The Division 2 Title Update 9 released, bringing new Exotics balance

The Division 2 Title Update 9 has arrived, bringing with it a massive number of tweaks and changes. The 10 GB patch will include a variety of changes to the game, as well as a slew of bug fixes. The Division 2 Title Update 9 mostly focuses on balance changes, with Ubisoft bringing in a bunch of tweaks to gameplay across multiple areas. Various missions like Liberty Island, Wall Street and others have all been given some tweaks, mostly making players stronger. A bunch of NPCs across the game have been tweaked, offering different damage values and loot compared to pre-patch. Damage values for even entire weapon types have been nerfed for NPCs, making things like shotgun-toting enemies less dangerous.

Other changes to certain Exotics and talents include changes to the likes of Imperial Dynasty, Sawyer’s Kneepads, Dodge City Gunslinger and Diamondback. Talent reworks are also on the docket for Tag Team, Reassigned, Tamper Proof, Empathic Resolve, Creeping Death. Players will notice that a ton of bug fixes coming as well.

Bug fixes for perks like Glass Cannon, One in Hand…, and certain gear-based buffs like Poker Face are on the way. Ongoing issues with these and other perks mostly related to the buffs not applying properly. And on the mission side of things, higher-level content should be working more reliably in The Division 2 Title Update 9. Missions that should proc higher World Tiers should work now, and gamers being locked out of certain content if they’ve just hit the level requirement should be less common.

The big new gameplay addition is that Ubisoft has now implemented a new upgrades system for Exotic-level items. Players will see a new growth in power thanks to this change, with Exotics getting better stats at higher levels. You will now be able to upgrade Exotic items to level 40, as well as re-roll their attributes with the new Reconfiguration system available in the Crafting bench. Find out more on the games site here.

Check out the full patch notes for The Division 2 Title Update 9 down below.

Game Balance

Exotics, Talent, Named items

Exotics

• Sawyer’s Kneepads – Reworked
  • Cannot be staggered by explosions.
  • Increase total weapon damage by 3% each second you are not moving. Stacks up to 10x and stacks are lost when moving
  • This exotic only provides defensive attributes and no brand bonus, so now has potential for high damage and makes it appealing to both red and blue builds.
    Developer comment: The old version didn’t provide enough engaging gameplay; this change should help with that.

• Imperial Dynasty – Buff
  • Reduced cooldown to 35s (down from 40)

  Developer comment: This buff is to better compensate for the lack of brand bonus.

• Dodge City Gunslinger
  • Reduced charge up time 30s (from 50s)

  Developer comment: This buff is to better compensate for the lack of brand bonus.

• Diamondback – Reworked
  • Now Grants all shots guaranteed crits for 5s after hitting a mark

  Developer comment: The Diamondback is underperforming, and this change should make the bonus a bit more exciting.

• Merciless/Ruthless – Buff
  • Explosion damage increased to 1200% (up from 900%)

  Developer comment: Explosion Damage doesn’t scale with crit stats, so boosted to compensate.

• Lady Death
  • No longer enhances Turret Skills.
• Bullet King
  • Base damage is now the same as the non-exotic LMG version.
• Exotic attribute roll quality
  • All exotics will now roll at the highest possible minimum roll regardless of the difficulty they are obtained in.
    • Exotic items can still roll higher than the minimum but minimum rolls are now higher.

Talents

• Tag Team – Reworked
  • The last enemy you have damaged with a skill is marked.
  • Dealing weapon damage to that enemy consumes the mark to reduce active cooldowns by 6s.
  • Cooldown: 4s
  • Does not consume mark if no skill is on cooldown.
• Reassigned – Buff
  • Killing an enemy adds 1 round of a random special ammo into your sidearm.
  • Reduced cooldown to 15s (down from 20s).
• Tamper Proof – Reworked
  • Enemies that walk within 3m of your hive, turret, or remote pulse are shocked.
  • Arm time: 2s.
  • Increased cooldown per skill to 10s (up from 5s).
• Empathic Resolve – Buff
  • Repairing an ally, increases their total weapon and skill damage by 3-15% for 20s (up from 10s). 1-7% if self.

  Developer comment: Currently it is difficult to keep a high uptime in 4-man content as non-tank players try to be as safe as possible and NPCs have higher lethality, so chip damage is less frequent.

Creeping Death

• When you apply a status effect, it is also applied to all enemies within 8m (up from 5m) of your target.
• Reduced cooldown to 15s (down from 20s).
• Overcharge talents now properly state they don’t work in PVP.

Named Items

• Contractor’s Gloves
  • Damage to Armor lowered to 8%.
• Firm Handshake
  • Status Effects increased to 15%.
• Ammo Dump
  • Now correctly rolls 2 additional attributes.
• Claws Out
  • Now correctly has a skill tier core attribute roll.
  • Now correctly rolls an attribute in addition to pistol damage and melee damage.
  • Melee damage increased to 400%.
• Fox’s Prayer
  • Damage to out of cover lowered to 8%.
• The Hollow Man
  • Damage to Health lowered to 10%.
• Punch Drunk
  • Headshot Damage increased to 20%.
• Send-Off
  • Removed Perfectly Rooted Talent.

Weapons

• Assault Rifles:
  • Increased maximum roll of Damage to Health to 21%.
    • Players on Stadia will not see this be displayed correctly and instead see an increase to Damage to Health on other weapon types. This is an UI issue only and will be fixed with the next client update.

Gear Sets

• True Patriot
  • White buff armor repair lowered to 2%/3% once every second.

Main Missions

• Pentagon & Darpa Research Lab
  • Lowered difficulty to be more on par with other missions.
• Liberty Island
  • Lowered difficulty to be more on par with other missions.
• Wall Street
  • Reduced health and damage of the APC.
• Stranded Tanker
  • NPC composition has been adjusted.

AI & NPCs

• Signature Weapons Against Named NPCs
  • Slightly increased damage signature weapons deal to named enemies
• Elite NPCs Damage Against Player Skills
  • Reduced damage elite NPCs deal to player skills.
• Tank Sprint Speed
  • Reduced sprint speed of Tank archetype from all hostile factions
• NPC Shotguns
  • Reduced damage of all NPC shotguns
  • Adjusted range of some NPC shotguns (including shotguns used by Black Tusk Rusher)
• Status Effects
  • Reduced duration of Poison and Cleaners’ Napalm Ensnare (when applied to players)
• Special Ammo Signaling
  • Any NPC with special ammo has the same UI indication as from the Special Ammo Directive.
  • Examples of who this affects:
    • Outcasts who pick up special ammo from boxes deployed by their Support archetype.
    • Bounties who spawn with special ammo.
• Rogue Agents
  • Significantly reduced the armor of dynamically spawning Rogue Agents.
    • To prevent this from being too large of a nerf in 3-4-player co-op a Rogue Agent can spawn with an armor kit which can repair their armor up to 70%.
  • Slightly reduced the damage output of dynamically spawning Rogue Agents.
• NPC Buff Allies Ability Changed
  • Previously, certain bosses and bounties would magically overheal themselves and their fireteam. This “buff allies” ability lacked clear messaging, so it has been replaced with a “leader overheal” ability. This is the same ability that the Rikers’ Leader archetype has. Once the boss (leader) is killed, all their friendlies lose their overheal. The UI indicator of pulsating circles inward/outward in their nameplate signals when this ability is active.

Loot/Rewards

• Increased power of dropped Exotics to always be of the highest tier, giving the highest minimum rolls.
• Added Operation Dark Hours raid gear set Chest and Backpack items to the general loot pool, making them available outside of Operation Dark Hours.
• Lowered number of Exotic Components awarded from Exotic deconstruction to match the cost of Exotic reconfiguring.
• Lowered Conflict XP amount from PVP weekly projects to match the required XP for 1 Conflict level.

Blueprints

• Combined all Skill Mod blueprints of different qualities into a single blueprint per Skill, scaling quality with that of the Crafting Bench.
• Added Skill Mod Blueprints for the Skills introduced in Warlords of New York.
• Added Blueprints from the general Blueprints pool to first-time weekly completion rewards of Invaded Missions.
• Added Blueprints from the general Blueprints pool to the rewards of Daily Projects.

Skills

• The Sharpshooter’s Tactician Skill base radius has been increased to 50m.
• Scoping is now enabled when using a Shield Skill.

Bug fixes

Gear and Skills

• Fixed several magazine attachments not matching their weapons and/or clipping with their models.
• Fixed several Scopes being offset on multiple weapons.
• Fixed a missing animation when picking up the Skill variant after defeating the final boss in The Tombs Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing deployable Skills to not refresh their duration when receiving the Artificer Hive buff.
• Fixed an issue causing some items created before Warlords of New York to have wrong attribute values.
• Fixed an issue causing the “Glass Cannon” gear talent to amplify all healing received.
• Fixed the text of the “Perfect Overflowing” talent to correctly state that it increases the base magazine capacity at the 3rd reload from empty.
• Fixed the text of the Acosta’s Go-Bag talent “One in Hand…” to correctly state that the buff triggers when the grenade is thrown.
• Fixed an issue causing cards to not correctly flip when having the “Poker Face” backpack talent of “Aces & Eights” Gear Set equipped.
• Fixed an issue causing the Nemesis Exotic to not trigger the Focus Gear Talent while scoped.
• Fixed an issue causing the muzzle flash VFX to be missing for the Lady Death Exotic submachine gun.
• Fixed an issue causing agent to get stuck on slopes and stairs when having a shield equipped and moving diagonally.
• Fixed an issue causing the Demolisher Firefly to sometimes target and destroy friendly decoys.
• Fixed an issue causing the Sniper Turret to have odd behaviour when shooting at enemy NPCs with shields.
• Fixed several issues causing attachments being misplaced on the Carnage and IWI NEGEV weapons.
• Fixed the text for the Booster Hive to now correctly state that it delivers a stimulant to nearby allies that increases their weapon damage and handling.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to purchase the “Holster Intel: Go West, Young Agent” at Inaya.
• Fixed an issue causing the “Plague of the Outcasts” debuff of the Pestilence to transfer the lower amount of stacks under certain circumstances.
• Fixed an issue that allowed wild life to count towards the Technician and Flamethrower Special Field Research. Be nice to the animals, y’all!

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to progress to a higher World Tier when completing any required Stronghold in another player’s session and leaving that session.
• Fixed an issue causing The Violent Delights bounty to not be completable when it spawns at certain locations.
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to not gain any Seasonal XP when disconnecting or crashing, requiring an additional restart of the game.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to reach The Angel of Mercy contaminated area.
• Fixed an issue causing low level agents to deal higher than intended melee damage while in co-op with a player at Level 40.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be able to change Global Difficulty when in a party with players without Warlords of New York or below Level 40.
• Fixed an issue that allowed a party leader to invite crossplay players into the group while other party members had crossplay turned off.
  • This would cause the non-crossplay players to be kicked off the group. You will now no longer be able to invite crossplay players into the group if any group member has deactivated crossplay.
• Fixed an issue that could cause odd grouping behaviour when a non-Warlords of New York player interacted with the helicopter pilot in Washington to transfer to New York.
• Fixed an issue causing Specialization Skill Mods to not scale correctly at level 40.
• Fixed an issue causing Global Event NPC challenges to only count for the player landing the killing blow.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to gain the Armor Breaker Distinction commendation under certain circumstances.

UI

• Fixed misleading GPS pointing towards a SHD Tech position in the Civic Center area.
• Fixed an issue causing Control Point Alert Level to remain after a player captured a Control Point in New York.
• Fixed an issue causing Gear Score to be displayed when creating a raid group at Warlords of New York maximum level.
• Fixed an issue causing the Directives tutorial to not trigger after finishing the Liberty Island Main Mission and activating Keener’s watch.
• Fixed an issue causing the “Opt in to participate” message to show in the “Rewards” and “Challenges” menu when performing a server transfer despite the event being already activated.
• Fixed an issue causing the “League activity started” celebration and “League activity: Time trial” objective to appear when starting a Time trial Mission on any difficulty.
• Fixed an issue causing the buff icon after using an armor kit with the System Corruption Gear Set to disappear before its visual timer was finished.
• Fixed an issue causing the Keener’s Watch tutorial to trigger on subsequent characters.
• Fixed an issue causing the UI to enlarge when pressing the “I” key while browsing an inventory section through an item.
• Fixed an issue causing non-functional apparel menu to remain on screen when exiting Apparel, Emotes or Weapon Skins while holding option button on any controller.
• Fixed an issue causing non-functional inventory UI to remain On-Screen when accessing and then exiting the store menu through a lootable item.
• Fixed missing VFX for completing a Rogue Agent Encounter.
• Fixed an issue causing the Expedition matchmaking UI element to be available for Warlords of New York players that have not reached level 40 yet.
• Fixed visuals for some modding icons in the weapon modding screen.
• Fixed an issue causing the incorrect message “You left the group” to repeat when trying to invite a player on another platform when you have Crossplay disabled on Stadia or PC.
• Fixed the text of the Shield Skills to correctly reflect that they also scale with the Blue / Defensive Core attributes.
• Fixed an issue causing the “Please wait” message to remain on screen when the player quickly sells and buys back any item from the vendor menu.
• Fixed an issue causing Warlords of New York skills to have placeholder render and missing stats on the Skills overview page of the Quartermaster menu.

Localization

• Fixed missing Italian, Spanish and Arabic voice translation for cinematics.
• Fixed an issue causing the error text “Can’t invite players that have not started the expansion” going out of border for certain languages.

Audio

• Fixed an issue causing the voice over to overlap if the player goes through the Keener’s Watch tutorial too quickly.

Missions

• Fixed an issue causing the Outcast Support NPC to remain stuck in the spawn area in the Federal Emergency Bunker Main Mission on Challenging difficulty.
• Fixed an issue causing too many Outcast Tanks to spawn at the same time during the Stranded Tanker Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing the mission objective to not update if the agent did not interact with the already open elevator doors when entering the Pentagon Main Mission a second time.
• Fixed an issue making it possible to destroy the fuse box before raising the shutter in the New York Federal Reserve Side Mission causing progress to be blocked.
• Fixed an issue causing the interaction with a door look weird after respawning during the Stranded Tanker Main Mission. Yes, technically this is a weird door.
• Fixed a missing interaction highlight on a prop blocking the way during the Pathway Park Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing too few Rogue Agents to be spawned for 4-player group in the Stranded Tanker Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing the error message “Outside playable area” to appear when walking against sandbag props in the City Hall Side Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing the Razorback generator hacking to not start when a player is inside the radius before it activates during the Liberty Island Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing the objective “Meet with Faye and Rhodes” to not update after a Delta disconnect during cinematic during the City Hall Side Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing the player character to not correctly be placed back in the mission area when disconnecting or quitting during the New York helicopter cinematic for the City Hall Side Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing players to not receive any damage from airburst seeker while sitting behind a specific cover piece during the Liberty Island Main Mission.
• Fixed an issue causing players on PC and Stadia to become stuck after climing a metal prop during the Pathway Park Main Mission when being in a 2-player group.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to fast travel to a group member when that group member was in a Classified Assignment entrance.
• Fixed several issues with props in Missions.
• Fixed collision issues in Missions.
• Fixed a number of cover issues.
• Fixed several occlusion issues.

Operation Dark Hours

• Fixed an issue causing Razorback to not drop any subsequent keys after defeating it once.

Open World

• Fixed an issue causing players to become stuck in a container after freeing a hostage.
• Fixed an issue causing Black Tusks to take over too many activities in New York. They also need some time to relax.
• Fixed some weird stairs.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be able to loot a weapon container through a wall.
• Fixed an invisible loot crate. You will ask yourself if there ever was an invisible crate or not…
• Fixed several doors not opening when doing Bounties.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to re-spawn a Hunter encounter when they die to it.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be unable to open a door after taking the appropriate key for a Hunter encounter.
• Fixed an issue causing NPCs to spawn from a manhole and then become stuck in a wall.
• Fixed some lighting issues in the Open World.
• Fixed some issues with buildings.
• Fixed occlusion issues in the Open World.

Dark Zone & PvP

• Fixed an issue causing Agent nameplates to be visible at incorrect distances.
  • SHD Agent name plates are now visible at 15m.
  • Rogue Agent name plates are now visible at 30m.
  • Manhunt name plates are now visible at 50m.
  • These values can change depending on Dark Zone perks.
• Fixed several props.
• Fixed a prop that could cause players to become stuck and immune when dropping from a certain location.

Vanity & Store

• Fixed some animation errors when a player uses the “Gunslinger” emote.

AI & NPC

• Fixed an issue that could cause players to become immobilized by the Riot Foam of enemy NPCs through cover.
• Fixed several issues where enemy NPCs would not shoot at the decoy.

Performance

• Fixed several issues causing low FPS in various Side Missions.
• Fixed a streaming issue in Haven at the beginning of the cinematic after the objective “Meet Faye and Rhodes”.
• Fixed a streaming issue players could encounter when starting the Pathway Park Main Mission.
• Fixed several streaming issues in the Open World.
• Fixed several performance issues during the Operation Dark Hours Raid.