Though set to go live earlier this week, Ubisoft Massive’s The Division 2 will receive Title Update 9.1 today. Servers will go down for maintenance at 12:30 PM PDT during which the update will be deployed. Maintenance should end three hours later but you can see some of the changes that are being pushed through.
Long story short: Nerfs for the enemy, buffs for the player. There have been complaints about NPC aggressiveness and damage since Warlords of New York launched. With this update, Massive is looking to “eliminate outliers with NPC weapons, abilities and behaviours.” Burn and bleed status damage inflicted by enemy NPCs (and players in PvP) is being reduced, but Cleaner Tanks will also see nerfs to their flamethrower range.
Hyena Assault red-bars will deal less damage and have less accuracy out of cover with their SMGs. You can also expect the damage from a Hyena RC Car explosion, along with the lingering fire from an Elite RC Car, to be reduced. It’s worth checking out the full list of changes here which also includes buffs for the player.
Patch Notes
NPC & AI
Developer comment:
The balance changes in Title Update 9.1 are intended to eliminate outliers with NPC weapons, abilities and behaviours. These are specific fixes and a first pass at balancing these outliers, if further adjustments are necessary then they will be made in Title Update 10. We are also looking at global NPC balance with Title Update 10.
NPC Status Effects Nerfs
Developer comment:
Certain NPC status effects were too strong. With TU9.1 we are adjusting their damage to players. These changes also affect PvP status effect damage.
Changes:
- Reduced damage caused to players by Burn status effect
- Reduced damage caused to players by Bleed status effect
NPC Weapon Nerfs
Developer comment:
Certain NPC weapons dealt significantly more damage than others. These changes should bring them more in-line with other NPC’s damage output capabilities.
Changes:
- Reduced damage and out-of-cover accuracy of SMG used by red-bar Hyena Assault.
- Reduced range of Cleaners Tank’s flamethrower.
- Nerfed Hyena RC Cars: Reduced damage of Hyena RC Car explosion. Reduced duration of lingering ground fire from Elite Hyena RC Car explosion. Reduced duration of Burn/Confuse status effect applied by Elite Hyena RC Car explosion. Reduced how often Hyena RC Cars are deployed.
- Nerfed Black Tusk Suicide Drones: Reduced damage of Black Tusk Suicide Drone explosion. Reduced how often Black Tusk Suicide Drones are deployed. Fixed issue where NPCs could throw a Firefly variant which did an excessive amount of damage to Players.