Massive Entertainment releases patch notes for The Division Public Test Server 4, which brings back Critical Hit Change to SMGs and normalizes gear in Last Stand.

Over the last couple weeks, Massive Entertainment has been testing its upcoming Update 1.6 for Tom Clancy’s The Division on a public test server (PTS). Every few days, Massive has made alterations to the mechanics and features in the game in an effort to improve the playing experience for both the PvP and PvE activities in the game.

Yesterday, Massive launched its fourth iteration of the current PTS for The Division, dubbed PTS4. The newest update brings a handful of changes that could significantly impact the game, especially the PvP modes, such as the new Last Stand game mode. PTS4 changes a few features within Last Stand along with weapon and combat, and fixes a long list of bugs.

Below is a quick rundown of the most significant changes, which can now be experienced in PTS4 on PC. The PTS is not currently available on console.

Last Stand Changes

Since Massive instituted PTS2 for the current round of testing, players in The Division have been able to test Last Stand, the new objective-based PvP game mode in the cover-based shooter. Over the course of the last couple weeks, Massive has tested numerous changes to Last Stand, including gear normalization, personal score allocation, and team makeup.

For PTS4, Massive is adjusting the way gear normalization works for players. According to the patch notes, gear normalization will now provide max Gear Score 256 stats for gear major/minor bonuses, gear mods, performance mods, weapon mods, major stats, weapon damage, and weapon attributes. This means there are only a few features that will differ between players, which should help make gameplay more equal during Last Stand. The normalization mentioned here won’t apply to the regular Dark Zone, which also offers PvP engagements.

The purpose behind the gear normalization is to allow players to create builds that fit their play style, rather than pushing them to whatever the current gear and weapon meta may be in the game. By normalizing the effectiveness of each build, players can choose a range of options without losing out on a chance to defeat the enemy.

In addition to changes to normalization, Massive is updating the fortifications at objectives to do more damage to players, but also take more damage from players. The developer is also adding a “join on the fly” feature to Last Stand, allowing players to join into games already in progress, rather than waiting for a new game to start. Personal score has also been updated to better reward players for their score and effort in Last Stand, and the Mercy Rule has been altered to give a losing team a better chance to rebound.

Combat and Weapon Changes

Since Update 1.6 is focused heavily on The Division’s PvP offerings, Massive is looking to make additional tweaks to combat in the game. Time to Kill has been altered to give players a better chance to defend themselves against other players and use their skills to survive and fight back against other players. This change is implemented both in Last Stand and the Dark Zone.

Massive is also making two notable changes to weapons in The Division. First, Massive is buffing the Historian, an exotic weapon in the game. The Historian was adjusted going into the PTS, but was quickly found to be overpowered. Due to its incredible power, especially for skill-power builds, Massive nerfed it heavily going into PTS3. For many players, the nerf made the gun nearly worthless both in PvP and PvE, which isn’t something that should happen to an exotic weapon.

In response to the feedback about the Historian, Massive has updated the weapon to give back its base damage (which was removed last week), and alter the explosive damage the bullets do when they’ve hit a target. Now, explosive damage will equal 700% of the user’s Firearms. This means the weapon should do base damage with every shot, and a healthy dose of follow-up explosive damage. Hopefully this change will make the Historian a viable option again.

The other notable change to weapons is SMGs regaining their Critical Hit Chance feature. Earlier this year, Massive removed Critical Hit Chance from SMGs and replaced it with Critical Hit Damage. The change nerfed SMGs to the point that very few players used them since. Going back to Critical Hit Chance should help make SMGs a strong contender among the other weapons again in The Division.

Other Changes

As mentioned above, Massive is also making quite a few bug fixes and updates to The Division with PTS4. Since the game is still in testing, the changes mentioned in the patch notes are subject to change and aren’t final for Last Stand or Update 1.6. However, after four weeks of testing, hopefully Massive is close to a final product it can release to all The Division players.

What do you think about the PTS4 changes for The Division?

Tom Clancy’s The Division is currently available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Be sure to check out the full list of PTS4 patch notes on the next page.

Last Stand

Normalization

With PTS4, normalization will roll the max stat for all gear bonuses, gear mods, performance mods and weapons mods – in addition to the previous max rolls for major stats, weapon damage and weapon attributes – which means that your entire character will be scaled to a fully min-maxed 256 build. Your goal when putting together a build for Last Stand should now be completely focused around creating a build that suits your playstyle, instead of only trying to find a build where the stats are rolled fully to your advantage.

Normalization now rolls the max Gear Score 256 stat for:

  • Your Gear major/minor bonuses Gear Mods Performance Mods Weapon Mods Major stats Weapon damage Weapon attributes

Fortifications

We have always wanted fortifications to help a solo player defend a tactical location, especially if the attacking team was not approaching tactically. With the previous tuning players were able to tank and heal against the turrets but the actual Time to Kill for the turret was fairly long. We are making the turrets more lethal if attackers are not playing smart, which should also help solo defenders hold down their home tactical location. The Pulse fortifications have not been changed.

  • The damage of the turret fortifications has increased by 40%. The health of the turret fortifications has decreased by 25%.

Join on the Fly

The issues we had with joining a Last Stand match already in progress during PTS2 have been resolved, and you are once again able to join on the fly. Also, players who joined as a group should no longer randomly be split up at the end of a match.

  • You can now join a Last Stand match already in progress again.

Mercy Rule

We continue to tweak the Mercy Rule and we will continue to adjust it as we gather more data. For now, we want to try to keep it more aggressive and see what players think. We would love to hear your feedback on this aspect.

  • Mercy Rule now activates at 10 minutes instead of eight.

Personal Score

Up until now, the scores used to calculate rewards at the end of the match were placeholders until we had more data on what kind of scores we could expect during a match. With PTS4, the score thresholds for Last Stand rewards have been increased. If your team wins the match, you will always get a win cache, no matter your personal score.

  • The Last Stand score thresholds are now 3000 for 1 cache, 6000 for 2 caches and 15 000 for three caches.

Game changes

Combat

Time to Kill was too fast during PTS3 and didn’t give enough time to work skills into encounters, so we’re lowering the PvP damage multiplier in PTS4. This change is subtle and should not dramatically affect the current pace of PvP. Additionally, with the updated normalization discussed above, players are going to be more lethal in general, which means we need to pull back the Time to Kill slightly.

  • The PvP damage multiplier has been lowered from 0.46 to 0.42. This change applies to both Last Stand and the Dark Zone.

Weapons

Historian

The Historian has been given back its base damage, which means that headshots and critical hit chance will once again have an effect on its performance. As noted during PTS3, the idea is to have a weapon that scales very well with Firearms, so we have given its explosive damage a further boost.

  • The explosive damage will now equal 700% of the user’s Firearms.

SMGs

During the testing of normalization in Last Stand, we had the opportunity to observe legacy SMGs that still had Critical Hit Chance on them in action. While we had initially planned to remove those weapons from the game, we realized that they were in a good place and that people really liked playing with them. Because of this, we decided to give back Critical Hit Chance to all SMGs instead.

  • SMGs have been given back their Critical Hit Chance, with a maximum roll of around 22%.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed a bug in Last Stand where the player’s Last Stand rank was not displayed correctly. Fixed a bug in Last Stand where the player would not receive credit for reviving teammates using Support Station. Fixed bugs in Last Stand where the scoreboard would not display correctly. Fixed a bug where players would be stuck at a vendor if the group leader canceled matchmaking for Last Stand. Fixed a bug in Last Stand where kill notifications while the Points for Kills perk was active did not display correctly for the opposing team. Fixed a bug in Last Stand where the player would spawn in the Dark Zone next time they log in after using Alt-F4 to quit the game. Players can no longer open caches when in a Last Stand match. Fixed a bug with Mobile Cover where talents Adept, Competent and Capable would stay active until either the cover was destroyed or the player changed cover. Fixed a bug where sometimes the player would lose input functionality after closing the stash. Fixed a bug where backpack skins did not display properly on the NinjaBike messenger bag on female characters. Fixed a bug where your Turret and Seeker Mines would attack your own Support Station when Rogue. Fixed an issue with the Distracted talent where it would always be active when shooting at an enemy’s body even if no status effects were active. Fixed a bug where Banshee’s Shadow 4-piece bonus would stop working after changing phases. Fixed a vendor bug where the player was unable to use the mouse to select the item they wanted to buy. Fixed a bug where the LMB pants awarded from Legendary missions looked different on female character models. Fixed a bug where the Defibrillator’s heal over time would not be renewed on multiple uses of the skill. Fixed a bug where Seeker Mines with the Airburst mod would stay active even after being hit by an EMP effect. Fixed a bug where a Favorited item could be accidentally marked as junk. Fixed a bug where the Premium vendor would lose functionality if all items were bought. Fixed a bug where the Signature skill cooldown would not update on the party’s UI if used outside of party range. Fixed a bug where Dark Zone leaderboards would not display. Fixed a bug with the Chromatic aberration graphical setting.