This nerf stems from a community bungie created, a community that was birthed in the fires of "no matchmaking"

Never, ever... Ever thought I say this
But Bungie...

(better not be too foul)

 

[Mafro]

Nerfing weapons players were using to exploit their cheap, lazy, bullet sponge boss fights. I hope they've actually bothered to create some interesting boss encounters in TTK that don't require those tactics.

 

[Dynedom]

Nerfing weapons players were using to exploit their cheap, lazy, bullet sponge boss fights.

Exactly.

 

[Prezhulio]

Is taken king going to have lfg implemented in game? Have they talked about putting such a thing in game AT ALL?

You can only say your nerfs for pve are inclusive if you provide the means for large portions of the game to be inclusive in the first place.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Nerfing weapons players were using to exploit their cheap, lazy, bullet sponge boss fights. I hope they've actually bothered to create some interesting boss encounters in TTK that don't require those tactics.

It sucks

I would rather see buffs to weaker weapons than nerfs to good ones

WTF

 

[The Strokes]

While I do love me some Gjallahorn and Thorn I can see why those guns need to be nerfed.

Ice breaker, tho, it's ridiculous. Its recharg time is slow as hell and now they're making it slower? God dammit.

 

[InsaneTiger]

I've had a Gally for a long time and even I get tired of the "just Gally it" strategy for 99% of all PVE activities.

It's for the best.

 

[Pjsprojects]

Starting to tire of Destiny big time and I'm a day one player on both consoles.

Months to get the high end weapons and they get nurfed.
Months to reach top level and the dlc makes it pointless.

 

[glaurung]

Actually I think that the Horn tuning is not as damaging as it could be. It will still be beast in PvE.

Thorn on the other hand should be turned into a water pistol. PvP is a joke since everyone got one.

 

[Asmodai48]

It sucks

I would rather see buffs to weaker weapons than nerfs to good ones

WTF

That never ends well.

 

[robertsan21]

It sucks

I would rather see buffs to weaker weapons than nerfs to good ones

WTF

.

I agree totally, why nerf when they can buff and make more weapons fun to use instead, they nerf and make them boring.

 

[StalkerUKCG]

Ghorn nerf is shit

 

[Mupod]

I think it's funny that they nerfed Thorn right after I got mine, then buffed it right after I stopped playing, and are nerfing it again right before I come back (I want to get at least something out of the expansion I got and never played).

Add a stack limit to Luck in the Chamber and Holding Aces so that only 2 of the bonus perks will ever stack on one round. This should prevent Hawkmoon from 1-hit killing full health players in PVP

Oh, good. Fuck that weapon and everyone who has one (because I never got one).

 

[firehawk12]

Nerfing weapons players were using to exploit their cheap, lazy, bullet sponge boss fights. I hope they've actually bothered to create some interesting boss encounters in TTK that don't require those tactics.

Yeah, pretty much.

 

[Neil_J_UK]

No Vex love

 

[Aztechnology]

Salty Gjallarhorn owner?

I'm actually one of the people who wants all the current weapons to become obsolete because it's a detriment game design wise to try and keep so many weapons balanced at once.

 

[Pepin]

The Gjallahorn nerf is fair - it became too much of a crutch for people & kinda broke the fun of he high-tier Raids/Nightfalls as a result. I mostly play PvP, so it didn't really affect me much (heavy = death anyway) but for the PvE it makes sense

I'm INCREDIBLY happy about the damage falloff when it comes to Hand Cannons, though - I love my Thorn but it's OP. I used to love it when Auto Rifles were king: yeah, you'd get blasted by Suros from half the map away, but at least you could trade easily enough (I ran Monte Carlo, it was the nuts)

These balances - exotics specifically - will be overshadowed by whatever new items drop in TKK anyway. Just makes it irritating playing the game NOW, considering we kinda know there's no point getting our best bits to MAX since they'll just be undercut in 2 months anyway

 

[giancarlo123x]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

There's a thread for every Witcher update, one about destiny won't kill you.

 

[theAntagonist]

As someone who primarily plays PvP in Destiny, yet enjoys some challenging PvE content every now and then, I think all of these proposed changes are pretty much spot on. Reducing the range and ADS aim assist on the overall hand cannon archetype is a pretty solid change as they were definitely too effective at too many ranges when compared to the other primary types. The Last Word and Hawkmoon changes are pretty much exactly what I felt needed to happen, and while Thorn's nerf sounds okay, I still would have liked to have seen a slight rate of fire reduction for it though hopefully the overall weapon archetype re-balance helps in that regard. I think it's good that they are slightly nerfing both Gjallahorn and Ice Breaker as they definitely were overused/used way too frequently as a crutch/coast mode in the PvE portion of the game. Same with Black Hammer. Playing in any of the strike playlists and just seeing guys sit in the back with their easy mode sniper rifles, then switching to Gjallahorn for the super fast DPS was just lame in my opinion.

The range perks on long range shotguns getting nerfed is good as well, though I still think that they will remain to be highly prevalent, especially with blink still being a thing. Same with the slight damage reduction for shotguns in PvE. The last change where they buffed them was good and needed, but I definitely felt that they made them overly good.

Grenades and Horseshoes (proximity detonation) for Rocket Launchers being changed to require rockets to be closer to their intended targets is also a good change, although I'm in the camp that thinks that proximity detonating rockets should be limited to the Exotics only and the fact that there's tons of Legendary rockets out there with the ability now has seriously killed a lot of the diversity when Heavy Ammo spawns in PvP.

Auto rifles being slightly re-buffed, but having a greater range falloff is pretty much what I felt should have been done to autos from the beginning. The problem wasn't that they were just a little too powerful, it was that like the hand cannons, they were too effective at too great of a range, especially Suros Regime.

The one thing I'm kind of perplexed by is the further nerfing(?) of the fusion rifles. Fusions are already extremely uncommon since they were nerfed in the last balance update, and now it sounds like they are making them even worse by making the projectiles slower, cutting the range of the long distance varieties, and buffing the shorter range fusions. It just sounds like they are making the fusion rifles even more of a poor choice for PvP, and that's not even considering PvE. They could stand to see a damage buff for PvE to make them more viable against the shotguns and snipers.

Just judging by what they've said, the new update definitely sounds a lot more balanced than the games' current metagame. I'm excited for these updates, though I feel that a lot of them are quite overdue and it does kind of suck that the existing playerbase has had to wait this long to finally get some good balance updating. Hopefully the content they add in The Taken King really puts some life into the world and really expands on things, because so far things sound pretty promising for the future of the game in the next several months.

 

[Carn82]

Nerfing weapons players were using to exploit their cheap, lazy, bullet sponge boss fights. I hope they've actually bothered to create some interesting boss encounters in TTK that don't require those tactics.

Well put. I love the game, but Bungie needs to insert some other variables and gameplay mechanics to end this 'weapon is op --> dps during encounters --> nerf' cycle

 

[Toski]

After playing Elder Scrolls Online for weeks now, I realize just how much Destiny is lacking in game and it's God damn depressing.


My g-horn is getting nerfed because the LFG community is pricks, I never seemed to notice because I always had every major exotic and gjallarhorn in my post and was my selling point.

With that said, we wouldn't need LFG sites if we had matchmaking.

Yes, I'm finally on the give us matchmaking train, the average dungeon in ESO is more challenging than a crota raid, and those could be completed with level appropriate random. (won't lie, sometimes they can't be)

This nerf stems from a community bungie created, a community that was birthed in the fires of "no matchmaking"

Never, ever... Ever thought I say this
But Bungie...

(better not be too foul)

Who are you and what have you done with devilsadvocat? I hope he's okay...

Can't say I hate any of the nerfs, except for Ice Breaker and Black Hammer.

 

[Carl]

Ew, Gjallarhorn nerf

Fucking hell they're nerfing Black Hammer and Ice Breaker too? Nerfing all the good weapons

 

[DrROBschiz]

The thorn changes are interesting

DoT has a massive reduction but you can stack it 5 times....

Seems like mostly a PvE buff against damage sponges since you would likely kill players with consecutive hits before the DOT mattered

I can live with that

 

[Aztechnology]

After playing Elder Scrolls Online for weeks now, I realize just how much Destiny is lacking in game and it's God damn depressing.


My g-horn is getting nerfed because the LFG community is pricks, I never seemed to notice because I always had every major exotic and gjallarhorn in my post and was my selling point.

With that said, we wouldn't need LFG sites if we had matchmaking.

Yes, I'm finally on the give us matchmaking train, the average dungeon in ESO is more challenging than a crota raid, and those could be completed with level appropriate random. (won't lie, sometimes they can't be)

This nerf stems from a community bungie created, a community that was birthed in the fires of "no matchmaking"

Never, ever... Ever thought I say this
But Bungie...

(better not be too foul)

This is pretty much the reaction of most people who've played a real MMO. Most people I know who have didn't stick around Destiny long. When a game like ESO, WOW, Final Fantasy etc releases such an amazing breadth of content per expansion comparitively it's hard to look at Destiny in a positive light. The Taken King will be my last chance I give Destiny. If it isn't a very significant chunk of content then I'll have lost what little faith I have left in the potential of this game. I figured that this first year has just been about setting up the assets they need to really start pushing out some real content. This is probably wishful thinking, but I'd like to believe it just a bit longer.

I'll be holding on to my collectors edition TK until I hear about whether it's lived up to its promises. If it doesn't I'll be selling it and collecting my money back plus some extra for that I lost for the first two rediculous expansions.

 

[Bollocks]

Bungie nerfs and thus rendering all existing guns useless right before the new DLC drops.

 

[Halabane]

I just hope this doesn't make old content impossible to get thru as they start making changes that impact PVE weapons. I understand balance in PvP. Frankly I kind of wish they did what WoW does in having separate gear, if for no other reason to not have to frig with the PVE part. This integrated design is going to make this forever a nightmare in destiny balancing.

 

[Ingueferroque]

I really don't think this needs its own thread.

Yea it does.

 

[pantsmith]

This is both hilarious and sad.

Keep in mind that you can't even buy Thorn. You have to be active enough to get a random exotic bounty, and from that pool be lucky enough to get Thorn's bounty, then hope your KDR is good enough with void weapons and you have friends to help you with the PvE encounter.

Basically it would be even higher if the gun was available to everyone.

 

[Mengetsu]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-bungie-nerfing-gjallerhorn-destiny

Save the Ghorn! 😂

 

[Podge293]

and here i am sitting without a Gjallarhorn, good news for me i suppose or is it still bad news?

 

[Asmodai48]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-bungie-nerfing-gjallerhorn-destiny

Save the Ghorn! 😂

Sad.

 

[firehawk12]

and here i am sitting without a Gjallarhorn, good news for me i suppose or is it still bad news?

Unless they introduce exotics with dramatically more interesting features, it's still the best weapon for PvE even with the nerf.

 

[robertsan21]

This is both hilarious and sad.

I really dont understand why people are so keen to see more diversity in the game. these questions is not aimed at you specifically so dont take offence . why do some player care what guns are being used in PVP? what benefit is it to you if there is a big difference in weapons being used? I just dont get it.

I play with the last word cause i find it to be a good gun and its fun to play with and it looks cool when shooting. I would never playing with an autorifle, scout,pulse, fusion as I dont find them to be fun to use.

 

[pringles]

.

I agree totally, why nerf when they can buff and make more weapons fun to use instead, they nerf and make them boring.

Looking at those charts it's pretty easy to see that Thorn and Gjallarhorn needed a nerf. Easier to bring 2 or 3 weapons down closer in line with the rest, instead of trying to buff a massive amount of weapons.

I actually started playing Destiny a lot less after I got my Gjallarhorn. It was so good that it felt pointless to use any other weapon. Basically every other exotic became useless, except the Icebreaker. I don't think that's how it should be.

 

[GlamFM]

Had to be done. What good are 10.000 guns if everybody uses the same 3?