The next wave of content for Destiny 2 players arrived today as the annual Festival of the Lost event kicked off, adding a Halloween flair to the game. In addition to new loot, cosmetics, and the Haunted Forest activity, Bungie also released update 2.6.1, bringing a ton of sandbox changes to the experience including more than a few nerfs. One such nerf may disappoint players as it impacts one of the newer weapons added with the Shadowkeep expansion.
The Divinity Exotic Trace Rifle, only obtainable from a quest that pushes players through a tough puzzle challenge in the Garden of Salvation raid, features a perk called Judgment that envelops the target in a disruption and weakening field from sustained damage. It's a powerful debuff that can help make fights even easier especially when combined with other Weakening effects players now have access to. In fact, this update increases its potency from the current 25% to 30%.
However, being able to stack debuffs was never apparently part of Bungie's plan, as the studio has announced that it is going to fix the issue in a future Destiny 2 patch. The Weaken effect from Judgment was intended to be a standalone debuff and the game will be fixed to prevent stacking methods. Once the update is live, the cage effect will still appear and continue to be a precision weak spot, but the stacking effect will be removed.
The gun has also been the source of many frustrations lately due to a bug that would cause the game to crash if the weapon was used in conjunction with any sort of target marking effect such as the One-Eyed Mask's vengeance perk. Thankfully, this update contains a fix for that issue which means the weapon may be more viable in certain modes like Gambit or Crucible than it had been previously.
Nerfs were also handed out to a couple of subclasses that have been wrecking havoc in the Crucible. The Code of the Juggernaut Striker Titan and Attunement of Flame Dawnblade Warlock have been adjusted in this most recent update which aims to reduce how long players can stay in their super. This should prevent Titans from using Fists of Havoc as a way to quickly traverse the entire map and add diminishing returns for how much super energy is given back to a Warlock per kill.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Stadia version also in development.