Destiny 2 Season 21 Exotic Weapon Changes Revealed, Immortal SMG Nerfed

One of the final pieces of the puzzle before we enter season 21, known as Season of the Deep. Bungie has revealed Destiny 2’s weapon changes that will go live when the new season drops as there are 17 Exotic Weapon updates as well as some quality-of-life improvements you’d appreciate if you are a veteran player.

Weapon reticle updates

For starters, some weapon types and Exotic Weapons will have new reticles either in hip fire or held down. This is to provide the player with more information during a fight. The weapon types that were adjusted by this will be Fusion Riles, Hand Cannons, Sidearms, and Trace Rifles. The most appreciative change is what was done with Fusion and Sword weapons as the reticle now has a charge meter while Swords now has a reticle and shows the current state of your Sword guard. Pretty neat.

Some Exotic weapons had their reticles changed as well to relay important information that’s only unique to that particular weapon.

Charge meter added to Exotic weapons whose base weapon type doesn't typically have a charge meter

• Devil's Ruin

• Salvation's Grip

• Grand Overture

Perk counter shows pips for perked shots

• Quicksilver Storm grenade count.

• Ace of Spades Memento Mori shot count.

• Lumina Noble Rounds shot count.

• Traveler's Chosen Gathering Light stacks.

Perk progress meter shows perk buildup

• The Manticore

• Perk active shows when the Exotic perk is active.

• Hawkmoon

• Ager's Scepter

• Tarrabah

• Touch of Malice

• Cryosthesia 77k

• Trinity Ghoul
  

Charge meter and perk counter

• Vex Mythoclast

This is just the start as Bungie plans to update other weapon types in the future with the same concept.

Here are some of the changes to weapon reticles below.

Another change coming in Season 21 is the ability to inspect your weapon when previewing its stats, you can rotate the model of the weapon the same way you can do with a Sparrow or a piece of armor. It’s weird how it will only become a thing now but better late than never.

Weapon Balancing

Bungie then also laid out the game’s upcoming weapon balancing and the most notable changes are adjustments to aggressive SMGs and the infamous Immortal that have been dominating the PvP space.  Snipers get a bit of love and there’s a good amount of Exotic Weapons getting adjusted that might be viable during Season 21 depending on how the meta is established.

Here’s a rundown of the changes.

Weapon Archetypes

Bows

• Tyranny of Heaven's stats were always weirdly low, and we were touching these weapons anyway so opted to update its stats while we were in there.

Submachine Guns (Aggressive frame)

• Reduced base damage from 15 to 14.

• Increased precision hit multiplier from 1.45 to 1.5 (crit damage goes from 21.8 to 21).

• The Immortal is such a stat monster that no other Aggressive SMG can compete, we've brought its range in while allowing it to continue to excel in other areas.

• Immortal SMG base range reduced by 10

Sniper Rifles

• Increased PvE damage by 10%.

Scout Rifles

Long Arm was inadvertently receiving the damage bonus vs minors for Exotics, so we've addressed that (it still receives the Scout Rifle PvE damage buff from the Season 20 mid-Season balance update).

Exotic Weapons

For Exotics, there’s a lot of cool adjustments here that could potentially bring life to these weapons next season. We are also getting long-overdue bug fixes to weapons like Winterbite and Fighting Lion, which have been dealing a bit too much damage due to bugs.

Eyes of Tomorrow 

• Killing 4 targets with a missile volley will refund one ammo.

Graviton Lance 

• Increased RPM from 257 to 300 (reduced burst delay by 20%, now matches Revision Zero's Hakke Heavy Rounds rate of fire).

• Rebalanced damage per shot.

• Increased first shot damage from:

• Body: 9.5 to 19.

• Crit: 15.7 to 31.4.

• Decreased second shot damage from:

• Body: 35.6 to 25.6.

• Crit: 58.7 to 42.3.

Jade Rabbit

• Added buff text to show when Fate of All Fools increased body shot damage is active.

• Quickly hitting 3 critical hits now refunds 3 shots instead of 1.

Manitcore

• Increased the catalyst's damage resistance from tier 3 to tier 4.

• Increased movement speed during hang time.

• Activating the catalyst perk (through an airborne kill or sustained damage following an airborne kill) now partially refills the magazine.

Lumina

• Increased Noble Rounds cap from 5 to 6.

Heartshadow

• Damage increase now activates quicker while invisible, after 0.25s instead of 1s.

• Heartshadow now weakens upon dealing any damage while the damage increase is active.

Worldline Zero

• The sprinting Heavy attack can now be chained into itself once.

• Sword guard energy cost from each sprinting heavy attack reduced from 100% to 50%.

• Increased damage from an individual sprinting heavy attack by 8.3%.

Sweet Business

• Now fires explosive rounds every 20 shots (fewer shots while fully spun up).

Legend of Acrius 

• Increased total ammo from 12 to 16.

• Increased maximum projectile distance from 9m to 12m.

Tommy's Matchbook 

• Catalyst updated: While overheated, sustained fire scorches your target. Every 5 shots applies 14+7 (with the Embers of Ashes Fragment) scorch stacks.

No Time to Explain

• Updated drone to work with Feeding Frenzy (from the NTTE catalyst).

• This also resolved an issue where the feedback for Feeding Frenzy would always play when the player spawned and then never again.

Skyburner's Oath

• Increased scorch stacks from 3 to 5 and 5 to 10 with the Embers of Ashes Fragment.

Salvation's Grip

• Reworked to have two firing modes. Charged shot creates a pattern of Stasis crystals (where the number of crystals is no longer dependent on charge time). Uncharged shot is a normal Grenade Launcher shot, which does more damage to Stasis crystals and frozen targets.

• Added a new perk that reloads the magazine from reserves when you quickly shatter at least 3 crystals with the uncharged shot.

Bad Juju 

• Fixed an issue that was causing the weapon to recoil like an Auto Rifle, making it harder to control. The recoil pattern will now be similar to other Pulse Rifles.

Fighting Lion

• Fixed an issue that was causing this weapon to do more damage than intended to red-bar combatants.

Thunderlord 

• Fixed an issue resulting in hits against a Divinity bubble counting as two crits instead of one.

Winterbite

• The impact damage has been removed and redistributed to the detonation damage.

• The self-damage scaling has been tuned to account for the increased damage of the detonation.

Weapon Perk Updates

Weapon perks adjustments in Season 21 are rather little compared to what you see above, but the most significant change is what Shoot to Loot can do next season as it’s now vital if you’re in need of picking up Orbs of Power during a fight.

Fragile Focus

• Bonus lasts until shield pop, returns when shield regenerates to 100%.

Thresh, Demolitionist, and Pugilist

• Grants increased energy to Glaive projectile kills (same as Shotguns, Fusion Rifles, and Sniper Rifles).

Reconstruction

Change in the initial timer and the cooldown timer between reloads.

• Base perk: 4 seconds.

• Enhanced perk: 3.5 seconds.

Shoot to Loot

• Updated to pick up Orbs of Power.

Bungie also detailed the Exotic Armor changes and the adjustments made to subclass abilities a few weeks ago. Simply put, once the next weekly reset hits, expect a lot of adjustments to the loadouts you’ve used for months now.

[Source: Bungie]

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