Update 6.3.0 for Destiny 2 has arrived, and here are all the changes and improvements mentioned in the patch notes. Destiny 2 update 6.3.0 brings changes to Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, Nightfall Loot Pool, and weapon balance in the patch notes. The update 6.3.0 for Destiny 2 will go live next Tuesday, December 6. The maintenance will begin at 8:00 AM PST. Here is the complete list of patch notes for update 6.3.0 for Destiny 2:
Destiny 2 Update 6.3.0 Patch Notes
Iron Banner And Trials Of Osiris
Trials of Osiris
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- What’s arriving:
- Exalted Truth Suros Adaptive Hand Cannon + Adept
- Unwavering Duty Suros Adaptive Machine Gun + Adept
- What’s arriving:
- What’s staying:
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- Whistler’s Whim Bow + Adept
- Forgiveness Sidearm + Adept
- The Inquisitor (Adept) Shotgun + Adept
- Burden of Guilt Fusion Rifle + Adept
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- What’s leaving:
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- Aisha’s Embrace Scout Rifle
- Reed’s Regret Linear Fusion Rifle
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Iron Banner
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- What’s arriving:
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- Dark Decider Auto Rifle
- Gunnora’s Axe Slug Shotgun
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- What’s staying:
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- Allied Demand Sidearm
- Roar of the Bear Rocket Launcher
- The Wizened Rebuke Fusion Rifle
- The Hero’s Burden Submachine Gun
- Frontier’s Cry Hand Cannon
- Razor’s Edge Sword
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- What’s leaving:
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- Forge’s Pledge Pulse Rifle
- Riiswalker Shotgun
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- What’s arriving:
Nightfall
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- What’s arriving:
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- Wendigo GL3 Heavy Grenade Launcher
- Hung Jury SR4 Scout Rifle
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- What’s leaving:
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- Silicon Neuroma Sniper Rifle
- Duty Bound Auto Rifle
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- What’s arriving:
Changes To Weapons
We pulled quite a few weapons archetype changes from Season 19 into the previously referenced 6.2.5 update patch notes Destiny 2, so this section is smaller than it would otherwise have been. That said, we have some substantial changes here, particularly to Shotguns and Glaives, so it’s worth diving into if weapon theory is your thing.
Shotgun
Shotguns were previously able to one-hit kill (OHK) from too far away and needed adjustment. Once that was addressed, the weaknesses of random pellet spread became clear: they’ve become less reliable, even at close ranges. This gave us a solid starting point to do something we have been looking into for a while: Giving each Shotgun subfamily a custom, fixed spread pattern and a matching custom reticle. Each of these spread patterns is intended to give a subfamily a unique style of gameplay and predictable effectiveness at specific ranges.
The reticles are tuned to match the size of the actual spread pattern at the default field of view (FOV) but note that this is not the case as FOV changes or as spread angle changes (like if you are jumping, for example). We’ll update reticles to react dynamically to spread angle in Lightfall and FOV in a later release, though this first step was crucial for getting that prepped for implementation in the future.
The changes listed evolve the experience of using a Shotgun so much that we expect to revisit tuning on these over the next few Seasons. That’s OK. Tailoring to different playstyles while maintaining a balance takes time, but we’re on a good path. Also, note that we have held off on adjusting Fusion Rifles because the balance between Shotguns and Fusion Rifles depends a lot on how these changes work out after Season 19 launches. “The numbers, Mason, what do they mean?”
Here are the spread patterns for each Shotgun subfamily:
Aggressive: fixed, evenly distributed cone
Precision (includes Duality hip-fire): vertical oval
Lightweight: diamond
Rapid-Fire: square
Slug: updated reticle to properly show precision
Additional changes:
- Aggressive
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- Fixed several Shotguns that were using the incorrect intrinsic Aggressive perk. All Aggressive Shotguns will now increase rate of fire after a kill, as intended.
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- Rapid-Fire:
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- Increased PvE damage by 5%.
- The reload speed benefit for the Rapid-Fire Shotgun Frame now always applies instead of only when reloading from an empty magazine.
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Sidearm
Sidearms are now much more viable in PvP since the 6.2.5 buff to this weapon type’s auto-aim falloff distance, but this caused a notable over-buff to Drang, allowing it to compete too far outside Sidearm range.
- Reduced zoom stat on Drang and Drang (Baroque) from 14 to 13.
Fusion Rifle
Now onto Fusion Rifles. Main Ingredient is still wildly effective as a range-y Fusion Rifle due to being able to roll with stability perks in both columns. We’ve adjusted some of those perks, but we don’t want to poke at them further if it isn’t needed, so we’re just hitting the (slightly out of band) stats of this weapon directly:
- Reduced stability from 49 to 35.
- Reduced aim assist stat from 59 to 45.
Fusion Rifle reticules don’t react much to changing accuracy due to firing or jumping, even when on mouse and keyboard and at a high FOV.
- Rebuilt the Fusion Rifle hip-fire reticle so that it reacts more obviously to changes in the accuracy cone.
Glaive
Glaive projectiles have not hit our quality bar for hit registration yet, so we have reworked them. We’re also loosening the restrictions on some melee damage Exotics and have adjusted base melee damage and some PvE damage scalars to avoid degenerate damage multipliers.
- Glaive projectiles have been adjusted for more reliable hit detection over the network.
- Glaive melee attacks can now benefit from the Exotic armor perks on Synthoceps, Wormgod Caress, and Winter’s Guile.
- Glaive melee damage multipliers reduced by 25-30% against Champions, mini-bosses, bosses, and vehicles.
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- Damage against major and minor enemies is unchanged.
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- Glaive melee base damage reduced from 75 to 67.
Hand Cannon
When we updated stats for Hand Cannons that used to be Lightweights (now Adaptives), we didn’t touch Rose. Now that Rose is returning, we’ve adjusted its stats for smoother re-integration.
- Updated Rose’s stats to work for an Adaptive Hand Cannon.
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- Increased range from 38 to 43.
- Reduced stability from 45 to 40.
- Reduced handling from 68 to 60.
- Airborne effectiveness is 20.
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Blinding Effects
Grenade Launchers, The Queenbreaker, and Grand Overture all previously used the older blinding screen effect, which players have reported could feel jarring and pose some photosensitivity concerns.
- Switched these to the new Arc blind effect, which has significantly reduced screen effect brightness and is overall less intrusive.
Weapon Mods
Weapon mods that increase the effects of weapon perks do not make for interesting decisions, so we’ve made a long-awaited (and long-requested) change to them:
Perks
Reworks
We’re not happy with how the prior redesign of Air Assault turned out, so we’ve taken a second pass at it. It now directly rewards success and is much more dependable for players.
- Air Assault now grants a stacking bonus to airborne effectiveness.
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- Maximum two stacks: one per final blow, two per airborne final, each stack is +30 AE.
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Headseeker has been a boring and questionably useful perk on most Pulse Rifles for quite a while, so we’ve redesigned it, as well:
- Body shots now increase your precision multiplier and increase aim assist. Additional body shots reset the timer.1
- It has a 0.55s base timer. Body shots while Headseeker is active reset the timer.
Encore’s initial implementation was a little complex and fiddly to use, so we’ve redesigned that one too:
- Final blows now grant stacks of Encore, and stacks grant increased stability, range, and accuracy.
- Body shot final blows grant one stack, precision final blows grant two stacks, with a maximum of four stacks.
- Lasts 7s, enhanced lasts 7.5s. Final blows refresh timer.
- +8 stability, +5 range, and +1.25% accuracy per stack.
Seraph Rounds will be appearing on more weapons next Season, but in its current form, it’s the strongest magazine perk by a large margin, so we’ve pulled it back a little and made it more of a tradeoff:
- Removed +10% range scalar.
- Now offers +7 stability, +3 range.
Tunnel Vision plus Kill Clip not being refreshable while active has always been counterintuitive, so we’ve now set them up to allow that. That being said, this makes Kill Clip too strong compared to other damage perks, so we’ve pulled it back a little:
- The duration of these buffs can now be refreshed if activated while already active.
- Reduced Kill Clip damage bonus from 33% to 25%.
Redirection didn’t use our standard method of checking for weak versus strong enemies, so we’ve changed it to be consistent with other perks since it’ll be appearing on more weapons.
- Now builds stacks against red bar enemies and consumes them on everything else (i.e., matches minor spec and other perks that use similar language).
Buffs
We want players to be able to use the Hakke Breach Armaments origin trait to bring down Ward of Dawn, Well of Radiance, and Stasis crystals in PvP.
- Now increases damage vs. Ward of Dawn and Well of Radiance sword by 30% (60% with the artifact mod).
- Damage bonus against Stasis crystals has been increased by 15% (both base and with artifact mod).
Gutshot Straight shipped a little weak on Auto Rifles, so we’ve bumped it up a little:
- Increased bonus Auto Rifle body shot damage 10% to 20%.
Compulsive Reloader’s reload speed benefit is enjoyable, but on certain weapon types, it doesn’t remain active deep enough into a magazine:
- Now remains active down to half ammo.
The High-Impact Frame intrinsic perk can be hard to use since it switches off with little movement. We’ve tweaked this, so that slow movement (e.g., crouching and strafing) doesn’t deactivate the perk.
- Now allows a small amount of movement instead of turning off with any movement.
Ambitious Assassin’s recent adjustment gives it a remarkably high potential for overflowing a magazine, but in areas with sparse enemies, it can be hard to chain kills quickly enough:
- Increased allowed time between kills from 5s to 7s.
For Well-Rounded:
- Duration increased from 10s to 15s.
- Stacking the effect still resets the timer.
Recombination had some reliability issues, so we made some tweaks and adjusted the damage. This was important since this is now available on new weapons:
- Tweaks to make this function in PvP as intended.
- Now grants up to 100% bonus damage at max stacks in PvE.
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- 50% in PvP.
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Zen Moment provides an extraordinarily strong (if not well understood) reduction to recoil angle, but missing would reset the perk completely, making it difficult to sustain:
- No longer deactivates on a miss. Now has a 1s timer.
As part of the work on Divinity this Season, we looked at other related hiccups, including Rewind Rounds:
- Rewind Rounds now work as intended when hitting the cage created by Divinity.
Genesis has always refilled weapon ammo on breaking shields in PvE, but that hasn’t been the case in PvP. We’ve determined that it was a safe call to make to remove this restriction entirely:
- Now triggers on breaking player shields.
One Quiet Moment wasn’t really doing the job of providing fast reloads out of combat in cases where a player has dealt with all nearby threats, so we’ve made the following change:
- Faster reactivation after a final blow.
Gun and Run was hard to trigger in PvP or encounters with few enemies, so we also decided to half the number of final blows needed to activate this when going up against most enemy types.
Nerfs
Box Breathing has been providing too strong of a benefit for too little investment on Scout Rifles, so we’ve pulled it back a smidge to avoid crossing time-to-kill (TTK) thresholds:
- Reduced damage bonus on Scout Rifles by 5%.
Unstoppable Force’s damage was a little too high for the level of investment, surpassing other damage perks for strength and uptime. We’re keeping the uptime but adjusting the damage:
- Reduced damage bonus from 30% to 20%.
One-Two Punch is one part of several combos that allow stacking melee damage buffs to get far higher than intended. Here’s what One-Two Punch will look like:
- Reduced bonus melee damage as follows
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- From 3x to 2x vs most enemies with unpowered melees.
- From 1.8x to 1.4x vs most enemies with charged melees.
- Reduced the additional bonus vs bosses from 0.5 to 0.25.
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Bug Fixes
To Excess (Opulent weapon origin trait)
- Triggering this perk across multiple weapons no longer displays a stacking counter on the UI.This perk never stacked its effects, so this change does not change its behavior.
Enhanced Perks
We’ve taken a pass over several enhanced perks to bring their functionality more in line with the base perks:
- Enhanced Unrelenting
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- Shifted to +5 health regen; removed +5 handling.
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- Enhanced Perpetual Motion
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- Removed .1s faster activation and removed the .1s grace period upon ending.
- Added 1s faster activation of x2 stacks.
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- Enhanced Timed Payload
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- Shifted from range to +5 stability.
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- Enhanced Explosive Payload
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- Shifted from range to +5 reload.
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- Enhanced Firing Line
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- Added additional 10 handling when in proximity.
- Removed increased neutral range.
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- Enhanced Grave Robber
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- Swapped +5 reload to +5 handling.
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- Enhanced Explosive Light
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- Added one more charge (stack caps at 7).
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- Enhanced Cornered
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- Added +10 stability when active.
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- Enhanced Cold Steel
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- Weapon energy and weapon magazine capacity now add +10 to be consistent with other ammo capacity-increasing Perks.
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- Enhanced Vorpal Weapon
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- Changed from +5 reload to +5 stability.
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- This will apply to the guard resistance stat on Swords.
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- Changed from +5 reload to +5 stability.
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- Enhanced Genesis
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- Removed Primary ammo overflow.
- Added additional handling.
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- Enhanced Flash Counter
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- Increased ammo capacity.
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- Enhanced Chain Reaction
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- Updated the description as this provides a different benefit to Swords.
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- Enhanced Ambitious Assassin
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- Increased allowed time between final blows from 6s to 8s.
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Exotics
Reworks
We identified a handful of weapons that we felt needed a substantial change to really hit the level of “exoticness” that we expect from Destiny 2 Exotics.
The Fundamentals perk (which can be seen on the damage-type switching Exotics: Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger), while functional, felt like it could do more to grant the modes some identity based on selected damage type, so each damage type now grants different weapon stats (think Elemental Capacitor, if that perk checked the damage type on the weapon instead of the player’s subclass).
- Added stats to each element
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- Arc: +25 handling and +5 range.
- Solar: +35 reload speed and +20 airborne effectiveness.
- Void: +20 stability and +10 aim assist.
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Even with the above change to The Fundamentals, we felt like Borealis needed a more substantial change:
- Breaking a matched shield now refills the magazine from reserves and allows your next 5 shots to deal bonus damage. Not deactivated by reloading.
Jade Rabbit is a strong Scout Rifle, but its Exotic perk was lackluster, so we’ve redesigned it to be more of a gameplay loop:
- Quickly landing 3 crits returns a round to the magazine and increases the damage of your next body shot.
- Stacks up to 3 increased damage body shots.
- Resets if you reload.
Update 6.3.0 Patch Notes for Destiny 2 is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. For more information on update 6.3.0 for Destiny 2 and future updates and patch notes, head over to the official Destiny 2 website here.