In Destiny, most special weapon kills in the Trials are achieved with special weapons that bypass the “Special Ammo” nerf. Many Guardians are not surprised by this.
Alongside numerous weapon adjustments, one of the biggest changes in update 2.5.0.2 was the special ammo nerf: After each death, you now lose all your special ammo in PvP. This also disappears after each round in elimination modes, like the Trials.
The developers aimed to curb the dominance of special weapons, particularly shotguns, and to make them truly “special” – meaning weapons that are used only in rare occasions. Primary weapons should take the foreground.
This partially worked: Primary weapons have a better standing than before and the reign of shotguns is over. However, the image emerging is that Guardians still do not want to give up their special weapons. They utilize possible ways to circumvent the special ammo nerf. And they do so with overwhelming frequency.
Guardians will not give up their special weapons
The Reddit user iihavetoes delved into the statistics from the Trials report and discovered that over 90% of all special weapon kills in the Trials were achieved with special weapons that cleverly evade the special ammo nerf. This includes pistols, No Land Beyond, and Universal Remote (both special weapons in the primary slot), as well as Icebreaker and Derision (which regenerate their ammo).
A total of 16,195,871 kills with all weapons were achieved in the Trials of Osiris a week ago.
Of these, 8,656,138 kills were with special weapons. He arrived at this figure by adding all kills with weapons in the special slot to the kills by No Land Beyond and the kills by Universal Remote.
With the special weapons that bypass the ammo nerf, a total of 8,054,646 kills were achieved. Here is the specific calculation:
5,010,973 Pistol kills
+ 1,735,259 No Land Beyond
+ 1,232,423 Icebreaker
+ 58,311 Universal Remote
+ 17,680 Derision
This leads the Reddit user to the conclusion that 93.05% of all special weapon kills in the Trials were achieved with special weapons that do not suffer from ammo poverty.
By the way: Among the special weapons affected by the nerf that still hold strong in the leaderboards are, for example, the Matador 64, the Void Look or the Longbow synthesis.
What, only 93%?
In the comments, many Guardians appear to be not surprised. This is precisely what logically happens when Bungie implements such a significant nerf. It was to be expected that the Guardians would simply resort to weapons that bypass the nerf. Some users even write that they were expecting more than 93%. Especially the pistols have been on the rise since the update.
However, Bungie plans to respond to this pistol dominance. These will be nerfed in the future – with some further adjustments.
Are you surprised by these numbers?
