The latest TWAB has arrived and Bungie spends most of it doing a deep dive into the weapon buffs and changes that you can expect heading into next season, which is still Season of the [Redacted] as of now.
Before diving into that, speaking of next season, while we all know Vault of Glass is coming, Bungie put a dagger into hopes of some players that were pulling for Venus being surprise added as a destination as well. Unlike the original Vault of Glass which spawned players at the entrance which was located in a public space, Destiny 2’s Vault of Glass will be a private instanced area that is closed off. Don’t expect random players to show up and help you open the gate, nor should you expect to be able to run off and explore Venus.
With that pipe dream dashed, the TWAB moves on to deep diving into weapon archetype buffs. The focus is primarily on explaining their thought process for heavy weapons. It’s a quite long-winded explanation on their philosophy of each heavy weapon and role they believe it serves that you can read here if you’re interested in their thought process. All of it leads to the point that Linear Fusion Rifles are not really good for anything right now.
Pretty for nearly the entire existence of Destiny 2, Linear Fusion Rifles have been overshadowed in PvE. The only exceptions were pre-nerf Sleeper Simulant and Arbalest (to an extent), and both of those weapons are exotics. Line in the Sand, a great Linear Fusion Rifle on paper, never saw any meaningful usage since, well, the weapon in general just sucks.
Bungie is buffing Linear Fusion Rifles pretty substantially by increasing its precision damage by 15% and its reserves by 20%. While they are not completely closed off to the idea of moving Linear Fusion Rifles into the special slot, as many players have suggested over the years, they are hesitant to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary as it will be challenging to balance it in PvP against sniper rifles.
Here are some other notable buffs discussed in the TWAB coming next season alongside the introduction of Transmog and other new features.
- Low-range Fusion Rifles will receive increased damage falloff start distance, with effect on 100 range stat, +2m on 0 range stat.
- Precision-class Auto Rifles (aka 450s) will get a slight bump in damage per bullet from 17 to 18
- Subsistence perk will no longer reduce your reserves. SMGs will now gain more ammo back per kill.
- High-impact reserves & Under Pressure perk will now will without having to pre-fire as long as the conditions are met.
- Unrelenting will be easier to trigger in PvE and will heal 20% more than it did previously.
- Sympathetic Arsenal will now also give +20 reload.
- Dragonfly will now also work on servitors and heavy shanks.
- Hip-fire grip will be more potent.
- Iron Grip, Iron Gaze, and Iron Reach will have their stat penalties reduced by -10.
- Osmosis and Elemental Captaciter now work with Stasis. Using Stasis with Osomsis will allow you to do Stasis weapon damage (not ability) and with Elemental Capcciter will grant improve recoil direction and reduce ADS movement penalty.
- No Distractions will activate quicker and reduce flinch by 30% more.
- Celerity now always grants +20 to handling and +20 to reload in addition to the triggered effect.
- Bottomless Grief now always grants +30 to magazine in addition to the triggered effect.
Also notable is that Mida Multi-Tool is finally getting a more useful perk instead of Outlaw from its catalyst. It will now instead have No Distractions.
Finally, expect a nerf to Dead Man’s Tale sometime next season to reign in its hip-fire a bit against long-range targets.
Phew, that’s a lot, and there’s still a bit more in this latest TWAB if you want to get into the nitty-gritty. You can read every last detail right here. What do you think of the changes? Let us know in the comments below.
