Destiny 2's Season of the Risen has been arguably one of the most successful accompanying releases to ever drop alongside a big expansion, and it showed that Bungie can wrap up the narrative of a given Season in only a handful of weeks. Season of the Risen's lack of powerhouse mods also played a big part in differentiating the meta in a way that doesn't make some weapons and Exotics blatantly better than the rest, which was a healthy change of pace from Season of the Splicer and Season of the Lost. These two, in fact, drastically altered Destiny 2's gameplay loop by featuring immensely powerful seasonal mods that ended up defining the meta more so than past Seasons.
Season of the Splicer came with a grenade launcher-exclusive mod that made this weapon archetype apply the weaken debuff on all bosses and enemies whose shields were broken this way, which was the pinnacle of Anarchy's power. Season of the Lost came with Particle Deconstruction, which was so strong that it overshadowed Gjallarhorn's return due to a fusion rifle-focused meta, with all fusion rifles across the board also getting plenty of buffs to make them better picks. Destiny 2's recent TWAB may be hinting at some kind of powerful mod for either machine guns or trace rifles, or even both, and that change would be a good one.
Why Destiny 2's Meta Could be Shaken Up in Season 17
Destiny 2 does have weapon usage charts listed on third-party websites, such as DestinyTracker, and it's worth noting that both trace rifles and machine guns are among the least used weapon archetypes across all game modes. This is understandable due to machine guns failing at the add-clearing niche and not providing burst damage like rocket launchers or sustained damage like linear fusion rifles, whereas trace rifles' scarce success is often attributed to them primarily comprising Exotic guns.
Trace rifles and machine guns are likely the two most niche and underused weapon archetypes in the game, which means that Bungie is also going to make them more impactful with complementary mods that either increase damage or enhance utility in Season 17. This is a particularly likely outcome because yesterday's TWAB included a FAQ section with a question that read as follows: "Trace Rifles and Machine Guns are both getting buffed—does this suggest future anti-Champion mods?," and Bungie's reply was "No comment." Destiny 2 fans will know that this line does say a lot about what's to come next Season.
In fact, it's very plausible at this point that both trace rifles and machine guns will get anti-Champion mods to support players tackling hard PvE activities, and that alone is a great change. Oftentimes, anti-Champion mods are provided for many tested and true weapons, more often than not a healthy selection of Primaries, but the meta-changers are almost always Special and Heavy weapons. In this case, having mods that encourage Destiny 2 players to go out of their comfort zones and pick underused weapon archetypes like trace rifles and machine guns would be beneficial.
While machine guns have been around for a shorter time than trace rifles, the latter category provides just a few options since there were only Exotic trace rifles prior to the 30th Anniversary patch, which introduced the first Legendary one. This means that the next Season could very likely have at least a couple of new trace rifles, and possibly even a new Exotic, especially seeing how the Ritual weapon for Season 17 is a machine gun. Overall, there's a fair chance that these two unused weapon archetypes will see much more action next Season, which can be a good way to highlight their weaknesses and ways to improve them in regular gameplay.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.