Bungie announces major buffs to airborne effectiveness ahead of Destiny 2 Season 18

Airborne effectiveness has been a recurring issue in the Destiny 2 sandbox ever since it was released with Season of the Haunted. Players have been unable to land shots that, under normal circumstances, would have surely hit while floating in the air.

With the majority of the community complaining on multiple social platforms, Bungie has decided to deploy some major changes before Season 18, despite announcing there will be no sandbox updates.

In the most recent TWAB (This Week at Bungie), the company announced some of these changes. Players can expect the following changes to arrive somewhere before Season 18 and during the Solstice in July.

Disclaimer: The patch notes mentioned in this article are based on Bungie's official website.

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All airborne effectiveness buff scheduled for Destiny 2 Season of the Haunted (2022)

It has been quite the first half of Destiny 2 Season 17 for Bungie, as airborne effectiveness brought more criticism than praise from the community.

Something that was initially announced as a massive game-changer for PvP was spotted inside the sandbox of PvE without any prior announcement.

Typically, this displeased a lot of players, leading to requests for immediate changes and tweaks to balance out Exotics and weapons.

Thankfully, Bungie was quick on the take and decided to work on the issue before they initially planned. The following are all the Airborne buffs coming a month before Season 18:

• Reduced airborne penalties for all Primary weapons—these changes are roughly equivalent to increasing the base AE stat of Primary weapons by ~15 at low stat values
• Reduced airborne accuracy penalty at low AE by 20%-40%, dependent on weapon type.
• Auto Rifle, Pulse Rifle, Scout Rifle, Submachine Gun – 40%.
• Hand Cannon, Sidearm – 20%.
• Bow – 30%.
• Reduced airborne aim assist penalties for the above weapon types and changed the stat scale to provide more benefit to each point
• Reduced airborne auto-aim (bullet bending, Mouse + Keyboard alongside controller) penalty by 20%.
• Reduced airborne magnetism (reticle stickiness, controller only) penalty by 40%.
• Some perks now give a static AE stat buff in addition to their other effects.
• Air Assault: +10 AE at all times in addition to +60 (for 70 AE total) when at low health.
• Extended Mag: +10 AE.
• Steady Rounds: +7 AE.
• Raised the base AE stat on several Exotic weapons, including Suros Regime, Whisper of the Worm, Forerunner, and Monte Carlo.

Gjallarhorn and Last Word will be getting a nerf in Destiny 2 PvP, with the Exotic Rocket Launcher having its proximity and Wolfpack Rounds dealing less damage in both Gambit and Crucible.

On the other hand, Last Word's hip-fire precision aim angle will be reduced by 50%, alongside damage and aim-assist falloff getting reduced by 3m.