Destiny 2 Lightfall nerfs Linear Fusion Rifles, buffs exotic flavour

As the Destiny 2 Lightfall release date rushes towards us, Bungie offers details on the weapon tuning lined up for next season. As the next big evolution of Destiny 2, it’s unsurprising that Lightfall is set to bring some big changes for some of your favourite weapons. Among the tweaks heading to the FPS game are Linear Fusion Rifle nerfs, heavy weapon buffs, improvements to Kinetic weapons, more flavour for exotics, and another Eager Edge rework, along with brand new Destiny 2 Lightfall exotics.

Bungie notes that the focus for Destiny 2 season 20 is heavy weapon tuning, specifically with PvE content in mind, and the addition of ‘subclass verbs’ to multiple Exotic weapons where appropriate to help tie into their new anti-Champion capabilities. There are also a couple of nice quality-of-life improvements, especially for those of us playing Destiny 2 on PC.

If you’ve played Destiny 2 on PlayStation or Xbox, you might have noticed that your weapon’s reticle turns red when it hovers over an enemy inside your weapon’s effective range. Bungie notes that it has wanted this “useful visual aid” to be applied globally for a while, so has enabled it on PC for season 20. In addition, the colour will become customisable in the future, allowing you to adjust it to your personal preference. There’s also a change to Shotgun reticles specifically, aimed at better displaying their current spread angle as you move.

As for general tuning, Linear Fusion Rifles are unexpectedly being hit with the nerf hammer. Bungie notes that they “outperform other heavy weapons for boss damage by a wide margin” so they’re taking a heavy 15% nerf. This won’t, however, apply to the Sleeper Simulant and Queenbreaker, as Bungie explains they don’t otherwise do enough to justify their use over that of a legendary equivalent.

Machine Guns, meanwhile, get a roughly 10% buff to damage, along with a hefty buff to their reserve ammo stock to improve their sustainability in tougher content. Heavy Grenade Launchers are “substantially below some other heavy options for damage” despite being awkward to use, so they’re seeing a big damage buff, increased blast radius, and improved collision to make grenades easier to land.

Kinetic weapons get a buff to their damage vs unshielded targets in PvE, with an extra bonus when using special ammo. This bonus is removed from Stasis weapons, however, to compensate for their extra functionality. Bungie also promises a “Kinetic damage type perk coming in Lightfall.”

Some key Destiny 2 exotics are getting additional theming where appropriate, including several subclass 3.0 verbs aimed at giving the weapons more potent functionality and adding some thematic flavour. The Queenbreaker’s shot now chains to enemies and applies the Arc 3.0 blind effect, and this change has also been applied to the blind from Grand Overture.

The Transmutation sphere slam on Ruinous Effigy will now suppress enemies, while Leviathan’s Breath applies volatile on a perfect draw impact. Several weapons with explosions or burn effects will now apply scorch stacks, including Sunshot, Polaris Lance, One Thousand Voices, and Two-Tailed Fox, while Prometheus Lens adds the Incandescent perk, allowing it to spread scorch to nearby enemies upon kills.

Finally, there are some perk updates to tie into the new Destiny 2 Strand subclass, a “more complete rework” to Eager Edge aiming to handle bugs around it, and a few other smaller tweaks noted below. Bungie adds that it’s already at work on future seasons, with considerations including a Full Auto Melee accessibility setting, changes to exotic weapon reticles, and features including charge meters and exotic perk counters.

Destiny 2 season 20 weapon tuning notes – Destiny 2 Lightfall changes

Here are the current patch notes for Destiny 2 season 20 weapon tuning:

General

Red reticle is now enabled on PC when over an enemy inside your weapon’s effective range.

Linear Fusion Rifles

Reduced damage vs. Champions, minibosses, bosses, and vehicles by 15%.
Sleeper Simulant and Queenbreaker are unaffected – Sleeper fans, this is not a drill.

Machine Guns

Increased damage by ~10%, with the following effects on time to kill (TTK) against a Guardian with Tier 6 resilience:
High-Impact Frame: TTK reduced from 0.67s to 0.50s.
Rapid-Fire Frame: TTK reduced from 0.53s to 0.47s.
Adaptive Frame: TTK unchanged at 0.53s.
Increased reserve ammo by 50% at 0 inventory stat, and 20% at 100 inventory stat. (Inventory stat is a 0-100 value behind the scenes. This is presented as the actual number of rounds in-game, but you can take this to mean that low reserves Machine Guns get a big boost, while large reserves Machine Guns get a smaller boost.)

Heavy Grenade Launchers

Increased damage vs. Champions, minibosses, bosses, and vehicles by 20%, minors by 40%.
Improved projectile collision, making it slightly easier to land hits.
Increased blast radius by 1m.
Parasite is unaffected. It does huge damage already.

Shotguns

Shotgun reticles now change in size proportional to spread angle.
Related note: The Legend of Acrius hip-fire reticle is now a bit more representative of its (very large) spread angle.

Kinetic Weapons

Kinetic Primary weapon damage multiplier increased from 1.05 to 1.1.
Kinetic Special weapon damage multiplier increased from 1.05 to 1.15.
Kinetic slot Stasis weapons no longer have the 5% damage bonus vs. unshielded targets in PvE.
There’s also a Kinetic damage type perk coming in Lightfall.

Exotics

The Queenbreaker: Shot now chains to nearby enemies and uses Arc 3.00 blind.
Ruinous Effigy: Transmuation sphere slam attack now suppresses.
Leviathan’s Breath: Now applies volatile on perfect draw impact. Increased damage from 396 to 442 (This allows it to once again one-hit kill all supers in PvP). Increased damage vs. Champions by 30%.
One Thousand Voices: Each explosion now applies 10 + 5 (with Ember of Ashes) scorch stacks.
Sunshot: Explosion on kill now applies 10 + 5 scorch stacks.
Polaris Lance: Perfect Fifth shots now apply 40 + 20 scorch stacks instead of a custom burn.
Two-Tailed Fox: Solar rocket now applies 60 + 30 scorch stacks instead of burn, the void rocket already applies suppress, and the catalyst completes the trifecta.
Prometheus Lens: Added the Incandescent perk to the catalyst.
Grand Overture: Switched the catalyst to use Arc 3.0 Blind.

Hip-Fire Reticles

We’re starting to experiment with hip-fire weapon reticles conveying more information, and used The Manticore as a test bed for this. You can expect to see more weapon-type or Exotic weapon functionality showing up in hip-fire reticles in Season 21 and beyond.
Added a reticle element to The Manticore showing current stacks of Antigrav Repulsor.

Eager Edge

No longer deactivates when moving faster than 35ms.
Deactivates correctly after a single melee swing.
Reduced the base lunge distance buff from 2 to 1.8.
Reduced airborne lunge distance penalty from 25% to 20%.
The enhanced perk now increases lunge distance slightly, back up to 2.

Perks

Osmosis now works with Strand.
Elemental Capacitor now has the following effect when using a Strand subclass: +20 airborne effectiveness (+25 for the enhanced perk).
Rewind Rounds rebuilt to work on non-Vault of Glass weapons.
Renamed ‘Blinding Grenades’ to ‘Disorienting Grenades.’
Veist Stinger trait: This was typically a full reload when the perk activated, it now reloads 25% of the magazine.

That’s all for now, but we’ll keep you up to date on all the latest Lightfall news as it comes – including Bungie’s plans for The Witness. In the meantime, check out the best Destiny 2 builds to use right now, along with a breakdown of the Destiny 2 classes if you’re unsure which to favour while preparing for the new expansion. Make sure to redeem your Destiny 2 loot before Lightfall, and take a look through the best multiplayer games if you’re after some more fun with friends.