With the introduction of Season of the Lost to Destiny 2, Bungie also implemented several power rebalances to popular weapons and armor, as well as the many mods and perks that can be applied to each. One perk in particular that took a substantial nerf in the new season of Destiny 2 has quickly been called out by the community as having been an overcorrection given the circumstances of activating the damage potential.
The perk in question is called Explosive Light, and it originally had the potential to greatly increase the damage of select rocket launchers as long as players could collect orbs of light. However, the current build of the perk keeps it from standing out against other perks available for rocket launchers in Destiny 2, especially considering the orb of light requirement.
Reddit user blyat1902 shared their own findings about how the damage of Explosive Light stacks up against other mods and perks in Destiny 2 after the launch of Season of the Lost. According to the damage numbers found in this experiment, the player found that Explosive Light's damage comes shy of the Vorpal and Lasting Impression modifiers. The problem here is that players need to pick up six orbs of light in order to hit Explosive Light's maximum damage, while Vorpal and Lasting Impression do more with less setup.
The nerf to explosive light was way too extreme and now the perk is very underwhelming compared to its counterparts. from DestinyTheGame
Further experimentation from a player posting in the comments of the original post as showed a more extensive damage breakdown, revealing how Explosive Light compares to these other perks with several rocket launchers. The result is that the perk is now less effective than others like Vorpal, even after picking up the maximum number of orbs of light to get the largest damage increase available. To make matters worse, for some weapons that can have multiple Destiny 2 mods or perks that work to increase damage, Explosive Light does not stack with anything to make it worth the effort of keeping it on top of something more useful.
Bungie has been more open about damage values and how things work under the hood recently, especially leading up to the release of Season of the Lost. So, it is likely that the developer is paying close attention to how the community has reacted to this change for Explosive Light, and will be working on a fix in the future. However, as the developer continues to make secret changes to Destiny 2 outside of patch notes, it is still up to players to find this rebalancing nerfs like what's happened to Explosive Light.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Stadia X/S.