In the MMO shooter Destiny , comprehensive changes to weapon balance have been announced. Some of the exotic weapons will be affected: They will become weaker. Others, however, will become stronger.
On the night from Thursday to Friday at 2:10 AM, the Weekly Update was released. This time it was really something: It brought hard facts, the information that so many have been waiting for. Bungie was straightforward about the weapon balance and presented the plans on how the power balance is supposed to shift with the expansion.
We will discuss the details of how each weapon class will be affected in a separate section. This article will focus on the specific changes to the exotic weapons.
The changes will only become active with Patch 2.0, with the arrival of “The Taken King“, One can assume: This also means that all “current exotic” weapons will remain relevant in some form with the expansion – so likely also “be brought up to the latest values” again. But that is still speculation at the moment. If the exotic weapons became insignificant with 2.0, they probably wouldn’t have gone through the effort of specifically strengthening or weakening them.
And there is a lot planned.
Hard Light and Necrochasm – Love for the Unloved Automatic Rifles
The exotic automatic rifle Hard Light will receive higher stability (from 65 to 80), the projectiles of the new Hard Light are not affected by damage loss over long ranges and the bullets will probably bounce a bit more than before.
The exotic automatic rifle Necrochasm will receive higher stability and a larger magazine. The property that precision kills sometimes cause explosions will be improved. This is supposed to happen “always” with 2.0. Furthermore, the explosions are supposed to have a larger radius and cause more damage.
Thorn, Hawkmoon and The Last Word – Hand Cannons in Danger
The hand cannon “The Last Word” will become weaker: Its range will drop from 20 to 10, stability from 30 to 20; the effective range when aiming with the weapon will also decrease. However, aim assist will be enhanced when Guardians fire from the hip: The goal is to make the weapon stronger in close combat.
The hand cannon “Thorn” will also be changed: The “Damage over Time” effect will only deal one third of its current damage in PvP, but it can be stacked up to 5 times (applied over each other), but only if the shooter hits 5 times. This means: A single Thorn hit is no longer as unpleasant as it is now, three hits in a row would cause the same poison damage. This only applies if the victim survives the three hits and has time to feel the poison at all.
The Hawkmoon will receive relatively complicated changes: By fine-tuning Roulette and Double-Down, they want to prevent too many bonus perks from stacking simultaneously and make Hawkmoon kill Guardians with full health with just one shot. When Double-Down is activated, Hawkmoon receives 2 additional bullets in the magazine. In addition, the damage bonus from “Roulette” will be reduced by 3%.
Icebreaker, No Land Beyond, and the Black Spindle
The sniper rifle “Icebreaker” will take 8 seconds to regenerate a bullet. Currently, it takes 5 seconds.
The sniper rifle “No Land Beyond” is supposed to aim faster with 2.0, allowing for quicker aiming and also quicker stowing. Additionally, they aim to fix an issue with the aiming system. Furthermore, the bonus effect of “The Master” will remain active longer, causing an additional 20% more bonus damage on precision hits.
The legendary sniper rifle “Black Spindle” will have 18 bullets and the “White Nail” will draw ammunition from reserves – which probably means: No bullets from thin air.
And the Gjallarhorn is affected as well
The shotgun “Lord of Wolves” will grant allies a three times higher recovery bonus than it currently does.
The rocket launcher Gjallarhorn will deal less damage with the Wolf-Pack-Rounds. This is meant to explicitly prevent players from being excluded from activities if they do not have the weapon.
These are the special changes to the notable weapons in Destiny. In addition to these changes, the weapons presented here will also be affected by the tuning of the weapon classes. For example, hand cannons will be weakened at long range.
The changes will only come in about two months, in the future of Destiny. Destiny also has a present, and that is Xur. On July 17 at 11:00 AM, we will welcome Xur in the Tower or the Reef and report on his inventory: Here is our article about Xur on July 17.
