It appears the universe of Destiny is about to undergo a seismic shift when Destiny 2's next expansion, The Witch Queen, drops on February 22. Aside from massive story implications, Bungie has been teasing some massive shifts in the game's economies and weapon systems, most notably with the introduction of weapon crafting. The latter two are the primary focus of Bungie's latest This Week at Bungie post, which outlines the weapon buffs and changes players will experience with the expansion's release.
The Witch Queen, as mentioned, is the latest, large-scale expansion to Destiny 2, which will pit players against the Hive god of cunning, Savathun. Players must venture into Savathun's throne world to learn how she stole the Light and what they must do to take it back with an array of new weapons and refreshed abilities. Standing between guardians and Savathun is her Light-powered Hive, the Lucent Brood, which will turn guardians' powers against them in an effort to protect the Hive god.
Guardians will need plenty of weapons to take down Savathun, which was the focus of Bungie's latest TWAB post previewing the weapon changes coming with The Witch Queen. High-impact fusion rifles are the first up, which Bungie says have been "hurting" since the season 15 fusion rework. To address this, high-impact fusions' damage per bolt is getting a bump from 62 to 64, alongside a PvE damage bonus bump from 15 to 20 percent.
Next up is a nerf to breach grenade launchers, specifically to blinding and concussion grenades, both of which will have damage reduced by 25 percent.
Rocket launchers follow as Bungie tries to create a more meaningful difference between the archetype's different subclasses. To do this, Bungie is tuning each subclasses' damage to be further apart. Precision rockets damage adjustment will be 0.95x, high impact will be 1.0x, and both adaptive and aggressive will be 1.05x.
The last two archetypes Bungie lists due to an update in The Witch Queen are sniper rifles and pulse rifles. The former will have "reduced variance" for aim assist which will scale from low- to high-zoom snipers to address the previous changes to sniper rifles' aim assist in Beyond Light. Meanwhile, pulse rifles will also get a damage buff in PvE against minor enemies to make the weapon more viable.
Aside from archetype changes, there are also some changes coming to specific weapons Bungie felt had to be touched up inside The Witch Queen. First are the 140 RPM hand cannons Waking Vigil, Dire Promise, Spare Rations, and Jack Queen King 3, all of which will have their respective range, stability, and aim assist stats tuned to address the wide differences caused from 150s becoming 140s. Felwinter's Lie shotgun's pellet spread is getting increased to offset the weapon's intrinsic perk and bring the gun back down to earth. Finally, Ikelos SMGs are also getting stats touched up to address how "wildly out of band" along with a slight increase to zoom.
Destiny 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Bungie
