Ubisoft Massive hosted a special State of the Game following the conclusion of maintenance for Tom Clancy’s The Division. In it, senior game designer Fredrik Thylander talked about weapon balancing and changes that were being made.
Weapons without additional perks were looking to be buffed but the biggest changes will be made to LMGs and Shotguns. LMGs will deal roughly 20 percent increased damage to targets out of cover and Shotguns will now stagger enemies in PvE. In PvP, there will be a 30 percent damage increase to players (the dev is also looking into adding player staggering in the future if it works out).
Assault Rifles have received an armour penetration bonus of roughly 20 percent depending on how the weapon is rolled but only for PvE enemies. SMGs will have Critical Hit Damage bonus as opposed to Critical Hit Chance (but this will not be retroactively changed on existing guns). However, the Vector and Aug guns will now do 10 percent less damage and that goes even for existing weapons. The M1A will also become less accurate the more you spam your shots. It was noted that all of these changes will only apply to guns that drop after patch 1.3.
Special Ammo is perhaps one of the bigger changes. Along with a 75 percent nerf to damage, burning effects will now last 30 percent of what they originally used to. Explosive ammo will also scale 1:1 and do the same damage as the original bullet (but over a larger area). If that weren’t enough, Sentry’s Call and Striker’s Battlegear will have their four piece bonus partially transferred to five pieces. That means you’ll pretty much need an entire set to take advantage of their bonuses.
But hey at least the Showstopper AA-12 shotgun has been confirmed. It seems update 1.3 has been slightly delayed for PS4 though platform owners will need to wait a bit longer for it (but definitely not till August 2nd when the Underground DLC arrives on PS4). Thoughts on these changes? Let us know in the comments.
