Embark takes the nerf bat to Arc Raiders' Venator once more as "it's still dominating in PvP," and while we're at it, the Kettle and Stitcher are also getting reined in

Arc Raiders' Shrouded Sky update is now here, but alongside the new content (and, uh, beards), patch 1.17.0 is bringing a whole bunch of balance changes, including nerfs for the Venator, Stitcher, and Kettle.

The Venator was already nerfed once back in patch 1.3.0 last November, but in the latest patch notes, Embark says it's "kept an eye on our data to see how it performs." Now, the team admits that "many of you have raised concerns that it's still dominating in PVP, and our data has shown that it is one of the highest performing weapons in the game right now." Considering the tier of the weapon, the devs "want it to perform well, but maybe not this well," so another damage nerf is here to "bring down" its time to kill.

As for the Kettle, Embark admits it's "been in a bit of a weird place," with its high damage originally "intended to be used in a more medium range setting at a more deliberate pace" rather than the "close quarters" combat many have been utilizing it in, "effectively turning into an SMG." Since the devs "want to distinguish it more from the Stitcher" but don't want to ruin its "versatility," its base damage is being nerfed from 10 to 8.5 while its "high headshot multiplier" remains intact "to see if we can push players to go for more headshots."

Speaking of the Stitcher, Embark knows its speedy time to kill "can sometimes lead to situations where you're ambushed and killed before you have much time to react," and "as many of you have pointed out, the high headshot damage is a large contributor to this problem." With its headshot multiplier being brought down to 1.75, its base damage to 6.5, and "Per Shot Dispersion" going up by 50% to make "it bloom faster," Embark hopes to "bring that headshot TTK a bit closer to the body shot TTK."

Arc Raiders characters standing together — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

It's not all nerfs, though, as the Jupiter and Aphelion have both seen some improvements. Namely, the former is now able to zoom in further when you're aiming down sights "to give you a better view of the targets you're trying to hit," while equip and unequip times have been reduced "to make it easier to swap to a secondary weapon to follow up on your shot."

As for the Aphelion, "It was intended to be a more PVP-focused legendary weapon, but it couldn't quite keep up with the pacing of many of our other PVP weapons." Embark has now reduced its base reload time, time between shots, vertical recoil, and improved its aim down sights settle speed "to make it feel less bulky and a bit more nimble to use, to make it more viable in PVP."

These specific weapons aside, Embark has also rolled out a broader change to follow up on an accidental alteration introduced in version 1.13.1. "Many of you have reported a 'shadow buff' to the weapons, and after investigating it, we found that 1.13.1 had inadvertently impacted our weapon input buffers," the patch notes state. "Where you previously would have to time your inputs to the intended cadence of a weapon to reach its full potential, you could now instead spam-click the button, effectively bypassing any skill requirement to learn the weapon's cadence."

Embark wants to "keep some of that skill expression, but we also recognize that what we had previously didn't feel very responsive." So, in hopes of finding "some sort of middle ground, we have since added more levers for us to control the weapon input buffering window on a gun-to-gun basis, and we've adjusted the semi-automatic weapons accordingly." Going forward, "the weapons should now still be more responsive to fire when spam-clicking, but the players who choose to pace their shots will see better results."

So, there are some pretty big changes, and that doesn't even touch the long list of fixes and new content, including the two new Arc machines being added.

Arc Raiders players predictably tried to rig matchmaking by lying in post-match surveys, but Embark says those don't do a darn thing: "We get really weird graphs that don't match up with what we're seeing."