Destiny 2 plans massive weapon tuning for Season 15 – Everything changes

Only a few days before the start of Season 15, Bungie provides a generous insight into the changes to weapons that await you in the new season of Destiny 2. We have summarized the most important information for you here.

Where is the information from? Season 15 of Destiny 2 starts on August 24. Officially, nothing is known about the season itself yet; information is likely to trickle in only on or just before the release day – probably alongside or as part of the most important stream of the year – the presentation of the upcoming major Witch Queen expansion.

However, when it comes to upcoming changes to the game, the studio has been more generous and has already revealed numerous details about the upcoming innovations and adjustments for many areas of the action MMO. In the last developer blog of the outgoing Season 14, there were now details on massive weapon tuning that Bungie has planned for the new season. Here’s what to expect in just a few days:

Global Weapon Changes

Legendary Stasis Weapons: In Season 15, legendary Stasis weapons will be introduced for the first time. Here are the most important details:

• Stasis power weapons will be in the power slot, while all other Stasis weapons will be in the kinetic slot. The energy weapon slot should not become too full. The kinetic slot will not be renamed for now.
• Stasis weapons will not really behave differently than weapons with other damage types, but they are the only weapons that can roll with Stasis perks.
• Generally, it is intended that Stasis perks will be triggered by kills with slow or freeze effects. This is simple enough in PvE but not totally out of hand in PvP.

Fix for Quickswap Glitch: Through a combination of certain control inputs and animation interrupts, it was possible to switch weapons almost instantly. This will be fixed with Season 15.

Unlimited Ammo for Primary Weapons: As some clever fans have already speculated, primary weapons in Season 15 will have unlimited ammo. Perks directly related to this have been adjusted, including:

• Overcoming Inertia from the middle path of the Striker Titan
• Fallback Mag. This perk grants higher reload speed but a smaller magazine 
• Compact Arrow Shaft. This perk has also been revised and provides higher reload speed and better handling
• Some other perks that influenced ammo reserves
• The exotic weapons Lion’s Roar and Workhorse have been individually adjusted (we will go into more detail later in the article)

Innovation in Trials Weapons: Bungie has some cool new perks that they wanted to equip the weapons from the Trials of Osiris with. All Trials weapons available in Season 15 will therefore have 7 perks instead of the previous 5 in each column.

New Guidelines for Returning Weapons: For weapons that are being brought back, the following will apply:

• 2-3 of the least used perks will be removed
• 2-3 newer perks will be added

This way, the identity of the weapon itself will be preserved, but the new options will also allow for completely new top-tier rolls. Light adjustments have been made to weapons returning with update 3.2.1 (Moon, Dreaming City) to push them in this direction.

Changes to Certain Weapon Archetypes

Wave-frame Grenade Launchers: In PvP, these weapons have become increasingly annoying, but in PvE, their performance is satisfactory. Therefore, the following adjustments are being made:

• Explosion radius reduced by 0.4 meters 
• Splash Damage reduced by 20, resulting in a total damage reduction from 220 to 200 on a direct hit (before factoring in the effects of spike grenades or environmental grenades)
• PvE damage increased by 12% (Given the splash damage nerf, a small buff of the combined total damage results)
• The exotic Drought Collector is not affected by these changes

Machine Guns:

• PvE damage increased by 20%

Scout Rifles and Hand Cannons:

• Damage against smaller enemies increased by 15% 

Fusion Rifles: Significant adjustments will be made to fusion rifles for the new season. Although fusion rifles benefited somewhat from the shotgun nerf, they differ too little in their individual archetypes according to Bungie’s opinion and were not really useful in a variety of activities. Therefore, the following changes will occur:

• PvE damage bonus increased, so all subtypes of fusion rifles now have a 15% PvE bonus (previously, directed cases had 0%, precision cases and adaptive cases had 10%, and rapid-fire cases had 12.5%)
• The subtypes have now been more clearly distinguished by adjusting the charge time, shots per volley, and damage. By the way, what is referred to as “base” here means: without battery perks, no charge time masterwork, or master charge time mod.
  • Directed Cases:
    • Base charge time increased from 0.86 to 1.0 seconds
    • 5 instead of 7 shots per volley  
    • Total damage per volley reduced
  • Precision Cases and Adaptive Cases (hardly any changes):
    • Base charge time unchanged
    • Shots per volley unchanged (still 7)
    • Total damage per volley slightly increased
  • Rapid-fire cases: 
    • Base charge time reduced from 0.54 to 0.46 seconds
    • 9 instead of 7 shots per volley
    • Total damage per volley increased

• Some of these changes also required adjustments to several fusion rifle perks and a mod.
  • Time to Kill was impacted by changes to fusion rifles and has been revised.
    • +100 to charge time stat has been removed, charge time multiplier reduced from 0.85 to 0.7, damage now scales at 0.8 
  • Liquid Coils and Accelerated Coils were also revised for this reason:
    • Both have been adjusted to now scale charge time and damage instead of modifying the charge time stat.
    • The end effect is essentially the same as before, but the weapons feel more robust 
  • The master charge time mod felt pointless. Therefore, its function has been changed so that the mod now directly scales charge time instead of affecting the charge time stat without adjusting the damage
• The stat order for fusion rifles has been adjusted to match other weapon categories
• These changes also apply to exotic fusion rifles 

Changes to Weapon Exotics

Anarchy (Grenade Launcher): The nerf in Destiny 2 has already been announced, now the over dominance of Anarchy in Season 15 will be curtailed. Here’s what will change with the exotic grenade launcher:

• Total ammo in the magazine and reserves has been reduced from 26 to 16
• Damage against bosses reduced by 30 % (Champions do not count as bosses. In challenging solo content, the weapon should still remain strong and relevant)

Xenophage (Machine Gun): The MG was already top-notch, so it didn’t need to benefit much from the global buff for machine guns. However, it benefits from the damage-per-round buff for MGs, but now has a lower fire rate to compensate:

• Fire rate reduced from 120 to 90 RPM 
• Benefits less from the MG PvE damage buff

Lion’s Roar (Grenade Launcher): In PvE, the soon-to-be unlimited primary ammo shouldn’t be an issue, but it was in PvP tests. Therefore, the following changes are being made:

• Reserve ammo increased from “a lot” to “unlimited” 
• Receives the same changes as other wave-frame grenade launchers
• Base stat for reload reduced to 0; wave-frame grenade launchers with 0 at this value reload extremely slowly
• Reload speed will return to its previous level when hitting multiple enemies with one grenade

Vex Mythoclast (Fusion Rifle): The goal was to avoid creating an OP weapon that only a few possess and would break PvP, but the Vex came out a bit too weak. So they want to make it attractive loot in the Glass Chamber:

• PV damage bonus increased by about 40% 
• Range stat increased, now ranks among the best in its class (High Impact Auto Rifles)
• Stability stat increased
• Masterwork catalyst revised. Now grants stability and damage after a kill
• Fire rate increased from 360 to 390 
• Reload time in linear fusion rifle mode reduced from 820 to 533 (as with standard linear fusion rifles) 
• No longer loses overcharge stacks when stowed (except in linear fusion rifle mode)

Relentless (Fusion Rifle):

• Perk updated to compensate for fewer shots per volley
• Damage penalty for increasing charge rate reduced by 40%

Jötunn (Fusion Rifle):

• Reload time reduced from 0.82 to 0.78 seconds (now loads 0.04 seconds faster) 
• Damage per shot slightly reduced

Bastion (Fusion Rifle): Bastion feels quite strong in PvP due to weaker shotguns, but is hardly used in PvE. This results in the following changes:

• Damage reduced by 15 % (can no longer kill a Guardian with a single shot of a 3-shot burst)
• Spread angle increased by 10 
• PvE damage increased by 25 % (which corresponds to about a 10% buff in PvE) 

Workhorse (Auto Rifle): The perk that refills the magazine upon picking up primary ammo no longer works due to unlimited primary ammo, so it has been adjusted: 

• Now refills the magazine when picking up special or heavy ammo instead of primary ammo

Perks:

Bungie found Shield Line too strong, and the perk is changing as follows:

• Damage bonus reduced to +20 % precision damage for all supported weapon archetypes (previously varied significantly depending on the weapon)
• Will roll on snipers, linear fusion rifles, and MGs – possibly on other things in the future

Some damage perks only affected the impact damage of explosive weapons, now they will also increase the detonation damage. The following perks are affected:

• Kill Clip 
• Rampage
• Adrenaline Junkie 

Additionally, the incorrect rarity of some recently released mods has been fixed.

What’s Next

Now they want to first take a look at how the many changes will impact the game. If necessary, they will make smaller adjustments in the first half of Season 15.

In the somewhat distant future (but still before Witch Queen), linear fusion rifles and swords with wave frames (Caster Frame) are to be adjusted – they are still not where Bungie would like them to be. Additionally, they are looking at underused and weak weapon exotics that they want to enhance a bit – including Arbalest, SUROS Regime, Cryosthesia 77K, Misadventure, and more. The partially too fast weapon swap of certain weapon types will also be reviewed.

Additionally, they want to give legendary weapons more identity shortly before Witch Queen – based on their sources. It seems that a completely new system will be introduced for this. Primary weapons will also become more attractive in challenging PvE content. However, they have not yet revealed how they plan to achieve this.

What do you think of the many weapon changes that will come with the new Season 15? What do you personally find reasonable, and what do you think is totally excessive? Do you think something important has perhaps been completely forgotten? Let us and other readers know in the comments.