That's a lot of sand.
Sandbox High Level
- Goals
- Glaives
- Flinch/airbourne gameplay
- Crucible one hit kills
- Special ammo, exotics, legendaries, perks
Goals
- Introduce more building into airbourne gunplay so it's no longer as simple and easy as "slap on incarus"
- Make flinch resistance easier, but also balance flinch by archetype
- Reduce one hit kill potential in crucible by tuning specials weapons, their uptime, and other primary outliers
- Weapon rebalancing, biggest yet for a sandbox pass, for both PVE and PVP
Glaives
General
- Glaive melees will now trigger non-powered melee related perks like Grave Robber, Swash, and Sealed Ahamkara Grasps
- Will not activate Combination Blow, Assassin's Cowl, etc
- Melee attacks should benefit from melee buffs like Wormgod Caress
- Projectiles should benefit from weapon perks like Kill Clip
Season 16
- Projectile hits required to fill shield lowered from 6 to 4
- Glaive melee interrupted by hunter dodge
- Grave robber pulls perks from reserve on glaives
- Sealed Ahamkara Grasps no longer reloads Glaives on projectile hits (but does on melee hits as expected)
- Glaive melees can no longer stunlock high-health combatants
- Glaive melee kills are now tracked in match history, for bounties and so forth
Season 17
- Glaive shield grants 97.5% PVE resistance, and 75% for PVP
- Melee increased 25% for PVE (except for bosses/vehicles)
- Shield drains 30% slower
- Projectile speed increased from 30 to 60 for 0 range, and 80 to 100 for 100 range (speeds in meters/second)
Exotic Glaives (S17)
- Edge of Action: Bubble adds overshield, and now is empowered by Helm of Saint-14
- Edge of Intent: Speed and acceleration of healing turret projectiles increased
- Edge of Concurrence: Damage tripled, and lighting chain can hit up to 8 enemies
Global Weapon Changes
Flinch
- Stability for weapons now includes flinch resistance
- 25% for AR, SMG, and bow
- 20% for Pulse, Scout, Sidearm, and Machine Guns
- 15% for Hand Cannon and Trace
- 10% for Fusion, Shotty, Sniper, both GLs, Linears, and Rockets
- Stability under 20 adds a small flinch penalty
- Resilience now adds flinch resistance as well (up to 10% at max Resilience)
- Pair these with the things from Fallout's flinch video to get high resistance
Airbournce Gunplay
- Adding new weapon stat called "Airborne Effectiveness" to all weapons
- Some exceptions, like Swords
- 0-30: small penalty, low aim assist
- 31-50: icarus like shooting, low aim assist
- 51-70: better than icarus shooting, reduced aim assist
- 71-99: no penalty, slightly lower aim assist
- 100: no penalty, normal aim assist
- This stat has been tuned for most weapons, but some legacy lengendaries have a default stat based on archetype
- Hidden stat you'll need to check through API
- This all puts a higher emphasis on aiming over randomness in airbournce gunplay
- You will need to spec into this build to make it effective
Airbournce Effectiveness
- Effected by the new stat, Icarus mods, weapon perks (like the new Air Assault), weapon archetype, weapon source (higher stats for raid, trials, and nightfall weapons), specific weapon tunning, subclass abilities (i.e. Heat Rises), and exotic armor perks
- In case you were wondering, they are watching how often certain exotic armor pieces are used with this change
- They make note of stompees and ophiddian's aspect
Playlist weapons
- Chance to roll with 2 perks in one or both columns
- Each vendor reset increases your change for that playlist
- Playlist weapons from Beyond Light forward now have appropriate Origin Trait
Stats Display
- Weapon stats now displayed from 1 to 100 to prevent scaling issues
One hit kills and Special Ammo
- Reduced the damage bonus for Empowering Rift, High Energy Fire, and Inertia Override from 20% to 15% against players (no effect in PvE)
- Disabled weapon scavenger mods in PVP
- Re-tuned special archetypes and Exotic weapons to reduce effectiveness and uptime
Special Weapons
General
- Added additional in air accuracy penalty bonus
- Scales with Airbourne Effectiveness, with no penalty at stat 100
- Added additional aim assist penalty
- Also scales, but is not removed at stat 100
Sniper
- Reduced stow/ready/aim by 10% to make Snapshot not as mandatory
Shotgun
- Reduced damage fall off start point by 1 meter
- Reduced aim assist and magnetism fall off start by 2m
Fusion
- Near damage fall off reduced by 2m at 0 range, 1.3m at 100 range
- Far damage fall off reduced by 1m at 0 range, 1.3 at 100 range
- Recoil variance scales with stability, .75 at 0 stat and .5ish at 100 stat
- High Impact: 0.960s, 330 damage
- Precision: 0.780s, 280 damage
- Adaptive: 0.660s, 270 damage
- Rapid Fire: 0.500s, 245 damage
Trace Rifle
- Increased damage against yellow bars by 20%
- Increased ammo pickup per brick to 30
Primary Weapons
Autos
- Increased damage falloff near distance by 0.75 meters
Pulse Rifles
- Damage fall off now 16 meters for 0 range, 24 meters for 100 range (NOTE: for HIP FIRE damage, so not including what scopes add)
- Lightweight Frames now do 16 non-crit damage per bullet making the TTK about the same, but with less crits
SMGs
- Increased damage falloff by 1.5 meters
- Max zoom values lowered on several SMGs (most notable Shayura's 16, Multimach 15)
- Some are being raised to 14/15 and most SMGs already have a max stat around 13-15
- Adaptive body damage decreased to 11.25
- Precision multiplier increased to 1.44
Precision Frame Hand Cannons
- Now default to a 25 stat for Airbourne Effectiveness
Heavy Weapons
Machine Guns
- 40% damage increase in PVE (Xenophage and Grand Overature DO receive)
- 20% for bosses (Xenophage and Grand Overature DON"T receive)
Swords
- Fixed stat display issue
- Increased charge rate of Sola's Scar from 20 to 50
Rockets
- Precision: -10% damage (both impact and detonation)
- High Impact: no change (this subfamily has the highest blast radius)
- Adaptive and Aggressive: +10% damage
Exotics
General
- All exotics now have kill trackers
Fighting Lion
- Reverted blast radius increase from season 15 for all GLs, EXCEPT this one
- Increased damage by 5%
Eyes of Tomorrow
- Increased damage vs bosses and Champions by 30%
Leviathan's Breath
- Archer's Tempo perk from the catalyst now has increased effect
- Added a small delay before detonation on Champions, minibosses, and bosses (helps with stunning)
- Damage increased by 50%, but now more split between impact and detonation
Huckleberry
- Increased zoom from 13 to 15
Xenophage
- Rate of fire increased to 120rpm
- Reduced damage per bullet backed to normal
Le Monarque
- Reduced poison tick damage vs players by 25%
- Changed poison damage type from burn to poison
- Increased poison tick damage vs AI by 50%
Lorentz Driver
- Reduced body shot damage against players by 20%
- Body damage reverts to old behavior when in the weapon's damage mode
- Precision damage not changed
Skyburner's Oath
- ADS projectile speed is not Hit Scan
- Rate of fire now 150rpm overall
- Hip fire no longer tracks, but shoots like a GL and has a larger detonation than when ADS
- Hip fire detonation applies burn
- Masterwork bonus stat added to base stat
- Highest base Airbourne Effectiveness stat of any weapon (35)
Last Word
- Reduced M&K recoil penalty from 33% to 22%
Arbalest
- Reduced damage vs Champions by 25%
- Still 1 hits Barrier champion shields
Graviton Lance
- Catalyst change from Hidden Hand, to adding Vorpal and Turnabout
Grand Overture
- Reduced time between bursts when in missile mode
- Holding the trigger will now fire all missiles in a continuous burst
- Tapping will fire 5-round bursts
Cold Heart
- Sustained damage creates an Ionic Trace and collecting an Ionic Trace grants energy to all your abilities
- Increased grace time before the damage ramp clears from 0.113s to 1.0s
Promethesus Lens
- Sustained damage applies better burn
Wavesplitter
- Power level no longer cycles randomly
- Picking up an Orb of Power now grants 10s of maximum power and caps at 20s
- Now suppresses targets while granted this mode by picking up an Orb
Osteo Striga
- Corrected rotation on the projection model
Lord of Wolves
- Reduced damage falloff start and end by 25%
Perks
- Snapshot scalar increased from .5 to .75 for special weapons
- Opening shot falloff scalar removed, and range stat bonus upped to 25
- Full choke angle scale increased from .95 to .96ish
- Smoothbore angle scale decreased from 1.1 to 1.0ish
- Desperado eventually being added to new weapons so increased fire recovery scalar from 0.415 to 0.7 to make RPM increase not as fast
- Desperado also lowered to 6 seconds now and no longer has a PVE damage penalty
- Air Assault rebuilt to add +60 Airbourne Effectiveness (perk is triggered the same way as Eye of the Storm)
- Mulligan now has 35% chance to return primary ammo, still 20% for special and heavy
- Compulsive Reloader stat buff increased to +50, and now adds a 0.95x reload animation scalar
- Adagio damage reduced on Shottys from 30% to 20%
Mods
- Icarus Grip reworked and now adds +15 Airborne Effectiveness
- Adept Icarus Grip also adds +5 handling
Weapons Going Away
Weapons leaving in S17
- Occluded Finality Sniper Rifle
- Finite Impactor Hand Cannon
- The Comedian Shotgun
- Palindrome Hand Cannon
- Shayura's Wrath Submachine Gun
- The Messenger Pulse Rifle
Weapons leaving in S18
- Peacebond Sidearm
- Archon's Thunder Machine Gun
- PLUG ONE.1 Fusion Rifle
- The Hothead Rocket Launcher
- Eye of Sol Sniper Rifle
- The Summoner Auto Rifle
Hotfix for April 26th
- Axion Bolt base cooldown increased from 91s to 152s
- Titan Barricade's base cooldown when the Bastion Void Aspect is equipped is now 82s, up from 53s
- Offensive Bulwark now provides 60% less bonus grenade energy regeneration in PvP
- Whisper of Chains now provides 15% bonus damage resistance against players when near a Stasis crystal, down from 25% (No PVE change)
- Renewal Grasps increase the base cooldown of the Duskfield Grenade from 62s to 152s
- The outgoing damage penalty applied to players in the Renewal Grasps' Duskfield Grenade reduced from 50% to 20% (No PVE change)
Gambit Labs: Mote Thief
- Premieres next week
- Normal Mote Blocker drain disabled
- Drain now occurs for every second an invader is present