[Destiny 2 ]My thoughts on the upcoming sandbox changes (4/8/2021)
Bungie decided to give us a sneak peak at the upcoming sand box changes going into the new season of Destiny. They are disappointing to me as a PvE player, yet I’m sure the PvP community is very pleased. They decided to look at the meta for both PvE and PvP and shake them up by nerfing the most popular weapon types. Hopefully they plan to do some buffing in the PvE realm to make up for this. If not, it will be pretty disappointing.
PvP
Bungie decided that they’ve had enough of the 120 Hand Cannon + Shotgun meta. So they nerfed the range and upped the damage fall off on the 120 Hand Cannons. This is great since these things can challenge and beat most long ranged weapons with very little effort.
They also decided to remove the perk QuickDraw from Felwinter’s Lie and Astral Horizon shotguns. This will affect all currently owned and future versions of these weapons, the perk will be replaced with Surplus. Silver lining, Surplus is a fantastic handling perk and almost makes up for the loss of QuickDraw.
Now, I don’t really play a ton of PvP, so I am not overly opinionated when it comes to these changes. However, PvE is a different story entirely.
PvE
Bungie has developed this nasty little habit of assessing the current PvE weapon meta, butchering it, and neglecting to buff something else into viability. Rather than bring weapons up, they cut others down. I get it, people may argue that power creep is a thing, yet, I don’t think that we’ve come close to it being a thing. There has not been a point in the Destiny franchise where EVERYTHING was overpowered in PvE.
This time they’ve set their sights on some of the best heavies we have at the current time, Swords. They’re making the heavy attack consume more ammo on Vortex Frames, Falling Guillotine. They are also removing the ability for Swords and Bastion to bypass shields.
On top of that, they’re nerfing the damage output of Lament, one of the best options for the Atraks encounter in the Deep Stone Crypt raid. It is the best due to the abnormally short amount of time players get to damage the boss.
There is a silver lining, as hard as it is to believe, since all I’ve done is bitch and moan about the nerfs.
Bastion is now an unstoppable weapon, which is huge. Having another exotic that intrinsically staggers a champion is fantastic. They also hinted at bringing back the Loaded Question’s perk, Reservoir burst, another nice change.
Now, their are some changes that are nice, yet none that truly excite me. Hopefully we see some sort of buff here in the near future to some weapon type, fingers crossed it’s Snipers.
Conclusion
Lot of nerfs, not many buffs. Not a surprise at this point in the game, still disappointing none the less. Luckily none of the encounters in Vault of Glass are sword heavy.
Now, I do piss and moan a lot about the decisions that Bungie makes, since I perceive them as poor decision. Don’t let that fool you, I love this game, I have 6000+ hours across both games in the franchise. I genuinely only complain about the game because I want to see it in a better state. I have high hopes for the future of the game, and Bungie has been going in the right direction in terms of content and direction. Presage was a ton of fun and I really hope that we get more missions similar to it, both fun as in a casual sense and a speed run sense.
