Destiny 2 is planning to make some significant changes to some of the game's most powerful exotic weapons and armor. We already detailed the big nerfs coming to Whisper of the Worm, the extremely powerful and fan-favorite exotic weapon for doing massive damage against bosses. For similar reasons, there are other high-tier and popular exotics that will be getting tuned down once the new season starts.
Developer Bungie explained in its weekly blog that the driving reason for many of these nerfs is because of how good these weapons are in Destiny 2's PvE content. Because many players have these exotics to use in harder PvE content, Bungie is designing and balancing experiences with that in mind. In turn, when players don't have these items, it is making the actual activities that much harder.
Sleeper Simulant
Like Whisper of the Worm, for a time in Destiny 2, Sleeper Simulant was the best option in PvE and in Gambit, which resulted in nerfs for Sleeper Simulant. But even with those nerfs, there have been situations where Sleeper Simulant still does massive damage thanks to its ability to build DPS by bouncing a shot. While Bungie has so far tried to combat the high DPS that can result from bouncing Sleeper Simulant shots by reducing the weapon's effectiveness against specific types of enemies, Season 7 will see the bounced shot damage reduced across the board.
Lord of Wolves
Players have discovered that the Lord of Wolves exotic shotgun can do crazy amounts of damage, which came as a side effect due to the buffs shotguns received at the start of the current Season of the Drifter. As a result, the weapon will get a massive 20% damage nerf in PvE. In addition, its Release the Wolves perk, which doubles the number of projectiles per burst for a short time after getting a kill will be reworked to be a secondary firing mode that the player can choose between by holding the reload button (similar to how Borealis or Hard Light work). The perk's PvE damage and range boost will be removed as well and swapped for a universal damage buff.
Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades is the one exotic on the list with more of a focus on its place among the PvP landscape. This gun is particularly popular in the PC version of Destiny 2, and Bungie sees it as being a little too good. With the upcoming changes, the weapon's signature Momento Mori perk will now end if the weapon is stowed and the perk's PvP damage bonus was reduced to avoid being able to two-tap Guardians when paired with the One-Eyed Mask. The one small buff this weapon is getting is that the Momento Mori perk will go back to affecting six rounds after a previous nerf bumped it down to five rounds.
Exotic Armor Nerfs
When it comes to nerfs for exotic armor, Bungie's eyes turned toward those exotic armor pieces that grant bonus super energy. Essentially, the Season 7 changes will make it so that an exotic cannot give a player back full super energy under any condition. All these exotics will be getting reductions to how well they can regenerate players' supers:
- Skull of Dire Ahamkara
- Orpheus Rigs
- Phoenix Protocol
- Shards of Galanor
- Ursa Furiosa
- Gwisin Vest
Why All the Nerfs?
It looks like Bungie is trying to knock down some of the game's most powerful outliers before Season of Opulence starts, almost undoubtedly to try to preserve the challenge and introduce more loadout diversity ahead of the game's next Crown of Sorrow raid.
In fact, that is exactly why Bungie is sharing this information now, so that players racing for World's First when the Crown of Sorrow raid releases on June 4 will know the details of these significant changes now instead of being surprised by them on launch day.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Season of Opulence begins June 4, 2019.
Source: Bungie