Developer Insights: S21 Mid-Season Weapon Tuning
Developer Insights: S21 Mid-Season Weapon Tuning
Weapon Archetypes
Pulse Rifles:
- Reduced auto aim by ~10% when the Aim Assist Stat is 0
Lightweight Bows:
- Damage falloff distance increased. (will do more damage at longer ranges)
- Accuracy increased by ~10%
Shayura's Wrath:
- Made improvements to the dynamic reticle they've been testing on that gun. If you haven't seen it the current reticle basically blocks your view and sucks.
Lightweight Shotguns:
- Reduced spread angle of outer pellets by 15%. Should result in more consistency in PVP.
Exotic Weapons
Graviton Lance:
- PVE damage up 67%
- No more aim assist from the Catalyst
- Cosmology PVP damage reduced 40%. PVE damage unchanged
No Time To Explain:
- Reduced range stat by 10
Fighting Lion:
- Bug Fix for the Chimera perk
Perks
Gutshot Straight:
- Reduced auto aim penalty by 37.5%
Slickdraw:
- Reduced auto aim penalty by 33%
Target Lock:
- PVP damage reduced from 40% to 25% (This is still going to shred as long as you can aim IMO)
- PVE damage unchanged
Zoom Changes
Future:
- Season 22 will see zoom changes to all weapons. Two high level goals:
- Reduce the variance between the optimal engagement ranges of our mid-range weapons (Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles, and Hand Cannons).
- Slightly reduce the average engagement range in Crucible by pulling in the maximum damage falloff distances of many weapon types.
- They have a big table going over where ADS damage falloff will be for each gun after this change. The table shows Old Base Zoom, Old Base Zoom+Rangefinder, then New Base ADS Modifier. TBH, I'm going to wait for CoolGuy or someone to explain this. As I understand it engagements are essentially going to get closer.
- They mention that certain exotics are getting custom tuning under this new system.
- Rifle style weapons should experience falloff more gradually while handheld weapons should experience it more quickly.
Other Season 22 Changes:
- Hand Cannon Buffs that were mentioned previously. Reload speed and PVE damage buffs.
- Sword guard getting reworked. (maybe it'll actually do something now?)
- More exotic tuning. LeMonarque and Touch of Malice mentioned.
- Bipod, Envious Assassin, and Over Under getting reworked
Season 23 should see lots of changes to Glaives to make them feel better. Details are still in flux right now.
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I'm glad Gutshot and Slickdraw are getting buffed because those are two instant shard perks for me.
Zoom changes are a big wait and see. It's going to affect the feel of the game drastically. I kind of feel like this is another situation where they invented a whole new system to fix a problem (SMG dominance).
My taraxappos with gunshot and explosive is gonna be even more yummy now
I think the zoom changes address a lot of issues even beyond the smg dominance. Rangefinder is currently a best in slot perk for like every weapon type except scouts and pulses. On handcannons, smgs, and fusion rifles it results in so many weapons that are head and shoulders above the rest. I think smgs definitely make it stand out the most because of their ease of use and the fact that the high zoom ones had so much more range than other options. I’m certainly excited to see how it shakes up the sandbox.
As for gutshot and slickdraw I feel like they’re still going to be insta shard perks. I feel like they’d need reworks to be useful. Like flip how gutshot works so you have less AA/accuracy firing from the hip but more body damage and it might not be terrible. Probably still better options but at least it would have situations where it might be useful. Slickdraw a rework so the accuracy penalty is only for a second or two after swapping might make it interesting. I just feel like perks like gutshot and slickdraw were introduced without really thinking about practical situations where they’d be useful over other perks and just end up diluting the perk pool making it harder to get decent rolls