Bungie's beloved shooter Destiny 2 has enjoyed a wide-spread audience thanks to its unique mix of abilities and gunplay across a beautifully realized science-fiction world. The MMO hasn't always been favored by its audience, however, as occasional hiccups in content deployments would readily frustrate players. It looks like history is currently repeating itself.
Destiny 2 has a mod system that allows players to customize their abilities and player statistics that marry well with how individual players prefer to work through the content. These mods work akin to Warframe, slotting into armor that matches the energy type of the mod. Seasons typically offer new mods that bring new and creative ways of clearing foes across the galaxy, and can also bring specific armor sets that have unique slots. Players invest heavily into these mods, and the understanding of the mod system synergizing with playstyles, which brings a bit of frustration were specific mods to get stealth-nerfed.
Last night, Destiny 2 received a patch that stealth-nerfed two popular mods, underpowering them in comparison to their standard operation. The two mods that were nerfed are Reactive Pulse and Surprise Attack. First noted by Twitch streamer Ehroar, these mods have gone from powerful options for late-game content to struggling to inflict a modicum of influence on play.
Reactive Pulse emits a burst damage attack when struck by an enemy, allowing players to dive into the fray and eliminate enemies as a side-effect of merely taking damage. The mod has received a sizeable damage decrease in last night's stealth-nerf, to the point that it now struggles to kill even the weakest enemies in the game. Ehroar proposes that this shift was to stymie Destiny 2 AFK farming that was prevalent in the past season. The consequence is that now, active players have noted that Reactive Pulse has become almost worthless while AFK-farmers are now using other mods to complete their objective.
Surprise Attack is a mod that uses stacks of Charged with Light, where players reloading a sidearm would consume all stacks to offer a massive damage buff. This mod paired well with every buff within the title, making it a favorite of players that wanted to use their sidearms. Now, the buff Surprise Attack offers has changed from 100% to a reported 35%. This debuff mitigates the number of players that can successfully clear content using only a sidearm, as the mod empowered sidearms to the point that primary weapons were pointless.
The stealth-nerfs have the Destiny 2 player base frustrated with the lack of communication coming from Bungie. While the nerfs could be reasonable, and even argued for by the developers, many players logged in today to simply find that their preferred build has been intentionally broken, and left to figure out both why, and how.
Destiny 2 is available to play on the PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.