Destiny 2 mid-season update – everything we know so far

Looking for a breakdown of the Destiny 2 mid-season update? Like many previous seasons, Season of The Deep is going to see a mid-season update, aimed primarily at implementing reworks, gameplay tweaks, and more.

The Destiny 2 mid-season update might not be the largest update players should expect, but it is important. We’ll walk you through all of the changes we know about so far, what they mean for you, and how to prepare for them. It’s a busy week though, with the Destiny 2 Solstice event also taking place. If you need to catch up with that, or the standard weekly Nightfall and weekly eververse store resets, we’ve got you covered.

When is the Destiny 2 mid-season update?

The Destiny 2 mid-season update for Season of The Deep will release on July 18, 2023, following the weekly reset at 6PM BST/ 10AM PT. It’s the only major update of its kind that we’re expecting to see for the rest of this season. After that, the next major event will be the Season 22 release date.

What’s coming in the Destiny 2 mid-season update?

The update will consist of gameplay changes, reworks, and tweaks, aimed at improving different aspects of the game experience. At the moment, we know of three particular areas that will be getting some focus in the update. These are the Crucible, weapon tuning, and server maintenance.

The mid-season crucible update

PvP and the crucible are one aspect that’ll be seeing some more work in the mid-season update. There are three things that the dev team has announced it will be focusing on.

• Respawns – respawn logic was altered at the start of Season 21 to prioritise spawning players near allies, and deprioritise enemy line-of-sight and friendly objective proximity. This was to get players into the action faster. It hasn’t worked too well, with spawn trapping and generally poor spawns becoming common. The mid-season update will improve objective and enemy sight line priorities in deciding spawn positions again, while also keeping ally proximity a priority, to try and find a good middle ground.
• Competitive matchmaking – the mid-season update will aim to refine some recent changes to competitive matchmaking. If you are above what the game considers your ‘target skill’ in terms of rank, there won’t be any limits to how high-skilled the players you match against will be. There will also be less throttling on the division points you earn or lose depending on how far away from your target skill you are.
• Dynamic skill ranges – this is a system designed to equalise the average skill across matches during times of low population days or low population ranks. It was tested previously to some rather unfortunate results, but with further work, it looks as though the dev team are preparing to test it again. It’s not confirmed that this test will be in the mid-season update, but it is a possibility.

We also know that there will be some patches to fix some out-of-bounds spots on various crucible maps, as well as a few rebalances for other standout bits and pieces. The Whisper of Chains stasis fragment will be getting a PvP damage nerf, from 15% down to 5% damage.

The mid-season weapons tuning update

There are plenty of weapons in Destiny 2, and keeping them all balanced is a difficult task. Weapon tuning is another feature we’re expecting to see in the mid-season update. The update is set to bring changes to three different areas, general weapon archetypes, exotic weapons, and perks. Here’s what we know about each so far.

Weapon archetypes

This covers the general changes coming to the different types of guns. There could be further changes we don’t know about yet, but it seems like we’ve gotten a fairly complete list now thanks to developer insights. The weapon archetype changes will be:

• Pulse rifle nerfs – pulse rifles with low aim assist stats will have a smaller auto aim cone, meaning that these guns will be less forgiving on near misses.
• Lightweight bow buffs – lightweight bows are getting a range buff. They’ll be able to hit targets further away before their damage starts falling off, and they’ll be slightly more accurate.
• Submachine gun buffs – SMGs have recently gotten new dynamic reticles when aiming down sights. The mid-season update will aim to declutter these reticles, making them more ergonomic to use.
• Lightweight shotgun buffs – lightweight shotguns will have slightly reduced spread angles, making it easier to hit targets with more or all the pellets in a shot.

Exotic weapons

Exotics are the most powerful weapons in the game. It should come as no surprise then that they’re vulnerable to poor balancing. The mid-season update will aim to make the following changes to the following exotics.

• Graviton Lance – it will be getting a big PvE damage buff (around 67%), and a bit of a PvP nerf. The aim assist bonus from its catalyst will be removed. It’s Cosmology explosion will do 40% less damage to guardians.
• No Time To Explain – the NTTE pulse rifle will also be getting a minor nerf, having its range stat dropped by 10.
• Fighting Lion – it will receive a bug fix, so that the catalyst can now apply its bonus to kinetic and power weapon slots as it’s meant to do.

Perks

Perks are special traits that guns can roll with, giving them different abilities or attributes that help them perform in certain situations. There are a lot of perks in-game. The update will aim to make the following changes to the following perks.

• Gunshot Straight – reduced auto aim penalty by 37%.
• Slickdraw – reduced auto aim penalty by 33%.
• Target Lock – reduced maximum damage bonus from 40% to 25% in PvP.

The mid-season server maintenance update

The Destiny 2 servers have an unfortunate reputation for poor reliability, and as the game has aged, many of these issues have only hoy worse. While the only long-term solution is likely something big, expensive, and time-consuming, the teams assigned to look after the servers still do regular work to maintain them as best as they can, and fix issues that pop up.

During the mid-season update, Bungie will make improvements to the alerts and logging systems, allowing teams to more quickly be made aware of and begin tackling issues that pop up. These changes are designed to reduce the risk of further stability degradation to the servers, and improve the response time to problems.

That covers everything we know about the Destiny 2 mid-season update for Season 21. We’ll keep you updated if we learn more. For now it looks like we now have a fairly strong idea of what the update will entail. The next update isn’t for a while as we’ve still got plenty more Season of The Deep to enjoy. If you want to make sure you’re optimised, and running the best Destiny 2 warlock build, best Destiny 2 titan build, or best Destiny 2hunter build for PvE or PvP activities right now, we’ve got you covered with some extensive guides.

When is the mid-season update for Season of The Deep?

The Destiny 2 mid-season update for Season of The Deep will release on July 18. It will release with the weekly reset at 6PM BST/ 10AM PT.

Are there new weapons coming in the mid-season update?

Unfortunately, there is no new content coming in the mid-season update for Season 21. It is mainly focused around gameplay balancing and improvements.