Episode 32: Upcoming PvP Changes, Leaked E3 Floorplan, Our Personal Tournament Ideas
This week on the Massive Breakdown Podcast, we have a grab bag of fun stuff to talk about, including Iron Banner weapons, possible Crucible changes currently being tested by Bungie, leaked floor plans from E3, and numerical evidence of the current meta - join us!
Buffs, Nerfs, and More Changes
The following is pasted in from This Week At Bungie.
1.
Sidearms
: In a not-entirely-shocking development, the Sidearm meta has grown strong. With its innate ability to not only keep ammo through death, but to also actually store it away, Scrooge McDuck style, it’s the ultimate gift for anyone who’s always running out. For now. We are currently working on a change that would allow Sidearms to continue to spawn with a small set amount of ammo post-death, but keep them from stacking anything extra. They’ll be handy if you run into resistance on your way to the ammo crate, but to keep your Sidearm usage high, you’ll still need to stock up often.
2.
Memory of Skorri
: This Artifact has led to some of the greatest dance parties I’ve ever attended in Destiny. That being said, aside from encouraging these sort of team building events, the artifact itself tends to inspire a more lackadaisical approach to gameplay. Instead of continuing to encourage you to hurry up and wait on a Super, we are looking at modifying Skorri to motivate some activity. The change currently in testing requires a kill to jumpstart Skorri’s unique ability for the next minute. Once it times out, you’ll need another kill to jumpstart it again. We believe you won't have any problems killing one enemy every 60 seconds for maximum uptime in PVE, but Trials may offer a greater challenge.
3.
Truth
: While I think Truth’s strength is its unique ability to find its target, clearly having more rockets is always better and losing a loaded rocket is - understandably - a heavy loss to many players. To make this a little bit easier to deal with, we are looking into adding one additional rocket into your backpack AND bumping Truth to the max Rocket Launcher reload speed.
4.
No Land Beyond
: Much like the recent rise of Sidearms, NLB is showing up more and more. Ultimately, we would never want to destroy NLB’s Exoticness, meaning we would never move it from the Primary slot or change it from being a Sniper. On the contrary, we've found a potential workaround for making NLB flinch like the Sniper Rifle it is. This one will require a good amount of testing, but we think it’s a good change. Keep your shooting clean and you’ll still pop heads like nothing ever changed… But falling behind in a head-to-head primary fight will likely be a death sentence.
5.
Blink
: As you know, we’ve nerfed Blink a few times over the years. While we're happy with the latest changes, we believe that the stack of nerfs has grown too high. To counter this, we are looking into removing the old Recovery nerf entirely. Additionally, we’re looking at pulling back the time that you’re HUDless by just a bit.
6. Finally
Nutty McNutface
is a lazy name for a squirrel and you all know it.
E3 Floorplans Leaked!
E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is open to the public this year and the hype is real. For us as Destiny fans, the hype is especially real thanks to some enterprising Neogaf users who found a link available on the public site that lead them to GES, a global event management company apparently contracted to organize the E3 show and a set of target floor plans showing Activision with a very large booth reserved.
Now these floor plans are "target" only and can therefore be considered tentative at best, but they do appear to be legit, given the source. According to E3's website, the actual floor plans will not be made public until May, which makes a lot of sense given the show doesn't take place until June 13-15, 2017, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The hype train is real, but for now we're keeping ourselves in check and just hoping for the best.
That's all for today, Guardians - now it's your turn. What do you think about the upcoming balance changes that Destiny is currently testing? Do you take the communication as a positive sign, or too little and too late? Do you believe the E3 leak?
Until next time!