In the leadup to the next season of Destiny 2, developer Bungie has released an all new This Week at Bungie blog post to bring players up to speed with the current plans for how to retool weapons in the game's future. This includes a major sandbox update in general, as well as some fine tuning of Destiny 2's best weapons, with PVP as the major focus and PVE seeing more buffs than nerfs.
These changes are set to be implemented as Season 15 of Destiny 2 begins, meaning that the retooling will appear in the update scheduled to launch next week. Interestingly, this update appears to be looking more at increasing the utility of weapons that have either gone underappreciated or have recently begun to take off, as opposed to nerfing popular weapon options.
One of the most substantial changes coming to Destiny 2's meta involves the primary weapons, or anything that fires using what is currently classified as primary ammo. These weapons will now have infinite ammo, meaning that players won't have to worry about running out of bullets in the more standard archetypes anymore, and can continue firing without a need to jump out into danger to pick up white ammo drops. This does also affect several perks and exotic weapons in ways that make some irrelevant, such as Drop Mag, which has had its downside of reducing reserve ammo replaced with a reduced magazine capacity.
Additionally, the retooling has made a heavy emphasis on reworking the utility of Fusion Rifles across all subfamilies, addressing previous changes to damage that separated between archetypes and bringing them all in line together. This means that all Fusions Rifles will add a 15% damage bonus to all subfamilies, based on the initial stats before the previous retooling that had started the increase in utility in the first place. Then for Destiny 2's most popular exotic weapons, several of these special tools have been altered to help them better fit the meta Bungie is trying to build, with weapons like Anarchy losing 30% boss damage, or Fighting Lion's base reload speed being set to zero.
According to Bungie's own words as the blog post guides players through these changes, the idea for this retooling is less about nerfing players' favorite weapons and more about lifting up less used options into the top tier. This goes for Destiny 2's best perks as well, where several are being reworked specifically for the infinite primary ammo and Fusion Rifle and Breech Grenade changes, but others are being left in players hands due to popularity. The full list of changes can be found below.
Global:
- Stasis Power weapons are in the Power slot, but all other Stasis weapons are in the Kinetic slot. This is to avoid overcrowding the Energy slot, and so that it’s reasonable to use one in match game content. The Kinetic slot won’t be renamed at this time.
- Stasis weapons don’t intrinsically do anything differently from weapons of other damage types, but they are the only weapons that can roll with Stasis perks.
- Fixed the quickswap glitch.
- All Primary ammo weapons now have infinite ammo.
- Inertia Override has been adjusted to account for there being no Primary bricks.
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Drop Mag's downside of reducing reserve ammo is now almost meaningless.
- Reworked to be +reload speed, -magazine size.
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Compact Arrow Shaft's upside of increasing reserve ammo likewise.
- Reworked to be +reload, +handling.
- Updated some other perks that refer to reserves in a way that's no longer accurate.
- See notes on Fighting Lion and Sweet Business in the Exotics section below.
- All Trials weapons available in Season 15 now have seven perks in each column (was 5).
- Added one or two of the original perks to each column for the Luna weapons reissued in 3.2.1 (i.e. the Lectern weapons only).
- Added one of the original perks to one or both columns for the Dreaming City weapons reissued in 3.2.1 (Tigerspite, Twilight Oath, Abide the Return).
Breech Grenade Launcher:
- Reduced blast radius by 0.4m, e.g. max blast radius decreased from 4.55m to 4.15m, min blast radius decreased from 3.80m to 3.40m.
- Reduced splash damage by 20, which reduces total damage for a direct hit from 220 to 200 (before taking spike or proximity grenades into account).
- Increased damage in PvE by 12% (because of the above splash damage change this results in a small overall buff to combined damage).
- Witherhoard is unaffected.
Machine Gun:
- Increased damage in PvE by 20%.
Hand Cannon & Scout Rifles:
- Increased damage vs. minors by 15%.
Fusion Rifle:
- Increased PvE damage bonus such that all subfamilies have a 15% PvE bonus (previously high impact was 0%, precision and adaptive were 10% and rapid-fire was 12.5%).
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Pushed subfamilies further apart, adjusting charge time, shots fired per burst (was seven for all subfamilies) and damage (note that the "base" below means without battery perks, a charge time masterwork or the Adept Charge Time mod):
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High Impacts charge slower, and while still strong require more planning to use effectively.
- Base charge time increased from 0.86s to 1.0s.
- Shots per burst reduced from seven to five.
- Reduced total damage per burst.
- With the reduced shots per burst, these are now less reliant on stability, so can stack a bit more range.
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Precisions and Adaptives are close to unchanged.
- Base charge time is unchanged.
- Shots per burst is unchanged at seven.
- Very slightly increased total damage per burst.
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Rapid Fires charge faster, allowing them to be used reactively against charging enemies, or aggressively when pushing forward.
- Base charge time decreased from 0.54s to 0.46s.
- Shots per burst increased from seven to nine.
- Increased total damage per burst.
- With the increased shots per burst, these are now more reliant on stability, but with the increased damage they're less reliant on range.
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High Impacts charge slower, and while still strong require more planning to use effectively.
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Parts of this work required adjusting several Fusion Rifle perks, and one mod:
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Backup Plan's implementation was incompatible with the Fusion Rifle changes, and we felt like the perk could use a rework anyway.
- Removed +100 to charge time stat, adjusted charge time multiplier from 0.85 to 0.7, now scales damage by 0.8.
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Liquid Coils and Accelerated Coils needed a rework for similar reasons.
- Both converted to scale charge time and damage instead of modifying the charge time stat.
- The final effect is much the same as before, but these are now more robust, however they won't visibly change the charge time stat in the inspection screen.
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The Adept Charge Time mod.
- Changed functionality to scale charge time directly instead of changing the charge time stat, without adjusting the damage.
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Backup Plan's implementation was incompatible with the Fusion Rifle changes, and we felt like the perk could use a rework anyway.
- Adjusted the Fusion Rifle stat order so it matches other weapons (stability and handling were out of order).
Perks:
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Firing Line
- Reduced damage bonus to +20% precision damage for all supported weapon archetypes (was highly variable depending on weapon type).
- Will roll on some Sniper Rifles, Linear Fusion Rifles and Machine Guns, and maybe some other stuff in the future.
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Certain damage perks only affected impact damage on explosive weapons, these specific perks have been updated to also increase detonation damage.
- Kill Clip
- Rampage
- Adrenaline Junkie
Source: Bungie.net