All weapon buffs and nerfs in Destiny 2: The Final Shape BungieDestiny 2 goes through balancing all the time, but when a new expansion rolls around, there is a lot to get right. Well, The Final Shape is here, and it\u2019s bringing with it a host of changes that have necessitated weapon updates across the board. The new Prismatic subclass is one of the biggest additions this time around. It combines many of the abilities from the existing subclasses into a concoction that is sure to define the initial meta for The Final Shape expansion. As such, interactions with existing weapons are a huge priority for balancing. The addition of a raft of new guns has also led to more general buffs and nerfs for each weapon type. There\u2019s a lot to get into, so here\u2019s everything you need to know about this round of weapon changes. All Destiny 2 weapon changes in The Final Shape There are some headline changes that players should be aware of. The first is that Boss Spec, Taken Spec, Minor Spec, Major Spec, and Adept Big Ones Spec are all being removed. In addition, Exotic Primaries are having their damage reduced by 10% against red bar enemies. The full list of changes to weapon types is as follows: Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants. Pulse Rifles: 20% Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero\u2019s Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.) – – Pellet Shotguns: 10% Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.) – – Slug Shotguns: 9% – Fusion Rifles: 7% Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.) – – Sniper Rifles: 7% Exceptions: Izanagi\u2019s Burden\u2019s Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike\u2019s storm. (These are both performing well.) – – Glaive projectiles: 7% – Linear Fusion Rifles: 5% – – Pulse Rifles: 20% – Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)\u2014this stacks with the base PvE damage increase. Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20% – Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15% For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero\u2019s Heavy Burst mode are included. I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars. – – – For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero\u2019s Heavy Burst mode are included. – Submachine Guns: 10% – Hand Cannons: 5% – – Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars). Trace Rifles: 20% – – Increased damage globally, including PvP. Machine Guns: 7% – Swords: 7% – – Quality-of-life weapon alterations Updated Heavy, Adaptive, and Aggressive Burst weapon intrinsic names to match burst count across all weapon archetypes. Functionality is unchanged. 2-burst: Heavy Burst Includes Sidearms, Hand Cannons, and Pulse Rifles. – – 3-burst: Adaptive Burst Includes Sidearms, Linear Fusion Rifles, and Adaptive Pulse Rifles. – – 4-burst: Aggressive Burst Includes Pulse Rifles. – – – 2-burst: Heavy Burst – Removed the foundry name from the Veist Rapid-Fire, H\u00e4kke Precision, and Omolon Adaptive weapon intrinsics. – Scout Rifles Updated the hip-fire reticle to better show accuracy and aim-assist state. – – Hand Cannons Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil\u2019s Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats. Crimil\u2019s Dagger (Iron Banner) Stability: 23 to 31 – Handling: 23 to 31 – Magazine Size: 8 to 9 – Airborne Effectiveness: 10 to 21 – – Something New (Solstice) Stability: 27 to 30 – Handling: 24 to 30 – Magazine Size: 8 to 9 – – – Crimil\u2019s Dagger (Iron Banner) – – Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil\u2019s Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats. – Low inventory Sniper Rifles were a little too low in PvE for our liking, so we\u2019ve increased the minimum. Increased minimum reserves from 14 to 17 shots; maximum reserve is unchanged. – – Linear Fusion Rifles Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control. Reduced firing animation kick and recoil for Adaptive Linear Fusion Rifles. – – – Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control. – Wave Frame Grenade Launchers deal competitive damage as of the Destiny 2: Into the Light update, but some stats on these didn\u2019t have a gameplay effect. In this pass, we\u2019re adjusting the blast radius. The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled. The default display stat for the blast radius has been changed from 100 to 50 (where 50 represents the previous baseline\u2014any stat over 50 will result in a larger wave segment than what was possible before). – – Special ammo Wave \u2013 Frame Grenade Launchers overperform as add clear weapons in their current state, so we\u2019ve pulled the length of the wave back a little. Reduced the length of the waves from 22 meters to 15 meters (except for Dead Messenger). – – – The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled. – Swords Updated the Sword reticle to better indicate its charge state. When Sword energy is consumed, the amount of delay the Sword has before it begins to recharge now subtly appears in the reticle. – Bug fixes: Fixed an issue where the Overwhelming Battlesong debuff from some missions would prevent Swords from recharging or losing energy while guarding. – Fixed an issue where unpowered caster Sword heavy attacks would not reset the Sword\u2019s energy recharge delay. – Fixed an issue where uncharged adaptive Sword heavy attacks cost the same amount of ammo as their charged counterparts. They now cost 1 ammo, same as other uncharged heavy attacks. – – – Exotic weapon changes A lot of existing Exotics are getting big changes with this new expansion. Additionally, there are some updated animations that should make using certain guns (like the Rat King) a lot easier. The full list of Exotic changes, with explanations from the developer, is as follows: Divinity\u2019s ability to bypass combatant gameplay by generating a weak spot (called a \u201ccage\u201d internally) on command has too high an uptime as it stands, particularly with trigger feathering. Increased the number of shots required to generate the cage by 75% against combatants (PvP unchanged). – Rat King\u2019s firing animation makes the weapon hard to control at high rate of fire, so we\u2019ve updated it. Swapped the firing animation to the same one used by other auto-fire Sidearms. – Devil\u2019s Ruin could be made to apply its firing animation to other equipped Sidearms. Fixed an issue where the firing animation from Devil\u2019s Ruin would get applied to other equipped Sidearms if the weapon was swapped during the firing animation. – Symmetry needed a little attention, particularly its reload speed and handling, so we took this opportunity to increase those via the catalyst. Catalyst now provides +10 reload speed, +10 handling, and the Eddy Current perk, in addition to its existing effects. – Gjallarhorn\u2019s Wolfpack Rounds always looked like Arc projectiles, regardless of the weapon\u2019s actual damage type. Updated the visuals of Wolfpack Rounds to match the damage type of the weapon. For example: On Gjallarhorn, they will use Solar effects. – On the Royal Entry Void Rocket Launcher buffed by Gjallarhorn, they will have Void effects. – – Touch of Malice\u2019s burn from the Darkness Ball didn\u2019t last long enough to be useful in PvE. Increased duration of burn applied by the Darkness Ball against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. – Osteo Striga made it too easy to spread poison across a whole encounter from a couple of kills of weak combatants. Now has a 4-second cooldown on the poison burst on kills. (Poison burst from sustained damage doesn\u2019t receive this cooldown.) – Necrochasm\u2019s add clear role wasn\u2019t as strong as we\u2019d like, so we\u2019ve buffed it and replaced the Outlaw perk on the catalyst with a new, custom perk that leans into this role. Intrinsic perk now provides increased reload speed after precision kills. – Increased duration of burn applied by the Cursed Thrall explosion against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. – Catalyst has been rebuilt. One for Thrall: Damaging 3 combatants in quick succession provides a period of increased damage, range, and aim assist. – – While The Lament\u2019s damage is roughly equivalent to other Swords, the healing on hit largely removes the intended downside of using a Sword for boss DPS, and the chained heavy attack was too strong. Reduced healing effect by 20%. – While this weapon does inherit the 7% global buff to Swords, we\u2019ve reduced the damage of the high end of the chained heavy attack by 20% from that point. This means combos at lower stacks are less affected by the change than combos at higher stacks. – – Dead Man\u2019s Tale\u2019s rapid-fire hipfire fantasy isn\u2019t landing as well as we\u2019d like, so we\u2019ve bumped up the rate of fire and added a bit of stability to Cranial Spike to make this easier to control. At the same time, its strength is skewed a little high on mouse and keyboard and a little low on controller, so we\u2019ve tuned accuracy and magnetism (controller reticle friction) to address this. Baseline: Cranial Spike stacks now grant stability in addition to aim assist stat and range (+2 per stack). – Increased reload speed benefit of Cranial Spike stacks. – – With catalyst, iwhen hip-firing: Slightly reduced accuracy benefits. – Increased magnetism falloff scale (1.6 to 1.7). – Increased baseline rate of fire from 130RPM to 140RPM. – Removed PvE-only damage buff that scaled with stacks of Cranial Spike and added a 15% damage bonus at maximum stacks of Cranial Spike. – – The Colony\u2019s fantasy of spawning self-replicating insectoid robots is something we\u2019ve wanted to juice for a while now. This update allows The Colony to deal with waves of combatants in a unique way. Now spawns additional insectoid robots on final blows. More robots (up to five) spawn from tougher combatants. – Truth has fallen far behind other Exotic Rocket Launchers, largely due to its lackluster damage, and we wanted to lean further into total rocket count. Increased area-of-effect (AoE) damage such that it doesn\u2019t lose noticeable damage due to not dealing impact damage. – Increased total reserves by 3. (This is on top of the reserves change to high impact Rocket Launchers from the 7.3.5 update.) – The Queenbreaker\u2019s damage output is outpaced by Legendary Linear Fusion Rifles, so we\u2019ve increased its damage and reserve ammo to compensate. We do see frequent requests to move Queenbreaker to the Energy slot, but given the number of Special ammo damage options in this slot, we have opted to push it further into the Heavy slot. We\u2019re working on some functionality changes to this weapon for a future update as well. Increased damage versus bosses, minibosses, Champions, and vehicles by 12%. – Increased reserve ammunition by 3. – The power from Cerberus+1\u2019s focus fire perk from the Exotic catalyst was limited by it being always available. We\u2019ve changed this to only being available following a kill, allowing us to increase its strength. Focus fire now will activate on Special reloads following a kill and will no longer reduce range or rate of fire. – In a world where Bastion has competition for a Fusion Rifle in the kinetic slot, we felt that it was time to lean further into emulating Saint-14\u2019s combat style. Reworked Saint\u2019s Fists perk: Dealing damage with melee increases your charge rate, damage, and reload speed for a short duration. Landing a majority of pellets in a burst increases melee damage. – Eriana\u2019s Vow has fallen behind other anti-barrier Special weapons and, as a Solar weapon, has the opportunity for a subclass tie-in. Breaking a matched shield or piercing a Champion\u2019s Barrier will cause the target to ignite. – Deterministic Chaos didn\u2019t have a clear niche when it shipped, so we\u2019ve redesigned it to be an anti-Champion and weakening powerhouse. This weapon is now intrinsically anti-barrier. – The Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal perks have had their locations and behavior swapped. Heavy Metal now causes every 4th bullet to make targets volatile. – Vexadecimal now causes every 16th bullet to also weaken targets. – – The flexibility offered by The Fundamentals (on the Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger Exotic weapons) is useful, but most of the time, there\u2019s no need to switch damage types rapidly, so it\u2019s irritating having the current damage type clear on death. The Fundamentals now maintains its state across death or respawn. –<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All weapon buffs and nerfs in Destiny 2: The Final Shape BungieDestiny 2 goes through balancing all the time, but when a new expansion rolls around, there is a lot to get right. Well, The Final Shape is here, and it\u2019s bringing with it a host of changes that have necessitated weapon updates across the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}