Destiny 2 expansion The Witch Queen is just weeks away from launch and Bungie is ready to start sharing more about what Guardians can expect. The latest This Week at Bungie blog post delves into some of The Witch Queen's new content. Focuses include the Enclave location, its new crafting system, and some customization elements. One area that Bungie provides specifics for is a wave of Exotic weapon changes planned for The Witch Queen, a topic every Destiny 2 player will be excited to hear about.
The balance changes for Exotic weapons in The Witch Queen start with a major PvE buff. Bungie explains that it believes Exotic Primary weapons and Trace Rifles a currently dramatically underpowered and rarely worth bringing to PvE content compared to Legendary weapons. As such, Bungie will be improving Exotic Primary weapons and Trace Rifle damage vs, minor enemies by a healthy 40%. This change impacts every Exotic that uses Primary ammo, including any secondary effects they might have.
Ten other specific Exotic weapons are also going to be touched on as part of The Witch Queen. Changes include a nerf to Chaperone's passive range buff radius, a similar nerf to Chaperone's buff radios and a buff so it preserves On Black Wings even after a reload, a nerf to Dead Man's Tale's hip-fire rate of fire, increased ammo pickup for Forerunner, and increased flinch for both Lorentz Driver and Arbalest due to their strength in PvP.
Those are some smaller changes, but larger changes are also being made. Tarrabah, Ruinous Effigy, and Lumina have all received changes that should make them more viable in The Witch Queen. There's also Ager's Scepter, which has been reworked to that its empowered mode and Super drain actually work as intended.
All of these changes and many more will be arriving with the release of Destiny 2's The Witch Queen expansion. Bungie even teases additional Exotic changes in the works for "the near future," assumedly beyond The Witch Queen's release. This is an opportunity for Bungie to press the restart button on the current meta, and it's going to embrace it.
In addition to making changes to existing Exotic weapons, The Witch Queen will also be introducing a wave of entirely new Exotics, too. A recently released trailer introduced six new Exotic weapons for Destiny 2's new expansion, though three of them are the new crafted Glaive weapons. Expect to hear more about Bungie's new Exotics in the weeks to come.
Destiny 2 The Witch Queen arrives February 22 on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
