Destiny 2 Update 4.0.0.1 Patch Notes – Witch Queen

The Witch Queen update has already rolled out and can be downloaded via Steam. The size of the update was around 21 GB for PC users. Unfortunate for the PS4 users, they won’t be able to preload the update due to some issue. However, Bungie has stated that the update will be available as soon as the weekly reset hits.

The Witch Queen update brings a plethora of new stuff in-game; notably the new raid, new exotic weapons, new exotic catalysts (maybe Thorn finally?), and a lot more that we will cover on the website. A lot of content is retiring at the same time, some forsaken stuff, multiple iron banner and trials maps.

If you are looking for Update 4.0.0.1 Patch Notes, then you are at the right place. We are actively looking for them and will update them as soon as they are published officially.

Destiny 2 Update 4.0.0.1 Patch Notes

Watch this section for updates! – The patch notes might arrive just after the weekly reset.

Maintenance Schedule for The Witch Queen launch on February 21-22.
Destiny 2 will be offline from 6:45PM (February 21) to 9:00AM (February 22) PST.

Here’s the maintenance schedule created by DestinyOverview:

Below is an early preview of the Witch Queen patch notes. We’ll be sure to keep you updated here as any further changes are detailed in the coming weeks.

Global

• Kill Trackers were once one reason to Masterwork a weapon, but we now see no reason to gate these behind Masterworking. They’ll be present by default on all weapons that shipped in Forsaken and later (Exotic weapons prior to Forsaken will be updated in a later release).
  • Yes, this means Masterworking should no longer be seen as mandatory, and we expect the +10 to a weapon stat (or +10 to primary stat, +3 to other stats for Adepts) to only matter to dedicated PvP players.
  • We have no specific plans for changes to Masterworking at this stage but will revisit it later. (Note that we did discuss gating the Origin Trait behind Masterworking, but ultimately this wouldn’t have achieved the goal of weapon differentiation for non-Masterworked weapons.)
• Following in the Armor Team’s footsteps, weapon mods for Legendary weapons are now free and instant to insert.
• We believe that many pain points around Special weapons in Crucible are exacerbated by how easy it currently is to acquire Special ammo, and while we’ve touched this in the past, we’re making a further adjustment now:

• Players now only drop one Special ammo on death (or equivalent), no matter how much they were carrying (as long they weren’t completely empty).
• The maximum you can pick up off a Special brick is one for a Shotgun, Fusion Rifle, or Sniper Rifle, or equivalent for other weapons. Scavenger mods add to this as normal, but we’ll be evaluating their place in Crucible in the future.

Archetypes

• Increased High-Impact Fusion Rifle damage per bolt from 62 to 64 (this doesn’t seem like a lot, but it allows more rolls to cross bolts-to-kill thresholds).
• Increased High-Impact Fusion Rifle PvE damage bonus from 15 percent to 20 percent.
• Reduced Blinding and Concussion Grenade damage by 25 percent.
• Rocket Launcher damage adjustment by subfamily:
  • Precision: 0.95x
  • High Impact: 1.0x
  • Adaptive: 1.05x
  • Aggressive: 1.05x
• Reduced variance in AA scaling between low (35 zoom) and high-zoom (60 zoom) Sniper Rifles.
  • Cone angle scalar increased by ~25 percent on low zoom, reduced by ~9 percent on high zoom.
• Pulse Rifle PvE damage buff – 10% vs minors

Exotic Weapons

• Exotic Primary weapons and Trace Rifles aren’t sufficiently stronger than Legendaries for them to be worth bringing into hard PvE content, particularly against minors. Note that this change applies to allExotics that use Primary ammo, and includes most secondary effects (e.g., perk-triggered explosions).
  • Increased damage vs minors in PvE by40 percent.
• Chaperone is a terror in PvP, particularly with the nerf to pellet Shotguns and the reduced frequency of grenade and melee abilities, and it outperforms some weapons that ought to be good counters to it, for example Sidearms and Submachine Guns.
  • Reduced passive range buff from 2m to 0.5m.
• Duality is in a similar place to Chaperone, but it’s not quite as rangy. On the other hand, its Exotic trait shipped with the constraint that it would wipe on reload, to make it harder to chain. Having seen it in action for a while now, we don’t think that limitation needs to be there.
  • Reduced passive range buff in slug mode (i.e., when aiming down sights) from 1.25m to 0.5m (pellet mode is unaffected).
  • The On Black Wings damage buff no longer clears on reload.
• Tarrabah is extremely strong as it is, but it currently demands complete commitment, with no weapon switching. This constraint is a bit harsher than it needs to be, so we’ve loosened it without removing it entirely. Also, while the duration extension when damaging players did actually function in PvP, it was so subtle that players kept reporting that it was bugged, so we bumped them up.
  • Now reduces perk progress by half instead of clearing it on weapon stow.
  • Increased Ravenous Beast duration increases for damaging a player slightly.
• Ruinous Effigy has been overdue for a look at its Beyond Light nerf (the nerf to damage dealt while guarding), so we’re rolling that back. Note that the other part of that nerf was to the airborne standard melee attack, and this hasn’t been touched.
  • Increased the damage dealt by guarding with a transmutation sphere by 66 percent (30percent against players).
  • Note: Transmutation Sphere multikills now count for Orb generation armor mods (previously only kills with the beam would trigger this).
• Lumina’s stats just don’t compare with other 140 RPM Adaptive Hand Cannons, and its usage reflects that, so we’re updating these alongside some of the Legendary Hand Cannons that also used to be 150 RPM (see below).
  • Increased range stat from 44 to 59.
  • Increased base stability stat from 46 to 56.
  • Sorry Thorn fans, Thorn is already strong and popular, and a similar buff would turn it into a monster in PvP.
• Ager’s Scepter’s initial implementation used Super regeneration scalars, which had very weird effects in activities that also had scalars, so we’ve rebuilt it to turn off regeneration while active and have implemented a slower drain using a different method.
  • Fixed being able to activate or continue using empowered mode while suppressed or Stasis encased.
  • Rebuilt the perk — used to modify Super charge rate, now freezes Super recharge and deducts Super directly, fixing several issues with activities that change charge rate and outliers for recharge based on Intellect stat.
  • Super should now drain more slowly while empowered.
• Dead Man’s Tale feels good to use on both mouse and keyboard and controller now, and we don’t want to go back to it feeling unreliable, but it’s far too good at spamming hip-fire shots at long range as it stands.
  • Reduced the catalyst’s hip-fire rate of fire from 150 RPM to 130 RPM.
• Lorentz Driver and Arbalest remain fairly hard to counter in PvP; one common complaint is how easily they can shoot through flinch. We’ll be keeping an eye on these moving forward and have another change planned if needed.
  • Increased flinch received.
• Forerunner’s ammo economy was fairly conservative when we shipped 30th Anniversary but having seen how it’s used in PvP we believe it would benefit from gaining a little more ammo per Special brick.
  • Increased ammo picked up from a Special ammo brick from two to three (and from four to five with a scavenger mod).

Destiny 2 Witch Queen patch notes: Legendary Weapons

• Hand Cannons: The band for Legendary 140 RPM Hand Cannon Aim Assist ends at 84 (and this extreme should be for a Hand Cannon from a pinnacle activity, like a raid or Trials), but when 150s were converted to 140s, many of their stats were either too low or too high. We’re adjusting the stats of these to be within the standard ranges (up or down), as follows (an overall buff in most cases):
  • Dire Promise: +4 range, +3 stability, -4 aim assist.
  • Waking Vigil: +6 range, +5 stability, -3 aim assist.
  • Jack Queen King 3: +3 range, +3 stability, -8 aim assist.
  • Spare Rations: +4 range, +4 stability, -9 aim assist.
• Felwinter’s Lie’s intrinsic perk makes it far too consistent and lethal compared to similar Shotguns, and it’s had plenty of time to shine.
  • +15 percent spread angle.
• Most of Ikelos SMG’s stats are wildly out of band for an aggressive SMG, but it does suffer from having a low zoom compared to other popular options.
  • +1 zoom, -5 range, -7 stability, -8 handling, -5 aim assist.

Perks

• We want players to be able to choose to build into hip-firing more easily, so we’re adjusting the Hip-fire Grip perk to support this.
  • Now increases damage falloff start and end distances by 20 percent (except on Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, and Fusion Rifle).
• Adagio often felt like it changed a weapon’s subfamily to the next slowest rate of fire — but worse, particularly when comparing damage falloff.
  • Increased duration from 5s to 7s.
  • Increased damage bonus (except on Bows and Fusion Rifles) from 25 percent to 30 percent.
  • Now adds +10 range stat.
  • Added a timer to the buff text to make it easier to tell when it’s going to expire.
• Dual Loader is okay on paper, but in practice that reload speed is pretty painful.
  • Reduced reload stat penalty from -50 to -35.
• Danger Zone felt pretty risky to use in some cases, resulting in a lot of self-damage.
  • Reduced self-damage scalar for Grenade Launchers, combined with the other scalars, this is ends up reducing self-damage from 1.25x to 0.75x.
• Tap the Trigger is the meta-breaking perk on a particular Fusion Rifle. When stacked with other elements of this roll, it makes Fusion Rifles much too stable. So much so that we stopped putting it on Fusion Rifles, and then squidface sold it a few times. With this change we believe it’s still quite a strong perk without being overpowered, so it’s likely to appear on future Fusion Rifles (note: we did try reducing stability from +40 to +20, but in playtests the difference wasn’t perceptible).
  • On Fusion Rifles only:
    • Reduced stability bonus from +40 to +10.
    • Changed max recoil angle scale from 0.5 to 0.875.
    • Changed error angle scale from 0.9 to 0.975.
  • Unchanged on all other weapons.
• Headseeker didn’t work as intended on Aggressive Burst Pulse Rifles, because the buff’s duration was too short. Sacred Provenance is the only viable Pulse Rifle that benefits from this in Season 16 (although there IS such a Pulse in the Season, it doesn’t roll with Headseeker), but expect to see more in future Seasons.
  • Extended buff duration from 0.17 to 0.3s
• Let’s talk about Eager Edge. It’s a lot of fun to use, but it can be used to do some mind-blowing, environment-breaking things if used in particular ways while airborne. While the tuning below isn’t meant to remove the fun factor, we have a fresh raid (and other fun content) coming with The Witch Queen and want to ensure we retain challenge behind our upcoming rewards. Breaking out of maps can be fun, indeed, but can easily remove the prestige and value of a given item or experience.
  • Reduced lunge distance benefit while airborne by 25 percent.
  • Now caps maximum player airborne velocity (to a fairly high value) while active.
• Occasionally we’ll shelve perks, because they’re not working for some reason (too strong or too weak). This means we won’t put them on weapons in the future unless we change the perk. In many cases we’d rather put design work into new perks than old ones, but there’s a whole “Perks” section here. Anyway, these perks are shelved (some have been shelved a while):
  • Bottomless Grief and Celerity (Both were attempts to inject some uniqueness into Trials of Osiris and Nightfall weapons, which we’re now doing with Origin Traits.)
  • Underdog
  • Shield Disorient
  • Air Assault (though note that this may get a redesign in a future Season)

Ritual Rewards 

• Starting with The Witch Queen, ritual playlist rewards will be updated to grant ritual specific gear (weapons, mods, armor) and no longer be granting rewards from the general world pool.
• Crucible will grant Crucible gear, Vanguard will grant Vanguard gear, and Gambit will grant Gambit gear.
• Engram focusing is currently only available on Saint-14 and the Drifter for their ritual specific engrams.
• World engrams will continue to be granted at major ranks on ritual vendors, just for a little variety.
• Gambit, Crucible, and Vanguard rituals are receiving updated armor rewards for a new expansion release.
• These share the same base appearance but have slight differences in decals and coloring to represent each ritual.

Returning Crucible Maps 

• Eternity and Vostok return to the Crucible on February 22, 2022.

Eververse 

• No changes.
  • Wait, what? Seriously?
    • Yeah, there are no systematic changes to the Eververse.
    • There will be new cosmetic items available for Silver and Bright Dust, but no systematic changes to the experience.
  • But what about Bright Dust? Any changes to how much players will be earning?
    • There are no changes to Bright Dust acquisition or totals compared to that of Season 15.
    • Players will continue to earn Bright Dust from Seasonal Challenges, repeatable bounties on specific vendors, and through the Season Pass.
    • Please note: This week brings the final drop of 700 Bright Dust in celebration of our 30th Anniversary. Make sure to redeem this offer in the Eververse storefront before it’s gone!

Season Pass Changes 

• High-stat Seasonal armor has been reintroduced.
  • Individual pieces are awarded between ranks 57 and 87.
• Legendary Engrams have been replaced with focused Umbral Engrams.
  • Five in total. Each focused to a different armor piece (arms, legs, chest, class, and head).
  • All Umbral Engrams are tier 2.
• The Season Pass emblem has been removed, but we have introduced a Season Pass Sparrow.
• The Season Pass scrounger bonuses (bonuses which increased Seasonal weapon/armor drop chances in ritual activities) have been overhauled.
  • The weapon scrounger bonuses are no longer separated by weapon type or ritual activity. They now apply to both Season Pass Legendary weapons and all activities at once.
    • Two weapon scrounger bonuses instead of six.
    • The first bonus grants the player a small chance to receive the weapons from ritual activities. The second bonus gives an improved chance.
    • Total drop chance is unchanged from previous Seasons.
  • The armor scrounger bonuses are no longer separated by ritual activity. It now applies to all activities at once.
    • One armor scrounger bonus instead of three.
    • Like the weapon, the total drop chance for each armor piece is unchanged.
• Aside from the emblem, no items have been removed from the Season Pass, only added.
  • A number of rewards such as Glimmer and Legendary Shards have been consolidated to make room for high-stat armor.
  • A small amount of Upgrade Modules have been added.
• The order some rewards are acquired has been tuned to accommodate the above changes.

Shattered Throne: “Thrallway” 

• Fixed an issue where Shadow Thrall in The Shattered Throne were unintentionally granting investment rewards, such as Glimmer, engrams, and XP.
  • As players begin to craft weapons and level up their Season Pass on February 22, we want to ensure gameplay rewards are earned by playing and completing activities, bounties, or just hanging out with friends in patrols while defeating minions of the Darkness.

Boss Stomps 

• Adjusted the physics knockback for boss stomps.
• This will should result in fewer deaths from being knocked into objects.

Keep an eye on our Destiny 2 page for more updates on the Witch Queen. We will be publishing everything from guides to basic news about this new update.