Division 2 Patch Notes: Update Adds Higher World Tier, Heroic Difficulty, And More

Ubisoft has released the patch notes for the latest update for The Division 2. The update itself is also already live, adding content and implementing balance changes and bug fixes. But most important of all is a change that causes NPCs at the White House Base of Operations to shout at you less.

Thanks to the new update, the Invasion: Battle for DC DLC is now live. The DLC is free for all The Division 2 players. Invasion: Battle for DC adds a new world tier to The Division 2, with a raised gear score cap of 500. The DLC also adds a heroic difficulty, the Tidal Basin faction stronghold, brand-new weekly invaded missions, and three more gear sets–Ongoing Directive, True Patriot, and Hard Wired. The full outline of content coming in the DLC can be found listed on The Division 2’s website.

The new update adds weapon, mod, and gear overhauls as well. Damage on the MK17 rifle has decreased, while the power of both the LW M4 and LVOA-C RPM has been increased. The Model 700 marksman rifle also sees a damage nerf, while the AA12 shotgun and MG5 light machine gun both get buffed. Skills mods have been overhauled “to give more achievable requirements and more reasonable bonuses,” so expect to see a change in almost every bonus and its corresponding requirement.

One of the biggest adjustments in this patch involves weapon mods. Ubisoft has reworked a large number of them, and you can check out a full table on Reddit that outlines the new bonuses and (smaller number of penalties) that they now carry.

Changes have also been implemented in several player skills too, with most of them aimed at drones. Bombardier drones will no longer get destroyed while climbing up or down a ladder or rope, nor will they crash into obstacles during their bombing phase. The firefly skill, revive hive, sniper turret, and chem launcher have all been updated as well.

Dozens of other changes come to The Division 2 in this update. The full patch notes can be found on Reddit. Below, we’ve outlined the major changes.

The Division 2 April 5 Update Major Changes

Weapons, Mods, and Gear

• Overhauled the Weapon mod system, see the table at the end of the patch notes for detailed information.
• Fixed a wrong long-range damage value for M4 (super 90) and P416. Previously, they could sometimes increase damage over longer ranges instead of the other way around.
• Rifles
  • Damage on the MK17 rifle reduced by 14%, also corrected this weapon not having a damage falloff over distance.
  • LW M4 damage increased by 5%, RPM increased from 240 to 360.
  • LVOA-C RPM increased from 240 to 380.
• Marksman Rifles
  • Model 700 damage reduced by 13%.
• Shotguns
  • AA12 damage increased by 16%.
• LMGs
  • MG5 damage increased by 12% and fixed reversed falloff, causing the weapon to do more damage over a longer range.
• Updated initial accuracy on the Sig Sniper MCmillan T1. It should now be much more reliable to shoot as soon as it’s shouldered and the transition to scoped view is over.
• Reduced the amount of Critical Damage and Headshot Damage that can roll on Gear, including the amount on existing Gear. The actual values will differ depending on the level and quality of the gear it occurs on. This is partially in preparation for another world tier, where we felt these values were already at the limit of what was healthy in WT4.
• Complete overhaul of skill mods to give more achievable requirements and more reasonable bonuses.
  • A closer equivalence between required skill power and the bonuses granted.
  • Changed the amount of skill power on gear to not increase exponentially with level, but instead more linearly. This results in most skill power values on gear being lower, but in accordance with the lowered requirements.
  • Tweaked the ranges of bonuses to be within acceptable bounds where they had extreme values before due to scaling errors. Most notably radius and ammo/charges values.
  • Players will see both the bonuses and the requirements of almost all skill mods change as a result of this overhaul.
  • In end game, both Superior and High-End skill mods exist to cover the different needs of different builds. They can overlap in power, but High-End mods have a higher maximum roll potential.
  • We are looking at ways to provide lower value/quality mods in end game world tiers in the future to provide a solution to the fact that on very low skill power builds, there would be room for those mods, and currently we are aware that means you have to save mods from your leveling experience.

Player Skills

• Fixed an issue which caused the Bombardier Drone to get destroyed while climbing up/down a ladder or rope.
• Improved feedback of Bombardier Drone crashing into obstacles during the bombing phase.
• Fixed an issue with Firefly payload sometimes failing to activate when reaching its target.
• Fixed an issue where Revive hive would not self-deploy if the agent was busy performing a different action such as using different skill when it triggered.
• Revamped the Sniper Turret version of the turret skill.
  • It now will automatically target the hostile nearest to the players’ center-of-screen (the same method it uses to pick other turret targets) and will fire at that target when the button is pressed, without a lock-on order needed.
  • If a player aims at a hostile, the sniper turret will attempt to match their aim, allowing precision shots using the sniper turret.
  • An issue where the sniper turret wasn’t correctly getting bonus damage when hitting headshots has been fixed.
• Revamped the Chem launcher skill platform.
  • Pressing the skill button will now equip the chem launcher similar to swapping to a weapon. The player can aim and shoot with normal weapon controls, as well as run with the skill and blindfire it.
  • Quick deploy at the agents own position is still available for the repair version of the chem launcher, using the same controls as before.
  • Unequipping the Chem launcher can be done using the skill button, the B (XBOX) / Circle (PS4) button or just using the weapon swap controls.

Loot & Rewards

• Control Point reward containers are giving the correct number of items for the corresponding Control Point’s defense level. Defense level 4 now awards 5 items instead of 3.
• Reduced DZ XP gain from Landmarks in Dark Zones.
• Reduced the quality and power for items dropped in Propaganda Broadcast and one drop of Settlement Blockade activities to be more in line with other open world enemies and activities.
• Updated XP rewards for low-level player playing in World Tiers to scale with player level.
• Supply Drop activity loot container items now scale with every consecutive container you open. This includes lowering the reward of the first crate, but results in similar rewards for the activity as a whole.
• Added 5 Specialized Apparel Cache Keys, awarded with levels 2 – 4.
  • As a thank you for playing, all players that played before April 4 get 5 Specialized Apparel Keys, regardless of their level.
  • Apparel Keys will be coming for those players later next week.
• Faction Key loot drops from Bounties are now guaranteed and are displayed in the loot preview.
• Adjusted bounty credit rewards to use scaling values in World Tiers instead of flat values so if a lower level player is playing with a higher-level player, they will receive an amount of credits more appropriate for their level.
• Changed Skill Unlock rewards to be non-invaded only so that players who co-op with a higher-level friend to play invaded before playing on story won’t receive the rewards.
• Added Apparel cache key fragments to the PvP reward caches.
• Adjusted the rewards for the street execution activity to give slightly lower quality/source level gear so the rewards are more in line with the difficulty of the activity.
• Reduced the quality and source level charts used for item drops from the living world activities settlement blockade and Propaganda broadcast to be more in line with other open world drops and the difficulty of the activities.
• Updated Collectibles set XP reward to scale with player level.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Drone Helicopter to not use the correct loot table.

Crafting

• Increased Material cap for Standard and Specialized crafting materials to 400 (with all perks).
• Increased Material cap for High-End crafting materials to 50.
• Materials required for crafting weapon mods does not scale as aggressively and has much lower values in endgame.
• Removed a small increase on materials required for crafting weapon mods after upgrading the crafting bench quality.
• Changed the upgrade blueprints for exotic weapons Lullaby and Ruthless to not show up on the vendor until you are level 30.
• Increased the power for the wandering vendor so her inventory has a narrower Gear Score range closer to the top of the World Tier Gear Score Range.
• Set all exotic upgrade blueprints to award you the upgraded weapon on the max gear score of the current tier.
• Removed a tiny increase on materials required for crafting weapon mods after upgrading the crafting bench quality.
• Exotic weapons are now pre-equipped with lore text mods. These mods do not have stats and cannot be equipped elsewhere.

Talents

• Blind Justice – Modified the Buff that increases damage to your next shot now expires at end of combat and when out of combat
• First Blood – Updated Normalized MMR Talent First Blood Text to correctly explain that the first shot after reloading from empty is the enhanced bullet.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that could cause undesired appearance changes to agents after login in or using the barber.
  • Players that have been permanently affected by an appearance change will unfortunately not be changed back with this fix. We want to apologize for any inconvenienced caused by this and we’re looking into options to allow players to fully customize their agent in the future, but we do not have a timeline for this feature.
• Fixed an issue where the Cluster Seeker Mine could split up more often than intended.
• Fixed an issue where the Defender Drone could have unlimited uptime.
• Fixed an issue which prevented players from finishing the Unite cypher riddle.
• We’re confident this is not bugged anymore.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the Stronghold activation animation to always play when entering the Base of Operations.
• Fixed several instances of Audio logs not playing automatically when picked up.
• Fixed an issue that could cause players being unable to finish the Side Mission Worksite Community.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to update their crafting bench after reaching a new World Tier.
• Fixed an issue with NPCs sometimes not reacting properly to cooked grenades
• Fixed an issue with Hunters not always appropriately despawning if a player flees a combat space
• Fixed rare issue where NPCs could get stuck when attempting to melee a player in cover
• Fixed issue with the Explosive Seeker Mine occasionally failing to path to its target
• Fixed bug where players could fast travel to non-friendly Control Points
• Fixed bug that made encounters with friendly NPCs requesting resources too rare
• Fixed bug where underground enemies would come to the surface during the day
• Fixed an issue where players were able to obtain gear with a higher gear score than intended
  • Any owned High-End items will be lowered to Gear Score 500.
  • Any owned Superior items will be lowered to Gear Score 490.
  • Clan caches no longer award items higher than the maximum loot Gear Score.
  • Recalibration still allows Gear Score to increase slightly past the maximum loot Gear Score.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/division-2-patch-notes-update-adds-higher-world-ti/1100-6466073/