Destiny April Update Crucible and Sandbox Changes

Destiny’s April Update is already going to be filled with quite a bit of content but today Bungie announced via another livestream on Twitch that there will be a lot of focus coming to Crucible and the Sandbox. There has been quite a bit of changes to guardians weapons, subclasses, the game mechanics themselves, and the way Crucible Events handle rewards. Bungie has heard the cries of the fanbase about some very over powered guns and found some issues within subclasses. Bungie seen the issues themselves in play tests which resulted in the changes.

Trials of Osiris, Salvage, Doubles, and Elimination will take a lot of new strategy to be able to get revives up without putting yourself in danger. Bungie wanted to add more risk to the reward of having an extra guardian with you. This will make Trials of Osiris, Elimination, and Doubles specifically strategic and a bit more difficult to the common player. The way they changed revives was by closing in the radius of how close you need to be to revive someone, and by not allowing guardians to simply run through a ghost and revive them. The overall revive time is slightly increased to help keep that in check. The revive overshield has been decreased meaning the reward for getting a player up is not as great as it once was. Also, the wait before you can be revived has been increased from 5 seconds to 7. Meaning each time you go down it will increase by 7 as well. The next major change to crucible game mechanics is how ammo comes into play on the field and in your reserve ammo. Special Ammo will now take two minutes longer to come into the game and heavy ammo will now only come into the match at the 5 minute mark. Heavy will only come into play once per match due to this change. Special Weapons across the board will carry less reserve ammo along with not being able to swap from a sidearm or say the Icebreaker and keep your ammo that you have for another weapon. Since you are not able to carry as much special you will see more special ammo boxes drop in PVE environments. Primary Ammo will not be changed.

Legendary drops will become more common across the board of Crucible as well. A very nice change will be that drops from Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner will now only feature drops from those factions. Resulting in a more rewarding feeling and obtaining better gear for each event. Iron Banner will still offer the Rank 3 and Rank 5 rewards with Rank 3 giving you the chance at an artifact with 320 Light and Rank 5 giving you a chance at a light level 320 Ghost. Shaxx has not been forgotten about in this update. There is a now a Weekly Shaxx Crucible Bounty that will guarantee you a light level 335 drop. Shaxx will also feature a new quest line for guardians to complete.

The discussion on the livestream quickly turned to weapons and how they have changed them to allow for more gun choices rather than having players run around with Mida and 1000 Yard Stares only. The lists below shows all of the changes to specific weapon classes such as Auto Rifles to Specific Weapons as well.

Subclasses will also be getting changes but the main focus for the stream overall was Warlocks. Sunsinger warlocks can expect a lower overshield after they melee someone. To help with this they buffed Solar Wind and Brimstone perks a bit to make them a more viable option. While using the super Fire Born does not last as long. You will have smoother grenade throwing while not running Fire Born and also the buffs to allies will be increased to help those become more popular. The Firebolt Grenade itself has not been changed though even though there has been quite a discussion about it within the community.

Stormcaller’s Landfall perk will no longer be able to blow up a Titan’s Ward of Dawn. Their Stormtrance will not last for as long of a time due to the arch lightning draining more of the super. The Aura is a tiny bit more stronger though so what Bungie is wanting to do with this is force more decisions out of guardians running Stormcaller instead of seeing them just run around, pop their super, and wreck havoc. They are now forced to smartly use their super as any other guardian.

Voidwalker had very little changed to it. The Nova Bomb was untouched but the “Energy Vampire Ability” grenades, melees, and super is buffed. Meaning you will see a quicker turnaround of getting those back. Energy regeneration and health regeneration will now happen immediately upon impact meaning a more balanced feeling between this subclass and the other two.

Bungie certainly has a lot coming up for us in the April Update but they are focused on making this game a much more balanced and enjoying venture for all to enjoy. More rewards, more things to do, and now a much more balanced Crucible sounds like Bungie has put a winning combination together. We can only find out next week though when the update goes live on April 12. In the meantime catch up with all the information Bungie has provided here about the new weapons and gear coming. You can also check out the information about Prison Of Elders coming back and more within this link here