Destiny 2’s Exotic class of weapons are about to become much more effective when Season 17 introduces a number of changes to them. Bungie outlined a number of buffs for Exotics that will see them deal more damage and engage their signature perks more often.
There are a number of debuffs on the horizon as well, according to Bungie’s latest weekly blog post, but the vast majority of these changes are designed to make these weapons feel more effective within the specific niches that they were designed.
All Exotics that shipped before the Forsaken release now have their kill trackers visible by default, with the changes affecting the following 17 Exotics:
- Fighting Lion
- Eyes of Tomorrow
- Leviathan’s Breath
- The Huckleberry
- Xenophage
- Le Monarque
- Lorentz Driver
- Skyburner’s Oath
- The Last Word
- Arbalest
- Graviton Lance
- Grand Overture
- Coldheart
- Prometheus Lens
- Wavesplitter
- Osteo Striga
- Lord of Wolves
Some of the interesting changes focused on more recent Exotics include Grand Overture’s missile barrage ability being tweaked. Bungie recently modified its ability to fire in bursts of 5, but from season 17 the ability to fire all missiles in a continuous burst will exist alongside that option. Xenophage will see its rate of fire increased and damage output adjusted back to original levels, Eyes of Tomorrow will wreck bosses with a 30% increase in damage, and Osteo Striga’s projectiles are getting a cosmetic tweak.
One of Destiny 2’s original Exotics, Skyburner’s Oath, will receive a bunch of changes that aim to improve its ease of use and give it more utility for airborne offense. ADS projectile speed is being increased to 9999, ADS and hip-fire will be set to 150 RPM, and hip-fire detonation also applies a burn to targets. While the weapon is losing hip-fire projectile tracking, rounds fired will have a larger detonation size and the gun will have the highest airborne effectiveness stat of any weapon in the game.
PC players who enjoy filling their hands with iron will find a reduced mouse and keyboard recoil penalty when using The Last Word hand cannon, Fighting Lion will gain increased blast radius and damage, and Wavesplitter’s random damage output is being done away with.
For those weapons that are being dialed back, expect to see Le Monarque’s poison tick damage scaled back in PvP and increased for PvE. Bungie explained that Lorentz Driver can be difficult to fight against in PvP, in part because it does very high body shot damage, so body shot damage against players by 20%. Warlocks who have an empowering rift ability ready, won’t be able to score a one-hit kill with this change either.
Arbalest’s damage output against champions has been reduced by 25% as Bungie felt that it was more dominant than intended in hard PvE content.
Source: Gamespot
