Destiny 2 Reveals Huge Changes to Exotic Weapons in The Edge of Fate

As part of its weekly blog post, Bungie reveals upcoming changes to Destiny 2 weapons, including major changes to many underused or overlooked exotics. As the launch date for The Edge of Fate continues to approach, Bungie has more information to share with fans, giving them a greater look at the game through a recent developer live stream, while also offering greater details in its weekly Destiny 2 blog post.

Bungie is ramping up its efforts to showcase more of what players can expect in The Edge of Fate, announcing a trio of livestreams while also highlighting various changes and tweaks to the core experience within its weekly blogs. Recently, fans got a better look at Destiny 2‘s new Dark Matter abilities, ways for players to not only impact how they traverse around Kepler, but opening up new combat opportunities as well. This week, Bungie had plenty to say about how weapons are evolving when the new expansion launches.

Inside its weekly blog post, Bungie placed the spotlight on weapon tuning inside the Edge of Fate, including staged reloads for Machine Guns, reduced projectile tracking on Glaives, and certain perks seeing tweaks. However, Bungie also confirmed major buffs coming to certain overlooked or underperforming exotics, like The Navigator, Worldline Zero, Devil’s Ruin, and Dead Man’s Tale. For Destiny 2‘s bizarre Tommy’s Matchbook exotic auto rifle, Bungie is decreasing the amount of damage the player receives and is increasing the duration that Ignition Trigger remains active after no longer firing the gun.

However, the biggest change listed by Bungie is to the Hierarchy of Needs combat bow from the Spire of the Watcher Dungeon. As Bungie noted, this exotic bow is fairly restrictive in how players can use it, so the buffs coming in Edge of Fate are intended to add more flexibility. Now, any hit from the Hierarchy of Needs will generate Guidance Ring charges, with a maximum of 3 needed to deploy the ring. The ring duration has been increased to 20 seconds, and it rotates to face the player. However, any allies using a bow can now take advantage of the Guidance Ring as they all spawn missiles when shooting through it.

Alongside the exotic news, Bungie also confirmed that certain weapons are also intrinsically gaining the ability to stun Destiny 2‘s various champion enemies. Queenbreaker, Salvation’s Grip, and Dragon’s Breath now work against Unstoppable enemies, while Tractor Cannon, D.A.R.C.I., and Two-Tailed Fox stun Overload champions. Conditional Finality can work against either Overload or Unstoppable depending on which element is currently active. For better clarity, weapons that have an anti-champion symbol in the weapon tray won’t be able to receive further buffs from the Artifact or “radiant-like effects.”

Destiny 2 Edge of Fate Exotic Weapon Changes

Vigilance Wing

Vigilance Wing’s Exotic trait Last Stand felt left behind by things like the Alacrity origin trait, so we have made a change that will allow it to be active when running solo in PvE activities.

• Last Stand bonus is now active when running solo in PvE activities.

Hierarchy of Needs

Hierarchy of Needs is a cool weapon that currently restricts the player’s actions too much. We wanted to increase flexibility with the weapon while keeping its fantasy intact, and while we were at it, we let it interact with other bows wielded by your allies or yourself.

• Players now gain charges of Guidance Ring with any hit from Hierarchy of Needs, and now only need three charges to deploy the ring.
• Hierarchy’s spawned Guidance Ring duration increased from 13s to 20s.
• Hierarchy’s spawned Guidance Ring now rotates to face its owner.
• Players are now limited to one Guidance Ring in the world per player. Spawning a second one will remove your previous ring.
• All Bows now spawn missiles when fired through an allied player’s Guidance Ring.

• Fixed an issue where Hierarchy’s seeker missiles would not play detonation visual effects when colliding with world geometry.

Dead Man’s Tale

Dead Man’s Tale has developed a reputation in the Crucible over its years in game but has always struggled a bit in PvE. We’ve made some adjustments to help it cancel out its long reload time and reward players more for landing their headshots.

• Each stack of cranial spike now grants:
  • +3.4% damage vs combatants (max 17% at 5 stacks)
  • +1 rounds reloaded

Duality

The previous set of changes to Duality were good but didn’t do quite as much as we were hoping. We’ve relaxed the trigger on its trait perk to allow it to ramp into good single target damage more consistently.

• Added a secondary activator for On Black Wings, now gives the buff when landing most of your pellets on a target

The Navigator

The Navigator is an interesting Exotic but has felt a bit one-trick for its woven mail and tangle creation. We’ve added a bonus to the weapon while the wielder has woven mail to let it excel while you are using it for its original purpose.

• When the user has Woven Mail:
  • Increased damage

  • Increased ammo generation stat

Wicked Implement

We’ve shifted Wicked Implement to a faster fire rate to better align with its gameplay fantasy. With our recent changes to how Stasis interacts with Champions, we’ve also made Wicked Implement to be anti-overload intrinsically to align with Stasis’s role in the sandbox.

• Now is Rapid Fire RPM.
• Now takes one additional hit to start slowing and to freeze to account for the faster rate of fire.
• Increased magazine size to 20,
• Is now intrinsically anti-Overload.

Heartshadow

A big constrictor for a lot of Heavy Swords is just how fast they chew through ammo. It makes it hard to choose when and where to use them, especially for a weapon like Heartshadow that very much wants you to use it to clear out chaff by peeking in and out of invisibility, so with these changes we’ve leaned harder into that fantasy.

• Increased ammo reserves.
• Reduced cost of heavy attack to three (from four).
• Added: “Defeats while Shot in the Dark is active make you invisible once more.”

Worldline Zero

Worldline has always been a fun Sword to play with but has largely fallen out of favor ever since it lost its ability to let you skate, alongside the introduction of Eager Edge. To give it a more defined niche, we are leaning into its Tesseract ability, emphasizing add clear via rapid nimble teleports.

• Increased lunge distance of the heavy Tesseract attack by 3m.
• Removed the ability to chain two blink attacks back to back.
• Added a new effect: “Defeating a target with Tesseract allows you to Tesseract again for a short duration.”
  • These extra blink attacks cost less ammo and consumes less guard energy.

Devil’s Ruin

Devil’s Ruin is another Exotic that has felt a bit one-trick for a long time now. We have reworked the weapon to remove its fire-on-release behavior as well as making the beam mode more of a reward, once it has been enabled.

• Removed fire on release behavior.
• Beam is now behind special reload.
• Kills with the weapon make firesprites and picking up a firesprite enables the special reload.
• Beam now scorches on hit and ignites on kills.
• Increased magazine size to 20.
• Is now intrinsically anti-unstoppable.

Tommy’s Matchbook

Tommy’s Matchbook runs into issues with survivability and overall useability. These changes focus on improving that experience, allowing players to maintain Ignition Trigger even if they stop shooting for a moment, and providing intrinsic avenues to heal back lost health without completely removing buildcrafting potential. We also wanted to provide a higher incentive for players to hip-fire this weapon and improve how self-damage is communicated to the user and to other players.

• General
  • Added a burning screen effect while the player takes self-damage from Ignition Trigger. Other players who are taking self-damage from Ignition Trigger will now have a burning effect surrounding their model.
• Ignition Trigger
  • The HUD buff now appears as a bar. While Ignition Trigger is active, the bar charges as you fire the weapon and drains when you don’t. So long as the bar has some charge, Ignition Trigger will remain active.
• Heat Sink
  • Hip-fire self-damage decreased to 50% less damage than ADS self-damage, previously 33% less damage.
  • Catalyst
    • Removed improved health regen. Now final blows while Ignition Trigger is active grant Cure x1 to the user.
  • Scorch on hit is unchanged.

Winterbite

With the massive update to how melee damage works, this always-on effect on Winterbite ended up being a bit too much free damage, especially in comparison to Swords. Like Wicked Implement, Winterbite will now be intriniscally anti-Overload to align with the changes made to Stasis Shatter’s Cchampion stunning.

• Reduced enhanced melee damage with ammo to +20% vs bosses, down from +50%
  • This is to account for this now being able to recieve melee damage bonuses from a variety of sources.
• Is now intrinsically anti-Overload.

Anti-Champion Changes

The following weapons have not been rebalanced but have been given anti-Champion capabilities intrinsically:

• Anti-Unstoppable
  • Queensbreaker
  • Salvation’s Grip
  • Dragon’s Breath
• Anti-Overload
  • Tractor Cannon
  • DARCI
  • Two-Tailed Fox
• Conditional Finality can be anti-Overload or anti-Unstoppable depending on which element is active.