Destiny 2's The Witch Queen launched alongside Season of the Risen, and it is one of the best-received Seasons yet. This is likely because Season of the Risen has overall better seasonal activities that fit the story and campaign of The Witch Queen, whereas past releases like Season of the Hunt could feel a bit detached from the accompanying expansion's themes. Season of the Risen also had a finished storyline by its fourth week, whereas in the past Bungie would tie the epilogue of a given narrative arc to its final week or two.
Another reason why Destiny 2's Season of the Risen is more popular than past content is that the current selection of artifact mods feels great without necessarily creating a brand-new meta that will go away when Season 17 launches. The artifact mods available in Season of the Risen are mostly tied to the Void 3.0 update and the release of glaives, a new weapon archetype that has a threefold function: shooting projectiles, raising a shield, and having intrinsic melee combos. While the glaive-related mods are quite good in most of the game's content, the weapon itself is not the best in terms of DPS, resulting in a more varied meta than previous Seasons.
Why Destiny 2's Season of the Risen Succeeds Without Powerful Mods
Previous Seasons in Destiny 2 often had a more focused meta where a certain weapon archetype or two would prevail over the others, especially since the introduction of Champions in Shadowkeep. This held particularly true for Season of the Splicer and Season of the Lost, as both had an incredibly strong mod that made specific weapon archetypes more valuable than others, and thus inherently better overall for both DPS and completing endgame activities.
Season of the Splicer introduced a mod called Breach and Clear, which cost a total of seven energy and was tied to class items exclusively. In exchange for its cost and limits, Destiny 2 players got the ability to weaken all boss enemies on hit with grenade launchers, and the debuff could also be applied to all those enemies whose shields were broken by the same weapon. Weaken has always been one of the strongest debuffs in the game, and being able to apply it by hitting a target with a grenade launcher of any kind - be it a Primary, Special, or Heavy weapon - made all the difference.
Maybe an even greater level of power was introduced with Season of the Lost, as it featured an artifact mod called Particle Deconstruction that increased the damage dealt by fusion and linear fusion rifles with a stacking debuff. This damage modifier was both stronger and weaker than Breach and Clear because it increased the damage of these weapons by 40 percent at five stacks, but it only applied to guns in the fusion rifle family. Still, because Destiny 2 features plenty of fusion and linear fusion rifles across all slots, a go-to loadout consisted of a Special fusion rifle and a Heavy linear fusion rifle to maximize DPS.
Season of the Risen doesn't have powerhouse mods that apply such meta-breaking debuffs, and the fact that glaives are not optimal weapons in endgame content may help the case for a meta about raw damage and utility. The fact that Destiny 2's Vow of the Disciple Raid has many different DPS strategies is proof that there is no best meta in Season of the Risen, but a handful of optimized loadouts that work quite well. Overall, this shows there is no need for insanely strong artifact mods in new Seasons, which is also good for Bungie's interest in allowing players to make their own builds and experiment with the sandbox.
Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.