Linear Fusion Rifles have dominated the PvE meta in Destiny 2 for the longest time, but that might change with the weapon tuning update for the upcoming Season 20. The dominance of Linear Fusion Rifles in the Destiny 2 PvE meta began more than a year ago and the landscape hasn't changed much after The Witch Queen expansion either, as the balance changes to other archetypes rendered Linear Fusions as the safer option.
The stagnant meta originally began with the arrival of the Particle Deconstruction artifact mod in the Season of the Lost. Coupled with this mod, heavy Linear Fusion Rifles rendered every other choice nearly obsolete, thanks to the Last Wish-exclusive One Thousand Voices vastly outperforming other weapons. Throughout the last four seasons, the heavy weapon meta has remained unchanged due to legendary Linear Fusion Rifles having much higher base damage, being deadly accurate, and having easier accessibility.
In the weapon tuning blog post, Senior Design Lead Chris Proctor outlines a series of changes coming with the Destiny 2 Lightfall expansion. Every best-in-slot Legendary Linear Fusion Rifle has received a nerf of 15% overall damage against bosses and champions. Machine Guns have received buffs across the board, increasing the damage by 10%, and base ammo reserve by 50%. Grenade Launchers now deal 20% increased damage against major targets, and 40% increased damage against minor combatants. Kinetic weapons have also received higher damage multipliers, but Stasis Kinetic weapons have lost the damage bonus against unshielded enemies. Other changes include a dynamic weapon reticle that indicates the weapon's effective range as well as improvements to Shotgun reticles to display proper pellet spread.
Existing exotic weapons are also being tweaked, with The Queenbreaker now firing shots that chain to nearby enemies and using the Arc 3.0 blinding effect. One Thousand Voices now applies Scorch stacks and instantly triggers ignition if every explosion hits an enemy. Many players will be excited about the returning Anarchy, the notorious Heavy Grenade Launcher that also stagnated the meta for years. Season of the Seraph's Wendigo GL3 can also potentially become a good choice, so players should farm the Master and Grandmaster Nightfall missions for god rolls. While the magazine reserve changes for Machine Guns are promising, the changes will affect weapons with lower reserves much more significantly. It remains to be seen if the upcoming Lightfall Exotic Machine Gun Deterministic Chaos can become a new contender for the crown of top DPS.
While this balance pass is guaranteed to bring a shift in the meta, players still have no idea how the new seasonal mods will function with these changes. Lightfall is changing how mods and builds function in general, and the new weapon perks might change the landscape even further. The extent of these changes will be clear once Destiny 2: Lightfall launches.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, with the Lightfall DLC set to release on all platforms on February 28.
Source: Bungie
