[GameSpot] - Destiny 2 Update "Fixes" New Hunter Exotic, Nerfing Star-Eater Scales; Read The Patch Notes

[343iBot]

One of the stars of Destiny 2's Season of the Splicer has been the new Hunter Exotic boots, Star-Eater Scales. They quickly became a favorite for PvE content and were so powerful that Bungie disabled them for the World's First competition for the Vault of Glass raid. But apparently, Star-Eater Scales were too powerful, and with its latest update, Bungie has patched the Exotic to bring its perks down to where they were intended to be.

Bungie shared the full patch notes for its new update, Hotfix 3.2.0.2, on its website. The update fixes a bunch of bugs and issues with the way certain elements were interacting and, for the most part, boosting Guardians' power more than they should have.

Star-Eater Scales is the biggest of these; the new Exotic allows you to gather extra Orbs of Power to overcharge your Super ability, making it do more damage. It also fires off a healing burst when you cast your Super, and if you power it up fully with four extra Orbs, you receive an overshield as well. The trouble was, Star-Eater Scales wasn't just boosting Super damage, it was also giving a huge boost to regular weapon and grenade damage, essentially making Hunters into damage powerhouses, especially in raids.

Hotfix 3.2.0.2 reels in Star-Eater Scales pretty significantly. First, it removes the damage boost to regular weapons and grenades, which Bungie says the Exotic shouldn't have had anyway. Next, it also makes powering up the Exotic to its full damage bonus power a little tougher--instead of picking up four extra Orbs of Power, you now need to pick up eight Orbs. That's going to make Star-Eater Scales significantly less cool than it was a day ago, and although it's still pretty powerful, it remains to be seen whether this will continue to be the new go-to Exotic for Hunters in PvE activities.

Other changes include Bungie fixing another new damage-boosting element in Season of the Splicer: Energy Accelerant. This mod, found on the Seasonal Artifact, increases the power of perks like Firefly, Chain Reaction, and Dragon Fly--and it had the side effect of making the Exotic fusion rifle Telesto about twice as powerful as it should have been. That mod has been fixed so that Telesto does the right amount of damage.

You can read the rest of the patch notes below.

GAMEPLAY AND INVESTMENT

ARMOR

• Fixed an issue where Recovery-focused Umbral Engrams would sometimes not award armor with a sufficiently high Recovery stat.
• Fixed issues where some Common, Uncommon, and Rare armors would provide stat bonuses when used as ornaments as a part of Armor Synthesis.
• Energy Accelerant mod:
  • No longer increases damage against players.
  • No longer increases the base damage of Symmetry, Telesto, Black Talon, and Deathbringer.
    • Telesto has also received another sternly worded lecture.
• Sundering Blast no longer causes Overload champions to exit their stun state when damaged by the explosion created by the mod.
• Fixed an issue where Star-Eater Scales was erroneously applying its damage bonus to weapons and grenades instead of only Supers as intended.
  • Increased the maximum number of stacks required for the full damage bonus from four stacks to eight stacks.
• Fixed an issue where players could spawn too many noble seekers with Boots of the Assembler by stepping in and out of a Rift.
  • When Warlocks wearing Boots of the Assembler are extending the duration of a Rift, class ability regeneration pauses.
  • Design note: The reason for this change was both to prevent game crashes caused by too many rifts being placed in a single activity, and to restore some of the advantage to running Sanguine Alchemy over Boots of the Assembler.

WEAPONS

• Fixed an issue where the catalyst for Cryosthesia 77K was incorrectly accruing progress from energy weapon kills.
• Fixed an issue where the catalyst Triumph for Cryosthesia 77K was being displayed in the wrong weapon category.
• Fixed an issue where Cryosthesia 77K could fire multiple freeze shots without losing the charged shot buff.
• Fixed an issue where existing drops of THE SWARM with Unrelenting switched to Bottomless Grief.
  • This fix only works in cases where players didn't select the Bottomless Grief node.

ACCESSORIES

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Vie for Glory Sparrow from taking shaders.

POWER AND PROGRESSION

• Fixed an issue where the reward for completing the weekly Vendor Challenge on the Splicer Servitor did not reward Pinnacle gear as advertised.
  • Upon completion, the weekly Vendor Challenge should now reward a Pinnacle piece of Seasonal gear.
• Fixed an issue where completing Presage as a weekly Activity Challenge was not rewarding Pinnacle gear.

UI/UX

• Fixed an issue where the Armor Synthesis ornament creation tutorial does not show up for Titan characters when reaching the armor ornament creation step.

GENERAL

• Players will no longer be able to claim the 150 Synthstrand from Ada-1 during the NUX quest if their inventory is full.
  • This will prevent players from losing the material and they will need to clear out inventory space to claim their Synthstrand.

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