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Destiny 2 Season 15 Weapon Tuning Notes Detail Infinite Ammo For Primaries, Fusion Rifle Boost

August 19, 2021

Destiny 2’s Season of the Splicer is wrapping up, and Bungie is preparing to reveal the new season next week. While we know very little about the next season’s content right now, Bungie has given us a taste of some of the changes to come to gameplay with tuning notes about all of the big (and little) tweaks to the game’s weapons.

Perhaps the most immediately obvious change will be to primary weapons. In an effort to eliminate the frustration that can currently come from running out of ammo in a PvP or PvE encounter, Bungie is implementing infinite ammo for all primary weapons. Alongside this, Bungie is also buffing the Inertia Override perk to compensate for fewer ammo bricks on the ground. Destiny fans have speculated that this change was on its way, such as in this post which correctly guessed the change two weeks ahead of time.

The developer is also rolling out its second attempt to correct some issues that arose from its implementation of max power levels on some weapons. Last year, Bungie rolled out this power cap in order to give it a tool to both restrain the total number of usable PvE weapons and to refresh the relevant arsenal of guns in any given season. Some deprecated weapons were “reissued” with higher power limits, but many players chafed at having to seek their favorite perk combinations all over again. Bungie’s original solution was to replace all of the perks on the reissued weapons, but this also didn’t work, as some sets of perks had become strongly identified with particular weapons. The studio’s new solution is to deprecate the 2-3 least useful perks and roll out 2-3 new ones whenever it reissues guns.

The studio will implement a number of weapon archetype-specific changes, too. Breech grenade launchers have become more popular as a result of the current season’s shotgun nerf, and so the launchers are getting slightly diminished power in PvP modes. Machine guns are going to be even more effective in PvE with a 20% damage boost across the board, while hand cannons and scout rifles will be 15% more damaging against minor enemies in PvE.

Fusion rifles have the most extensive (and most granular) changes on the way, all designed to make them better competitors with other classes of weapon. All fusion rifles are having their PvE damage bonuses bumped up by 15%. The rest of the changes are meant to make fusion rifle subfamilies more distinct. High Impact rifles are slower to charge and thus require more deliberation to use effectively; Precision and Adaptive rifles haven’t had much change beyond a slight damage boost; Rapid Fire rifles will charge even faster.

Bungie also gave a hint as to what’s to come for weapons in the future. Linear Fusion Rifles and Caster Frame Swords will be re-balanced at some point, but no details were shared. In addition, the studio will address “spamming high rate-of-fire semi-automatic weapons as fast as possible,” although it’s currently unclear whether it intends to make this easier or harder.

All of these tweaks alongside Legendary Stasis Weapons and Exotic changes will be rolled out with Season 15, which launches on August 24. We’ll learn more about what’s coming up for the season at its big showcase event on that date. In addition to details about the season, we also will learn something about the game’s next expansion, The Witch Queen, which launches next year and will be the first expansion since Beyond Light in November 2020.

Destiny 2 Season 15 Weapons Tuning Patch Notes

Global

Fixed the quickswap glitch.
All Primary ammo weapons now have infinite ammo.
Inertia Override has been adjusted to account for there being no Primary bricks (see the 8/5/2021 abilities TWAB).
Drop Mag’s downside of reducing reserve ammo is now almost meaningless.
- Reworked to be +reload speed, -magazine size.
Compact Arrow Shaft’s upside of increasing reserve ammo likewise.
- Reworked to be +reload, +handling.
Updated some other perks that refer to reserves in a way that’s no longer accurate.
All Trials weapons available in Season 15 now have seven perks in each column (was 5).
Added one or two of the original perks to each column for the Luna weapons reissued in 3.2.1 (i.e. the Lectern weapons only).
- Since these can be target farmed, we’re ok with increasing the size of the perk pools in this case.
Added one of the original perks to one or both columns for the Dreaming City weapons reissued in 3.2.1 (Tigerspite, Twilight Oath, Abide the Return).
- Since these can’t be target farmed (yet), we didn’t want to increase the size of the pools by more than one.

Archetypes

Breech Grenade Launchers

Reduced blast radius by 0.4m, e.g. max blast radius decreased from 4.55m to 4.15m, min blast radius decreased from 3.80m to 3.40m.
Reduced splash damage by 20, which reduces total damage for a direct hit from 220 to 200 (before taking spike or proximity grenades into account).
Increased damage in PvE by 12% (because of the above splash damage change this results in a small overall buff to combined damage).
Witherhoard is unaffected.

Machine Guns

Increased damage in PvE by 20%.

Scout Rifles and Hand Cannons

Increased damage vs. minors by 15%.

Fusion Rifles

Increased PvE damage bonus such that all subfamilies have a 15% PvE bonus (previously high impact was 0%, precision and adaptive were 10% and rapid-fire was 12.5%).
Pushed subfamilies further apart, adjusting charge time, shots fired per burst (was seven for all subfamilies) and damage (note that the “base” below means without battery perks, a charge time masterwork or the Adept Charge Time mod):
- High Impacts charge slower, and while still strong require more planning to use effectively.
  - Base charge time increased from 0.86s to 1.0s.
  - Shots per burst reduced from seven to five.
  - Reduced total damage per burst.
  - In playtesting, we’ve found that charging these in the open is super risky, but pre-charging around corners or otherwise in safety is very effective.
  - With the reduced shots per burst, these are now less reliant on stability, so can stack a bit more range.
- Precisions and Adaptives are close to unchanged.
  - Base charge time is unchanged.
  - Shots per burst is unchanged at seven.
  - Very slightly increased total damage per burst.
  - In playtesting, we feel that these are very effective all-around, without stepping on the niches of High Impacts and Rapid Fires. (I’ll be keeping a good PLUG ONE.1 for PvP).
- Rapid Fires charge faster, allowing them to be used reactively against charging enemies, or aggressively when pushing forward.
  - Base charge time decreased from 0.54s to 0.46s.
  - Shots per burst increased from seven to nine.
  - Increased total damage per burst.
  - In playtesting, we’ve found that these are very effective against Shotgun-rushers. The combination of them needing to be closer, and you having a shorter charge time work well together, and if you have good enough timing, you can fire two bursts with a rapid fire before a high impact user finishes charging their first.
  - With the increased shots per burst, these are now more reliant on stability, but with the increased damage they’re less reliant on range.
Parts of this work required adjusting several Fusion Rifle perks, and one mod:
- Backup Plan’s implementation was incompatible with the Fusion Rifle changes, and we felt like the perk could use a rework anyway.
  - Removed +100 to charge time stat, adjusted charge time multiplier from 0.85 to 0.7, now scales damage by 0.8.
- Liquid Coils and Accelerated Coils needed a rework for similar reasons.
  - Both converted to scale charge time and damage instead of modifying the charge time stat.
  - The final effect is much the same as before, but these are now more robust, however they won’t visibly change the charge time stat in the inspection screen.
- The Adept Charge Time mod felt pointless, and we felt like it would still be balanced against other mods if it didn’t reduce damage.
  - Changed functionality to scale charge time directly instead of changing the charge time stat, without adjusting the damage.
- A note on the Charge Time Masterwork:
  - A Fusion Rifle’s damage is determined by its charge time stat, similar to how most others weapons’ damage is determined by their rate of fire stat. Masterworks can only increase weapon stats for performance reasons, so it’s not possible to change how charge time maps onto damage without big changes to how the charge time stat works.
  - We investigated doing this by making the Masterwork a perk, but this would cause Fusion Rifles to exceed the perk budget, resulting in Bad Things Happening (as mentioned in a prior TWAB).
  - With the Fusion Rifle rework, we feel that this Masterwork is more viable; it now rarely reduces bolts to kill, so may feel not feel like a downgrade in the same way as before.
  - We’ll be watching to see how this plays out and have some options to address the issue if that’s still needed.
Adjusted the Fusion Rifle stat order so it matches other weapons (stability and handling were out of order).