The Division 2 Update 8.4 is out, bringing a pretty significant number of gameplay changes, reworks and other elements to Ubisoft’s big shooter. The gameplay changes alone are pretty substantial. Open World Activities and Seasonal Manhunt are both getting attention in a few different ways. Seasonal Manhunt will now allow players to adjust the difficulty.
A handful of balance tweaks come in this patch too, with health values for many different units being worked out, the general trend seems to be a buff to players by nerfing unit health. There are some pretty major PvP nerfs coming down the pipe too. All weapons in PvP deal 20% less damage, with rifles and MMRs being handed another 10% penalty. NPC Damage output for all difficulties has been reduced too. The game developer also adjusted health and armor values for enemies based on the activity, so scaling should be a bit smoother.
And as is usual with updates, there are bug fixes coming too.
You can find the full details in the patch notes below.
The Division 2 Update 8.4 Patch Notes
Gameplay changes
- Seasonal Manhunt is changed to allow progress at Normal difficulty and above. This will make playing together easier as all players will gain progress no matter what difficulty was set by the group leader.
- Seasonal Manhunt is receiving a button in the Manhunt UI that allows players to reset the Manhunt to replay it. This allows players to reset the progress specifically and without changing the Global Difficulty.
- This also means changing the Global Difficulty will not reset the Seasonal Manhunt. Players are also required to reset it via the Seasonal Manhunt UI.
- Coyote’s Mask will drop from Coyote with an increased drop chance on higher difficulties.
- We are also looking into providing the Mask for players that have not received them even though they reached Season Rank 35.
- Increasing the reward quality for the following Open World Activities to be in line with other activities: Public Execution, Settlement Blockade and Propaganda Broadcast.
- Reward caches from Conflict matches at maximum level are now of High-End quality.
Balancing changes:
- Reduce NPC Damage output for all difficulties.
- This applies to all NPCs and activities and enemies will do less damage to players compared to their current damage output.
- Reduce NPC Health and Amor for group scaling.
- Enemy Health and Armor scaling for 2-, 3- and 4-player groups based on Veterancy.
- This means Red, Veteran, Elite and Named enemies will have their Health and Armor reduced compared to their current values.
- Additionally, we are adjusting Health and Armor based on activity difficulty.
- This applies to Hard and Challenging difficulties where enemies will have lower Health and Armor compared to their current values.
- An exception are Heroic and Legendary difficulty enemies which will have their Health and Armor?increased?to compensate for the group scaling reductions to their values.
- Black Tusk specific adjustments which went live earlier last week
- Reduced the health of Warhounds.
- Reduced damage of Warhound Sniper.
- Also reduces the damage of the 360 spin of Warhound minigun.
- Increased the intention icon duration of the 360 spin from Warhound Minigun to give players more time to react.
- Reduced weak point health of Warhound Grenadier’s Control Unit.
- Support Station
- Reduced Base Health of Support Station.
- Adjusted health scaling of Support Station with Veterancies.
- Increased likelihood of Support Stations being deployed in the open (away from cover).
- EMP effects will now damage the Support Station.
PvP Balance Changes:
- All PvP weapon damage: – 20%
- PvP Rifles: an additional -10%
- PvP MMRs: an additional -10%
Skills
- Cluster Seeker Mine:
- Reduced distance to bull charge from 12m to 10m.
- Reduced distance from end to explode from 6m to 4m.
Bug fixes
- Fixed missing dialogue localization for Brazilian Portuguese on Stadia.
- Fixed an issue causing developer UI elements being visible in the Language and Settings menu.
- Implemented improvements for data streaming issues on PlayStation 4.
- Fixed an issue that could cause in-game settings to reset after a player respawns.
- Fixed an issue causing the Seasonal Manhunt progress to reset when changing Directives.
- Also fixed an issue causing the Apparel Event Urban Jungle schedule to not show correctly in-game.
- Fixed an issue causing Target Intel to be delivered to the mailbox.
- Fixed an issue causing the Sticky Bomb to not do damage under certain circumstances.
- Also fixed an issue causing the Shock Trap deploys to be very close together when launched.
- Fixed an issue causing Global Difficulty to affect the Operation Dark Hours raid.
- Fixed an issue causing Specializations to not unlock while owning the Ultimate Edition or having purchased the Year 1 Bundle.
- Fixes an issue causing Season rewards to be skipped and instead giving players duplicates when gaining multiple Season Levels.
- Fixed an issue causing the objective “Complete the Roosevelt Island Mission on Hard or Higher Difficulty” to not count towards the Daily Project Outcast Hunt.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the Level 35 Season reward to not be delivered.
- Also fixed an issue causing unintended Health values on Shields.
- Fixed an issue causing Season Ranks to be reset.
- Fixed an issue that caused League Mission Timers to reset when a Rogue encounter wiped the group.