Season of the Witch brought with it all kinds of changes and most have been well received, but the global nerf to a fan-favorite weapon perk in Chill Clip hasn’t gone down well with the community now demanding Bungie reverts the change.
With its introduction in Season 17, Riptide quickly established itself as the strongest Legendary Kinetic weapon in Destiny 2. This was largely thanks to its impressive utility with Chill Clip.
When proceed, Chill Clip freezes enemies, triggering additional shatter damage and stunning multiple champion types. It offers a special type of utility that is rarely seen outside of Exotic weapons.
However, this popular weapon trait was nerfed in Season 22:
- Reduced the slow stacks from 60 to 40.
- Wolfpack Rounds no longer trigger this perk.
In practice, this means Chill Clip now requires an additional shot to freeze enemies with all weapons. While this doesn’t affect faster-firing weapons like Riptide too much it has destroyed the perk’s value on slower-firing guns like Rocket Launchers, Grenade Launchers, and other Fusion Rifles.
Destiny 2 slam Chill Clip nerf for not achieving desired goal
Upset by Chill Clip’s current state one Guardian posted on Reddit: “Chill Clip shouldn’t get a global nerf because of Riptide. Its effectiveness should be based on the speed that a weapon can apply it.”
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“Much like how perks like Vorpal Weapon scale based on the weapon slot, Chill Clip should scale based on the weapon archetype that it’s placed on. Weapons that fire slowly like Aurvandil FR6 should be able to apply Freeze in two shots while weapons like Fire and Forget, Typhon GL5, and Riptide should remain at 3 or 4,” OP proposed wanting to make Chill Clip viable on more weapons.
Further criticizing Bungie’s approach to the Chill Clip nerf, one player replied: “Before the nerf – People only used Riptide. After the nerf – People still only use Riptide. The nerf to chill clip balanced the Riptide well but didn’t account for other stasis fusions. This should be looked into. Perhaps the next winter season.”
“Yep. All the nerf did was make Riptide the only weapon worth having it on but honestly, it’s just not really desirable at all to me anymore,” responded a different Guardian.
Others were especially critical of how Bungie had acted too rashly and not considered how the nerf would impact other weapons: “Yeah, it’s probably one of the worst nerfs in a while in terms of cause and effect; Everyone loved it on Riptide, so they made it unusable on every other gun(???).”
Riptide continues to see significant use but other Chill Clip weapons have been dropped by the community. The likes of Aurvandil FR6, Deliverance, and Lingering Dread are seeing less use than ever following the perk’s nerf.