The Destiny 2 season 21 release date is imminent, and a raft of Destiny 2 season 21 weapon changes reveal that we’re in for plenty of explosions. Explosions! After all, who doesn’t love explosions? With buffs incoming for Eyes of Tomorrow and Sweet Business among others, there’s going to be all manner of ways to blow even more stuff up in Destiny 2 once the Season of the Deep arrives in Bungie’s space game.
There’s plenty of changes to dig through in the update, with improvements to a variety of reticles, meters, and more alongside the actual Exotic weapon balance adjustments. Hip-fire reticles have been tweaked to be more visible at higher FOV settings, Fusion Rifle charge and Sword guard energy will now be displayed next to the reticle, and several Exotics are getting custom additions to track their unique perks.
If you’ve ever wanted to just punch into the void forever, there’s a new ‘full auto melee’ setting that will continue using your fist, charged melee, Sword, Glaive, or Super melee attack by holding down the input. There’s also new showcase options, allowing you to zoom in and rotate your guns from the inspection screen to really pick out the fine details.
Elsewhere on the balance side of things, these Destiny 2 patch notes are pumping up the damage of Sniper Rifles in PvE modes slightly, making them a little more of a reliable tool (something I’m very happy about as a big enjoyer of Destiny 2’s headshot pops). Aggressive Submachine Guns, on the other hand, are having their base damage dropped just a little, while The Immortal has also seen its range reduced to wind back their PvP dominance.
Destiny 2 patch notes – season 21 weapon changes
Here are all the weapon changes revealed in Destiny 2 Season of the Deep, courtesy of Bungie:
Exotic Weapons
Eyes of Tomorrow
- Killing 4 targets with a missile volley will refund one ammo.
Graviton Lance
- Increased RPM from 257 to 300 (reduced burst delay by 20%, now matches Revision Zero’s Hakke Heavy Rounds rate of fire).
Rebalanced damage per shot.- Increased first shot damage from:
- Body: 9.5 to 19.
- Crit: 15.7 to 31.4.
- Decreased second shot damage from:
- Body: 35.6 to 25.6.
- Crit: 58.7 to 42.3.
- Increased first shot damage from:
Jade Rabbit
- Added buff text to show when Fate of All Fools increased body shot damage is active.
- Quickly hitting 3 critical hits now refunds 3 shots instead of 1.
The Manticore
- Increased the catalyst’s damage resistance from tier 3 to tier 4.
- Increased movement speed during hang time.
- Activating the catalyst perk (through an airborne kill or sustained damage following an airborne kill) now partially refills the magazine.
Lumina
- Increased Noble Rounds cap from 5 to 6.
Heartshadow
- Damage increase now activates quicker while invisible, after 0.25s instead of 1s.
- Heartshadow now weakens upon dealing any damage while the damage increase is active.
Worldline Zero
- The sprinting Heavy attack can now be chained into itself once.
- Sword guard energy cost from each sprinting heavy attack reduced from 100% to 50%.
- Increased damage from an individual sprinting heavy attack by 8.3%.
Sweet Business
- Now fires explosive rounds every 20 shots (fewer shots while fully spun up).
Legend of Acrius
- Increased total ammo from 12 to 16.
- Increased maximum projectile distance from 9m to 12m.
Tommy’s Matchbook
- Catalyst updated: While overheated, sustained fire scorches your target. Every 5 shots applies 14+7 (with the Embers of Ashes Fragment) scorch stacks.
No Time To Explain
- Updated drone to work with anti-barrier (will break Barrier Champion shields and over penetrate combatant shields).
- Updated drone to work with Feeding Frenzy (from the NTTE catalyst).
- This also resolved an issue where the feedback for Feeding Frenzy would always play when the player spawned and then never again.
Skyburner’s Oath
- Increased scorch stacks from 3 to 5 and 5 to 10 with the Embers of Ashes Fragment.
Salvation’s Grip
- Reworked to have two firing modes. Charged shot creates a pattern of Stasis crystals (where the number of crystals is no longer dependent on charge time). Uncharged shot is a normal Grenade Launcher shot, which does more damage to Stasis crystals and frozen targets.
- Added a new perk that reloads the magazine from reserves when you quickly shatter at least 3 crystals with the uncharged shot.
Bad Juju
- Fixed an issue that was causing the weapon to recoil like an Auto Rifle, making it harder to control. The recoil pattern will now be similar to other Pulse Rifles.
Fighting Lion
- Fixed an issue that was causing this weapon to do more damage than intended to red-bar combatants.
Thunderlord
- Fixed an issue resulting in hits against a Divinity bubble counting as two crits instead of one.
Winterbite
- The impact damage has been removed and redistributed to the detonation damage.
- The self-damage scaling has been tuned to account for the increased damage of the detonation.
Perks
- Fragile Focus is fairly potent, but the perk deactivator was very unforgiving.
- Bonus lasts until shield pop, returns when shield regenerates to 100%.
- Thresh, Demolitionist, and Pugilist have always granted increased energy on Shotgun, Fusion Rifle and Sniper Rifle kills, but Glaives missed out on that bonus until now.
- Grants increased energy to Glaive projectile kills (same as Shotguns, Fusion Rifles, and Sniper Rifles).
- Reconstruction has been simplified under-the-hood so that we can place the perk on more weapons without exceeding perk budgets.
- This results in a slight change to the timing of the perk where the initial timer and the cooldown timer between reloads have been unified.
- Base perk: 4 seconds.
- Enhanced perk: 3.5 seconds.
- Shoot to Loot is already situationally useful, but we’ve been looking for a good way to allow players to interact with Orbs of Power at a distance, and this was an obvious option.
- Updated to pick up Orbs of Power.
- Currently this only works on direct hits. The ability for the orbs to be picked up with weapon detonations will be added in a future patch.
Weapon Archetypes
Bows
- Tyranny of Heaven’s stats were always weirdly low, and we were touching these weapons anyway so opted to update its stats while we were in there.
Submachine Guns
- Aggressive Submachine Guns have surged in PvP, they need to be brought back into band—we’re doing that in a way that keeps them viable by reducing both base and crit damage a little, requiring higher precision to reach their optimal time to kill (TTK).
- Reduced base damage from 15 to 14.
- Increased precision hit multiplier from 1.45 to 1.5 (crit damage goes from 21.8 to 21).
- The Immortal is such a stat monster that no other Aggressive SMG can compete, we’ve brought its range in while allowing it to continue to excel in other areas.
- Reduced base range value by 10.
Sniper Rifles
- Sniper Rifles are a very safe option, and we don’t want to also make them dominant, but there’s some room to bring their damage up to improve their feel in PvE. Note that rapid-fire Sniper Rifles also got a large reserves bump and reduced recoil in the Season 20 mid-Season balance update. We’ll keep an eye on this and may bring them up a little more in future if this doesn’t move the needle.
- Increased PvE damage by 10%.
- Note: Izanagi’s Burden’s Honed Edge perk shots don’t receive this buff, all other Exotic Sniper Rifles receive the buff as written.
Scout Rifles
- Long Arm was inadvertently receiving the damage bonus vs minors for Exotics, so we’ve addressed that (it still receives the Scout Rifle PvE damage buff from the Season 20 mid-Season balance update).
Weapon Reticles
- Rebuilt the reticles for the following weapon types so that they move more visibly at high FOV, while still conveying the current state of the weapon accurately.
- Fusion Rifle
- Hand Cannon
- Sidearm
- Trace Rifle
- Fusion Rifles now have a charge meter under the reticle.
- Sword reticles now show the current Sword guard energy.
- Shayura’s Wrath: Now has an aim-down-sights reticle that reacts to the weapon’s accuracy and autoaim state, and ties into “red reticle,” meaning this will change color when an enemy that’s within this weapon’s engagement range is under the reticle.
- Charge meter added to Exotic weapons whose base weapon type doesn’t typically have a charge meter.
- Devil’s Ruin
- Salvation’s Grip
- Grand Overture
- Perk counter shows pips for perked shots.
- Quicksilver Storm grenade count
- Ace of Spades Memento Mori shot count
- Lumina Noble Rounds shot count
- Traveler’s Chosen Gathering Light stacks
- Perk progress meter shows perk buildup.
- The Manticore
- Perk active shows when the Exotic perk is active.
- Hawkmoon
- Ager’s Scepter
- Tarrabah
- Touch of Malice
- Cryosthesia 77k
- Trinity Ghoul
- Charge meter and perk counter.
- Vex Mythoclast
General
- Inspection Screen has been updated for weapons:
- Rotate weapons around the same way you would a Sparrow or piece of armor.
- Added support for ambient VFX to play for weapons that have them.
- Knowing how popular the full auto (now called “full auto firing”) setting was, we’ve implemented a matching “full auto melee” setting that lets you continue melee attacking with your fist, charged melee, Sword, Glaive, or roaming Super melee by holding down the appropriate input.
Whichever guns you rate as the best Destiny 2 Exotics, make sure to browse our picks of the best Destiny 2 builds for all classes to make sure you get the most from them. We’ve also got a comprehensive Vault of Glass raid guide to walk you through the game’s first ever – and perhaps still best – raid in its reborn Destiny 2 form.