In Destiny 2, Guardians have often tried to push the limits of damage to unprecedented levels. However, Bungie has now put a stop to the current best combo. We at MeinMMO show you which changes were made in secret.
This combo is about: In the current “Season of the Lost“, players are enjoying massive damage. Mostly thanks to the mod “Particle Deconstruction“. This applies a stackable debuff to each opponent. This debuff was inflicted with shots from fusion rifles of any kind, and after a short time, the yellow damage numbers stacked up.
However, that was not all; the debuff could be stacked with other debuffs and buffs. Thus, from +40%, it quickly turned into several hundreds of percent more. A popular combo included, for example:
- The Well of the Warlock
- The Titan’s Bubble
- The Hunter’s Arrow or the Tractor Cannon
- The Mod Focus Lens + Stasis damage
- Light Charges (like High-Energy Fire)
With these combos plus weapon perks like Vorpal Weapon, even the strongest raid bosses quickly threw in the towel in just one phase. Since Bungie apparently has a soft spot for bosses, there have now been changes.
This was secretly nerfed: Bungie has put a stop to the debuffs. If you apply Particle Deconstruction to an enemy, that is the only debuff. You can now shoot as many arrows at the boss as you want; the damage will no longer increase.
Bungie has not commented on this. Neither via Twitter nor in the latest patch notes from Patch 3.0.3.3 was this change to the debuffs mentioned.
Bungie secretly fixed a bug that was considered a feature
Was the high damage just a bug? This covert intervention suggests that such a high damage effect was not intended. If Bungie had implemented a feature here, it would certainly have been communicated in patch notes or on Twitter. But since everything happened in secret, Bungie wanted to rectify this situation.
The effect of “Particle Deconstruction” resembles the mod “Breach and Clear” from Season 14. Even back then, the bonus damage generated could not be increased with, for example, an arrow. Users could have already been suspicious, as the arrow only activated its debuff properly if it was shot after the Particle Deconstruction.
Thus, the fact that the mod was combinable with, for example, the arrow in Season 15 was likely a mistake that Guardians have now been able to exploit for a month.
If you still want to deal massive damage, you can do so with Divinity. That hasn’t been patched yet.
Was that the first secret change? A similar secret change was made by Bungie in the previous patch 3.3.0.2: The Titan’s Throwing Hammer received a 60% cooldown extension without mention in the patch notes. Thanks to this hammer, the highest damage numbers in the game were possible when combined with exotics.
This “stealth nerf” was of course noticed by attentive Guardians (via reddit). Bungie’s Community Manager Cozmo even commented on this:
[…] We do not perform “stealth nerfs.” It is quite obvious when we make changes to abilities – we would never think of sliding something like that under your noses. Sometimes we overlook patch notes in the hustle, but in this case, it was an unintentional change and we are already working on a fix for an upcoming update.
Cozmo via reddit
What do you think of the change? Did you even know about it? Let us know in the comments whether you also took advantage of this bug and how you are now tackling the raid bosses – or does it not even require that much extra damage?
