The Expertise system has been one of the more polarizing additions to arrive in The Division 2’s long-awaited Season 9 update. This new form of progression adds an incremental and deliberately slow stat gain to equippable items like guns and armor pieces. According to a May 30 update from Ubisoft, the system had been miscalculating the amount of XP that kills should reward, and as a result, will have to be rolled back to keep game balance in check. Affected Division 2 players will lose some of the unintended progress in their Expertise and Proficiency but will be given free SHD caches with items and materials for their trouble.
For those players unfamiliar with it, the Division 2 Expertise system is a passive XP system tied to individual items rather than your character. The more you use an armor piece or weapon, the more Proficiency points you gain for that specific item. Once you hit a certain threshold, your Expertise level goes up, allowing you to invest resources to increase the item’s Grade and overall stats. It’s not something you actively grind, but rather a little buff that slowly grows in the background as you play the game. Nevertheless, many Division 2 players going into Season 9 with an ingrained farm-and-grind mindset felt that the new system was too slow and stingy.
As it turns out, the Expertise system was going too fast and dolling out more kill XP than it should have, and Division 2 players were on track to hit certain power thresholds and level up caps sooner than expected. As this would impact the long-term power balance of the game and runs the risk of making content feel too easy, Ubisoft has been forced to reset players down to their intended level of progress.
The Expertise system rollback will deploy in The Division 2 on May 31, and afterward you may notice a small decrease in the Proficiency values of items you had put time or resources into to level up. This is ultimately for the best. It was never clear what to do with all the extra power gained through the Expertise system considering that The Division 2’s content is already easy enough to play without it. While we wait for Ubisoft to deliver new and harder missions to justify its existence, it’s best for the Expertise system to not get completely out of control. In the meantime, you can try out the new Target hunt and Countdown game mode in The Division 2 Season 9.
