Destiny 2 Gets a Major Episode Revenant Act 2 Update

Key Takeaways

• Bungie launches Destiny 2 update 8.1.5, which includes major sandbox changes like improving roaming supers.
• Act 2 introduces new gear, activities, and fixes bugs, making god rolls accessible.
• The update tweaks exotic weapons, armor, and archetypes, balancing gameplay across Crucible and PvE.

Bungie releases update 8.1.5 for Destiny 2, fixing a number of problems, while also making big changes to gameplay and gear, including improving roaming supers. It’s been a big week so far for Destiny 2 players as Act 2 finally launches, adding a wealth of new activities and gear to chase, on top of working through the next part of the seasonal storyline.

Over the past few weeks, Bungie has attempted to prepare Destiny 2 players by highlighting some of the planned content and changes that the studio was launching alongside Act 2. Part of the announcements included a reward for players as thanks for helping to solve a frustrating weapon perk weighting issue. Alongside the launch of Act 2, Destiny 2 players can pick up god rolls of weapons which were previously near impossible to get at Banshee. However, Act 2 also brought with it a major update for Destiny 2.

For many players, the biggest piece of Bungie’s latest update is going to be the changes to the overall sandbox. Bungie previously teased roaming super changes in Destiny 2, and now with this update, many overlooked subclasses may be viable again thanks to improved energy gains and damage output. Going further, the Prismatic subclass likely won’t be as oppressive in the Crucible as the ability cooldown has been increased by 15%. On top of that, the popular Hunter super, Storm’s Edge, also recieved a few nerfs as well.

Alongside fixes to various bugs and the arrival of Act 2 for Episode Revenant, this update also made adjustments and tweaks to certain exotic armor, namely Raiden Flux, Knuckelhead Radar, Point Contact Canon Brace, and Ballidorse Wrathweavers. Weapon perks, such as High Ground, have also been balanced in an attempt to make them less oppressive in the Crucible, specifically when paired with weapons like Bygones. Certain weapon archetypes have also been looked at, with some lesser used ones getting much needed buffs.

The update also makes adjustments to a handful of exotic weapons like Tessellation, Grand Overture, and a few hand cannons. Thorn and Lumina, for example, got a 5 point boost to Stability, while Eriana’s Vow had a bug that was reducing its crit damage in PvP. Interestingly enough, Telesto was also in the patch notes as Bungie (likely) carefully worked to fix a bug and increase the weapon’s PvE detonation damage by 20%. As longtime players know, Destiny 2 has a rough history with Telesto, so it’ll be interesting to see if these tweaks cause any unforeseen issues.

Destiny 2 Update 8.1.5 Patch Notes

Seasonal

Revenant

• Act II is now available.
  • Added 50 Seasonal Pass levels and their rewards.
  • Added new Artifact perks.
  • Added new Tonics.
  • Added new Fieldwork missions.
  • New activities: Tomb of Elders and Gauntlet of Elders
  • New Weapons available
    • Noxious Vetiver – Arc – Precision Submachine Gun
    • Scavenger’s Fate – Void – Precision Shotgun
    • Gridskipper – Void – Rapid-Fire Pulse Rifle
  • Fixed an issue where certain projectiles could collide and detonate with Ether Siphon orbs.
  • Fixed an issue where Ether Siphon would remove magazine overflow

Onslaught: Salvation

• Fixed an issue where ability spamming while Ether Overload is active could crash the activity.
• Fixed an issue where in Widow’s Court a turret could spawn inside the ADU and damage it indefinitely.
• Fixed an issue where immune enemies with a bane could not be defeated.
• Fixed an issue where picking a Cannon Relic could trigger an activity error code.
• Fixed an issue where Rocket Assisted Sidearms could not break Scorn cages.
• Reduced the number of Cabal shooting blinding rockets on the boss arena.
• Fixed an issue where the Storm’s Edge Hunter Super would not properly teleport the user inside of the boss arena.
• Fixed an issue where players could not commend each other when completing 50 waves.

Echoes

• Fixed an issue where Enigma Protocol had a higher than intended activity target Power.
  • It’s returned to its original value of 2005.
• Fixed an issue where some players could not access the main questline.

Expansions

The Final Shape

• Fixed a rare issue where players could not grab the Hunter’s Journal.

Crucible

General

• Fixed an issue where the Heavy ammo crate on Dead Cliffs was spawning at inconsistent locations in a variety of modes.
• Reduced the size and visibility distance of Special ammo brick icons in Crucible.

Private Matches

• Fixed an issue where enabling infinite Special ammo would grant players an Overshield.

Iron Banner

• New Armor set: Iron Intent
• New Weapon: Tinasha’s Mastery
  • Element: Stasis
  • Archetype: Rocket Assisted Sidearm
• Reprised Weapon: Archon’s Thunder
  • Element: Stasis
  • Archetype: High-Impact Frame

Vanguard Ops

Strikes

• Fixed an issue where sometimes players could not regenerate health.
• Fixed an issue where Champions would appear on the regular version of Heist Battlegrounds: Europa.

Grandmaster Nightfalls

• Catch up node with all Seasonal Nightfalls is now available.

Dungeons and Raids

Vesper’s Host

• General
  • Fixed an issue where players could not open the second secret chest, preventing them from completing step 7 of the Rogue Network quest.
  • Fixed an issue where players could not respawn after joining the fireteam.
  • Fixed an issue where players could duplicate nuclear cores.
  • Fixed an issue where Grand Overture could gain rocket stacks by shooting immune panels.
• Second encounter
  • Fixed an issue where the boss wouldn’t reform, allowing for an unlimited damage phase.
• Third encounter
  • Fixed an issue preventing the encounter from starting.
  • Added some extra cover to the ‘red room.’
  • Fixed an issue where the combatant carrying augments could not appear.
  • Fixed an issue where rally barricade could nullify the radiation debuff.

Garden of Salvation

• Fixed an issue preventing completion of the Voltaic Tether Triumph by allow players to trigger the encounter by shooting the boss instead of the Minotaur.

Exotic Missions

• Fixed an issue where the Standard difficulty for Zero Hour and The Whisper was higher than intended.

Timeline Reflections

• Fixed an issue where ‘Cayde’s Fate’ could not be completed.

Gameplay and Investment

Armor

Exotic Armor

• Hunter
  • Raiden Flux
    • Increased bonus Super damage perk stack from 14% to 20%.
      • This maxes out at about a 70% damage increase (up from 50%.)
    • Knucklehead Radar
      • Changed the activation requirements of its perk; now requires the wearer to damage a player to mark them as target.
• Titan
  • Point Contact Canon Brace
    • Amplified lightning bolts now do 100% increased damage over base, up from 50%.
    • Lightning strike final blows now also refund melee energy.
      • Reduced Thunderclap refund by 10% to compensate for increased energy gains on average.
• Warlock
  • Ballidorse Wrathweavers
    • Increased bonus shatter damage from 100% to 150%.
      • Increased shatter damage now shows as a yellow number to aid with visibility of the perk.
    • Fixed an issue where enemies were inconsistently getting the boosted shatter damage at higher framerates.

Armor Ornaments

• Fixed some issues with the GR1P-EE5 ornament textures and geometry.

Weapons

Weapon Archetypes

• Bows
  • Precision
    • Increased body shot damage by 10%.
• Hand Cannons
  • Aggressive
    • Increased damage by 3% (this allows them to kill all resilience levels in 2C1B).
    • Igneous Hammer
      • Reduced Stability, Handling, and Aim Assist stats by 3.
  • Adaptive
    • Better Devils
      • Increased Stability, Handling, and Aim Assist stats by 3.
  • Heavy Burst
    • Fixed an issue where Headseeker was not appropriately increasing critical hit damage after dealing body shot damage.
• Machine Guns
  • Changed the scalar that determines how much ammo you can pick up from a crate.
    • Magazine sizes of 50 or less should get 21 rounds.
    • Magazine sizes between 51 and 59 get between 21 and 26 rounds.
    • Magazine sizes between 60 and 80 get between 26 and 27 rounds.
    • Magazine sizes between 81and 99 get between 28 and 44 rounds.
    • Magazine sizes over 100 should get 45 rounds.
• Breech Grenade Launchers
  • Micro-Missile
    • Increased the velocity players can generate with the rocket jumping blast.

Exotic Weapons

• Telesto
  • Fixed an issue where Telesto was doing less damage than intended in PvP.
  • Increased Telesto detonation damage by 20% in PvE.

• Eriana’s Vow
  • Fixed an issue where Eriana’s Vow was dealing reduced critical damage in PvP.

• Thorn
  • Increased base Stability by 5.
• Lumina
  • Increased base Stability by 5.
• Grand Overture
  • Fixed an issue that allowed missiles to be loaded by shooting at immune targets.
• Tessellation
  • Fixed an issue where Tessellation lost all ammo and could not be fired or reloaded if an Artifact mod, Armor mod, or subclass change was made with ‘Property: Irreducible’ active.
  • Players can now reload Tessellation while ‘Property: Irreducible’ is active. Doing so removes ‘Property: Irreducible,’ similar to Izanagi’s Burden.

Weapon perks

• High Ground
  • Dealing damage to a player with a Primary weapon now only grants a single stack of the damage buff.
  • Dealing damage with a Special weapon, or against combatants, continues to grant maximum stacks.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed some archetypes to activate the perk when damaging targets while airborne.

• Explosive Payload
  • Reduced splash damage against players only on Legendary Hand Cannons by 7%.

• Withering Gaze
  • Fixed an issue where the weaken debuff could be applied to allies.

Weapon fixes

• Fixed an issue where Arcane Embrace could be obtained with Trench Barrel.
  • This perk was unintended and instances of it or Enhanced Trench Barrel will be replaced with Swashbuckler or Enhanced Swashbuckler.
• Fixed an issue where the Ether Siphon Trait would reset overflown magazines.
• Fixed an issue where the sound effect for some Hand Cannons had been changed to the default Hand Cannon sound effect.

Abilities

General

• Fixed an issue where Ignitions were incorrectly scaling damage against all bosses instead of just Raneiks Unified, resulting in lower-than-expected damage.

Prismatic Hunter, Warlock and Titan

• Increased ability cooldown in the Crucible by 15%.

Hunter

• Storm’s Edge
  • Reduced height of damage impulse from 5m to 3.75m.
  • Reduced DR against players from 53% to 45%, both on cast and during the spin attack.
  • Moved from tier 3 to tier 1 Super cooldown.
• Arc Staff, Golden Gun, Spectral Blades, Silkstrike
  • Increased Super energy gains per damage event against PvE combatants by roughly 3x.
  • Increased damage against Champions by 30-55% depending on Super.
  • Note: This change excludes the Celestial Nighthawk Golden Gun variant
• Combination Blow
  • Reduced bonus damage against combatants by around 17%.
• Stylish Executioner
  • Fixed a bug where some projectile melee attacks activated Stylish Executioner if the attack hit in the first frame of the projectile melee’s lifetime.
    • Stylish Executioner is only meant to work with physical melee attacks.

Warlock

• General
  • Fixed an issue where Warlocks could not blink during Onslaught.
• Stormtrance, Daybreak, Nova Warp, Winder’s Wrath
  • Increased Super energy gains per damage event against PvE combatants by roughly 3x.
  • Increased damage against Champions by 30-55% depending on Super.

Titan

• Ward of Dawn
  • Ward of Dawn now draws enemy fire when an ally is standing inside it.
    • This behavior is similar to the Barricade taunt.
  • On cast, Ward of Dawn now knocks enemies back.
• Fist of Havok, Burning Maul, Hammer of Sol, Sentinel Shield, Glacial Quake, Bladefury
  • Increased Super energy gains per damage event against PvE combatants by roughly 3x.
  • Increased damage against Champions by 30-55% depending on Super.
  • Note: This change excludes the Pyrogale Gauntlets Burning Maul variant.
• Knockout and Roaring Flames
  • Fixed an issue where Knockout and Roaring Flames were not benefitting from the Titan Unpowered Melee buff from Update 8.1.0.

Artifact

• Kinetic Impacts
  • Fixed an issue where the column 5 Artifact mod was not working with all Grenade Launchers.
  • Fixed an issue where the mod’s bonus impact damage was not being scaled correctly.
  • Fixed an issue where triggering the mod took more damage instances than intended.

Gameplay Modifiers

• Reduced the effectiveness of the Counterfeit modifier.
  • Spawn rate of trick loot reduced from 25% to 10%.
  • Reduced damage impulse size on all trick loot items by 1m.
    • Updated shockwave size to match the new damage radius.
  • Reduced damage of all trick loot items.
  • Increased animation before exploding from 2s to 3s.

Vendors

Hawthorne

• Fixed an issue where the Ancient Gospel offer in the Garden of Salvation menu showed the wrong element.

Triumphs

• Fixed an issue where Episode Revenant Triumphs would not progress the Active and Lifetime Triumphs Score.
• Fixed an issue where certain engrams would not advance the 10th Anniversary Triumph “Disappointed.”

Collections

• Fixed an issue where the Plaguebreaker Armor Sets showed an incorrect name.
• Fixed an issue where the Jade Filament Armor Sets showed an incorrect name.

Music and Sound

• Fixed an issue where some sound effects would cut out or delay.

UI/UX

Combatants

• Fixed an issue with the color of health bars for major combatants (orange bars), making it difficult to distinguish them from minor combatants (red bars).
  • For the color theory fans: #df6d1c.

Character Screen

• Fixed an issue where the left and right inputs could not open the Loadouts and Mod Customization side panels.

Appearance Customization

• Fixed an issue where Ornament would not show their hovering menu when inspecting them.

Localization

Mexican Spanish

• Fixed an issue where the Feed the Void Prismatic Aspect incorrectly says it requires ‘Void ability’ instead of ‘any ability.’

General

• Fixed an issue where the current Season highlight wasn’t properly displaying on the Timeline.
• Removed an erroneous dialog that would appear when opening the Mass Effect Accessories bundle on an account based in South Korea.
• Corrected the messages that appear with multiplayer instances of the Venus Flytrapped emote.
• Revised Season Pass + Ranks bundle description to highlight the Season Pass sources.