Highlights

  • Bungie plans to address overpowered exotic items in Destiny 2 inside the Crucible, including Red Death, Khvostov, and Speaker's Sight.
  • Both Khvostov and Red Death have become go-to weapons in the Crucible thanks to high stability and their ease of use.
  • Speaker's Sight was too good at producing orbs, endangering the long term health of the Crucible and activities like Trials of Osiris.

In its weekly blog post, Bungie reveals upcoming plans to address the currently popular Red Death, Khovostov, and Speaker's Sight exotic items in Destiny 2. The Final Shape exotic has been seen as some of Bungie's best work for Destiny 2, introducing a compelling campaign where players participate in a climactic battle against The Witness, while also adding plenty of content to be enjoyed post-campaign.

Alongside the activities and campaign, The Final Shape has added some of the most unique and powerful weapons and armor players have seen in quite a while. In fact, many of the legendary weapons added to Destiny 2 The Final Shape have quickly become fan favorites, like The Call, which is a microrocket firing Strand sidearm with some excellent perk rolls. Alongside a slew of new exotics, players can also earn the series' first ever class specific item from the Dual Destiny mission, unlocking armor that can roll with two random perks taken from other exotic gear. However, as a live service title, Bungie is constantly making tweaks to the game and the upcoming "mid-episode" patch aims to shake up more than a few fan favorites.

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Bungie's latest weekly news post gave players a quick look at some upcoming changes to the overall sandbox, including the Iron Banner, which is now going to be a two-week event that focuses on only one game mode instead of offering a couple. Bungie is also working on a larger update for Destiny 2 Episode: Echoes with a number of quality of life features. In advance of the update, as well as the arrival of Act 2 on July 16, Bungie is planning on hosting another developer livestream to preview the new content sometime in the next few weeks.

Exotic Item Changes Coming to Destiny 2

However, Bungie highlighted three exotic items in particular which are getting changed and, in some cases, nerfed, as each item has largely been overperforming in the game's Crucible activities.

Khvostov 7G-0X (Auto Rifle)

While unlocking Destiny 2's exotic Khvostov auto rifle can be a grind, the auto rifle has proven to be incredibly popular with players as the weapon dominated total kills within the Crucible and Trials of Osiris. Part of the reason is the weapon's ease of use thanks to its relative lack of recoil as well as very high aim assist. As it turns out, Bungie confirmed the overly high stability is due to a bug that was only intended for the special ricochet rounds rather than the entire magazine. In an effort to not remove the gun's unique feeling entirely, Bungie is removing the bug entirely, but increasing the base stability back up to 72 overall.

In terms of Ricochet Shots, Bungie indicated they have become a balance issue in PvP with an extremely quick time-to-kill ratio due to the high uptime and buffs through orbs. To counter this, Bungie is making a PvP only change by reducing the bonus impact damage against other players from 15% to 5%. On top of that, the bouncing bullet damage has been nerfed against players only from 18.4 to 4.6 damage, while PvE is left unchanged.

Red Death Reformed (Pulse Rifle)

Bungie has also noticed that Destiny 2's returning Red Death Reformed exotic pulse rifle has also become a popular Crucible pick thanks to an easy to manage recoil pattern. Second only to Khvostov in Crucible popularity recently has been Red Death Reformed, though unlike the exotic auto rifle, the bonus stability was not a bug, but intentional. Considering that High-Impact pulse rifles are already strong and, combined with the bonus stability, Bungie felt it was a bit excessive. While the studio didn't want to remove the weapon's unique feel entirely, it instead chose to reduce the added stability that the pattern provides.

Speaker's Sight

This exotic helm has given players a viable way to play a true healer style build within Destiny 2 and has quickly become a favorite already for Warlocks. However, Bungie noted that this exotic armor is too good at generating orbs in the Crucible, making it a very strong pick for those in Trials of Osiris or Competitive activities. Considering how many orbs this exotic can create, Bungie felt leaving this wasn't healthy for the long term of the Crucible. For the time being and as a PvP only solution, Bungie is disabling the orb generating portion of this exotic. The studio will revisit the exotic to figure out a better long-term solution for slowing down how many orbs it can create.