Destiny 2 Nerfing Some Top Tier Weapons Including Falling Guillotine
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases in just under three weeks, and Bungie still has lots more news to share. While fans had gotten a thorough look into the upcoming Stasis subclasses, there hasn't been much talk about weapons and sandbox in the new expansion. However, today's This Week at Bungie blog goes over the key ways the player arsenal will change come November.
Large sandbox changes arrive every expansion and Destiny 2: Beyond Light is no exception. Despite the general feel and meta of the game seeming quite good at the moment, there have been oppressive outliers cropping up over the summer, changing long-standing kings of the PvP Crucible and PvE activities, which Bungie will soon address.
First off, the pinnacle weapon Mountaintop is getting brought down to the level of other weapons. This is an incredibly easy to use grenade launcher because it has a lot of forgiveness. Bungie will make its projectiles slower and significantly more inaccurate from the air so that players cannot as easily knock enemies out from great range.
Plus, the splash damage will be cut by 33% to not reward inaccurate shots as much. However, direct impact damage has been increased to keep the total damage mostly intact, placing new Mountaintop damage just 5 percent below of what it was before. This small decrease in total damage might help certain players escape with a sliver of health.
Swords have fully made a comeback in Season of Arrivals, no small thanks to the new ones added. Falling Guillotine in particular is the paragon of DPS in the current environment. The weapon's heavy spin attack can sustain damage for an ample amount of time while also dishing out a chunk of damage in 1 second. Bungie has reduced heavy attack damage by 24%, which means the sword's special capability will be less potent, but regular strikes will remain the same. The Guillotine will still be a top tier sword but will no longer dominate other weapons in Beyond Light.
Auto rifles, and more specifically the 600 RPM variants, have been the darlings of Crucible players during the summer no small thanks to Gnawing Hunger. Needless to say, the boost once given to 600 RPMs is getting dialed back. The damage per bullet this class of auto rifle will do in Beyond Light will be 14.25 brought down from 15.75. A considerable change in the grand scheme of things, but still higher than their legacy damage which was 13.75 points per bullet.
This is an interesting topic, as the change to the 150 class can be a nerf in some sense while a complete shift of perspective in another. In essence, every 150 RPM hand cannon will intrinsically become a 140 RPM hand cannon, removing the need for a 150 class from the game. This means that 150 RPM hand cannons of today, like Spare Rations or Dire Promise, will fire a bit slower and lose the Lightweight perk which grants a hidden mobility bonus. While this change includes the elusive Luna's Howl and Not Forgotten, the exotic Sunshot will be excluded to keep it as exotic as possible.
Sniping is one of the harder playstyles in almost any shooter game, and many will agree that's true in Destiny. However, the current sniper rifles reward mediocre aim a bit too much, making them a great choice whenever a Crucible map doesn't require close quarters combat. The snipers with low-zoom scopes, in other words the most popular ones, will have less aim assist while the unpopular high-zoom snipers will have more. This should help make different zoom levels equally desirable on snipers going forward.
Despite not being a huge troublemaker, Ruinous Effigy's Transmutation Spheres will be nerfed. The aerial attack performed with a sphere in hand is cut by 25% and the guarding ability of the sphere will chip away at enemy health a lot more slowly. Arbalest, the special ammo Linear Fusion Rifle, will stop hitting enemy shield more than once but its damage per bullet against shields has been increased to compensate for this. Overall, the changes to weapons in Beyond Light seem very deliberate and surgical, intended to fix obvious outliers instead of creating an artificial shift in the meta. Hopefully, almost all weapons will be viable in the near future and there is still more to learn about the sandbox.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases November 10, 2020, for PC, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. The PS5 version will be available on November 12.
Source: Bungie
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