With Beyond Light, the highly anticipated expansion to Destiny 2 finally out, players are quickly running through the DLC's new content and occasionally hitting new glitches and exploits that came with the update. One of these unanticipated issues has recently taken a toll on Destiny's Crucible activities, leading to an exotic weapon being removed as to maintain the competitive balance of the PvP game modes.
The Witherhoard exotic grenade launcher was quickly found to have picked up an issue when the Beyond Light update tweaked a number of Destiny 2's exotics in order to balance them with the new light levels and updated content. This also isn't the only exotic that was negatively impacted, as Rose also had a light level bug, with both weapons warranting an official tweet from Bungie to acknowledge the issues.
Players have been quick to report exactly what the issue with the Witherhoard is, with a video by YouTuber Cheese Forever giving one of the most in-depth looks at how the bug works. The bug itself involves the way that Witherhoard's perk creates a damage over time effect while enemies are inside of the bubble that the grenades leave behind. While the pool of darkness is supposed to damage anyone who stays inside too long, the exploit that breaks the weapon in the Destiny 2's Crucible is that the effect continues even after leaving the pool, making the exotic a one-hit kill at times.
For the moment, Bungie has seen it necessary to remove the weapon until further notice due to the way that the issue has been negatively affecting the Crucible. Many of the reports about the Witherhoard were about the issues players have run into with the weapon in PvP, but it isn't entirely clear if this bug had become an exploit in PvE activities. It's possible that the extra ticks of damage had been occurring in activities like Beyond Light's new public events, with AI controlled enemy movement patterns making it difficult to exactly tell the difference.
Glitches and exploits are a normal part of massive updates like the one that recently arrived with Destiny 2's latest expansion. However, in the case of the weapons like Witherhoard that have caused issues with Beyond Light, Bungie is at least addressing these individual situations by removing the weapons quickly. With any luck, these issues will be resolved soon enough to allow players to use their preferred exotics while working towards the next light level soft cap in Destiny 2: Beyond Light.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.