Bungie provides more details on the new weapon tuning scheduled for the forthcoming Destiny 2 Lightfall season. These include new weapons enhancements, increased exotic weapons, and another Eager Edge rework.
Bungie stresses that Destiny 2 season 20 will be focusing on heavy weapon tuning, with particular emphasis on PvE content, and the addition of'subclass verbs' to multiple Exotic weapons where appropriate to aid in their new anti-Champion capabilities. There are also a couple of nice quality-of-life enhancements, especially for those of us who are playing Destiny 2 on PC.
If you've played Destiny 2 on PlayStation or Xbox, you'll likely notice that your weapon's reticle turns red when it hovers over an enemy inside your weapon's effective range. Bungie says the colour will become customizable in the future, allowing you to modify it to your liking.
Linear Fusion Rifles are unexpectedly being thrown with the nerf hammer. They "outperform other heavy weapons for boss damage by a wide margin," so they're getting a heavy 15% nerf. This won't, however, apply to the Sleeper Simulant and Queenbreaker, because they don't otherwise exist to justify their use.
Machine Guns, for example, receive a roughly 10% damage boost, along with a substantial increase in their reserve ammunition stock to increase their durability in tougher content. Heavy Grenade Launchers are "substantially below other heavy options for damage," meaning they're getting a big damage boost, a wider blast radius, and improved collision features to make grenades easier to land.
In PvE, Kinetic weapons get a boost to their damage when compared to unshielded targets, as well as an additional bonus when using special ammo. This bonus is removed from Stasis weapons, however, to compensate for their extra functionality. Bungie also promises a "Kinetic damage type reward."
When necessary, some Destiny 2 exotics will get additional himing, such as several subclass 3.0 verbs aimed at giving the weapons additional weapon functionality and some thematic flair. The Queenbreaker's shot now chains to enemies and applies the Arc 3.0 blind effect, as well as from the Grand Overture.
Ruinous Effigy's Transmutation sphere will now suppress enemies, while Leviathan's Breath will apply volatile on a perfect draw impact. Sunshot, Polaris Lance, One Thousand Voices, and Two-Tailed Fox will now apply scorch stacks, while Prometheus Lens will now provide the Incandescent effect, allowing it to incinerate nearby enemies upon kills.
Bungie adds that it's already working on future seasons, including changes to exotic weapon reticles and charge meters and exotic perk counters.
Season 20 of Destiny 2 – Weapon Changes – Destiny 2 Lightfall Changes
Here are the most recent patch notes for Season 20 weapon tuning in Destiny 2: Destiny 2.
When you're above an enemy within your weapon's effective range, your red reticle is now enabled on your PC.
- Reduced damage vs. Champions, minibosses, bosses, and vehicles by 15%.
- Sleeper Simulant and Queenbreaker are unaffected – Sleeper fans, this is not a drill.
- Increased damage by ~10%, with the following effects on time to kill (TTK) against a Guardian with Tier 6 resilience:
- High-Impact Frame: TTK reduced from 0.67s to 0.50s.
- Rapid-Fire Frame: TTK reduced from 0.53s to 0.47s.
- Adaptive Frame: TTK unchanged at 0.53s.
- Increased reserve ammo by 50% at 0 inventory stat, and 20% at 100 inventory stat. (Inventory stat is a 0-100 value behind the scenes. This is presented as the actual number of rounds in-game, but you can take this to mean that low reserves Machine Guns get a big boost, while large reserves Machine Guns get a smaller boost.)
- Increased damage vs. Champions, minibosses, bosses, and vehicles by 20%, minors by 40%.
- Improved projectile collision, making it slightly easier to land hits.
- Increased blast radius by 1m.
- Parasite is unaffected. It does huge damage already.
- Shotgun reticles now change in size proportional to spread angle.
- Related note: The Legend of Acrius hip-fire reticle is now a bit more representative of its (very large) spread angle.
- Kinetic Primary weapon damage multiplier increased from 1.05 to 1.1.
- Kinetic Special weapon damage multiplier increased from 1.05 to 1.15.
- Kinetic slot Stasis weapons no longer have the 5% damage bonus vs. unshielded targets in PvE.
- There’s also a Kinetic damage type perk coming in Lightfall.
- The Queenbreaker: Shot now chains to nearby enemies and uses Arc 3.00 blind.
- Ruinous Effigy: Transmuation sphere slam attack now suppresses.
- Leviathan’s Breath: Now applies volatile on perfect draw impact. Increased damage from 396 to 442 (This allows it to once again one-hit kill all supers in PvP). Increased damage vs. Champions by 30%.
- One Thousand Voices: Each explosion now applies 10 + 5 (with Ember of Ashes) scorch stacks.
- Sunshot: Explosion on kill now applies 10 + 5 scorch stacks.
- Polaris Lance: Perfect Fifth shots now apply 40 + 20 scorch stacks instead of a custom burn.
- Two-Tailed Fox: Solar rocket now applies 60 + 30 scorch stacks instead of burn, the void rocket already applies suppress, and the catalyst completes the trifecta.
- Prometheus Lens: Added the Incandescent perk to the catalyst.
- Grand Overture: Switched the catalyst to use Arc 3.0 Blind.
- We’re starting to experiment with hip-fire weapon reticles conveying more information, and used The Manticore as a test bed for this. You can expect to see more weapon-type or Exotic weapon functionality showing up in hip-fire reticles in Season 21 and beyond.
- Added a reticle element to The Manticore showing current stacks of Antigrav Repulsor.
- No longer deactivates when moving faster than 35ms.
- Deactivates correctly after a single melee swing.
- Reduced the base lunge distance buff from 2 to 1.8.
- Reduced airborne lunge distance penalty from 25% to 20%.
- The enhanced perk now increases lunge distance slightly, back up to 2.
- Osmosis now works with Strand.
- Elemental Capacitor now has the following effect when using a Strand subclass: +20 airborne effectiveness (+25 for the enhanced perk).
- Rewind Rounds rebuilt to work on non-Vault of Glass weapons.
- Renamed ‘Blinding Grenades’ to ‘Disorienting Grenades.’
- Veist Stinger trait: This was typically a full reload when the perk activated, it now reloads 25% of the magazine.
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