Destiny 2’s latest Lightfall expansion changed many things in terms of buildcrafting, as well as added new parts to the equation. The Strand subclass, seasonal Artifact Mods, and Armor mods have reshaped the way that players make loadouts for the various activities in the game. At the same time, one of the new additions to Lightfall’s content may be pointing to what’s yet to come in the near future for Destiny 2.
Weapons in Destiny 2 have seen plenty of updates in the past year, either bringing them up to speed with other major changes or adding entirely new perks to their available perk pools. While many of the new perks have been related to synergizing with Destiny 2's new 3.0 Subclasses, one particular perk introduced in Lightfall is a suspicious outlier. It’s not out of the ordinary for weapon perks to deal increased damage to generalized tiers of opponents, like minor enemies, major enemies, and Guardians in their Supers. However, dealing damage to a specific enemy variant is a strange trend, even for Raid weapons.
A History of Destiny 2's Raid Gear and Perks
Even the mods that can be slotted into the Raid armor sets cover a wide variety of effects, but none of them really touch on unconditional and universal damage boosts against a particular enemy type. Destiny 2's Vow of the Disciple’s mods come fairly close with the perks that increase damage to particular enemies, although they are all temporary buffs. Vow of the Disciple’s Raid armor mods that grant increased damage either require players to first strike a Glyphkeeper, or are dependent on whether the player has stacks of the Pervading Darkness effect.
The King’s Fall Raid armor mods are the closest to providing a universal damage boost, but once again there are conditional requirements that need to be met to utilize their effects. While the armor mods from this Raid have a few mods with the easiest conditions to meet, these mods suffer from the same limitations as all Raid armor mods in Destiny 2. The one thing that stops armor mods from the different Raids from being useful in the entirety of Destiny 2’s content is that these mods are only available in their relevant Raid. Having Raid armor mods outside of the Raids would trivialize the difficulty of the game, however, the Perks on Raid weapons are a different story.
The Witch Queen Expansion's Lucent Hive May be Returning
Raid weapons that have an intrinsic perk can be utilized anywhere in Destiny 2. What makes this such a thought-provoking feature in Destiny 2 is the perk that comes on all the weapons from the Root Of Nightmares Raid in Lightfall. Namely, the new Harmonic Resonance perk on Raid weapons deals increased damage to Tormentors, Lucent Hive, and Guardians using their Supers. While increased damage to Tormentors makes sense given the presence of Tormentors in the Root of Nightmares Raid, the increased damage to Lucent Hive on Lightfall weapons seems off. The Lucent Hive were the featured enemy from the previous expansion, so having a weapon perk related to them could be setting up a return of these enemies in the very near future.
The Lightfall expansion’s first Dungeon is expected to release in Destiny 2's Season of the Deep. So far, not much is known about Season of the Deep’s content yet besides potential leaks that point to the Hive enemy faction getting the spotlight. The RoN Harmonic Resonance perk seemingly supports these leaks, and points towards Hive Lightbearers making a return in future content, particularly the upcoming Dungeon. Hive Lightbearers have no dedicated endgame content so far, but introducing a perk that deals increased damage to this enemy type is a good sign that this will change very soon.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
