All weapon buffs and nerfs in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Destiny 2 goes through balancing all the time, but when a new expansion rolls around, there is a lot to get right. Well, The Final Shape is here, and it’s bringing with it a host of changes that have necessitated weapon updates across the board.

The new Prismatic subclass is one of the biggest additions this time around. It combines many of the abilities from the existing subclasses into a concoction that is sure to define the initial meta for The Final Shape expansion.

As such, interactions with existing weapons are a huge priority for balancing. The addition of a raft of new guns has also led to more general buffs and nerfs for each weapon type.

There’s a lot to get into, so here’s everything you need to know about this round of weapon changes.

All Destiny 2 weapon changes in The Final Shape

Bungie

There are some headline changes that players should be aware of. The first is that Boss Spec, Taken Spec, Minor Spec, Major Spec, and Adept Big Ones Spec are all being removed. In addition, Exotic Primaries are having their damage reduced by 10% against red bar enemies.

The full list of changes to weapon types is as follows:

• Increased base PvE damage versus all combatants.
  • Pulse Rifles: 20%
    • Exceptions: Graviton Lance and Revision Zero’s Heavy Burst mode. (These both have an intrinsic PvE damage buff built in.) 
  • Pellet Shotguns: 10%
    • Exceptions: Legend of Acrius, Tractor Cannon, Conditional Finality, and The Fourth Horseman. (These are all already performing as intended.) 
  • Slug Shotguns: 9% 
  • Fusion Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: One Thousand Voices. (This one was just buffed.) 
  • Sniper Rifles: 7%
    • Exceptions: Izanagi’s Burden’s Honed Edge shots and Cloudstrike’s storm. (These are both performing well.) 
  • Glaive projectiles: 7% 
  • Linear Fusion Rifles: 5% 
• Increased damage versus Minors (red bars)—this stacks with the base PvE damage increase.
  • Sidearms, Trace Rifles, Scout Rifles, and Bows: 20% 
  • Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles: 15%
    • For Pulse Rifles, this is in addition to the above buff, and Graviton Lance and Revision Zero’s Heavy Burst mode are included.
      • I.e. Pulse Rifles will do 1.2 * 1.15 = 38% more damage to red bars. 
  • Submachine Guns: 10% 
  • Hand Cannons: 5% 
• Increased damage versus Majors (orange bars).
  • Trace Rifles: 20% 
• Increased damage globally, including PvP.
  • Machine Guns: 7% 
  • Swords: 7% 

Quality-of-life weapon alterations

Bungie

• Updated Heavy, Adaptive, and Aggressive Burst weapon intrinsic names to match burst count across all weapon archetypes. Functionality is unchanged.
  • 2-burst: Heavy Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Hand Cannons, and Pulse Rifles. 
  • 3-burst: Adaptive Burst
    • Includes Sidearms, Linear Fusion Rifles, and Adaptive Pulse Rifles. 
  • 4-burst: Aggressive Burst
    • Includes Pulse Rifles. 
• Removed the foundry name from the Veist Rapid-Fire, Häkke Precision, and Omolon Adaptive weapon intrinsics. 
• Scout Rifles
  • Updated the hip-fire reticle to better show accuracy and aim-assist state. 
• Hand Cannons
  • Some aggressive Hand Cannons struggle to compete with the stats of the top-tier examples [cough] Igneous Hammer [cough], so with Crimil’s Dagger and Something New returning in The Final Shape, we updated their stats.
    • Crimil’s Dagger (Iron Banner)
      • Stability: 23 to 31 
      • Handling: 23 to 31 
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9 
      • Airborne Effectiveness: 10 to 21 
    • Something New (Solstice)
      • Stability: 27 to 30 
      • Handling: 24 to 30 
      • Magazine Size: 8 to 9 
• Low inventory Sniper Rifles were a little too low in PvE for our liking, so we’ve increased the minimum.
  • Increased minimum reserves from 14 to 17 shots; maximum reserve is unchanged. 
• Linear Fusion Rifles
  • Adaptive Burst Linear Fusion Rifles are strong, but in some cases are quite hard to control.
    • Reduced firing animation kick and recoil for Adaptive Linear Fusion Rifles. 
• Wave Frame Grenade Launchers deal competitive damage as of the Destiny 2: Into the Light update, but some stats on these didn’t have a gameplay effect. In this pass, we’re adjusting the blast radius.
  • The size of the wave is now affected by the blast radius stat. This will mostly impact the width of the wave, though the length and height will also be scaled.
    • The default display stat for the blast radius has been changed from 100 to 50 (where 50 represents the previous baseline—any stat over 50 will result in a larger wave segment than what was possible before). 
  • Special ammo Wave – Frame Grenade Launchers overperform as add clear weapons in their current state, so we’ve pulled the length of the wave back a little.
    • Reduced the length of the waves from 22 meters to 15 meters (except for Dead Messenger). 
• Swords
  • Updated the Sword reticle to better indicate its charge state. When Sword energy is consumed, the amount of delay the Sword has before it begins to recharge now subtly appears in the reticle. 
  • Bug fixes:
    • Fixed an issue where the Overwhelming Battlesong debuff from some missions would prevent Swords from recharging or losing energy while guarding. 
    • Fixed an issue where unpowered caster Sword heavy attacks would not reset the Sword’s energy recharge delay. 
    • Fixed an issue where uncharged adaptive Sword heavy attacks cost the same amount of ammo as their charged counterparts. They now cost 1 ammo, same as other uncharged heavy attacks. 

Exotic weapon changes

Bungie

A lot of existing Exotics are getting big changes with this new expansion. Additionally, there are some updated animations that should make using certain guns (like the Rat King) a lot easier. The full list of Exotic changes, with explanations from the developer, is as follows:

Divinity’s ability to bypass combatant gameplay by generating a weak spot (called a “cage” internally) on command has too high an uptime as it stands, particularly with trigger feathering.  

• Increased the number of shots required to generate the cage by 75% against combatants (PvP unchanged). 

Rat King’s firing animation makes the weapon hard to control at high rate of fire, so we’ve updated it. 

• Swapped the firing animation to the same one used by other auto-fire Sidearms. 

Devil’s Ruin could be made to apply its firing animation to other equipped Sidearms. 

• Fixed an issue where the firing animation from Devil’s Ruin would get applied to other equipped Sidearms if the weapon was swapped during the firing animation. 

Symmetry needed a little attention, particularly its reload speed and handling, so we took this opportunity to increase those via the catalyst. 

• Catalyst now provides +10 reload speed, +10 handling, and the Eddy Current perk, in addition to its existing effects. 

Gjallarhorn’s Wolfpack Rounds always looked like Arc projectiles, regardless of the weapon’s actual damage type. 

• Updated the visuals of Wolfpack Rounds to match the damage type of the weapon. For example:
  • On Gjallarhorn, they will use Solar effects. 
  • On the Royal Entry Void Rocket Launcher buffed by Gjallarhorn, they will have Void effects. 

Touch of Malice’s burn from the Darkness Ball didn’t last long enough to be useful in PvE. 

• Increased duration of burn applied by the Darkness Ball against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. 

Osteo Striga made it too easy to spread poison across a whole encounter from a couple of kills of weak combatants. 

• Now has a 4-second cooldown on the poison burst on kills. (Poison burst from sustained damage doesn’t receive this cooldown.) 

Necrochasm’s add clear role wasn’t as strong as we’d like, so we’ve buffed it and replaced the Outlaw perk on the catalyst with a new, custom perk that leans into this role. 

• Intrinsic perk now provides increased reload speed after precision kills. 
• Increased duration of burn applied by the Cursed Thrall explosion against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. 
• Catalyst has been rebuilt.
  • One for Thrall: Damaging 3 combatants in quick succession provides a period of increased damage, range, and aim assist. 

While The Lament’s damage is roughly equivalent to other Swords, the healing on hit largely removes the intended downside of using a Sword for boss DPS, and the chained heavy attack was too strong. 

• Reduced healing effect by 20%. 
• While this weapon does inherit the 7% global buff to Swords, we’ve reduced the damage of the high end of the chained heavy attack by 20% from that point.
  • This means combos at lower stacks are less affected by the change than combos at higher stacks. 

Dead Man’s Tale’s rapid-fire hipfire fantasy isn’t landing as well as we’d like, so we’ve bumped up the rate of fire and added a bit of stability to Cranial Spike to make this easier to control. At the same time, its strength is skewed a little high on mouse and keyboard and a little low on controller, so we’ve tuned accuracy and magnetism (controller reticle friction) to address this. 

• Baseline:
  • Cranial Spike stacks now grant stability in addition to aim assist stat and range (+2 per stack). 
  • Increased reload speed benefit of Cranial Spike stacks. 
• With catalyst, iwhen hip-firing:
  • Slightly reduced accuracy benefits. 
  • Increased magnetism falloff scale (1.6 to 1.7). 
  • Increased baseline rate of fire from 130RPM to 140RPM. 
  • Removed PvE-only damage buff that scaled with stacks of Cranial Spike and added a 15% damage bonus at maximum stacks of Cranial Spike. 

The Colony’s fantasy of spawning self-replicating insectoid robots is something we’ve wanted to juice for a while now. This update allows The Colony to deal with waves of combatants in a unique way. 

• Now spawns additional insectoid robots on final blows. More robots (up to five) spawn from tougher combatants. 

Truth has fallen far behind other Exotic Rocket Launchers, largely due to its lackluster damage, and we wanted to lean further into total rocket count. 

• Increased area-of-effect (AoE) damage such that it doesn’t lose noticeable damage due to not dealing impact damage. 
• Increased total reserves by 3. (This is on top of the reserves change to high impact Rocket Launchers from the 7.3.5 update.) 

The Queenbreaker’s damage output is outpaced by Legendary Linear Fusion Rifles, so we’ve increased its damage and reserve ammo to compensate. We do see frequent requests to move Queenbreaker to the Energy slot, but given the number of Special ammo damage options in this slot, we have opted to push it further into the Heavy slot. We’re working on some functionality changes to this weapon for a future update as well. 

• Increased damage versus bosses, minibosses, Champions, and vehicles by 12%. 
• Increased reserve ammunition by 3. 

The power from Cerberus+1’s focus fire perk from the Exotic catalyst was limited by it being always available. We’ve changed this to only being available following a kill, allowing us to increase its strength. 

• Focus fire now will activate on Special reloads following a kill and will no longer reduce range or rate of fire. 

In a world where Bastion has competition for a Fusion Rifle in the kinetic slot, we felt that it was time to lean further into emulating Saint-14’s combat style. 

• Reworked Saint’s Fists perk: Dealing damage with melee increases your charge rate, damage, and reload speed for a short duration. Landing a majority of pellets in a burst increases melee damage. 

Eriana’s Vow has fallen behind other anti-barrier Special weapons and, as a Solar weapon, has the opportunity for a subclass tie-in. 

• Breaking a matched shield or piercing a Champion’s Barrier will cause the target to ignite. 

Deterministic Chaos didn’t have a clear niche when it shipped, so we’ve redesigned it to be an anti-Champion and weakening powerhouse. 

• This weapon is now intrinsically anti-barrier. 
• The Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal perks have had their locations and behavior swapped.
  • Heavy Metal now causes every 4th bullet to make targets volatile. 
  • Vexadecimal now causes every 16th bullet to also weaken targets. 

The flexibility offered by The Fundamentals (on the Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger Exotic weapons) is useful, but most of the time, there’s no need to switch damage types rapidly, so it’s irritating having the current damage type clear on death. 

• The Fundamentals now maintains its state across death or respawn.