After completing most story content and quests of the new expansion “The Witch Queen” in Destiny 2, and with only hardcore content left, Bungie is tuning the meta. However, the first adjustment caused quite a stir, as it rendered two weapon types much less interesting. MeinMMO tells you which ones and why.
What adjustments are we talking about? Especially PvP players and glaive enthusiasts need to brace themselves, as yesterday’s hotfix 4.0.0.5 revealed two weapon nerfs in the ongoing Season 16 for significant advantages.
- For fusion rifles, the effectiveness of the perk “Like a Rock in Stormy Seas” has been reduced by 50%.
- Glaives now fully charge only after hitting 4 successful projectile hits, and fighters are no longer indefinitely stunned when hit by a glaive melee attack.
- The armor mod “Suppressing Glaive” now consumes (and requires) 10% weapon energy when suppression is applied with glaive melee attacks.
Fusion rifles remain strong: The nerf to fusion rifles, especially in PvP, could still be seen as justified, as they were able to achieve kills from 30m away in PvP. The perk “Like a Rock in Stormy Seas” was particularly popular on the new craftable Throne World fusion rifle “Pretty Suspicous”.
Despite the 50% reduction, the perk “Like a Rock in Stormy Seas” on fusion rifles is still a good option in PvP, showing just how strong this advantage was. Players should continue to effectively engage outside shotgun range with a consistent fusion rifle.
The end of the glaive? For glaives, however, the adjustment means a death knell for many players of the newest weapon type in Destiny 2. Suppression was the only thing that kept glaives even remotely relevant. Now glaives seem worse than any other weapon in the game, as the player Kryptokashless writes on reddit.
Glaives are now worse than any other weapon in the game. The only thing that would save glaives right now would be activating damage advantages for glaive melee, like Rampage.
finds the player Kryptokashless on reddit
The effects of the glaive nerf
The nerf for the glaive also affects the powerful perk “Suppressing Glaive” from the seasonal artifact of Season 16.
- If you deal damage to fighters with your glaive, they become suppressed and cannot use abilities for a short time.
With the nerf, the perk can no longer chain the suppression effect on enemies through repeated melee attacks. Instead, the glaive now consumes 10% of its energy. You will therefore need to score several successful ranged hits including ammunition to use the effect of the suppressing glaive. Currently, it takes 4 hits to fully utilize the glaive’s energy. Before the change, a melee hit would trigger the suppression and didn’t even require ammunition.
This change nullifies a large part of the effect of the artifact mods and leads to the new weapon type being relegated to the vault by players for good, or even disassembled indefinitely.
This is also the sentiment of the player Japjer, who commented on the hotfix article on reddit:
They could have simply added a cooldown of three seconds. Or a five-second cooldown. Damn! Almost anything would have been better than this.
writes the player Japjer about the nerf on reddit
And the player Zer0Warri0r asks in the official Destiny 2 Forum the community:
Let me ask you all a question: Who asked for suppressing glaive mod changes? Why didn’t they [Bungie] use this development time to polish glaives overall instead of “fixing” a mod that is going to disappear in a month and a half? […]
For many players, this nerf also marks the final death knell for the use of exotic glaives. They were already hardly relevant in the game without this adjustment, as they offered too few advantages, leading to player disappointment.
Many hunters in Destiny 2 have already buried their “ninja glaive build” with permanent invisibility, as they are only granted invisibility if they have some energy left on their glaive.
Thus, the player Edel456 has already returned to his Warlock, which promises him much more fun.
Being a space ninja was the most fun for me with my hunter class. Now I’m back to being a space wizard with my Warlock, and it’s so much more fun.
finds the player Edel456 on reddit
Is the glaive weapon type still salvageable? As interesting as the glaive is, it currently has a bad reputation among players. In challenging activities, the glaive often feels weak and has thus been only usable in normal activities, like Gambit or in the campaign.
However, it should be noted with this nerf that if an enemy is already suppressed, whether by a shot, a melee, a grenade, or through a teammate, all glaive melee attacks against that enemy do not consume energy.
Nevertheless, some players hope that Bungie will perhaps give attention to glaives again after the hardcore activities of the Nightfall “Grandmaster” and that they might receive a buff in the future. Once the seasonal glaive mods leave the game at the end of Season 16, this could signal the final end for this weapon type.
What do you think about the adjustments? Has the nerf caused you to stop using your glaive, or was it already irrelevant to you? And what do you think about the adjustments to fusion rifles? Did you use the perk, or do you find the adjustment unimportant because other perk combinations and fusion rifles are better anyway? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments.
