The Halo sandbox is not often subject to change, but Halo Infinite‘s Winter Update—launching next week on Nov. 8—is bringing a number of small adjustments to a variety of weapons to perfect the combat experience.
The sandbox team at 343 Industries explained that they’re happy overall with the current state of balance in the game in a blog post released today, but that a series of nerfs and buffs are coming based on community feedback around specific sore spots. The patch will additionally see the removal of the “snap slide” tech that was breaking the game flow of many Arena maps.
The majority of the buffs center around the difficulty of using some weapons. Community manager Unyshek explained that players have said both the overcharged Plasma Pistol and Pulse Carbine are hard to track with, even in their intended mid-to-close range window. Their upcoming tuning focuses on this, bringing improvements to the tracking and velocity of the weapons’ projectiles so that they feel more valuable to pick up.
The Plasma Pistol will see a further buff to its base damage as well after the sandbox team took notice of how rarely the weapon’s regular firing function was actually used.
Plasma Pistol changes
- Increased base shot damage from 20 to 28
- Increased charge shot angular velocity from 20 to 35 degrees per second
- Increased charged shot guided angular velocity at rest from 50 to 70 degrees per second
Pulse Carbine changes
- Increased guided angular velocity at rest from 25 to 35 degrees per second
- Decreased angular velocity from 50 to 30 degrees per second
- Increased targeted leading fraction from 0.35 to 1
- Increased guided projectile error radius from 0.2 to 0.22 degrees
The buff to the Commando hits a similar pain point, with Unyshek saying that “one of the most common pieces of feedback we’ve seen is that aiming with the VK78 Commando felt loose, especially at shorter range.” This has led to a small increase in both its aim assist and bullet magnetism.
VK78 Commando changes
- Increased Headshot Prioritization Angle from 0 to 0.1 degrees
- Increased Bullet Magnetism Angle from 1.25 to 1.3 degrees
- Increased Aim Assist Angle from 5 to 6.25 degrees
- Decreased minimum error angle max from 0.8 to 0.6 degrees
The Battle Rifle is one of the few pieces of the sandbox to see a nerf in this patch, due to the common talking point that the weapon is simply a bit too easy to use. As it is the starting weapon in competitive play as well as ranked, it will receive a round of nerfs next week intended to raise the skill ceiling of the weapon. These tuning changes mostly focus on its bullet magnetism.
BR75 Battle Rifle changes
- Headshot Prioritization Angle reduced from 0.25 to 0.2 degrees
- Bullet Magnetism Angle reduced from 2.4 to 2.2 degrees
- Bullet Magnetism Range reduced from 20wus to 18wus
- Bullet Magnetism Falloff Range reduced from 12wus to 10wus
The Frag Grenade nerf is a small one on paper but has potentially far-reaching consequences for the effectiveness of grenade spam in the game. 343 believed the Frag Grenade to be too powerful in its current state, capable of clearing out rooms with ease or securing a martyrdom kill with very little time for the enemy player to react. An increase to the detonation timer aims to change that.
Frag Grenade changes
- Increased detonation timer by 0.2 seconds
The Disruptor pistol was the last weapon to get touched for the Winter Update’s launch but comes with a far more straightforward buff than many of the other guns touched. An increase to the magazine count hopes to make confirming kills a lot easier for players, although the inconsistency of the weapon’s damage-over-time effect—an issue that Unyshek says they are aware of—won’t be seeing an improvement until a later patch.
Disruptor changes
- Increased magazine ammo count from 10 to 12
Aside from the adjustments coming to the weapons above, there was one final element of the sandbox that was tackled for the Winter Update: “snap slides.” Not to be confused with the “curb slide” tech that allows players to move around the map at much greater speeds than intended, snap sliding is a far more aggressive abuse of momentum. Since the tech was allowing players to make jumps otherwise impossible on many Arena maps that ultimately broke game flow, 343 has fixed the physics bug that allowed for them to be possible. Curb sliding, fortunately, will still remain.
The concluding paragraphs of the blog detailed a lot of future changes, too. Updates and improvements to things like server desync, M&K aiming, and the availability of red reticle on PC didn’t make it into the Winter Update but are still slated to come out “in the next few months.”
Halo Infinite‘s Winter Update will be launching next week on Nov. 8, with two new maps, a free battle pass, and a variety of quality-of-life adjustments before season three hits in 2023.
