With a new season fast approaching in Destiny 2, Bungie has revealed some of the weapon changes that players can expect following the Season 22 update. For the most part, this update dives into some very granular details about weapon fall-off damage, reticles, and fine-tuning: content that will appeal to any fan of numbers.
Where things get interesting is in the Exotics and special-ammo weapons departments, as some interesting changes–and nerfs–are scheduled to go live next season. First off, some bad news for anyone running a Guardian build that specializes in wielding two special-ammo weapons.
Bungie has been monitoring a bug that is unintentionally caused by equipping two of these weapons, which results in heavy ammo dropping at an increased rate. This exploit is being patched out, and you can expect heavy ammo to be generated at the same rate as a balanced spread of weapon ammo archetypes.
For the good news, Monte Carlo fans can look forward to “the most complex catalyst” that Bungie has ever produced, a change to the stylish Exotic weapon that finally allows for the bayonet on it to be used. Bungie showed a preview of Monte Carlo’s pointy end being used in action, which according to the dev team, required “a host of custom animation work” to pull off.
For other Exotics, Bungie outlined the following tweaks that’ll be applied to them, including some big adjustments to Le Monarque, Touch of Malice, and Wicked Implement. Le Monarque’s lingering damage-over-time is being reduced in PvP, Touch of Malice is being tweaked to be less of a drain (literally) on players, and Wicked Implement is getting a nice little boost:
Quicksilver Storm
- Fixed an issue where ammo was loading into Quicksilver Storm slightly too late in the reload animation.
Dead Man’s Tale
- Fixed the displayed impact stat. This is cosmetic only. Damage per bullet is unchanged.
Two-Tailed Fox
- Two-Tailed Fox now fires a three-shot burst with the catalyst, instead of firing three rockets in a two-shot burst.
Verglas Curve
- Whisper of Fissures detonations now generate Hail Barrage stacks if the Stasis crystal was created by this weapon.
- Shiver Quiver now activates when slowing enemies.
- We increased the slow stacks from 40 to 60 when hitting players directly with Hail Barrage arrows. This allows for a freeze if two Hail Barrage arrows hit the same player.
Le Monarque
- Reduced draw time from 684ms to 612ms.
- Reduced body shot damage from 100 to 85.
- Increased critical hit multiplier from 1.5x to 1.6x (crit damage against players goes from 150 to 136).
- Changed the poison DoT effect.
- Reduced poison DoT duration from 3 seconds to 1.75 seconds.
- Moved from 8 damage ticks to 6, but poison deals the same total damage to players.
- Poison damage increased in PvE by 50%.
Vex Mythoclast
- RPM reduced from 390 to 360 to match other high-impact Auto Rifles.
- Increased damage against minor combatants (red bars) and major combatants (orange bars) by 25%.
Tommy’s Matchbook
- Updated Scorch value
- It was previously 14 + 7 (with the Ember of Ashes fragment equipped). Now it’s 15 + 5.
Touch of Malice
- Increased final round damage in PvE by 20%.
- Decreased the self-damage from the final round from 10 to 7.
- Final round damage can no longer kill the user.
- Increased the health awarded by the Touch of Mercy perk from 30 to 75.
- Set up Touch of Mercy to work like Unrelenting. (Guardians and major combatants give more points towards activation, and we increased the time allowed between kills.)
- Ball of Darkness now appropriately deals Arc damage and will blind combatants and stun Unstoppable Champions.
Malfeasance
- Fixed an issue where the Vorpal Weapon catalyst wasn’t displaying the status buff text.
Cloudstrike
- Reduced the lethal kill distance of the lightning strike against players.
Wicked Implement
- The timing window for Creeping Attrition has been increased from 3.5 seconds to 4.5 seconds.
- You can now also active Tithing Harvest by destroying Stasis crystals.
- The Wicked Implement Exotic catalyst now also includes the Headstone perk.
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