Bungie held its final live stream for Destiny‘s April Update and discussed changes to the Crucible and sandbox. The latter was just a way to indicate changes being made to weapons and classes like the Warlock.
Though the official patch notes are yet to arrive, a Reddit user managed to collate all the information from the live stream. Some of the bigger changes to Crucible include getting in closer to revive friends and not being able to sprint revive any more (even with a fast revive helm). The overshield gained on reviving is also less powerful and an additional two seconds has been added to the death timer in Trials of Osiris (with an increment of 7 seconds for each additional death by the sounds of it). Players now spawn with Special Ammo as before but it now arrives only twice in the match – three minutes in and then two minutes after that.
Crucible will also be seeing increased Legendary drops, Heavy Ammo dropping once during matches (at the five minute mark) except in Mayhem and changes to Bounties. For instance, the Trials bounty “His Eye Upon You” can be done daily when the event is active and an Iron Banner bounty that required a win with 2500 points was changed to a match completion with 1500 points. It was also noted that Shaxx will have his own Crucible quest-line after the update.
Weapons have been changed up in small ways. Sniper rifles have slightly pushed out zoom distance on all scopes, slower zoom animation and Snapshot now allows for 20 increase in ADS speed as opposed to 30 percent. Fast ROF auto rifles have slightly reduced damage, affecting Arminius-D and Doctrine of Passing, while low ROF ARs have higher base damage. SUROS Regime, for instance, even has higher range for its Focus Fire perk though the Spinning Up perk now begins four bullets later than before.
Oh and that trick you used to bestow Special Ammo using Icebreaker or sidearm and switching between rounds? That will no longer work when the April Update goes live on April 12th.
As for the Warlock nerfs, Sunsingers now have lower Flameshields and Fireborn results in shorter Radiance duration. The Stormcaller’s Landfall no longer destroys a Titan’s Ward of Dawn or blinds players while Storm Trance itself has a shorter duration. You should also be judicious with the lightning – holding the trigger down results in faster Super depletion. As for Voidwalker, you apparently have increased energy from your abilities like Energy Drain (which already improved grenade cooldown but further enhances that). Firebolt grenades haven’t been changed interestingly enough.
Stay tuned for more information from the upcoming patch notes and let us know what you think of the changes in the comments.