No game changes were applied during today’s scheduled weekly server maintenance, which doesn’t mean that a lot of changes are waiting for us to be revealed with update 1.2.
Although the developers remain silent about the actual release date or the new Incursion and Dark Zone changes coming with “Conflict”, we still got a few new bits we can talk about after the first info wave during last week’s stream.
As always, you can watch the full episode of the State of the Game talk from May 12th on Twitch.
Contents
Toughness Indicator & Armor Cap Increase
Calculating your EHP (Effective Health Pool/Effective Hit Points) can be tricky at some point – based on how much Stamina/Health and Armor you have. To make it easier for players, the Health indicator in your main inventory screen between the DPS and Skill Power numbers will be replaced with a new Toughness indicator. The higher your Toughness, the more shots you can take. However, in the end it still will not consider additional bonuses like the “Protection from Elites” attribute as it was said on the stream.
In addition to this, the armor cap will be increased from 65% to 75%. This design decision was made because the overall players’ damage output went up a lot since last update, but the survivability aspect was not being considered that much at all. In order to achieve a higher armor rating and damage mitigation, you would have to sacrifice one or two other major attributes to reach the new cap.
Sentry’s Call Gear Set Changes
Gear Sets have made their first appearance in The Division’s latest content update 1.1. It’s not hard to notice that one of them, the Sentry’s Call Gear Set, seems to be a bit overpowered compared to the other 3, especially in PvP encounters in the Dark Zone.
On the other hand, the Path of the Nomad Gear Set seems to be too bad or not worth to wear at all at the moment, but that’s another story. Because Sentry’s Call was supposed to be only used by Snipers and not the SMG Elite out there, the upcoming update will make sure that the Headshot Bonuses are only applied when using a semi-automatic rifle like the M1A.
Update 1.2 as Weapon Rebalancing Preparator
SMGs and Designated Marksman Rifles are currently the most used and powerful weapons in the game, supported by the fact that those were and are still the easiest ones to acquire via crafting through the first available blueprints for the Vector 45 ACP and AUG A3P as well as the now available M1A blueprint (until this Friday).
Update 1.2 will not directly address this problem, however the significant increase of weapon drops should allow players to try out more and especially other weapons like Shotguns or Assault Rifles. The developers will then evaluate this data and apply changes to the best and not so good weapons in a completely new update afterwards.
New Gear Sets Preview
More Gear Sets will be coming with the next update. To make them more special than the exisiting ones, some of them will be targeting specific weapons with which they are working best. The usage of these Gear Sets and weapon combinations will also influence the aforementioned and upcoming balancing changes for weapons.
GS 240 Stays for Now
Some agents might fear that their gear would become obsolete with the next update and the introduction of a third bracket in the Dark Zone for players with a Gear Score higher than or equal to 200. This is not going to be the case as the maximum Gear Score for items will stay at 240 for now.
Additional Changes
More detailed information about the new content will be revealed soon, but here are some more changes that will find their way into the next update.
- Performance Gear Mods will be buffed in terms of higher skill bonuses to compensate the missing primary attribute.
- Phoenix Credits cap will be doubled from 1000 to 2000.
- Minimum and Required Gear Score for new “Broken Circle” Incursion will be the same as for Falcon Lost (160/180).
- Visual indicator in the Dark Zone to see if you are talking via ingame voice chat or not.
