‘Destiny’: The Most Painful Weapon Nerfs In The 2.0 Update

The upcoming weapon balance changes to Destiny with the 2.0 update are already generating loads of discussion among the game’s community. While some of the changes are undoubtedly welcome, these changes are going to be the most painful for PlayStation and Xbox players.

Bungie has spent months on the weapon changes in Destiny as the last balance update was in February of this year. At the time, I suggested that a public test environment of some kind that makes use of a very engaged community to get feedback on weapons prior to finalizing them would be ideal.

It’s likely that Bungie doesn’t have the resources to run such an environment, but it appears that they’ve done lots of internal testing with the goal of increasing the difference between some weapon classes and scaling down the power and impact of others.

Seperate from the Weekly Update, we’re dropping big news about weapon tuning in Update 2.0: https://t.co/UCpCfPFLjL pic.twitter.com/q9zgYc7fiV

— Bungie (@Bungie) July 17, 2015

Update: Those interested in the best buffs and nerfs in the 2.0 update should check out this article.

Black Hammer

The Black Hammer’s “White Nail” perk is being nerfed from one that allowed free regeneration of ammo after every three precision shots to one that pulls ammo from inventory instead. Meaning, you will eventually run out of ammo unless you go pick up some more or pop a special weapon synth.

The impact this change makes to the Black Hammer cannot be understated. It now makes the Black Hammer, a weapon obtained from a Raid, on par with Legendary sniper rifles bought from a vendor or picked up from loot drops. If the “Triple Tap” perk didn’t exist, the change wouldn’t be as bad. It does, though, which means players will shift to those in PVE so that they can get some ammo regeneration from three precision shots.

Ice Breaker

The Ice Breaker nerf is interesting solely because its use has fallen off greatly since the Black Hammer was introduced with The Dark Below. It’s almost as if Bungie said, “If we nerf Black Hammer, players will just go back to Ice Breaker so we better hit that too.”

The ammo regeneration perk for Ice Breaker is being changed from one round every five seconds to one every eight seconds. That means it will not take 48 seconds to generate a full clip of ammo versus 30 seconds.

Bungie’s logic behind both the Black Hammer and Ice Breaker nerfs is that Destiny players sit in one corner of the map and shoot at bosses with either of these two weapons. Unfortunately, that’s just as much a result of the boss encounters as it is the weapons. There are only a couple of boss fights were the boss will chase players, such as the Archon Priest. The rest sit in one spot or move back and forth around a very small defined area.

We’ll have to see what happens when the 2.0 update comes out, but my guess is that these encounters will simply take longer as players switch back and forth between weapons while still sitting in one spot for the boss fights that allow it.

Hand Cannons

It wasn’t enough that the Thorn and The Last Word received the kinds of debuffs that Destiny players have been begging for. Bungie nerfed the entire hand cannon class, as well. The reasoning behind the nerf is to increase the contrast between Hand Cannons and Scout Rifles versus thinking they were overpowered.

As a result, Hand Cannons will be less accurate from a distance and the damage fallout will be greater the further away a target. Additionally, the magazine size is being reduced, which is what makes this change more painful in my opinion. The clip sizes on Hand Cannon aren’t especially large already. Reducing the size will slow down players as they spend more time reloading.

Gjallarhorn

I don’t know if this will be the most painful debuff, but it is one of the most talked about. The rocket launcher is currently the single-most most powerful weapon in Destiny, has broken boss fight mechanics, and caused players without one to be excluded from Raids, Prison of Elders, and Nightfall Strikes. Thus, Bungie felt it deserving of a nerf.

Bungie is reducing the damage output of the Gjallarhorn’s Wolfpack Rounds. The catch is we don’t know yet how much the damage output is being reduced. The rocket launcher will still be the most powerful weapon in the game even with a reduction in damage.

The Gjallarhorn will still have the regular damage output from plus the Wolfpack Round damage. So, the weapon will still be the most powerful in the game. It’s just a matter of if it goes from 1.5 times more powerful to 1.33 or 1.2 times more powerful?

The weapon is also receiving a little buff as all rocket launchers are getting a slight increase in blast radius.

Non-Painful Nerfs

Thorn and The Last Word have earned some well-deserved nerfs. We’ll have to wait and see how they perform in the 2.0 update when combined with the general Hand Cannon weapon class changes.

Fusion Rifles changes are all over the place. Accuracy is improved for short range weapons in the class while reduced for long range weapons in the class. Meanwhile, high impact rifles have had their base range reduced. It’s part of Bungie’s goal to make this a mid-range weapon. It’s hard to say if this will increase their use over shotguns though.

[Images via Bungie]