In its first sandbox tuning discussion, Bungie gives Destiny 2 players a preview of its planned tweaks to weapons, including a look at major buffs for a ton of exotics. There remains plenty of hope among the community that Renegades could be the spark that reinvigorates the currently slumping Destiny 2.
By now, it's not a secret that Destiny 2 isn't thriving like it once was, with player counts dropping as Bungie continues to try and address some of the pain points impacting the overall experience. Bungie has already backltracked on a number of newer features, including completely removing Unstable Cores from Destiny 2 entirely. Many of these moves are in an effort to better streamline the game and address player feedback on items they don't like. Hope may be on the horizon, however, as the Star Wars-inspired Renegades expansion is out in just a few weeks.
Destiny 2: Renegades Overhauling Bounties and Seasonal Challenges
Bungie reveals the new Orders System for Destiny 2, which completely replaces bounties and seasonal challenges inside the Renegades expansion.
While there appears to be plenty of excitement around Destiny 2's take on the Star Wars franchise, Bungie is kicking off a three-part Dev Insight series, highlighting some of the bigger changes coming to the sandbox. First up was Weapon tuning, highlighting changes to the ammo system, archtype adjustments, and perk balancing. However, Bungie also took the opportunity to detail major buffs coming to various exotic weapons, some of which have not been adjusted in quite a while.
Cayde-6's iconic Ace of Spades hand cannon will now be more deadly in PvE, with the Memento Mori damage bonus rising from 18% to 30%. Its Firefly perk is also getting a damage bump and explosive range increase. Similarly, Hawkmoon's PvE viability will be much stronger thanks to a Paracausal Charge damage bonus.
Osteo Striga's poison burst will see its cooldown cut in half from 4 to 2 seconds, which should help make it a great choice for dealing with enemy mobs again. Touch of Malice, a weapon which had a difficult time offsetting its self-damage perk is seeing its healing ability become slightly easier to activate. Still Hunt, Symmetry, and Revision Zero are also receiving major boosts, while Tessellation and Black Talon are seeing extensive changes.
Surprisingly, the Wolfsbane exotic axe that was introduced in Ash & Iron is also being adjusted for Renegades. While Bungie admitted it was happy with player reception to it, the weapon itself launched a little underpowered. To address that, light attack damage is getting boosted by 8.5%, Nano Assault now lasts 12 seconds with around a 20% boost in damage, while the damage resistance on the Retuned Axe Handles has also been increased.
It'll be interesting to see how these changes pair with the new content coming inside of Renegades. Previously, Bungie revealed the new weapons and exotic gear in Destiny 2 Renegades, which feature more than a few that appear to be modeled after Star Wars weapons like Chewbacca's Boltcaster, Han Solo's DL-44 pistol, and The Mandalorian's Amban rifle. The new exotic armor also seems to invoke some new ways to play, like the Titan's Praxic Vestments, which give them an "advanced tactical air move" that reminds many of Anthem's flight suits.
Destiny 2 Renegades Exotic Weapon Changes
Ace of Spades
- Increased extra PvE damage bonus of Memento Mori from 18% to 30%.
-
Ace of Spades’ Firefly.
- Increased maximum damage in PvE from 65 to 100.
- Increased minimum damage in PvE from 0 to 20.
- Increased area of effect size from 6m to 7.5m.
- Increased damage falloff start from 30% of area of effect size to 50% (will keep full damage for more distance).
Hawkmoon
-
Now gets a PvE damage bonus per stack of Paracausal Charge.
- Maxes out at 70% at x8 Paracausal Charge.
- Does not include the final Paracausal Shot.
Osteo Striga
- Reduced the cooldown of the poison burst on Osteo Striga final blow from four seconds to two.
Suros Regime
-
Can now be special reloaded at-will to swap between Spinning up and Dual-Speed Receiver behaviors.
- Added new hip-fire reticle elements that correspond with each firing mode.
- Grants bonus Special ammo progress with spun up kills while using Spinning Up.
- Grants bonus Heavy ammo progress on Dual-Speed Receiver kills while ADS.
Revision Zero
- Hunter's Trace rounds now create a small damaging shockwave and Exhausts targets on impact.
Touch of Malice
- Increased the amount of healing provided by the intrinsic perk.
- Reduced the number of kills needed to trigger the healing in PvE, and activating Charged with Blight will now fire the healing impulse.
Collective Obligation
-
Added a very slow rate of leeching effects off unaffected targets. Gives each effect in order of effectiveness with around a full mag of hits (per debuff).
- Volatile -> Weaken -> Suppression
- Also charges the leech mode at the same rate.
Symmetry
-
Now builds Bolt Charge with > one stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
- Grants more stacks at >10x Dynamic Charge.
- Now can spend Bolt Charge with >1 stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
- Increased base reload stat by 20.
Still Hunt
- Buffed Still Hunt's Golden Gun damage while using Celestial Nighthawk by 40%.
- Allowed Sniper's Meditation to buff Still Hunt's Golden Gun shots.
Witherhoard
- Reduced Silent Alarm auto-load time from 3.5 seconds to two.
Duality
- Reduced hip fire spread by 6%
The Chaperone
- Changed Chaperone to use the Rapid-Fire Slug frame damage and rate of fire profile.
Ruinous Effigy
- Catalyst now grants a 30% (15% in PvP) damage buff to the Trace Rifle when killing anything with the Transmutation Orb or damaging a miniboss/boss/Champion with a Transmutation Orb.
Izanagi's Burden
- Special Reload once again scales with reload speed stat.
Tessellation
-
Property: Undecidable
- Final blows now also grant 2.5% light and dark Transcendence energy, and grant bonus time to Transcendence while active.
- Fixed an issue where Transcendence grenade chunk energy gains were not scaling based on the grenade stat.
-
Property: Irreducible
- While Transcendence is active, special reload shots now deal 25% more damage when combined with the Transcendence damage buff.
- Special reloading now reloads the mag from reserves, and you can now special reload while you have zero ammo in the mag.
-
Catalyst
- Increased applied Scorch stacks from 15(+5) to 70(+10), and Slow stacks from 30 to 80.
- Subclass keyword application is now near immediate, though it still does not apply before the primary explosion.
-
Misc
- Updated the timing of the reload for Tessellation and Jötunn so that ammo is added to the mag slightly sooner, properly lining up with the animation.
Deathbringer
- Reduced the spread of the secondary cluster munitions after they are created.
Black Talon
- Heavy attack now suppresses on hits. If target is already suppressed, it spreads to nearby targets.
-
Catalyst:
- On hit gives a 10% damage boost per void debuff on the target for 2s.
- Reduced heavy attack cost to three ammo from four.
- Added Duelist's Trance trait.
- Increased max reserve ammo.
Deterministic Chaos
- New effect: Releasing the trigger after a Vexadecimal projectile pulls 12 rounds into the magazine from reserves.
Worldline Zero
- Fixed an issue where Tesseract was only hitting one instance of damage instead of the usual five.
-
Increased the damage instances via Tesseract from five to seven (~40% damage increase).
- Reduced time between these instances from.66s to.44s.
- Fixed an issue where chaining tesseract was inconsistent if the player had the Wordline Zero catalyst equipped.
- Reduced the cost of chained tesseract blinks from 20% Sword energy to 10% per.
Wolfsbane
- Increased damage of light attack by 8.5% (closer to lament or aggressive Swords).
-
Increased nano assault duration from 10s to 12s, which makes the tornados feel a little more forgiving.
- Increased Swarm-nado damage by ~20%.
-
Retuned Axe Handles
- Increased damage resistance on each handle by ~5%.
- Increased damage resistance linger time from 3s to 5s.
- Reduced internal cooldown on Subroutine: ~Recursion's extra nanites from 5s to 2s.
- Adjusted damage increased when used on ~A F F L I C T E D targets to ramp slightly quicker.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
- Engine
- Tiger Engine
- Franchise
- Destiny
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC
Source: Bungie