Patch Notes PTS 2 January 27
Before beginning these patch notes, we want to take a moment to talk about the reasons behind the main changes coming with this new PTS build.
With the opening of Last Stand, we want to try something that has never been done with PvP in The Division: Normalization. The idea is to reduce the importance of gear building in PvP to leave more room for skilled gameplay. While a player with good and optimized gear will always have an edge, a less geared one should still have a fighting chance to ensure a fairer experience. Note that the Normalization formula listed below is a first version that we want to test on the PTS, and will probably evolve greatly before (if at all) implementation in Update 1.6.
The same goes for changes such as Body shot damage or reload while sprinting. We know that these can be controversial and have been heavily debated already, but we want to test these changes on the PTS and see how they impact your gameplay. This does not mean that they will be implemented in Update 1.6. It will all depend on the results of PTS testing, and your feedback on the resulting experience.
An important thing to note about Health and Armor changes, is that our intention is to move away from a meta where players could stack damage mitigation and face-tank enemies without having to worry about their positioning or using covers. We do want health and survivability to be a thing, but it should not mean that you can run straight to the enemy in the open and not be punished for it. Above all, good survivability should come in conjunction with the ability of positioning and using the environment.
Finally, you will notice that we went as far as having a complete pass on Gear bonuses in this PTS. The purpose is to try to offer more valuable choices for you to pick from when min-maxing your build, and removing the bonuses that were always disregarded as useless. The end goal with these bonuses changes together with the Health and Skill Power changes is to make specializing into different builds more valuable, and make sure that you always have interesting options to push gear optimization one step further no matter if youre going for DPS, tank, support, or any other kind of gameplay style you are looking for.
PATCH NOTES
Here is the list of changes deployed during the PTS update of January 27. Note that all comparative values here are related to what was available in PTS 1, and not the live version. We have also updated the Global Patch Note for better comparison with the live version of the game.
Last Stand
Last Stand is now activated and available to all Season Pass owners.
Last Stand Gear normalization is activated: When entering a match of Last Stand, character stats will be modified in order to bring a more stable balance to player versus player combat.
Gear pieces (in Last Stand)
Automatically increase to Gear Score 256.
Main attributes (Firearms, Stamina, Electronics) will be increased to the maximum roll of the existing stat on each equipped piece.
The following bonuses will be uniformly scaled:
Weapon type damage
Skill Power
Health
All other bonuses remain unchanged.
Weapons:
Automatically increase to Gear Score 256.
Base damage is set to the maximum possible for this weapon.
Talents unlock based on the normalized main attributes.
Mods act as normal.
Other stats (RPM, Reload speed, etc) are unchanged.
All players will be set to the same armor mitigation value.
Players talents, Gear Sets bonuses and Weapon Sets bonuses function as normal.
Game changes
It will no longer be possible to reload while sprinting.
Increased Hip-fire penalties: Weapon spread is now wider while stability and recoil are also more impacted.
Dark Zone: Koreatown is no longer classified as a Landmark.
Gear Sets
S.E.E.K.R.
After the first round of PTS testing and community feedback, it became clear that the initial direction with this set was wrong. The proposed mechanic was promoting Hip Firing when we were trying to encourage more interesting gameplay. The overall bonuses provided with the 2 and 3-piece bonus was also too strong.
The proposed changes should rebalance the 2 and 3-piece bonus, and turn this set into more of a skill based long range combat set, particularly interesting for Marksman Rifle users.
Set Bonus (2): +10% All Resistance (instead of +10% Body shot Damage)
Set Bonus (3): +5% Body shot Damage (instead of +30% Critical Hit Damage)
Set Bonus (4): After 2 consecutive shots to the body, the next headshot will have +200% Headshot Damage bonus. (instead of the next shot is a guaranteed critical hit)
Banshees Shadow
Many of you have been asking for a change to Banshee following the change to DZ rules where non-Rogue players no longer loose DZ XP and funds when dying.
With the proposed change, we want to push the fantasy of the Rogue Hunter a bit further by providing a revenge type of bonus.
Set Bonus (4):
While Rogue, all ammo is completely refilled every 30 seconds. Damage takent from non-rogue players reduced by 10%. (no change)
While not Rogue, Damage to Rogue players is increased by 10%. This bonus is increased to 20% for 10 minutes after being killed by a rogue. (instead of no DZ experience and funds lost on death)
Tacticians Authority
To be more in line with the new Skill Haste values, we have increased the Skill Haste bonus of Tactician.
Set Bonus (2): 15% Skill Haste.
Weapons
Hildr & Eir
Obviously, the set bonus provided by these weapons didnt work correctly as the Hildr could benefit from its own critical damage bonus. This has now been fixed.
Valkyria: Each hit with Hildr increases critical hit damage by 1% to a max of 30. The bonus decreases by 1 every second. This bonus only applies to Eir.
Urban MDR
Requested by many, the Urban MDR is finally receiving a damage boost to bring it more on par with other Exotic weapons. The damage boost might seem huge, but we wanted to bring it more on par with Marksman Rifles since it handles similarly.
Base damage increased by 65%.
Distracted: Damage bonus increased to 18%. (instead of 10%)
FAMAS
To make it more unique, we have changed the name of this weapon. We also increase its damage slightly.
FAMAS is now called Bullfrog
Base damage increased by 11.7%.
Midas
We received a lot of feedback on the healing debuff of the Midas and decided to preserve the debuff idea, but with a different angle.
Midas: Each bullet you hit with reduces your damage by 1% and your target's damage by 1% to a max of 20%. The effect is reduced by 5% per second.
Showstopper
Requested by many, the showstopper is finally receiving some love with this new PTS build.
Base damage increased by 11%.
Hungry Hog
It became obvious during the PTS that the current instalment of the Glutton talent could lead to ridiculous amount of damage. We have decided to limit the amount of bonus damage that can be received from its talent.
Glutton now provides 10% extra damage per kill and can stack up to 5 times.
Historian
It was reported on the PTS that the explosion sound of the Historian was a bit too loud, and could disturb gameplay significantly.
Explosion sound of the Historian has been lowered.
L86
Base damage increased by 4%.
Damage falloff at range reduced by 40%.
Gear stats
With the last PTS, we removed Armor as a gear bonus and replaced it with Health. While we consider this to be a step in the right direction, we also noticed that the Health bonus was still too strong and that Health remained a Best in Slot choice in many cases.
In order to address that and make other choices just as interesting, we have decided to lower Health bonuses but also implement a new concept: Base Health which is determined by the World Tier you are currently in.
The end result means that players who dont invest in Health will have more Health than in the last PTS, while players who invest heavily will remain at similar levels. This should make for a more consistent Time to Be Killed.
On top of the already known changes to Toughness and Skill Power, we also had a pass on all Gear bonuses: getting rid of those that were deemed uninteresting, replacing them with more interesting choices as well as making sure that each piece had options available for damage, tanking or support.
(the changes listed below do not include Armor being turned into Health and Health turned into All Resistance)
-bonus is removed
+bonus is added
=bonus remains
Chest
-Damage to Elite
-Damage from Elite
+Skill Haste
+Enemy Armor Damage
=Health
=Health on Kill
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=All Resistance
Backpack
-Skill Haste
-Signature Skill Resource Gain
+Weapon Stability
=Health
=Critical Hit Damage
=Skill Power
Mask
-Damage to Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
=Critical Hit Chance
=Health on Kill
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=Skill Power
=All Resistance
Gloves
-Damage to Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
+Skill Haste
=Critical Hit Chance
=Critical Hit Damage
=Health on Kill
=Assault rifle Damage
=LMG Damage
=Marksman rifle Damage
=Shotgun Damage
=SMG Damage
=Pistol Damage
Kneepads
-Damage to Elite
-Damage from Elite
+Enemy Armor Damage
+Skill Power
=Health
=Critical Hit Damage
=Exotic Damage Resilience
=All Resistance
Holster
-Damage from Elite
-Pistol Damage
+Critical Hit Chance
+Reload Speed
=Health
=Skill Haste
Other changes to stats:
Enemy Armor Damage is now a Major bonus and no longer a Minor.
Damage from Elite values has been halved.
Pistol Damage is doubled on gloves.
Recalibration
With all these changes to Gear stats, here are the details of how existing gear should convert with this update.
It is important to note that new bonuses are only available on newly acquired gear. Recalibrating an existing item will not give access to a new bonus.
If you had a native Armor bonus (not recalibrated), it will be turned into health.
If you had a recalibrated Armor bonus, the recalibration will reset and you will be back to the initial bonus when the item was acquired.
If you had a native Health bonus (not recalibrated), it will be turned into All Resistance.
If you had a recalibrated Health bonus, the recalibration will reset
If you had a recalibrated Skill Haste bonus on your backpack, the recalibration will reset
If you had a recalibrated Pistol Damage bonus on your holster, and the holster was acquired after update 1.5, the recalibration will reset
If you had a recalibrated Enemy Armor Damage or Damage to Elite and the item was acquired after update 1.5, the recalibration will reset
All recalibration on Exotic weapons will reset
Unique talents on Exotic weapons cannot be recalibrated
Free talents on Exotic weapons that dont have a Unique talent (Liberator, Centurion, Eir and Hildr) can be recalibrated
Note that when a recalibration resets, the money spent will be reimbursed, based on the recalibration costs of Update 1.6. Since recalibration now has a cost cap, if the initial recalibration costed more, you will only be reimbursed according to this cap.) Note that recalibrations will not be reimbursed on the PTS as recalibrations cost 0.
Skills
After this first PTS, we noticed that Skill Power builds have had a second life and have started to shine. This is a good thing, but it shouldnt become a new extreme that makes any other kind of build worthless. We will keep monitoring the situation for future PTS updates.
We are also aware that First Aid is considered too weak in its new version, which hurts solo players. We will address the issue if it persists, however, we want to give some more time to the community to adapt to the new meta before doing any changes on the skill.
For the time being, we decided to modify Skill Powers impact on cooldowns to help players who have low Skill Power, and make more room for Skill Haste as a valuable stat. We also rebalanced a few skills that appeared to be slightly too strong in PTS 1.
Updated the impact of Skill Power on all skills cooldowns. The result is that Skill Power will have less of an impact on cooldowns, leading to slightly faster cooldowns for players with low Skill Power and slightly slower ones for players with high Skill Power.
Sticky Bomb
Disruptor: Explosion radius increased to 9 meters.
With this very large radius, Dirsuptor becomes a strong counter to skill proxies such as Turrets, Support Stations or Seeker Mines.
Support Station
All mods: Radius decreased from 8 meters to 6 meters.
All mods: Healing rate decreased by 16.7%.
Life Support: Revive time increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
The base stats of the Support Station were a bit too strong, especially in combination with the Reclaimer gear set.
Vendors
We had a quick pass at Vendors costs to take into account the addition of Exotic items.
Exotic items sold at Vendors have had their prices slightly increased.
Gear Set items have been lowered to be equivalent to High End prices.
Legendary Difficulty
Our goal with Legendary Difficulty is to add an activity specially tailored for very optimized players. Thus, we purposely designed it to not be achievable by everyone. With that said, we also want to make sure the experience is fair, and that failing feels deserved or at least understandable.
Slightly decreased accuracy, aiming and weapon spread of NPCs.
Several updates to NPC behavior in Legendary Mode.
Slightly increase NPC damage to compensate for accuracy and aiming changes.
Bug fixes
Fixed a bug where NPCs would often get perfect aim.
Fixed a bug where Hildr was still named Valkyria.
Fixed a bug where Incursions weekly rewards would not correctly contain an Exotic Cache.
Fixed a bug where Exotic weapons would end up with incoherent talent requirements if they had been recalibrated before the update.
Fixed a bug where Skill Haste value was not correctly doubled on Gear Mods.
Fixed a bug where the collision in The Armory landmark did not match the geometry.
Modified some roamer paths in the DZ to reduce amount of AI that can be pulled into engagements.
Player can now fast travel to all DZ gates, including the ones along Central Park Wall.
Fixed a bug where Uncomplicated could be recalibrated.
Fixed a bug where Tacticians Authority 4-piece buff would be lost after 10 seconds if not consumed by using a skill.
Fixed a bug where the Quickdraw talent on Damascus had attributes requirements.
Fixed a bug where the Glutton talent on Hungry Hog would provide more bonus damage than intended.
Fixed a bug where mods could be unequipped randomly when reclogging into the game.
Fixed a bug where Dark Zone leaderboards would not work properly.
Fixed a bug where High End weapons only had 3 talents available when recalibrating instead of 6.
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1556349-Patch-Notes-%96-PTS-2-%96-January-27
