Destiny 2 Exotic Guns Are About To Get Way Stronger

Destiny 2 Exotic Guns Are About To Get Way Stronger

Bungie dropped a bombshell in today’s blog post, and it had nothing to do with being bought by Sony. The studio revealed some more major changes coming to Destiny 2 with the launch of the long anticipated Witch Queen expansion later this month. While the game’s crating system was the big topic of discussion, Bungie also revealed that exotic primary guns will get a major damage boost to finally make them relevant again.

As the most rare and sought-after Destiny 2 weapons, exotics are also supposed to be some of the most powerful. Not all of them have been created equal, however, and since players can only equip one at a time, special and heavy ammo weapons usually steal the show. To deal with this imbalance, all primary exotic weapons will deal 40 per cent more damage against regular enemies once The Witch Queen goes live.

This means some of the most beloved guns in the game, like Ace of Spades, Monte Carlo, and Riskrunner, will become much more useful again in PvE. This is obviously great news for anyone who has a special attachment to exotic hand cannons and sidearms, and means weapons with mob-clearing perks like Sunshot and Thorn are about to become absolute juggernauts. Sometimes perfect game balance can become the enemy of fun, so while this buff may end up being overkill, I’m more than happy to take the trade-off for now.

Screenshot: Bungie
Screenshot: Bungie

Bungie spent the rest of today’s blog post previewing other upcoming changes to its sandbox and pulling back the curtain on Witch Queen’s new crafting system. Here’s a quick summary:

  • Collect a weapon form from completing a quest or objective

  • Gather crafting resources

  • Acquire new weapons with something called deepsight resonance

  • Extract the deepsight resonance perk you want

  • Combine them all to craft a new gun

  • Level up the gun to unlock additional stat bonuses

It sounds great in theory, but there are a few caveats. For starters, deepsight resonance weapons are a random drop, so RNG is sticking around. It’s also unclear if the “perk essence” you extract from deepsight resonance weapons will be a consumable or permanent unlock. We also still don’t know more generally how grindy the entire progression will be, and Bungie has confirmed only a few weapons will be craftable at first, with more getting added over time.

The other notable reveal is that the world loot pool (read: random guns that drop in the wild) will be updated with returning favourites from the first year of Destiny 2, but with a twist. Going forward, all new and re-issued legendary guns will have origin traits inspired by their fictional manufacturers. These will be bonus weapon perks that do stuff like improve flinch resistance or increase damage against vehicles. In addition, perk pools for weapons will lean into the manufacturer reputation of each weapon. Bungie describes these manufacturer archetypes as, “big damage for Häkke, consistency for Suros, abilities tie-ins and weird stuff for Omolon, never-stop-firing for Veist.”

Big changes like these always introduce unforeseen wrinkles, but on their face they all seem like welcome developments. I for one can’t wait to start ripping mini-solarnova headshots on Hive with my Sunshot again.


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