Tripmines see their damage decreased another 3%, meaning that you are almost certainly never going to get a kill on any Guardian with full health. Previously, it was possible to still one-shot low armor Hunters/Warlocks who neglected to invest in Armor, but it’s highly likely this 3% figure was chosen to make even that impossible. Finally, you can no longer stick a Tripmine to a foe. This change is, frankly, a mistake. The Gunslinger neutral game has historically been weaker than its competition, and Tripmine sticks rewarded a well-timed (and better-aimed) lob with a very satisfying kill. Removing this possibility may work to limit the number of ways you can “one-shot” another Guardian, but the alleviation of this occasional frustration does not make up for the loss of memorable and – honestly – fun moments that Destiny should be trying to encourage. This is to say nothing of the impact in PvE, where encounters often take place in open areas with very few tactical surfaces on which to stick a tripmine. There was something giddy and perfect about stapling a tripmine to a Thrall’s head, just in time to see it wipe out everything around the unlucky enemy.
In a similar vein, the 10% damage reduction to Throwing Knives is equally perplexing. Bungie cites a complaint about dying to a single Throwing Knife with the Incendiary Blade augment – but again, we’re hard-pressed to track down a prevailing sentiment among the community that Incendiary Blade was in any way “broken” to begin with.
The difficulty of landing a headshot with a throwing knife is already prohibitive enough such that increased damage that consumes a perk slot is hardly an unbalanced reward. In PvE, this also might mean more instances in which you’re no longer able to take advantage of Circle of Life’s new functionality, that decreases the cooldown of Golden Gun for every precision knife kill. This is a great perk re-work that will be appealing against trash like charging Thrall or Corrupted Psions.
Of course, if that 10% penalty removes a OHK threshold on a hardier enemy like an on-level Acolyte, then we’ll be left with a change to PvP that negatively impacts PvE – a trend that Bungie should put a little more thought into avoiding. Certainly, a damage increase against AI combatants would be a reasonable offset.