Bungie Accidentally Nerfs Black Hammer And Fix Incoming From Destiny

Gamers don’t need to go far to know that Destiny is among the most divisive games around; the title’s struggles are well documented. Moreover, no matter what Bungie tries to fix with their new game, it’s often the case that they end up turning yet another gamer off in the process.

Such was the case this month when Destiny released their 1.1.2 update. In it, Bungie included a handful of useful features, including increased vault space and some very important fixes for the game’s raid bosses.

But hidden among those “good” changes was yet another unexpected one. See, Bungie tried to make a change to the Black Hammer sniper rifle in Destiny, but they ended up breaking the gun (slightly) in the process. Today, the developer acknowledged the problem and vowed to fix it.

“Additionally, we are aware that the White Nail perk is not activating when targeting Fallen Walker legs. We apologize for the inconvenience. “

Any high level player should be plenty familiar with the Black Hammer. It’s a Legendary sniper rifle that only drops once a player defeats Crota in the Crota’s End raid on Normal difficulty. What makes Black Hammer truly special is its White Nail upgrade, which replenishes the gun’s 3-bullet clip any time they land 3 consecutive precision hits.

Now, in most cases the White Nail upgrade made Black Hammer a godsend – a high level sniper rifle with a seemingly endless supply of ammo. However, when the gun first launched it had some problems; specifically, the gun’s increased damage against Hive enemies made it so the While Nail upgrade didn’t trigger against them. So, the gun that came from defeating a Hive god, and that was supposed to make the Hive-centric Crota’s End raid easier, was made practically useless against those enemies.

Luckily, it wasn’t too long before Destiny fixed the problem simply by turning the Hive damage off. At the very least it made the sniper rifle more useful. That is, before the latest Destiny update hit.

With said update, Bungie was hoping to nerf a specific part of the Black Hammer’s White Nail upgrade that let ‘Immune’ damage count as precision hits. In essence, players could hit a precision shot and then put two shots into an immune target and still refill their ammo. This was a particularly useful trick with the Fallen Walker, whose massive legs double as precision spots and immune spots depending on whether the Destiny tank is vulnerable or not. It was basically an exploit that Bungie wanted to get rid off.

By doing that, however, Bungie ended up making it so the Walker’s legs no longer counted as precision spots for the Black Hammer either. As a result, any player using the Black Hammer against the tank saw no White Nail perk and ran out of ammo quickly.

There’s no word from Bungie as far as when a fix for the problem might arrive, but the good news is they are aware and looking into it. The bad news is that this isn’t the first time Bungie has tried to change something in Destiny and broken something else in the process.

For that matter, why they even needed to address such a small issue when so many other problems are left unchecked is just one of the reasons many deride Bungie and Destiny. They focus on taking away from players more than giving to them. That will hopefully change when the House of Wolves DLC hits on May 19th, bringing with it a new social space and cooperative experience called Prison of Elders. At least we hope…

Did you notice this problem with the Black Hammer sniper rifle? Are there any issues like this that Bungie needs to fix in Destiny ASAP?