Bungie recently released a new This Week At Bungie post, where plenty of changes coming in Destiny 2's next season are outlined and explained thoroughly, especially highlighting the reasoning behind every choice. With Destiny 2 being an ever-evolving game with an adaptive meta that shifts every season, it shouldn't come as a surprise that many of these changes may be very impactful to a selection of specific builds out there. Some of these balance changes will buff a few key aspects of the game going into Season 15, while others will open up new exciting possibilities for other builds to become just as good, albeit with different items and mods.
The TWAB discussed here is the penultimate sandbox update from Bungie before Destiny 2's Season 15 launches in just 12 days from today, and it is going to be sparking quite a few debates over what's good for the game and what is not. Currently, there are very few builds that can truly compete for the best spots in high-end content in Destiny 2, and especially so in PVE due to the way Raids and Grandmaster Nightfalls are structured in terms of the artificial difficulty scaling with Champions. Champions are a big threat in the game because of their high damage output and the fact that they have to be stunned with appropriate mods to make them vulnerable for a short span of time, making all sorts of extra damage or burst damage very valuable.
Changes to Destiny 2's Top-Tier Super Exotics and Underused Ones
In the past few weeks, it became apparent that one of Bungie's goals for Destiny 2 is to make the game more oriented towards its gunplay rather than all of the cool abilities that can be used by each subclass, or even Supers. One of the main things that will be changing when Season 15 comes to Destiny 2 are those Exotics that generate Super energy when certain conditions are met, and the changes may seem like nerfs in most cases, but they are actually being implemented to make for more even ground. Exotics like Ursa Furiosa, Shards of Galanor, Geomag Stabilizers, and Phoenix Protocol have been dominating the PVE meta for a long time now, to the point that different choices were frowned upon by some players.
These Exotics will all see a cap of 50% to the amount of Super energy they can restore when used, which makes some of them suddenly less desirable choices, and that's actually good. Having a few overly powerful Exotics and a handful of underperforming ones can ultimately hurt the game more than it can do good, which means that reducing the power of those items that are too strong will open up more options when tackling the hardest content in the game. That's not all though, as Bungie also made sure to make up for this loss of power by improving several class-specific Exotics that have been underused for way too long, including items that were previously considered close to useless.
Among them, those that stand out the most are the Titans' Precious Scar Exotic helm and another Exotic headpiece for the Warlocks, called The Stag. These items have never been great because they were intended to be useful in dire conditions, which coincidentally meant that their buffs were also extremely negligible when it came to making a difference. However, Precious Scars will now create a burst of healing energy and provide bonus Recovery around the player when killing enemies with weapon damage matching the wearer's subclass, while The Stag will now provide a huge boon to damage reduction to all allies standing in a Rift created by the player.
Other notable buffs are those for two Hunter Exotics, namely the Graviton Forfeit helm and the Lucky Pants legs. Graviton Forfeit is one of those items that are overlooked because better alternatives exist that do something very similar to its effect, but the new buff makes its invisibility last longer, while also providing extra melee regeneration speed, Recovery, and weapon reload speed while invisible. Lucky Pants got their perk reworked in a way that now automatically implements a brand-new mod that reloads stowed hand cannons over time, and also got a damage boost to Kinetic hand cannons and those that match the energy of the wearer's subclass.
Warmind Cells, Ammo Economy, and Auto-Loading Weapons
Another huge change to the current Destiny 2 meta will come with Warmind Cells being nerfed quite heavily. Bungie was very blunt with this, as these glowing cells provided way too much damage and area of effect for very little investment and effort, making them a must in high-end content. The base damage of Warmind Cells will be nerfed, as well as bonus damage and range that other mods of the same line provide.
This will likely mean that Warmind Cells will see much less use in Season 15 than ever before, since they were first added into the game, and this will in turn have beneficial effects. Destiny 2 offers a great selection of mods that can make for unique combinations, and yet most never see the light of day because Warmind Cells exist. Elemental Wells, especially, will now be a much more consistent choice thanks to the nerf of Warmind Cells and the buffs for mods like Elemental Armaments and Font of Might.
Furthermore, Bungie will also make plenty of changes to ammo mods, starting with multiple copies of Scavenger mods now not stacking anymore. This is to prevent some weapons to have too many reserves in both PVE and PVP. Another healthy change is coming in the form of primary weapon kills now having an increased chance to drop ammo bricks based on the Ammo Finder mods used by players.
Finally, another interesting addition comes with Holster mods. These are going to be very impactful because they will likely cost a relatively small amount of energy and allow weapons to be automatically reloaded while holstered, which is now only done with certain Exotic catalysts or with guns rolled with the Auto-Loading Holster perk. This new line of mods will likely help Destiny 2 shine more in the long run, as it removes the need for Auto-Loading Holster on some weapons, and it also makes others inherently more viable. Overall, players should be excited about the changes, even for the nerfs, because they are made to open up lots of options for more diversity and customization.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.