It's been a big week for fans of Destiny 2 as Bungie finally revealed The Witch Queen expansion, the next big chapter for the long running game. Naturally, Savathun is going to be a massive part of the experience, finally bringing the light to her minions and creating Hive Guardians, which have their own super abilities to use against players. While the expansion is still a few months away, Season 15 also launched this week and looks to be a prequel of sorts to the upcoming expansion.
With the Awoken Queen, Mara Sov, back in the picture, players will be attempting to help her fend off the forces of Xivu Arath as well as attempt to find answers for Savathun's Endless Night ploy at The Tower. In addition to new story content, Season of the Lost also brought with it a hefty update, balancing all sorts of elements including weapons, gear, and exotics. Many under used and appreciated exotic gear also got reworked, including the Hunter's hand cannon focused Lucky Pants.
The Season 15 rework for the Lucky Pants saw Bungie add an intrinsic Hand Cannon Holster mod, which gradually reloads the stowed weapon, and completely replaced its previous functionality which basically gave hand cannons better accuracy after switching and loading one round into the chamber of stowed hand cannons after a precision hit. Now, when players ready a fully-loaded Kinetic or matching subclass energy type, each hit increases the damage of the next shot for a short time.
Following this change, players have found that hand cannons are now capable of massive damage. In fact, one post on the Destiny 2 subReddit from user Raymancer indicates that the Last Word can finish the Consectrated Mind boss fight inside the Garden of Salvation in one phase and the Eriana's Vow exotic can hit for 100,000 damage on Honored Colossus Cabal enemies. Naturally, players are able to make normally difficult or lengthier activities easier than Bungie likely intended. While the original Reddit post assumes a nerf is inbound, others in the comments aren't so sure due to how fun it now is as well as how Bungie can specifically tune how these exotics work, considering Hawkmoon's special trait isn't impacted.
For now, it's unknown how Bungie will proceed and with Season 15 still so new, the studio will likely wait to collect more data before it moves to make adjustments. In terms of overpowered weapons, later this year sees the return of the Gjallarhorn rocket launcher, an infamous weapon that quickly became a fan favorite in the first game. Bungie has attempted to temper expectations a bit by confirming that the weapon will be tuned and won't be quite as strong as longtime players will remember.
Destiny 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.