On this week’s The Division 2 State of the Game stream, Content Lead Hamish Bode is joined by Community Developer Chris Gansler and Game Designer Bruce Kelly to discuss the upcoming first episode of Title Update 5, which now has an official release date: Year One Pass owners will get early access to the two new main missions as well as the Kenly College expedition’s first investigation area on July 23rd. That’s also when the Discovery difficulty of the new Operation Dark Hours raid will become available to all players, along with, of course, the myriad balance changes that the Title Update 5 brings. Then, a week later on Tuesday, July 30th, the new missions will open up for all players, as will the Kenly College expedition and its second investigation area.
The devs also discuss the aforementioned balance adjustments coming with Title Update 5, which — as they have previously detailed — focus largely on bringing skill-based builds up to the same level as weapon-based ones. Notably, the minimum skill cooldown has been reduced from 10 seconds to 3 seconds (save for the Chem Launcher, whose minimum cooldown will be capped at 8 seconds), which will allow players to use their skills much more frequently — with enough cooldown reduction mods, of course. Most skills have also had their damage significantly buffed, and the devs stress that many skills that were previously mere nuisances will be devastatingly lethal following the update. For the full details on what you can expect when Title Update 5 goes live later this month, you can check out the full State of the Game video just below, or head on over to The Division 2’s subreddit for a handy TL;DW summary.
