Destiny Patch Unintentionally Changes Perks Gamewide
By Weston Albert 13 February 2017
The latest Destiny weapon balance patch unintentionally changes how health regeneration perks work across the game instead of only affecting the targeted Bladedancer class.
Destiny players are currently exploring the many weapons of Destiny and how they perform head-to-head in the Crucible after the latest weapon balancing patch, which went live today. The patch made a number of changes to how Special Ammo works in the Crucible, as well as toning down the go-to weapons and subclasses that have ruled PvP for months.
However, whenever a developer issues a patch, there is always the danger that it will unintentionally break or change something else that was working as intended, and Destiny’s HotFix 2.5.0.2 did just that. More specifically, it applied the planned changes to the Bladedancer’s Hungering Blade perk to every Health Regen perk in the game.
Hungering Blade was changed in the following ways:
- Immediately starts Health regen
- Restores more Health per kill
- Gives a flat amount of Health/Shield per activation
- Does not immediately start regenerating Shields
This change was to avoid the situations when a Bladedancer is down to virtually no health and then kills an opponent, automatically gaining full shield and health back. But it appears that those changes got applied to other Health Regen perks across other subclasses, weapons, and armor. Here’s the full list of everything affected:
- Transfusion (Striker Titan)
- Cauterize (Sunbreaker Titan)
- Lifesteal (Voidwalker Warlock)
- Red Death Perk
- Suros Legacy Perk (Suros Regime)
- No Backup Plans
- Ward of Dawn cast
- The Ram
- Apotheosis Veil
- Embrace the Void (Voidwalker Warlock)
To be clear, these perks are not broken, but they are instead now functioning in the exact same way as the new Hungering Blade change. Bungie says its Test team discovered the issue just days ago, but the developers decided to move forward with the patch even though these specific changes were unintended:
Over the last couple of days, as we continued to test the patch, it came to our attention that the changes we made to Hungering Blade were unintentionally shared among a number of additional elements[…]. While we considered delaying the hotfix to remove the shared change, we ultimately decided to live with the patch we’d made and tested. We believe that Hotfix 2.5.0.2 is an important step forward to maintain the health of the game and that getting it out to you ASAP is in everyone’s best interest.
However, while these perks were not meant to see this change, it appears a fix is not in the near future. Bungie looks to be taking the more “sit and wait” approach of seeing how it all plays out, and then deciding how to handle any changes if necessary at some point in the future. Bungie says it will monitor how the change is playing out and gathering feedback from players:
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be diligently watching and listening to what you have to say about these changes. While we will be unsurprised if additional tweaks need to be made, we are honestly super interested to see how these changes, intended or not, play out. We will be relying on you to give us your feedback as you grow accustomed to the feel of the game over the next couple of weeks. We will also be with you ingame, playing along and making our own notes…
A fix of some sort may be coming to Destiny sooner rather than later, even if it doesn’t address this issue. Fans just discovered a glitch that grants two classes infinite Supers, and HotFix 2.5.0.2 did not address that bug. Depending on how much Bungie wants to tweak Destiny from here, most fans are not expecting many patches to be coming to the game until the promised content update sometime in the spring.
Destiny: Rise of Iron is available now on PS4 and Xbox One.
