The July Update - Destiny 2

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

I like that they're doing videos to explain the update as well as patch notes.

 

Bounties are a welcome addition so going to have a look around tonight. The Solstice of Heroes sounds good because of the 'new bosses' but we'll have to wait and see.

 

Some of that gear looks epic though. Closer to the prestige gear that was in Wrath of the Machine.

 

Btw, this update is free to all players. I get that having the DLCs though helps with the Power on the raids.

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

Full Patch note details:

 

Solstice of Heroes

Moments of Triumph

• Moments of Triumph bounties will become available in-game for the Solstice of Heroes event starting July 31, 2018.
  • Players may access a set number of Triumphs on Bungie.net prior to the event beginning.
  • Players can complete Triumphs to earn points that they can trade for rewards such as emblems, a Sparrow, and a code to purchase a special T-shirt.
• When the summer event becomes available on July 31, 2018, players can receive these Triumph bounties from the special summer event vendor and will have the entirety of the event to complete them.
• Triumphs are based on account-specific data; once a Triumph has been claimed and redeemed for points, it cannot be claimed for points on another character.
• All Triumphs can be tracked via bungie.net; the highest values of a character on that account will be displayed.
• In-game rewards will become available on July 31, 2018. Stay tuned to @Bungie for announcements of availability.

INVESTMENT 

 

Bounties

• 5 Crucible bounties a day will now be available from Shaxx.
• 5 Vanguard bounties a day will now be available from Zavala.
• These bounties rotate on a daily cadence.
• Bounties can expire after you obtain them. Expiration of individual bounties is shown in the tooltip.

 

Exotic Masterworks

• Catalysts for Legend of Acrius, Telesto, and Sleeper Simulant are now available as rewards from Prestige “Leviathan,” Prestige “Leviathan, Eater of Worlds,” and Prestige “Leviathan, Spire of Stars,” respectively.
• Exotic catalysts from Heroic strikes now have slightly higher drop chances.
• The Skyburner’s Oath Exotic catalyst from the “Leviathan” raid now has slightly higher drop chances.
• The catalyst for Sturm can now be found by defeating enemies on Nessus.

 

Miscellaneous Quality-of-Life Changes

• Adjusted Escalation Protocol weapon reward chances to be more deterministic.
  • Players improve their chances each time they defeat the boss.
• Once all Mercury Forge weapons have been obtained, they become available for direct purchase from Brother Vance in the Lighthouse (second vendor page).
• Momentum has been removed from Heroic adventures.
• The “Pursuits” inventory bucket has been moved to the top of Inventory categories.
• Fixed an issue where unequippable emotes could be selected.
• Fixed an issue where no sound would play on increasing and decreasing the handicap on Challenge Cards.
• Commas have been added to large numbers as separators on the IGCR and PGCR.
• Fixed an issue which prevented the Season 3 Dead Orbit Gauntlet Ornament from receiving progress from Arcstriders using the Way of the Warrior subclass tree.
• Armor may now be purchased from Iron Banner and Faction Rallies vendors.

 

Strikes

Strike Modifiers

• Blackout: Now increases enemy melee damage significantly but is no longer a guaranteed one-shot kill for all players.
• Glass: Slightly reduced the health and shield penalty.
• Grounded: Significantly reduced incoming damage when you are airborne, to account for odd geometry that Guardians may not have any control over.

 

Developer Insight: The goal is to ensure these modifiers are noticeable, but when Guardians advance their Power and stats, they can notice themselves overcoming the debuffs.

 

Nightfall

• The Nightfall tutorial experience for new players has been updated to no longer call out pre-1.1.3 Nightfall mechanics.

Destinations

Mars

• Fixed an issue that was preventing some players from accessing Mars adventures.
• Fixed an issue that caused some open world chests on Mars to not drop Glimmer or Mars tokens.
• Fixed an issue which prevented prophecy materials for Brother Vance from dropping from chests found on Mars.

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

Sandbox

Exotic Armor Updates

• Hunter
  • Lucky Raspberry
    • Increased the chance to fully recharge Arcbolt Grenade on Arcbolt Grenade hits.
    • Now guarantees a full recharge when Arcbolt Grenade hits four targets.
  • St0mp-EE5
    • Increased benefits when using Strafe Jump and Triple Jump.
  • Young Ahamkara’s Spine
    • Now also improves Tripmine Grenade’s blast radius and throw speed, and makes your Tripmine Grenades harder to destroy.
    • Solar ability hits now grant some Tripmine Grenade energy (33%).
    • Added new FX treatment to the improved Tripmine Grenades to differentiate them from normal Tripmine Grenades.
    • Removed target-marking functionality.

 

• Titan
  • ACD/0 Feedback Fence
    • Now grants Fury Conductor stacks on melee hits instead of kills.
    • Now reduces melee damage received while you have stacks of Fury Conductor.
    • More stacks of Fury Conductor further reduce melee damage received.
  • Doom Fang Pauldrons
    • Void melee kills now grant more Super energy.
    • Shield Throw hits now grant Super energy.
  • Dunemarchers
    • Reduced the time to activate Linear Actuators while you’re sprinting to 1.5 seconds (down from 5 seconds).
    • Increased the damage of the chain lightning effect (+70% in PvP, 440% in PvE).

 

• Warlock
  • Crown of Tempests
    • Collapsed the total number of stacks of Conduction Tines to 3 (with the same total effect).
    • Conduction Tines now also reduces the speed that Super energy depletes while Stormtrance is active.
  • Karnstein Armlets
    • Melee kills now instantly heal you, then grant continuous healing for 8 seconds.
    • Removed bonus resilience, mobility, and enemy highlights on melee kills.
  • Starfire Protocol
    • Empowered weapon damage hits now grant some Fusion Grenade energy (20%).

 

Armor

• Plasteel Reinforcement Mod now includes “Trait” in its tooltip, to have conformity with Restorative and Mobility Enhancement Mods.
• Corrected stowed Hand Cannon position on the Haakon’s Iron Strides ornament.
• Dragon’s Shadow now has an audio cue when it reloads your weapons.
• Updated tooltip presentation of some Warmind Exotic armor item intrinsic perks.
• Updated the perk description for Sanguine Alchemy to better reflect its functionality.
• Fixed an issue that was causing targets marked by Sanguine Alchemy to produce orbs when defeated.
• Fixed an issue that caused Wraithmetal Mail’s active perk to appear in the UI without an icon.
• Fixed an issue that caused Starfire Protocol not to work with the Dawnblade Attunement of Sky ability path.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Warlock melee attack damage when players were using the Ophidian Aspect Exotic and Hive Swords or orb carry objects.

 

Abilities

• Fixed an issue for high framerates on PC that caused players to suddenly lose momentum after activating Supers and aerial dodge abilities.

 

Exotic Weapons

• Increased the number of rounds granted to Crimson on respawn.

 

Weapons

• Fixed an issue that allowed empty swords to drop heavy ammo bricks on death in the Crucible.
• Fixed the Rapid-Fire Frame intrinsic perk on Basilisk (Dead Orbit Shotgun).
• Fixed an issue that impacted the recoil of West of Sunfall 7 and the Trials of the Nine Hand Cannon, A Cold Sweat.
• Fixed an issue causing the Iron Banner Hand Cannon, Finite Impactor, to not properly track Masterwork statistics.

RAID 

 

Prestige Raid Lairs

• Each week, there is a curated weapon suite and a global activity modifier for Spire of Stars and Eater of Worlds Prestige. The weapon set and modifier will be the same across both activities.
  • Prestige Eater of Worlds will become available at 11 a.m. PDT on July 17, 2018.
  • Prestige Spire of Stars will become available at 10 a.m. PDT on July 18, 2018.
• Prestige raid lairs will drop weapons at 400 Power and Exotic catalysts.  
• Raid armor ornaments will become unlockable.

 

Misc

• Fixed an issue which prevented Hunters from receiving some loot chest rewards in the Spire of Stars raid lair.

PC

Clan Chat

• Adds a new in-game text chat channel that allows online Destiny 2 clan members to communicate (in real time). This chat channel is separate from the companion clan chat channel.  

Director Map PC (Mouse) User Experience

• Scrolling area reduced to the edges of the game window.
• Cursor is now restricted to game window when a map is active (mouse capture).
• Edge scrolling now freezes when game window loses focus.

Misc

• Fixed an issue which caused bluetooth headphones to not play sound properly on some PC configurations.

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

A little disappointed I must say that Bounties are currently only assigned to Zavala and Shaxx. They are enjoyable and rewarding but hoping we'll see random bounties pop up over time.

[L_C_Scipio 395]

I think the Iron Banner power play thing is pretty cool

[TigerBurge 2,374]

I’m thinking they will bring back exotic bounties at some point. Well hopeful at least 

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

5 hours ago, L_C_Scipio said:

I think the Iron Banner power play thing is pretty cool

I do too. I'm really glad we're seeing positive tweaks to IB as it tends to just be left as it is.

3 hours ago, TigerBurge said:

I’m thinking they will bring back exotic bounties at some point. Well hopeful at least 

Totally agree. They indicated that in how they explained it in last week's TWAB. I'm just hoping that there will be a few that can drop in the next few weeks so there is a few things to chase alongside Solstice of Heroes.

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

Houndish's explains the Solstice mechanics pretty easily.

If you don't watch it, essentially we'll have a ton of bounties to do which takes us back through missions that have been revamped and with different modifiers along the way. You are rewarded a set of armour as rewards and you keep upgrading thia armour as you do more bounties/objectives. End result is 400 Power armour with 3 different styles (the first 2 styles become ornaments so only need one set of gear).

I'm glad they are re-using content in a different way as I miss the days of old where we had to re-run missions for dailies, etc.

There's a chance that the Black Spindle quest/challenge could open up from one of these modified missions too.

[Plumbers Crack 4,033]

Please... Black Spindle...[emoji7][emoji7][emoji7]

Via the FG App

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

I'll take this armour. And at least it drops at 400.

[TigerBurge 2,374]

47 minutes ago, GazzaGarratt said:

I'll take this armour. And at least it drops at 400.

Part of getting the set is completing one of the raid lairs on prestige. 

[Sennex 1,903]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/07/18/so-how-is-destiny-2s-big-pre-forsaken-july-patch/#4a3954f2227f

 

Yesterday, Destiny 2 rolled out a rather large patch meant to introduce a few new aspects into the game and lay the groundwork for larger changes with this falls Forsaken expansion in two months. I’ve been playing over the course of the last day, and while I haven’t experienced everything the update has to offer (I’m not a Prestige Raid Lair guy), here are my thoughts on what I’ve seen/done so far.

Bounties

Bounties are one of those things that got taken out of Destiny 2 from Destiny 1 where no one really understands why exactly that happened. Now they’re back, giving you daily tasks to complete in strikes and the Crucible, and for the most part they’re pretty easy, a fountain of free tokens where completion gives you four each. So in addition to whatever else you’re getting from these activities, that’s 20 tokens a day from bounties alone, a full rank by itself. They also give you shaders (please, no more shaders, my postmaster can’t take it, and can also give you legendary engrams, but I’d say it took about 20-25 completed bounties for me to land one, so it isn’t often.

Bounties are…fine, just a bit unexciting and not really necessary for someone like me who plays a lot and already has an enormous excess of Vanguard and Crucible tokens anyway. I don’t see a reason for them not to exist, but I sort of wish they were harder to complete/gave better prizes. These are just sort of…there.

 

 

Destiny 2Bungie

Catalyst Stuff

The drop rate for Heroic Strike catalysts has supposedly been buffed, but buffed from what to what is anyone’s guess, given that Bungie doesn’t share that information. I can’t really judge this change in one day as no, I haven’t gotten a strike catalyst in my first ten strikes of the patch, but that’s hardly surprising.

 

I already got myself the Sturm catalyst after doing I think, a single strike on Nessus, so that one doesn’t seem too hard to get. Playing with Sturm and Drang again for the first time since launch has…not made me like them any more, even with recent changes, and I doubt this catalyst will solve that. Fetch just isn’t going to happen with this thing, Bungie.

I am more than a little miffed that the Sleeper Simulant and Telesto catalysts are tied to Prestige Raid Lairs. I will be lucky if I do either of those activities once, much less be able to farm them for catalysts, so this is hugely disappointing given that those are two of my favorite exotics in the game. Really not a fan of raid-only catalysts, though I suppose I understand why they exist. Still, I wish I had an alternative to get them.

Destiny 2Bungie

Exotic Buffs

I have not been able to play around with every newly buffed exotic so far, but the changes I’ve seen so far have been good, even if I’m not sure if any of my core builds will fundamentally change.

The new Hunter Stomps are hilariously fun, turning you into Air Jordan. It’s not quite Bones of Eao, but it’s a similar feeling as you will get an incredible amount of air with these on triple jump now. I have not tried the new tripmine gloves but I hear they make that grenade more viable in PvE now.

The new Titan Dunemarchers are interesting with their 400% PvE damage buff. It does some pretty solid work but it’s a little awkward because there’s no animation that starts when you’ve activated the perk after 1.5 seconds of sprinting, I feel like it needs some effect there like when you’re about to shoulder charge/hammer strike. The sprint speed increase is really noticeable though. The new Doomfang Pauldrons are actually pretty wicked and can make your super a trash-mob clearing machine by constantly refreshing the timer while you’re rampaging around doing damage. It’s not arcstrider, but it’s really close now.

Warlock stuff I haven’t gotten to yet, but I’m hoping Karnstein is actually good again as that used to be my favorite set of glvoes. Hard to know if anything could ever actually make me use Starfire regularly but who knows.

Destiny 2Bungie

Heroic Strike Nerfs

Bungie essentially nerfed all the most annoying Heroic Strike Modifiers. You don’t take as much damage with airborne now, you don’t have your health and shields nerfed as much in Glass, and you don’t automatically get one-shot by blackout melees. Granted I’ve only experienced airborne so far, but it is…way less annoying, and I have to imagine the others will feel similar. Hopefully the blackout change will make me not automatically skip blackout day entirely now.

The biggest problem with heroic strikes right now is that we need more fun positive modifiers besides heavyweight, and that hasn’t been fixed yet. Still, between these changes and the heroic strike catalyst rate, farming these just got less annoying.

Destiny 2Bungie

6v6 Crucible

I don’t know where I land on 6v6 Crucible at this point. I hated it at first, then slowly have been warming to it, but I’m not sure how I feel now. I feel like on most of these maps 6v6 is just too chaotic, making the matches less tactical and more Call of Duty kill/die/kill/die in rapid succession, which I’m not a huge fan of. You get less power ammo now since there are four more players on the map to grab it, and you get killed by more supers, which is less than enjoyable. I just don’t know where I land on this. 4v4 was always an odd call because of fireteam sizes in the first place, but you can’t really design maps for 4v4 then jam six players into them all the time.

Far and away my biggest problem with 6v6 has been lag, which is way worse than ever. Not sure if the player count alone is causing this, or if adding new players from more places is doing it, but it’s been pretty unbearable in a lot of games, and really turned me off.

 

400 Light

Yeah…things are a little weird with this 400 light idea. Players can land 400 light level weapons from prestige raid lairs now, but they can’t infuse them into anything else. Players will be able to earn 400 light level armor from Solstice of Heroes, but also can’t infuse that. So the entire point of these additions are that you’re earning a single set of weapons and armor that can take you up to a level that will really not help you in any significant way other than sounding cool, and doing so a month before Forsaken launches and takes max power to 600. I don’t know, seems a bit pointless to me, and if I’m excited for anything, it’s the Solstice armor ornaments and replaying the campaign on a harder difficult. 400 power seems like a gimmick to me with no real purpose and some weird restrictions.

That’s not everything in the patch, but it’s most of the major stuff. If you’re playing, how are you feeling about it?

[Sennex 1,903]

so the 400 light stuff can't be infused into other things?

 

also new LL of 600?

 

I really just don't understand the decisions they(Bungie) make at times.

[Plumbers Crack 4,033]

so the 400 light stuff can't be infused into other things?
 
also new LL of 600?
 
I really just don't understand the decisions they(Bungie) make at times.

Didn't know about the infusion problem but I'm pretty sure the 600LL has been known for a few weeks now

Via the FG App

[Sennex 1,903]

34 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Didn't know about the infusion problem but I'm pretty sure the 600LL has been known for a few weeks now

Via the FG App
 

Yea I don't stay on top of Destiny news, sorry man.

If I see something on google news about it, I share it here with you guys, but half the time I don't even read it. I just C&P it for you all

[Plumbers Crack 4,033]

No problem, between you and Lee I think most things get covered 👍

[GazzaGarratt 10,867]

16 hours ago, Sennex said:

so the 400 light stuff can't be infused into other things?

 

also new LL of 600?

 

I really just don't understand the decisions they(Bungie) make at times.

Here's the official answer from TWAB last night.

 

Prestige raid lairs and armor from Solstice of Heroes were not intended to be infusion fodder for two reasons:

• These items are intended to be trophies, for players to show their accomplishments leading up to Forsaken.
• If players who own Curse of Osiris but do not own Warmind use these items for infusion, any gear infused above 335 Power will no longer be available for use.

Players who have already done this can claim a duplicate of their weapon from their Weapon Collections, which will become available to all players when Forsaken launches on September 4, 2018.]

 

Personally, I get the MoT armour. The cap is there and the event is to focus just on this new gear. However, the raid weapons at 400...well, that felt like it was just cos they didn't have time to build more new weapons so opted for an easy answer. Plua to push prestige raids, which imo still need more rewards.