Destiny 2 Season 17 Changes Announced

When Destiny 2 Season 17 begins, players can expect to see a number of changes to the game’s weapons. In a new edition of This Week at Bungie, the developer went into great deal about some of the changes fans can expect to see when Season 17 drops on May 24th. By the company’s own admission, these changes are a lot, and some players might not get a good idea of how they’ll work in the game until the update actually goes live. Readers can get a glimpse of the currently announced plans below:

Here’s what’s changing in Season 17: 

• We’repushing Glaives deeper into their roles of hard-hitting melee damageand near-complete protection when shielded, as well as increasingprojectile speed to make them more reliable at range. 
• Note: the Glaive shield grants 97.5% damage resistance in PvE, 75% in PvP. 
• Increased melee damage vs PvE enemies (except for bosses and vehicles) by 25%. 
• Reduced energy drain speed while shielded by 30%. 
• Increased projectile speed dependent on the range stat: 
• At 0 stat: increased from 30 to 60 m/s. 
• At 100 stat: increased from 80 to 100 m/s.

• Exotic Glaives have all been buffed, in addition tothe global Glaive changes which make it easier to build energy(projectile speed making landing shots easier and energy granted perprojectile hit). 
• Titan Glaive, Edge of Action: playersnow gain a Void overshield while inside the bubble, Helm of Saint-14 nowapplies to this bubble as it does for Ward of Dawn. 
• Warlock Glaive, Edge of Intent: increased speed and acceleration of the healing turret projectiles. 
• HunterGlaive, Edge of Concurrence: tripled the damage of the wave detonation,increased the number of enemies it can chain to from 4 to 8.
  

GLOBAL CHANGES

Flinch 

Aimdeflection on receiving damage, typically called flinch, is a commonpain point, particularly on Primary ammo weapons. We’ve rebuilt the stability weaponstat to grant flinch resistance in addition to its other effects, with amaximum flinch resistance of 10% to 25% dependent on weapon archetype.With this change players can build for flinch resistance, more easily onweapons that feel flinch more than others, and less so on Specialweapons, which we don’t want to be easier to use when under fire. 

Frominternal playtests, you may not feel the difference when using just onesource of flinch resistance, but when stacking two or more sources thebenefit is strong. 

• Note that higher zoom weapons are more affected by flinch, which we took into account when tuning these numbers. 
• Here’s the breakdown for flinch resistance with 100 stability: 
• 25%: Autorifle, Submachine Gun, Bow 
• 20%: Pulse Rifle, Scout Rifle, Sidearm, Machine Gun 
• 15%: Hand Cannon, Trace Rifle 
• 10%:Fusion Rifle, Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Grenade Launcher (both Breech andDrum), Linear Fusion Rifle (both Special and Heavy versions), RocketLauncher 
• Note that a stability stat of below 20 willtechnically have a small flinch resistance penalty, but only around fiveweapons have a stability stat in that range. 
• Mentioning here because it’s a related change, the Resilience character stat now grants flinch resistance of 0% at 0 stat, 10% at 100 stat. 
• Examples (note that sources of flinch resistance stack multiplicatively): 
• A100-stability-stat Suros Pulse Rifle (with Suros Synergy active), 10Resilience, No Distractions and two Unflinching Pulse Rifle armor mods,while buffed by Rally Barricade: 
• 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.9 * 0.65 * 0.7 * 0.5 = 0.1x, i.e., 90% flinch resistance. 
• A 70-stability stat Hand Cannon, 5 Resilience, one Unflinching Hand Cannon armor mod: 
• 0.91 x 0.95 x 0.7 = 0.61, i.e., 39% flinch resistance. 

Airborne Gunplay 

Beforegetting to buildcrafting, we’ve made a fundamental change to themodifiers applied while airborne. Your Primary weapons will have lessrandomness in projectile accuracy in most cases, you’ll have less aimassist instead, and will need precise aiming to land your shots withoutbuilding heavily into airborne. 

We’veadded a new weapon stat, “Airborne Effectiveness,” which is present onall weapons (except those where being airborne doesn’t have an effect,Swords for example), which maps onto aspects of airborne gunplay usingthese guidelines: 

• Withlittle to no investment (0-30 airborne stat), a character will have asmaller accuracy penalty than retail but will have significantly loweraim assist.  
• With minimal investment (31-50 airborne stat), acharacter will have around the same in-air accuracy as Icarus-equippedweapons do currently, but with noticeably lower aim assist. 
• Withsubstantial investment (51-70 airborne stat), a character will havebetter accuracy than retail weapons with Icarus, with fewer misses dueto randomness, but with reduced aim assist.  
• With specializedinvestment (71-99 airborne stat), a character will have no airborneaccuracy penalty, with very slightly less aim assist.  
• With full investment (100 airborne stat), a character will have no airborne accuracy penalty, and the same aim assist. 

Thisstat has been hand tuned on all Exotic weapons, everything that shippedin Season 16 or 17, and everything that’s ever shipped as Trials ofOsiris or Nightfall loot. Older Legendary weapons have a default value,set per weapon archetype to a value just below the middle of the allowedstat range. 

NOTE:

this will be ahidden stat at Season 17 launch, similar to aim assist and recoildirection. You’ll be able to check the stat on a specific weapon throughthe API, and in Season 18 several previously hidden stats will bevisible on the weapon inspection screen. 

• This stat influences several aspects of airborne gunplay: 
• AimAssist cone penalty angles (i.e. auto-aim angle, reticlefriction/adhesion angle) – a high-penalty to this angle at 0 stat, and alow or zero penalty at 100 stat. 
• Accuracy cone penalty angle for Primary weapons: a lower penalty than currently at 0 stat, zero penalty at 60-100 stat. 
• Accuracy cone penalty for Special weapons: a slightly lower penalty than currently at 0 stat, zero penalty at 100 stat. 
• Headshotaim assistance: 0 at 0 stat, 1 degree at 100-stat on Primary weapons,Slug Shotguns, Linear Fusion Rifles and Machine Guns, 0.5 degrees onSniper Rifles. 
• This controls how forgiving headshots are while airborne – if this is zero, you must be pinpoint aiming precisely at the head to get the headshot, otherwise you’ll get a body shot even if your aim assist cone overlaps the head. 
• Previouslywhile airborne, players would get full aim assistance for headshotsprovided their aim assist cone overlapped the head at all. 
• Pellet Shotgun spread angle – +25% at 0 stat, 0 at 100-stat (i.e., more Shotgun spread at low Airborne Effectiveness stat). 
• Whatthis means overall is that you’ll get fewer misses due to randomnessfrom the accuracy cone while airborne, but reliance on aiming is muchhigher at low stat. To make this easier you will need to build intoairborne. With decent aim you will land more body shots instead ofcrits. 
• Before and after examples of accuracy cone penalty: 
• Hand Cannon  
• Before, 0.667 degrees airborne accuracy penalty 
• After, 0 stat: 0.450 degrees 
• After, 60 stat: 0 degrees 
• Sniper Rifle 
• Before, 3 degrees 
• After, 0 stat: 2 degrees 
• After, 60 stat: 0.8 degrees 
• After, 100 stat: 0 degrees 
• The Airborne Effectiveness stat comes from three sources: weapon, subclass, and armor. 
• Weapon: 
• The weapon’s base Airborne Effectiveness stat, with ranges varying from 0 to 10, and 0 to 30 depending on the weapon archetype. 
• Exoticweapons typically get bumped up, i.e., higher stat than Legendaryweapons in that archetype (unless they’re already extremely strong). 
• The Icarus Grip/Adept Icarus weapon mod: +15. 
• Certain weapon perks, such as the redesigned Air Assault. 
• Valid stat ranges for Legendary weapons (Exotics sometimes exceed these). 
• Hand Cannon: 0-25 
• Sidearm: 0-30 
• Auto Rifle: 0-25 
• Pulse Rifle: 0-25 
• Scout Rifle: 0-20 
• Submachine Gun: 0-30 
• Bow: 0-20 
• Sniper Rifle: 0-5 
• Shotgun: 0-5 
• Fusion Rifle: 0-10 
• Breech Grenade Launcher: 0-5 
• Trace Rifle: 0-15 
• Rocket Launcher: 0-10 
• Machine Gun: 0-20 
• Linear Fusion Rifle: 0-15 
• Drum Grenade Launcher: 0-20 
• Glaive: 0-15 
• Higher tiers of Legendary weapons (Trials, raid, Nightfall) use the upper end of these ranges, as with other stats. 
• Some examples of Exotic weapon outliers: 
• Sweet Business: 27 
• Merciless: 15 
• Fighting Lion: 12 
• Sunshot: 27 
• Skyburner’s Oath: 35 
• Rat King: 30 
• The Huckleberry: 33 
• Ace of Spades: 14 (as an example of an Exotic that is already plenty strong enough and doesn’t need to excel here) 
• The Chaperone: 1 (ditto) 
• Thunderlord: 26 
• Traveler’s Chosen: 35 
• [REDACTED]: 29 
• Some examples of hand-tuned Legendary weapon stats: 
• Frontier’s Cry: 19 
• Deliverance: 9 
• Submission: 27 
• Silicon Neuroma: 4 
• Cantata-57: 12 
• The Messenger: 20 
• Hung Jury SR4: 22 
• Ragnhild-D: 3 
• Igneous Hammer: 23 
• Subclass: 
• The Heat Rises ability: +70 while Heat Rises is active (i.e., on consuming your grenade) 
• The Tempered Metal ability: +20 after getting a Solar weapon kill 
• The Whisper of Hedrons Stasis Fragment: +20 after freezing a target 
• Exoticarmor: armor that revolves around being airborne, or works on specificweapons, grants a bonus or penalty in the -50 to +40 range (or higher ifconditional) 
• Foetracer: +20 to all 
• Mechaneer’s Tricksleeves: +50 to Sidearms 
• Oathkeeper: +40 to Bows 
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps: +50 to all for 5 seconds after a melee hit 
• Lucky Pants: +20 to Hand Cannons after readying a Hand Cannon 
• ST0MP-EE5: -50 to all 
• No Backup Plans: +30 to Shotguns 
• Actium War Rig: +30 to Auto Rifles and Machine Guns 
• Hallowfire Heart: +20 to all 
• Lion Rampant: +50 hipfire only 
• Peacekeepers: +40 to Submachine Guns 
• Peregrine Greaves: +20 to all 
• Eye of Another World: +15 to all 
• Astrocyte Verse: +30 to all 
• Ophidian Aspect: +10 to all 
• Necrotic Grips: +30 to Weapons of Sorrow 
• Wings of Sacred Dawn: +50 to all 
• Boots of the Assembler: +30 to Lumina 
• [redacted]: +30 to Fusion Rifles and Linear Fusion Rifles 

Thismeans that in general if you want good Airborne Effectiveness (say 70stat), you should pick a weapon with a high stat, put Icarus on it, andeither equip an Exotic armor piece that helps, or run a subclass Aspect,Fragment, or ability, and if you want the best possible AirborneEffectiveness, you’ll generally have to go all in on weapon, Exoticarmor, and subclass. 

Examples: 

• Frontier’s Cry (with Precision Hand Cannon bonus), Icarus Grip, Lucky Pants: 
• 19 + 25 + 15 + 20 = 79 Airborne Effectiveness 
• Submission, Icarus Grip, Stompees, Tempered Metal active: 
• 27 + 15 – 50 + 20 = 12 Airborne Effectiveness 
• Tarrabah, Peacekeepers, Whisper of Hedrons active: 
• 23 + 40 + 20 = 83 Airborne Effectiveness 
• Skyburner’s Oath, Heat Rises active: 
• 35 + 70 = 100 (i.e., capped) 

Thisis a big weapon system change. We’ll be monitoring how it rolls out andexpect to make adjustments post-ship. For fun, here are some graphsshowing the most used armor exotics across each class. We’ll be watchingdata (and feedback) once these changes are live to see how thingsshift!

Playlist Weapons 

The latest playlistweapons drop from Gambit, Crucible, and strike activity completions.Older weapons are available from vendor-rank packages or can be focused.

Theseweapons are intended to provide interesting drops even for players whospend a lot of time in an activity. And while we want to keep the largeperk pools to address that goal, we want to provide a way to reduce theduration of the chase for players who want a specific weapon. Also,since the older playlist weapons are still available as vendor rank-uprewards we want them to feel more relevant in a post-Origin-Traitworld. 

• Playlist weaponsnow have a chance to roll with extra traits in one or both columns,increasing with number of rank resets with that vendor during a givenSeason. 
• Note, reputation resets each Season, so you’llneed to play these activities each Season to unlock the potential forextra perks. 
• All playlist weapons from Beyond Light and later will drop with the appropriate Origin Trait. 

Stat Display Update 

Followingthe recent change to show numbers for all stats instead of just bars,we’ve opted to change the stat display on weapons to more clearlyreflect their capabilities. All weapon stat bars now range 0 to 100,instead of being limited to some range in the middle of the bar.  

Thischange eliminates rounding and other errors, particularly on Adeptweapons, Masterworks, and enhanced traits, and better conveys the boundsa weapon stat can exist within. This is purely a display change. Noweapon behavior has changed, but you should expect all existing weaponstat bars to look slightly different.  

One-hit Kills and Special Ammo

Thereare several damage buffs external to weapons that allow weapons toone-hit kill without much investment, such as an Aggressive Sniper Riflewith High Impact Reserves, Eriana’s Vow or Le Monarque, specificallywhen combined with an external 20% damage buff. As an example,Empowering Rift can give many Sniper Rifles one-hit body-shotcapabilities in the Crucible.

Mostof these use the same buff under the hood, so we’ve adjusted them allat once. With these changes it’s going to be much rarer to get an easyone-hit kill with a weapon that wouldn’t typically allow it. 

• Reducedthe damage bonus for Empowering Rift, High Energy Fire, and InertiaOverride from 20% to 15% against players (no effect in PvE). 

In addition, we want Special ammo to be less plentiful, making it more difficult to chain Special weapon kills. 

• Disabled ammo scavenger armor mods in PvP. 
• Nomatter how much ammo a player was carrying on death, if you pick up aSpecial brick you can only get one ammo for a Shotgun/Sniper Rifle (or”one kill’s worth of ammo” for weapons that require more than one shotto kill, e.g., Forerunner, Trace Rifles) 
• Retunedseveral Special weapon archetypes and Exotic weapons (see below), withthe general goal of reducing the effectiveness and uptime of Specialweapons.
  

ARCHETYPES

Special weapons, in particular Shotguns and Fusion Rifles, areresponsible for more one-hit kills than we’d like in PvP. We still wantthem to be an option, but less ubiquitous, less effective at multipleranges, and with lower uptime.

Special Weapons 

• AllSpecial weapons have had their in-air accuracy significantly reduced.While we are okay with encouraging players to build into using theirPrimary weapons more effectively in the air, we do not believe aprevalence of airborne one-hit kill options is good for PvP. 
• SpecialWeapons have a slightly larger airborne accuracy penalty than Primaryweapons at 0 Airborne Effectiveness stat, reduced to 0 at 100 stat. 
• SpecialWeapons have a similar airborne aim assist cone penalty to otherweapons (around 50% at 0 stat), and this penalty can be reduced but notentirely removed by investing in Airborne Effectiveness. 
• Sniper Rifles are fairly slow to ready, stow and aim down sights, which has made Snapshot feel mandatory for many players. 
• ReducedStow, Ready and Aim Down Sights times by 10%, i.e., all snipers are nowsnappier (there’s a matching change to Snapshot below).
• SniperRifles have less access to ammo than Shotguns and Fusion Rifles (wherekills drop ammo right in front of you), so we think ammo scarcity willprevent Sniper Rifles from spiking.
  

• Slug and pellet Shotguns are still overwhelminglypopular in PvP despite some recent changes, so we’ve touched them againwith the goal of encouraging some diversity in Special weapon choice.We’re keeping an eye on this change, since we’ve touched Shotgunsmultiple times recently, and will adjust it if needed. With this changewe expect Shotguns to have a shorter one-hit kill distance, but still beeffective enough in that short-range kill role. This change reducesShotgun one-hit kill distance by around 0.5m, because the importance ofspread angle is just as high as damage falloff and this has not beentouched. 
• Reduced damage falloff start and end by 1m. 
• Reduced aim assist and magnetism falloff start and end by 2m. 
• FusionRifle usage is trending pretty high, particularly in Trials, andbringing Shotguns down a little more would make them too good an option,so we’ve made a global change. With these changes 20m+ Fusion Rifleone-hit kills should be very uncommon (through a combination of damagefalloff and recoil changes). 
• Reduced damage falloff near distance. 
• 2m at 0 range (~2.7m when ADS with a 15-zoom stat) 
• 1.3m at 100 range (~2.275m when ADS with a 15-zoom stat) 
• Reduced damage falloff far distance. 
• 1m at 0 range (~1.35m when ADS with a 15-zoom stat) 
• 1.3m at 100 range (~1.75m when ADS with a 15-zoom stat) 
• Reduced recoil scalar variance between 0 and 100 stability. 
• 0 stability: unchanged at 0.750 
• 100 stability: increased from 0.500 to 0.550 (i.e., increased the recoil penalty slightly)
  

• When we rebuilt Fusion Rifles in Season 15, wewanted to differentiate the subfamilies dramatically from each other,which worked! Now that we’ve seen them in action for a couple ofSeasons, we’re pulling back from the extremes a little. With thesechanges Fusion Rifle subfamilies are still very different from eachother, but high impacts are stronger and rapid-fires and precisionsshould be a little less dominant. 
• High Impact: reduced unmodified High Impact charge time from 1.000 to 0.960s, increased damage per burst by 10. 
• Precision: increased unmodified charge time from 0.740 to 0.780s. 
• Rapid Fire: increased unmodified charge time from 0.460 to 0.500, decreased damage per burst by 20. 
• New charge time and damage per burst for all Fusion Rifle subfamilies: 
• High Impact: 0.960s, 330 damage 
• Precision: 0.780s, 280 damage 
• Adaptive: 0.660s, 270 damage 
• Rapid Fire: 0.500s, 245 damage 
• BesidesDivinity, Trace Rifles aren’t as popular in hard content as we wantthem to be (we particularly want damage type reworks of the oldest threeTrace Rifles to have a chance to shine this Season), and they’re alsomore affected by disabling scavenger armor mods than other Specialweapons. With this change they’re a better use of Special ammo againstnon-red bar targets. 
• Increase Trace Rifle damage against non-red bar combatants by 20%. 
• Increased ammo picked up per Special ammo brick from 18 to 30. 

Primary Weapons 

• AutoRifles and Pulse Rifles aren’t as competitive as we’d like atmid-range, and Lightweight Pulse Rifles are too hard to use to hit theiroptimal time to kill – with these changes we expect Auto Rifles andPulse Rifles to better compete with Hand Cannons in mid-long range andoutrange standard zoom Submachine Guns. 
• Auto Rifle 
• Increased damage falloff near distance by 0.75m. 
• Pulse Rifle 
• Increased damage falloff near distance based on the range stat: 
• 0 range: increased from 15 to 16m. 
• 100 range: increased from 22.5 to 24m. 
• (Notethat this is the hip-fire falloff distance and is multiplied by thezoom value to get the aim down sights falloff distance). 
• Damage falloff far distance remains 40m regardless of the range stat. 
• IncreasedLightweight (450RPM) Pulse Rifle damage per bullet from 15 to 16 (with a1.65x precision scalar this will increase precision damage from 24.75to 26.4). 
• This won’t change the optimal time to kill in PvP but will reduce the number of crits required. 
• Zoomis too important a factor on Submachine Guns, and Submachine Guns withlow zoom don’t feel competitive in PvP. We’ve reduced the variance inzoom, brought the base zoom up from 13 to 14 and extended the damagefalloff distance. With this change, several standard zoom SubmachineGuns will be more competitive, but this does make the inaccessibleSubmachine Gun with highest perk/trait RNG (Multimach) compete less withAuto Rifles and it will no longer straight-up outclass every otherSubmachine Gun in PvP. 
• Increased damage falloff by 1.5m 
• Adjusted zoom values on most viable Legendary Submachine Guns and one Exotic. 
• Shayura’s Wrath: 17 to 16 
• Multimach: With max zoom scope: 17  to 15 (second highest zoom will bring this to 14 instead) 
• Stochastic Variable: 13 to 14 
• Ikelos (just noting the change from The Witch Queen here): 13 to 14 
• Seventh Seraph: 13 to 14 
• Every Waking Moment: 13 to 14 
• The Huckleberry: 13 to 15 
• Welike Adaptive Submachine Guns and are starting to make them again. Butin their current form they kill a little too fast with body shots, sowe’ve reduced body damage to increase their body shot time to kill byone bullet without impacting their optimal time to kill. 
• Decreased body damage from 12 to 11.25 
• Increased precision multiplier from 1.35 to 1.44 
• PrecisionFrame Hand Cannons have always been good while airborne, effectivelyhaving built-in Icarus Grip, and with the changes to airbornefunctionality we wanted to preserve that feel while translating theiradvantage to the new system. 
• Intrinsic switched from a75% airborne accuracy penalty reduction to +25 Airborne Effectivenessstat (this means that if you had a Frontier’s Cry with an Icarus Gripmod in it, you would be at 19 + 25 + 15 = 59 before factoring in armoror subclass). 

Heavy Weapons 

• MachineGuns still aren’t where we want them to be in PvE, so we’re giving theman additional buff, but less so against bosses, where their extremelylong range and deep ammo reserves would make them strong in too manyroles. With this change they’ll shred most enemies without stepping ontop tier boss damage options. 
• Increased damage by 40% against PvE enemies (20% vs bosses). 
• Xenophage and Grand Overture receive this buff, except for the bonus vs bosses. 
• Sword stats have been inconsistent for a while now, so we’ve tidied all of these up (mostly cosmetic) 
• Fixed several inconsistencies in stat display between different Swords (this has no gameplay impact). 
• Increased the charge rate stat of Sola’s Scar from 20 to 50 to match Temptation’s hook.
• RocketLauncher subfamilies weren’t differentiated enough by the previouschange, so we’ve made the differences more extreme. With this change weexpect there to be a more marked tradeoff for the intrinsic tracking onprecisions, and a greater benefit for the other subfamilies. Specifiedrelative to the baseline, i.e. High Impact Rocket Launchers
• Precision: -10% damage (both impact and detonation)
• High Impact: no change (this subfamily has the highest blast radius)
• Adaptive and Aggressive: +10% damage

Exotics 

• All Exotics that shipped before the Forsaken release now have their kill trackers visible by default 
• FightingLion needed a bit more of a buff, so we improved its reload speed whenThin the Herd is active a couple of releases back, and now we’reincreasing its blast radius and damage. With this change it should beeasier to get the damage you need to trigger its perk. 
• Revertedthe Season 15 Breech Grenade Launcher blast radius reduction, but justfor Fighting Lion, i.e., increased blast radius by 0.4m. 
• Increased damage by 5%. 
• Eyesof Tomorrow as a raid Exotic ought to be better against tough PvEenemies – with this change it’s a solid option in this role,particularly with the Adaptive Ordnance perk active. 
• Increased damage vs bosses and Champions by 30%. 
• Leviathan’sBreath always felt like it should absolutely wreck Champions, and usingits first shot to stun an Unstoppable Champion without it doing muchdamage felt bad. Archer’s Tempo from its catalyst is significant onpaper but in practice that draw speed buff isn’t as noticeable as we’dlike. Overall, we hope these changes make it feel a bit better againstall types of Champions and other tough enemies in hard content. 
• The Archer’s Tempo perk from the catalyst now has increased effect (just on this weapon). 
• The standard draw time scalar for Archer’s Tempo is 0.75x, it is now 0.5625x on Leviathan’s Breath. 
• Addeda small delay before detonation on Champions, minibosses, and bosses –this allows the impact to stun an Unstoppable Champion and thedetonation to deal bonus damage against the stunned Champion. 
• Damage changed to be more of an even split between impact and detonation, and increased damage across the board by ~50%. 
• Overall damage vs Champions is roughly doubled (even more compared to shooting an un-stunned unstoppable Champion). 
• The Huckleberry had an underwhelming engagement range, updated zoom based on the change to baseline Submachine Gun zoom. 
• Increased zoom stat from 13 to 15. 
• Ourexperiment with pushing Xenophage into harder-hitting but slower-firingdidn’t pan out, so we’re increasing the rate of fire and adjustingdamage back to what it was. 
• Increased rate of fire from 100RPM to 120RPM. 
• Reduced damage per bullet to match the previous. 
• Doesn’t benefit from the Season 17 Machine Gun damage buff vs bosses. 
• LeMonarque is too oppressive when combined with external damage buffs,but we felt that it could be stronger in PvE – with this change combinedwith the damage buff change above we’ve introduced a 60-resilience gateon killing a Guardian in PvP with a crit while in an Empowering Rift orsimilar. 
• Reduced poison tick damage vs players by 25%. 
• Changed poison damage type from burn to poison (this is largely housekeeping, not gameplay-significant). 
• Increased poison tick damage vs AI by 50%. 
• LorentzDriver can be difficult to fight against in PvP, in part because itdoes very high body shot damage. With this change, getting left superweak by a body shot should be less common, though we’re keeping an eyeon how this change lands and may revisit it later.  
• Reducedbody shot damage against players by 20% (this will also prevent it frombeing a one-hit kill with a body shot while in an Empowering Rift,combined with that change). 
• Body damage reverts to old behavior when in the weapon’s damage mode. 
• Precision damage in any mode unchanged. 
• Skyburner’sOath felt like it didn’t have a niche, except for airborne memes, sowe’ve made a bunch of changes aiming to improve its ease of use, give itsome more utility and really push it into that airborne role. 
• Increased ADS projectile speed to 9999 (i.e., this projectile is now hitscan). 
• Both ADS and hip-fire are now 150 RPM. 
• Hip-fire projectile no longer tracks, but arcs similar to a Grenade Launcher and has a larger detonation size than ADS. 
• The hip-fire detonation also applies a burn to targets. 
• Thebonus range from the Masterwork has been rolled into the base stats ofthe weapon. The Masterwork now grants bonus reload speed instead. 
• Has the highest Airborne Effectiveness stat of any weapon in the game (35). 
• TheLast Word plays very differently on mouse and keyboard than it does oncontroller, but the disparity doesn’t need to be that large. We’rekeeping an eye on this one too. 
• Reduced mouse and keyboard recoil penalty from 33% to 22%. 
• Arbalestis more dominant than intended in hard PvE content, able to fill theanti-barrier role as well as shield breaking and boss damage. We’ve madea fairly small adjustment here but may need to look at it again in afuture Season. 
• Reduced damage vs Champions by 25% (will still break barriers in one hit). 
• GravitonLance’s catalyst didn’t help the weapon enough, and we wanted to giveit a bit of a boost. This change gives it some interesting utility inPvE and PvP, particularly with the buff to Exotic Primary weapons in TheWitch Queen. 
• Catalyst changed from granting Hidden Hand to granting Vorpal Weapon and Turnabout. 
• GrandOverture’s most recent adjustment switched the missiles to fire inbursts of 5, which allows for more granularity in unloading that damage,but sometimes you just want them all to fly out at once. 
• Reducedtime between bursts when in missile mode. Holding the trigger will nowfire all missiles in a continuous burst, tapping will fire 5-roundbursts. 
• Coldheart: Arc damage type update, andColdheart’s Exotic trait more or less being “is a Trace Rifle” no longerfits in a world with Legendary Trace Rifles. The ease of use onsustained damage was also pretty low. 
• Sustained damage creates an Ionic Trace and collecting an Ionic Trace grants energy to all your abilities. 
• Increased grace time before the damage ramp clears from 0.113s to 1.0s. 
• Prometheus Lens: Solar damage type update, and generally this needed some tweaks to be viable 
• Sustained damage applies a more useful burn to targets. 
• Wavesplitter: Void damage type update, and the power-cycling mechanic was interesting but ultimately hard to capitalize on. 
• Power level no longer cycles randomly, the default damage output is the same as the old middle tier. 
• Picking up an Orb of Power now grants 10s of maximum power and caps at 20s, up from 5 and 10. 
• Now suppresses targets while granted this mode by picking up an Orb. 
• Osteo Striga’s projectile somehow shipped rotated by 90 degrees, looks a bit weird. 
• Corrected rotation on the projectile model. 
• Lordof Wolves is kind of a Shotgun, but has its own custom tuning. Itwasn’t impacted by the previous Shotgun change, and was much too strongwith Shotguns and Fusion Rifles getting reduced range, this brings itmore in line.  
• Reduced damage falloff start and end by 25%. 

Perks 

Note: Where an enhanced perk exists and an adjustment is needed, it’s been adjusted in the same way. 

• SnapshotSights has felt mandatory on Sniper Rifles forever, with this change aSniper Rifle with Snapshot will feel about the same, but one withoutSnapshot will feel a lot snappier. 
• Increased ADS animation speed scalar from 0.5 to 0.75 for Special ammo weapons, Primary ammo weapons are unchanged. 
• OpeningShot has felt mandatory on Shotguns forever, in large part because itgives part of its buff as a damage falloff scalar – this isn’t somethingwe like on short-range weapons. You can still feel the range bump withthis change unless range is already capped, but it won’t let weaponspush completely outside their intended engagement ranges. 
• Removed damage falloff scalar. 
• Increased range stat bonus from +20 to +25. 
• Otherstats from this perk are unchanged (+20 aim assist stat, 5% reducedaccuracy cone angle, 10% reduced accuracy cone growth). 
• FullChoke has been the go-to magazine perk forever (justified or not) –with this change other magazine options should be competitive. 
• Increased spread angle scale from 0.95 to 0.9625 (i.e., narrows the spread a little less). 
• Smoothbore has always felt like an awkward magazine perk, so we’re buffing it a little. 
• Reduced spread angle scale from 1.1 to 1.075 (i.e., widens the spread a little less). 
• Desperadois a strong perk in its current form, but we’d like to be able to putit on more weapons without breaking PvP. With this adjustment it’s stillstrong, has more PvE utility, and can be applied to Pulse Riflesubfamilies aside from High Impact if desired. 
• Increased fire recovery scalar from 0.415 to 0.7 (i.e., doesn’t fire as fast with the perk active). 
• Reduced duration from 7s to 6s, added a timer to the buff text. 
• Removed the PvE damage penalty. 
• AirAssault was shelved a long time ago, but adding the AirborneEffectiveness stat gave us the opportunity to turn it into a perk thatactually does what it says on the description. With this change,airborne gunplay while wounded will be much more effective. 
• Rebuilt now grants up to +60 Airborne Effectiveness stat when wounded (same trigger conditions as Eye of the Storm). 
• Mulliganwas never quite strong enough to warrant a pick previously, but buffingit would have been risky on Special weapons. With this change, it’suseful on rapid-fire Primary weapons where you don’t expect every shotto hit, occupying a similar role to Triple Tap (but inverted). 
• Increased chance to return ammo on a miss from 20% to 35% on Primary ammo weapons. 
• Unchanged on Special and Heavy ammo weapons. 
• Compulsive Reloader shipped a little weak, with this change you can really feel the reload speed bump. 
• Increased reload stat buff from +40 to +50. 
• Added a 0.95x reload animation scalar. 
• Adagiowas allowing for a one-hit body shot kill with slug Shotguns. Whilethis is possible with other perks such as Swashbuckler, the investmentrequired to trigger the perk is much too low for that power bump. Withthis change a slug Shotgun with Adagio will be less of a monster in PvP,but will still be able to get headshot kills at greater ranges with theperk active. 
• Reduced the damage bonus for Shotguns from 30% to 20%. 

Mods 

• Icarus Grip will now grant the Airborne Effectiveness stat instead of its previous airborne accuracy penalty scalar. 
• Removed airborne accuracy scalar, now grants +15 Airborne Effectiveness stat. 
• Adept Icarus Grip now grants +15 Airborne Effectiveness stat and +5 Handling.
  

Hopefully, these changes will prove to be for the best. It certainly seems like Bungie has ambitious plans for Season 17, but it’s difficult to say how things will play out. For now, fans of the game will just have to wait and see!

Destiny 2 is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Google Stadia, and PC. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.

Are you looking forward to any of these changes inDestiny 2? What do you want to see in Season 17? Let us know inthe comments or share your thoughtsdirectly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!