Sandbox Tuning Preview for Ash & Iron

Ash & Iron is almost upon us, and we’ll be returning to the Plaguelands very soon. Our Sandbox team has been prepping a lengthy list of changes coming with our first Major Update, available to all players, which focuses on weapons, perks, Exotic armor, and a handful of abilities. Additionally, we have some tuning changes targeting PvP combat within the Crucible.

Sandbox can be a complex conversation. Diving deep into the numbers, cones, and mechanics of Destiny is no easy task. We’ve added notes and explanations to help here, but some changes will make the most sense when you hop into the game and get a feel for how they play in combat.

Snag a water, take your time, and feel free to hit us with questions. Without further ado, we hand it off to the sandbox team.

Global Changes

Weapon Hip-Fire Reticles

Various hip-fire reticles and hip-fire reticle elements have been updated with three goals in mind. The first is to make reticles properly communicate the weapon's firing performance. The second is to tone down visual complexity and/or improve the visuals of reticle elements (perk active, pips, and charge meter). The third is to update reticle elements to properly adapt with changes to FOV, bloom, and auto aim, which eliminates situations where they could overlap with each other and in turn allows them to move in closer to the primary reticle.

• The positioning of perk active indicators, pips, charge meters, and Tex Mechanica horns now all adapt to size changes in the primary reticle due to FOV, bloom, and auto aim. Due to this, most of these have also moved closer to the primary reticle.
  • Trinity Ghoul's perk active indicator has unique positioning due to its split arrow behavior.
  • The pips on Vex Mythoclast have been moved to appear underneath the reticle.
  • Barrow-Dyad's pip positioning is untouched in order to keep them aligned with the charge meter and holo sight.
  • Monte Carlo's perk active indicator is untouched.
• Pips now have more simplistic visuals in order to lower overall visual complexity. In addition, pips will now disappear completely unless you have at least one pip.
  • Deterministic Chaos's pips are untouched and maintain their old visuals since their function is unique on this weapon.
• Curved charge meters now have the "max charge" indicator that horizontal charge meters have.
• Delicate Tomb, Jötunn, and Salvation's Grip now use horizontal charge meters.
• A few weapons in their "perk active" state now use a different reticle that communicates their firing behavior more accurately:
  • Grand Overture
  • Tessellation
  • Devil's Ruin
  • Cryosthesia 77K
  • Touch of Malice
• Lumina now uses the support hip-fire reticle when aiming at allies while you have Noble Rounds.
• Support Frame Auto Rifles (non-healing mode) now have a brand new hip-fire reticle.
• Legendary Tex Mechanica Sub-Machine Gun (SMG) hip-fire reticles now have horns.
• To maintain a consistent visual and functional language for reticle elements, the pips on Telesto and Traveler's Chosen have been removed and will be visible only as HUD buffs.
• Visually, Machine Gun and Fusion Rifle hip-fire reticles now appear more consistently similar across all weapons within each archetype, regardless of input method.
  • Vex Mythoclast is exempt from this change due to its unique firing performance.

Deterministic Recoil

Deterministic recoil, the set pattern by which a weapon shifts recoil direction when being fired, is something we’re removing in Ash & Iron. We had a goal when introducing this feature for players to be able to master their individual weapons, knowing just how it would recoil and being able to build to know exactly how it would perform.

However, weapons can sometimes feel harder to control or need recoil stat help that is counterintuitive to our in-game display or visual firing patterns. Therefore, we’re removing this and we will be looking into other options in the future. We're retaining deterministic recoil on Vigilence Wing – here we believe deterministic recoil fulfills our goals.

Weapon Archetypes

Note: We have a larger balance pass on more families of weapons coming in the future, with specific emphasis on the balance between Special ammo archetypes and close quarters battle Primary weapons (CQB), but there were some high priority items that we wanted to pull forward.

Heavy Burst Sidearms

Several patches ago, we increased the ADS Damage Falloff Scalar of Heavy Burst Sidearms from 1.2 to 1.3. While this has been beneficial for the rest of the sub-family, Forgiveness was a bit of an outlier when it comes to the total stat package, and this increased range has pushed it over the top. Instead of reducing the range of all Heavy Burst Sidearms back down, we’ve decided to target Forgiveness specifically to bring it more in line.

• Forgiveness
  • Reduced range stat by 15.

Aggressive Submachine Guns

In the days since Immortal reigned in the Crucible, SMGs in general and the Aggressive subfamily specially have received multiple nerfs, leading to them falling far behind other CQB options in effectiveness. In the future, we plan to take a larger swing at increasing SMG ease of use, but for now we’re going to focus on a more target change to Aggressives which should allow them to better compete with Sidearms and Spreadshot Hand Cannons.

• Increased ADS damage falloff scalar from 1.4x to 1.5x.

Spreadshot Hand Cannons

While Spreadshot Hand Cannons have proven to be a fun new tool in close combat, they are just a little bit too easy to use outside their intended engagement windows, and they can be frustrating to fight against. We’re going to take a few targeted swings at addressing this friction with accompanying paired ability tuning outlined later in this article to create a smoother PVP experience:

• Increased damage versus combatants by 8%.
• Added a 0.1s delay after firing before you can melee to prevent near simultaneous damage events.
• Increased pellet spread angle by 5%.
• Reduced flinch dealt to players by 30%.

Sniper Rifles

Snipers in general have fallen by the wayside in Crucible due to both the difficulty of maintaining ammo, and the increased flinch they take versus players. Now that Special ammo uptime in general has been reduced, we’re going to start looking to bring some of the power back to these weapons. Our first change will be to help to address their ammo economy, and we are currently playtesting changes to the flinch system that we will release in a future update.

• Increased ammo per brick pickup in Crucible from one to two.

Lightweight Shotguns

Lightweight Shotguns are currently eclipsed by their Precision pellet brethren, so we are going to start narrowing the gap in effectiveness between them. This is only our first pass, as we’re still playtesting additional changes to give players a reason to run Aggressives and Lightweights in Crucible.

• Decreased pellet spread angle by 6%.

Crossbows

• Crossbow bolts now have a Heavy ammo radar marker, visible only to the player who owns them.
• Updated weapon tray icon, obituary, and kill feed to reflect the Crossbow's unique silhouette.

Exotic Weapons

Featured Weapon Expansion

 In Ash & Iron, we’ll be expanding the Featured Exotic Weapon list with the following options. They’ll benefit from the Artifact Buff and contribute to your score with an intent to add more diversity into loadouts. We’ve also revisited a few of these options to make them a bit more appealing.

MIDA Multi-Tool

MIDA Multi-Tool is a stat monster, but the "Exotic" part of it has unfortunately been left behind as our standards for Exotics have evolved. We decided to take inspiration from its source material, taking a larger swing to raise this closer to modern standards while also seizing an opportunity to incorporate new pairing functionality with MIDA Synergy weapons.

• New Trait: MIDA Software Package
  • Getting enough kills with MIDA Multi-Tool now provides various buffs and an incremental PvE damage bonus after reaching certain thresholds:
    • Stage 1: 25% faster Handling and ADS speeds, 5% PvE Damage.
    • Stage 2: 15 Range and Stability, 5% PvE Damage.
    • Stage 3: 15% AA/Magnetism ranges, 5% cone angle, 5% PvE Damage.
    • Stage 4: Shots detonate on impact.
  • Kills with weapons that have the MIDA Synergy intrinsic also grant progress towards these buffs.
    • Primary ammo MIDA Synergy weapons grant progress at a rate on par with MIDA Multi-Tool.
  • On death you regress to the beginning of the previous stage.
  • The "radar while aiming" functionality has been moved to the intrinsic.
• Catalyst
  • Replaced No Distractions with a brand-new catalyst.
  • While an enemy is within close proximity and MIDA Multi-Tool is in hand, you are granted enhanced radar resolution and improved reload speed (20 reload stat, 15% reload scaler).
    • This buff lingers for a few seconds once enemies are no longer within close proximity.
• Misc
  • Very slightly increased the movement speed bonus.

Sturm

The pairing fantasy of Sturm and Drang is a unique concept, though the output does not feel worth the requirement of two weapon slots. The slow rate of gaining Overcharge shots would lead to "maining" Drang until enough shots were stored, and the requirement to use Drang meant half (or more) of the time you felt like you weren't running an Exotic. We wanted to keep the pairing requirement, so we took a larger swing with Sturm as well to help the juice feel worth the squeeze.

• Storm and Stress
  • Rapid kills with Together Forever weapons within three seconds of each other now load extra Sturm Overcharge shots.
    • Primary ammo Together Forever weapons load even more Sturm Overcharge shots.
  • Sturm Overcharge shot’s bonus damage has been tuned. Previously this was roughly a 261% damage buff against all combatants and a 78% buff against players. New values are as follows:
    • 260% against bosses
    • 280% against mini-bosses and Champions
    • 300% against minors and majors
    • 75% against players
  • In providing Sturm more opportunities to load overcharge bullets than ever before, we’ve reduced the maximum Sturm Overcharge to 25. The prior cap of 99 was never very realistic and at the new limit, players are encouraged to use them as they have them far more often.
• Accomplice
  • In addition to existing behavior, final blows with Sturm Overcharge shots now also increase the magazine capacity of Together Forever weapons until death, capped at 100% of the base magazine.
• Catalyst
  • In addition to the increased stats, Sturm now has a brand-new catalyst.
    • With the Catalyst, kills with Sturm Overcharge shots grant charges that provide a 50% ready and stow speed scaler for Sturm and Together Forever weapons. One stack is consumed upon readying Sturm or a Together Forever weapon, max six stacks.

• Miscellaneous

  • Lucky Pants now buffs the damage of Sturm Overcharge shots, but at a lower-than-normal efficacy (110% buff at Illegally Modded Holster x10).
  • Increased Sturm's Ammo Generation stat from 30 to 80.
  • Fixed an issue where Sturm Overcharge shots were not playing the impact VFX that signify increased damage.
  • A lens flare is now visible on opposing players' Sturm in PvP while they have active Sturm Overcharge shots. So watch out!

Eriana's Vow

Eriana's Vow was given a small VFX adjustment to bring it in line with other special weapons in PvP.

• A lens flare will now be visible on opposing players' Eriana's Vow in PvP.

Graviton Spike

Graviton Spike has been quite popular since the launch of Edge of Fate, particularly in the Crucible where its performance makes it clear its Overcharge modes are a bit too easy to turn on. We don’t want to outright stomp this weapon down in PvP or PvE, so we’re taking a small swing, placing a stricter timer on both its base trait and its unique catalyst to activate. With the amount of targets in our non-Crucible activities, we’ve found that the performance remains nearly the same, but early Crucible playtests have shown this change reduces the overall frequency of those high-powered fire modes enough to give this a bit more counterplay.

• Reduced time to gain overcharged shots from 20s to 7s.
• Reduced time to gain Temporal Alignment catalyst buff from infinite to 7s.

Tarrabah

Long ago, when zoom changed damage falloff distance, we reduced the zoom on Tarrabah to stop it from being in a menace in the Crucible. Now that that is no longer the case, we began the process of walking it back up and are now returning it to its original value.

• Increased zoom to 16.

Tarrabah with Ravenous Beast active in addition to the Peacekeepers damage buff was proving to be an extreme damage outlier. We want to make sure it stays very strong so that the high investment and need for close range remain worth it, but the top end combined damage needed to come down a bit, particularly to maintain fair competition in our raid and dungeon activities.

• Reduced the Peacekeepers bonus damage when using Tarrabah with Ravenous Beast active from 100% to 70%.

Hawkmoon

Hawkmoon was given the same treatment as Sturm by allowing Paracausal Shot (cacaw!) to benefit from Lucky Pants.

• Lucky Pants now buffs the damage of Paracausal Shot, but at a lower-than-normal efficacy (50% buff at Illegally Modded Holster x10).

New Land Beyond

• New Land Beyond's perk counter, previously capped at x100, now stacks up to x999 for bragging rights.
  • Increased damage is still capped at x100.

Lord of Wolves

Lord of Wolves has been a consistent part of loadouts in our raid and dungeon encounters for a while now. We’re making an adjustment to let it remain a powerful option, while also encouraging a bit of diversity when dealing with our most challenging bosses.

• Decreased Release the Wolves damage versus bosses by 20%.

Grand Overture

In a long damage phase, particularly for our raid encounters, few other weapons are able to compete with Grand Overture's total damage. Ideally, we'd like it to shine when players put in the effort to prep a missile barrage before a damage phase instead of being one of the best options even with no preparation. This pass will reign in Grand Overture slightly and give a bit more space to entertain other options for specific raid encounters.

• Reduced total reserves from 58 to 48.
• Catalyst
  • Omega Strike micro-missiles no longer require direct hit kills for enemies to explode, enemies killed by its blast radius will now also trigger the explosion.

The Queenbreaker

Since its rework in Episode: Heresy, The Queenbreaker has proven a reliable and easy to use option for consistent damage, particularly for raid and dungeon boss encounters. We're tapping it down some to bring it more in line with other similarly easy to use options to make a bit more space for other weapons in those fights.

• Reduced damage vs bosses by 8%.
• Reduced decreased charge rate via Combat Sights by 15%.

Outbreak Perfected, Barrow Dyad, and Hierarchy of Needs

These weapons are currently significant outliers in terms of Super energy generation, particularly during raid and dungeon boss damage phases. A core part of their Exotic identity is creating seeking projectiles for additional damage, but the projectiles are creating some issues with Super tuning. So, we want to tune that down instead of nerfing the weapon’s damage output when that’s ultimately not the issue culprit.

Outbreak Perfected

• Reduced damage-based recharger Super contribution.
• Slightly reduced nanites damage-based recharger Super contribution.

Barrow Dyad

• Slightly reduced damage-based recharger Super contribution of non-seekers.
• Reduced damage-based recharger Super contribution via Taken seekers.

Hierarchy of Needs

• Reduced damage-based recharger Super contribution via guidance ring arrows.

Thunderlord

We discovered an issue with Thunderlord’s Exotic catalyst which was causing lightning strikes to refill more ammo than was required to activate it, so we’ve fixed this.

• Fixed an issue with the Thunderlord catalyst where it was refilling more ammo than intended.

Whirling Ovation

Befitting its fantasy of "damage-phase prima donna," Whirling Ovation launched asking too much of players to really make the weapon shine against bosses. These changes should allow it to shine in a variety of damage rotations while maintaining the promise that dealing more damage with other weapons will always result in Anticipation building faster.

• Increased the rate at which Anticipation builds.
  • A fairly optimized damage rotation utilizing Whirling Ovation should see the Anticipation meter fill time decrease from ~ten seconds to ~eight seconds.
  • Less-optimized damage rotations will see a more significant fill time decrease.

Weapon Perks

Burning Ambition

We're overall very happy with how Burning Ambition is landing, but this perk uses some fancy new tech to make it easier for us to build and maintain these kinds of perks, and in some cases the enhanced version of the perk would not provide a decrease in number of shots to activate.

• Time to activate threshold reduced from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Enhanced time to activate threshold reduced from 2.25 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Magazine-based hits activation threshold reduced from 60% of the magazine to 55% of the magazine.
• Enhanced magazine-based hits activation threshold is unchanged at 55% of the magazine.
• When calculating the lower of the above thresholds, the perk no longer rounds down.
• Enhancing this now reduces the hits to activate by a flat one hit.

Enhanced Perk Improvements

When we were initially developing enhanced perks, we had a strong vision around what they could be. Now with the system implemented alongside so many new enhanced perks, we feel more comfortable revisiting some old perks and granting them greater benefits; to align them with the fantasies they’re trying to deliver more.

With that in mind, the following perks have had their enhancement benefits adjusted:

Dragonfly

• Removed +5 Reload Speed.
• Added +10% damage to the explosion.

Cluster Bombs

• Removed +5 Blast Radius.
• Added +10% damage to each cluster bomb.

Reservoir Burst

• Removed +5 Stability.
• Added +10% to enhanced shot damage.

Magnificent Howl

• Removed +5 Reload Speed.
• Added +5% damage to each enhanced shot.

Eye of the Storm

• Removed +5 Stability.
• Added +10% effectiveness to all Eye of the Storm benefits.

Flash Counter

• Removed +5 Inventory Size.
• Added +1 second to disorient time.

Chain Reaction

• Removed +20 Inventory Size.
• Added +10% damage to the explosion.

Headstone

• Removed +5 Stability.
• Added new behavior: Precision kills always generate a large Stasis crystal.

Chill Clip

• Removed +5 Stability.
• Added new behavior: Players can create slowing detonations from a lower percentage of the magazine.

Hatchling

• Removed +5 Handling
• Added new behavior: There is a chance to generate two threadlings instead of one.

Weapon Mods

Temporal Blast

As we updated perk damage scaling with explosions in The Edge of Fate, we missed updating Temporal Blast to this philosophy leading to a number of instances where this mod provides a wealth of extra damage, particularly on explosive weapons. To make space for some of the other seasonal mods in builds, we want to bring this down just a bit.

• No longer gains progress on splash damage.
• Reduced blast damage impulse by 66%.
  • NOTE: These changes in tandem on average increase shots to ready explosion by 1-2 trigger pulls. They also reduce damage of the blast when caused by Heavy weapons dramatically more than special/primary weapons (e.g ~75% nerf when used with Crossbow or Rocket but only ~23% with a Rocket Pulse).

Exotic Armor Tuning Preview for Ash & Iron

Featured Armor Expansion

In Ash & Iron, we’ll also be expanding the Featured Exotic armor list. They’ll benefit from the Artifact Buff providing additional Damage Resistance and contribute to your score. To encourage some new buildcrafting selections, we’ve tuned a number of these additions!

Titan

In Ash & Iron, we’re reworking the exotic Stronghold arms. For a while now, they’ve provided immense defensive benefits, but those benefits rarely prove to be valuable to players outside of niche situations. We're redistributing the power that this Exotic provides to make buildcrafting with it more interesting, doubling down on the "tank" fantasy to make moment to moment decisions more engaging.

• Perfect Guard HUD buff now appears as a bar and stacks no longer drop off ten seconds after blocking damage—they persist until they are spent.

• Blocking larger amounts of incoming fire gains stacks at a slower rate, while blocking lower amounts of incoming fire gains stacks at a faster rate.
• Landing a direct hit on a light or heavy Sword attack consumes 50% of your Perfect Guard charge, Exhausting enemies hit and instantly healing you and nearby allies.
  • Landing a Sword hit while at max Perfect Guard stacks will now fully refill your Sword energy instead of offering infinite guard duration. This enables back-to-back Heavy attacks, or allows immediate ability to block again.
  • Now that it fully heals you and nearby allies, it no longer grants Restoration
• Gradually gain up to +50 Guard Resistance and +50 Guard Endurance based on the number of Perfect Guard stacks instead of the previous +100 Guard Resistance, meaning you’ll be able to buildcraft with your sword perks a bit more to maximize your defensive or offensive prowess.
• Gain 30% DR for 1.5 seconds upon exiting Sword guard, instead of gaining Resist x4 while blocking. This is now a generic source of DR and can stack with other sources of Resist.
• Walking speed while guarding with a Sword is now increased when moving in all directions instead of only forwards.

Hunter

Cyrtarachne’s Facade

Woven Mail is a strong buff but without a means for regaining health, Strand hunter struggles to stay in the fray. This change to the base Exotic aims to increase some of that survivability while you grapple around combat.

• While Woven Mail is active will now also return health on defeating an enemy.

Unintended Patch Note - Relativism

While updating Cyrtarachne, we began to investigate some adjustments to the Spirt of Cyrtarachne perk to balance it a bit against other options on the Exotic Class item. We concluded this change was premature but were unable to fully remove the change before 9.1.0 was locked.

While we intend to revisit the effectiveness of this perk in the long run, we’ll be rolling back the following change to the Woven Mail timer in our next available patch.

• Spirit of the Cyrtarachne
  • Duration of Woven Mail provided reduced from ten seconds to six.
  • This will be reverted in our next available patch. 

Warlock

Chromatic Fire

Chromatic Fire is an Exotic that ostensibly should be useful with a variety of subclasses and weapons, but in reality the current design is only useful on certain subclasses with a subset of kinetic weapons. We're reworking it to be less dependent on your subclass to be useful and to be functional with all kinetic weapons. Yes, all.

• Detonation radius on precision kinetic final blow has increased by 36%.
• No longer applies keywords based on equipped Super.
• Non-precision kinetic final blows also produce a detonation.
  • The radius of this detonation is dependent on how many recent elemental final blows the player has achieved.

Contraverse Hold

Contraverse Hold should have been a big winner with the stat rework, but ultimately it failed to shine in the Edge of Fate release meta. We're buffing the energy return, tuning it by grenade type to be aligned with how quickly the grenade cooldown lasts, and giving it a bit of a buff by providing weaken, freeing up some likely space in fragment selection when using this exotic.

• Charged grenades will now apply weaken.
• Energy returned has been tuned per grenade type.
  • Vortex grenade gains increased slightly but can no longer activate twice.
  • Axion Bolts, Handheld Supernova, and Scatter grenade gains all received moderate increases.

Abilities Tuning Preview for Ash & Iron

We’ve already detailed most of the ability changes coming in Ash & Iron in our Warlock tuning preview and our Class Identity writeup, but there are a few more we haven’t talked about yet.

Hunter

Gambler’s Dodge

In the Edge of Fate release, we changed the melee-energy return from Gambler’s Dodge to scale on the Melee stat and no longer require dodging near an enemy. We’re bringing back the “dodging near enemies” behavior to double the amount of energy you get, while rescaling the stat bonus. This change brings back the “gamble” by allowing you to get close to enemies to double your reward, while addressing Crucible feedback about Hunter melee spam. In PvE, having 50 melee stat and dodging near an enemy will now give you a full melee charge, and at 100 melee stat, dodging near an enemy will grant two melee charges for multi-charge abilities.

• Rescaled the amount of melee energy generated by Gambler's Dodge from 100% at 70 stat points to 100% at 100 stat points.

• Dodging near an enemy now doubles this amount. 

• Reduced the amount of melee energy generated in PvP.
  • Note: The amount of energy generated in PvP has been reduced by only 20% in this patch, but in patch 9.1.0.1, it will be reduced by the full amount of 50%.

Lightweight Throwing Knives

We’ve received strong feedback that Lightweight Throwing Knives are frustrating to play against in the Crucible. We’re reducing their damage vs. players and will continue to monitor their performance.

• Reduced damage versus players by 16%.

General

Woven Mail

In order to fix an issue with Warlock’s new Weavewalk behavior, we’re making a change to Woven Mail application to make the duration no longer reset to the original Woven Mail source’s max duration. Now, when you proc Woven Mail, the duration will be the longer of these two options: the current time remaining or the new source’s max duration.

• Woven Mail application no longer resets duration to original source duration.

Stats

We’re still working out the kinks of our new stats system, and we’ve made some changes to smooth out the experience. First up, we’re making stats no longer increase damage against yourself.

• Stat damage bonuses no longer increase self damage.

Next, we’re making the Super stat the only stat that buffs your Super damage. It’s cleaner and more consistent this way.

• Melee and Grenade stat damage bonuses no longer apply to melee and grenade damage done while in Super. Super stat continues to increase melee and grenade damage in Super.

We’ve also fixed a technical issue that was causing the Class stat to only increase the benefits when you hit a multiple of ten.

• Fixed an issue where the Class stat energy benefits were not scaling smoothly between increments of ten.

Finally, we have a fix for mods and perks that increase player mobility.

• Corrected an issue where the upper end of the mobility stat benefits was set too low, resulting in Mobility boosts like the Athletic mods appearing to grant less Mobility than intended

We're looking forward to getting these ability changes in the wild. In addition to these changes, we’re also shipping some Warlock buffs that we mentioned a few TWIDs back. Hunter and Titan buffs will be coming later in our 9.1.5 October release.

Thats it from the sandbox team for upcoming Ash & Iron changes. We will be watching launch and ingesting all the feedback that comes our way from these changes. See y’all in the Plaguelands!