The Division 2 released Title Update 9 (TU9) on April 21st, bringing many smaller and some larger highlights. Now we can upgrade our old Exotics, but we have to reassess really strong items. Here is an overview of the patch note highlights.
What changes with Title Update 9? With the extensive “Warlords of New York” expansion at the beginning of March, much changed in The Division 2, and the developers are still working on the areas of improvement for the loot shooter as well as its second raid.
Update April 21 – 6 PM: The nerf of the M1A Classic including “Bakers Dozen” has been added to the official patch notes and is around 40%.
Highlights of the Patch Notes for Title Update 9
With a maintenance update on April 21, the next major update arrived: Title Update 9. The most important adjustments can be roughly divided into 3 categories:
- Balance Changes
- Exotic Workshop
- Bug Fixes
The comprehensive patch notes are currently only available in English, and here you can find a German summary of the most exciting changes.
Balance Adjustments with TU9
The developers announced some time ago that the 3 strongest items for damage builds would be nerfed:
- Contractor’s Gloves – Armor damage from 11% to 8%
- The Invisible Man – Health damage from 21% to 11%
- Fox’s Prayer – Damage against unprotected targets from 15% to 8%
These items will lose some of their power. However, they may still remain interesting as they provide the opportunity to add a multiplicative bonus to your damage equation. So if you haven’t installed one of the attributes on your weapons yet, you might still get a strong value here.
Additionally, there are several changes to the Exotics:
- Sawyer’s Kneepads – Rework: Now provides more damage when you stand still
- Diamondback – Rework: Now guarantees critical hits for 5 seconds
- Lady Death – No longer influences turret skills
- Bullet King – Base damage now equals the non-exotic weapon variant
- Imperial Dynasty – Shorter cooldown
- Dodge City Holster – Shorter cooldown
- Ruthless & Reckless – Increased explosive damage
And changes to talents:
- Reassigned – Shorter cooldown
- Empathic Solution – Longer buff duration
- Stealthy Death – Larger radius, shorter cooldown
- Switch Crew – Markings remain when no skill is on cooldown.
The adjustments here were largely already known. If you want a detailed look at changes and impacts for the Exotics, check it out here:
Any more interesting changes? Not just Exotics and talents were put under review. Some missions, NPCs, and the assault rifle weapon category also receive adjustments:
- Assault Rifles – Health damage can now increase to 21%
- True Patriot (Gear Set) – The white buff only provides 2% armor per second now
- Missions – The two Pentagon missions are now easier, as are Liberty Island. Wall Street and “Stranded Tanker” have been adjusted.
- NPCs – Many smaller adjustments. Status effects deal less damage, elite enemies deal less damage to skills.
- Shotgun-Sniper – All enemy shotguns deal less damage and have somewhat reduced range.
- Rogue Agents – These random enemies are now not as tough – Less armor and damage.
- Skills – With a shield, we can no longer aim and the sniper turret now has a 50-meter range.
- Blueprints – New Warlords mods for crafting and invasion missions (first run) as well as daily projects now provide blueprints from the general blueprint pool.
Was there a hidden nerf? Yes, there was. Reports of a secret change not listed in the patch notes have been confirmed. The strong rifle M1A Classic, which includes the popular named item “Bakers Dozen,” has been heavily nerfed. The damage has dropped by around 40%.
In the addendum of the official patch notes, the developers apologize for this. Due to a communication error, the nerf was not included in the list.
Exotic Workshop, better Exotic loot and Raid gear for all
About the Exotic Workshop the developers already spoke extensively in their weekly livestream for Division 2 “State of the Game” and with TU9 it has now arrived in the game. We can upgrade our old level-30 Exotics to the WoNY level for an exotic component and a few materials, as well as get the chance to reroll our Exotics.
What’s up with the better Exotic loot? The activities in Division 2 have different loot quality levels. Depending on the difficulty, we receive items that do not fall below a certain minimum value for the attributes. The higher the difficulty level, the higher the minimum values of the loot.
With TU9, every Exotic now drops at the highest loot level, regardless of which difficulty you gather the exotic items. This applies to old Exotics when you reroll something, as well as for the new Exotics that came with “Warlords of New York”.
What about the Raid gear? There are a few gear sets from which only the armor pieces “Chest” and “Backpack” were previously obtainable in the Raid “Dark Hours.” With TU9, you can now obtain these sought-after pieces with special talents outside of the raid. Thus, there are no more raid-exclusive gear sets.
Massive Bug Fixes with TU9
The list of bug fixes is very long. More than 50 entries decorate the patch notes. Here are some of the most interesting solutions:
- Raid – Razorback sometimes did not drop raid keys upon completion. This has been fixed.
- Acosta Go-Back – Now has the correct description.
- Aces & Eights – The backpack talent should now work correctly.
- Nemesis – Now works correctly with the Focus talent.
- Specializations – Mods did not scale correctly at level 40.
- UI – Many small fixes in malfunctioning menu displays.
- Missions – Many errors of stuck NPCs or broken covers have been fixed.
- Open World – Hunter activities could often not be repeated after a death. This has been fixed.
If you want to see the complete list of all changes and adjustments, you can find it in English here in the Ubisoft forum.
April was a bit marked by the DPS glitch for Division 2, which led to many bans and account rollbacks. The developers took strong action and had to defend themselves against a lot of criticism, but were also praised for it. It will be exciting to see how the current changes are received by the agents.
