‘This Week At Bungie’ has confirmed what every Guardian of Destiny 2 was afraid of, the their special weapons getting downgraded, let’s go through each downgrade and explain the reasons behind the decision.
Bungie first talks about Swords, who had received an overhaul in functionality, all the changes will arrive when the next season begins, the developer tease that the new season will be a PvE challenge, the new Nightfall difficulty, or “Grandmaster” as it’s officially dubbed, will teste even the most proficient Guardians
We’ll have more details about this new ordeal in the coming weeks. But for now, we have information from the Dev team on changes being made to ensure that we strike the right balance between challenge and reward.
Izanagi’s Burden
Since the removal of auto-reload effects from Rally Barricade and Lunafaction Boots, as well as the introduction of a catalyst for Izanagi’s Burden, it’s seen a significant uptick in use. Izanagi’s Burden solidified itself within the majority of endgame builds due to its excellent burst damage, sustained damage, ammo economy due to Special ammo, and safety due to being a Sniper Rifle. The Outlaw trait was swapped out for No Distractions to be more in-line with the fantasy of the weapon and to ensure the trait on the weapon would still work with Honed Edge.
Bungie also confirms that all Sniper Rifles will be less powerful, the increase of output damage being done in Shadowkeep hasn’t satisfied the developers and they feel like Sniper Rifles “was giving them too much of a leg-up on their closer range counterparts”
- Damage to Major enemies and above have been reduced to pre Shadowkeep values (~-20%).
- Adaptive Snipers precision multiplier has been reduced from 3.25x to 2.95x.
- Rapid-Fire Snipers base impact has been reduced from 100 damage to 90 damage.
Grenade Launchers will have slightly reduced effectiveness on Powerful enemies “To give other weapons some more breathing room”
- Aggressive Frame grenade launchers are now Rapid-Fire Frame Grenade Launchers.
- Rapid-Fire Frame Grenade Launchers have had their damage reduced to account for their Rate of Fire (0.8x), but now also have increased reserves.
- Previously, Aggressive Frame Grenade Launchers fired faster than Adaptive but had the same damage.
- Damage to Major enemies and above by Power weapon Grenade Launchers reduced by ~10%.
The Last Word has been severely downgraded, the weapon is now less forgiving and Bungie is trying to reduce the maximum time-to-kill.
- Fan Fire now adjusts the precision scalar while hip-firing.
- Fan Fire impact values have been adjusted.
- Precision Hip/ADS adjusted from 67.95/67.95 to 68.27/52.2.
- Non-Precision Hip/ADS adjusted from 50.01/50.01 to 38/38.
- Aiming down sights no longer provides additional effective range (damage falloff).
- Reduced stability for Mouse and Keyboard input.
- Reduced the effective range.
- To improve the experience, adjusted the way target acquisition is handled while hip-firing.
Shotguns are a fan favoriteon Destiny 2, it excel on Crucible due to his devastating power at close range, the aim assist system has been tweaked, according to Bungie “we made more adjustments to Shotguns to give other weapons a little more time to react to them.”
- Target acquisition for non-slug Shotguns has been adjusted to no longer account for precision locations.
- Previously, target acquisition could actually cause the player’s spread to deviate from the intended aim vector, causing most of the spread to miss.
- Cone angle is now adjusted on a per sub-archetype basis and is no longer adjusted by the range stat.
- Aiming down sights no longer adjusts effective range for this weapon archetype.
Destiny 2 Fusion Rifles will also suffer from a severely downgraded aim assist system
- Target acquisition for Fusion Rifles has been adjusted to no longer account for precision locations.
- Effective range and the impact of the optics stat for this weapon archetype has been reduced across the board.
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