The next expansion of Destiny 2, the Season of Opulence and its annual pass content drop, Penumbra, are finally here. Bungie hasn’t just dropped new activities, new loot, and a new raid on players with the kickoff of the new season, though–it also has dropped a big patch to the game that reworks a bunch of weapons.
Update 2.5.0.1 brings all the new Season of Opulence content to the game, along with a host of changes, bug fixes, and most specifically, weapon “nerfs.” Bungie first discussed weapon changes on its blog in May, kicking off an intense but brief backlash from players. That’s mostly because the update weakens a lot of guns that have become essential to how lots of people play the game.
Probably the biggest standout is the change to Whisper of the Worm, a tough-to-get secret sniper rifle that’s great for melting big-time enemies, such as raid bosses. The thing that made Whisper so great was a perk called White Nail, which gave the gun infinite ammo so long as you were landing precision hits. The new patch changes that, causing White Nail to draw ammo from your reserves rather than generating fresh ammo. Bungie increased the amount of Whisper ammo players can carry, but the result is that, eventually, Whisper runs out of bullets, which pretty much removes the element that made the gun so useful.
Other weapon nerfs affect Destiny 2’s competitive multiplayer mode, the Crucible. Two major favorite weapons for competition, Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten (both of which are extremely tough for players to earn), have also been weakened. The guns’ fire rates have been reduced, making them shoot more slowly, and their signature perk, Magnificent Howl, has been weakened as well. It used to be that landing two precision shots with the guns would increase their damage for a short time until your next kill or missed shot; going forward, Magnificent Howl will only increase the damage of one shot after landing two precision shots.
This is also the update that changes Exotic armor that generates Super energy. Several pieces of armor, when used correctly, can give players most or all of their Super energy back every time they use one of these powerful abilities. Bungie has said it didn’t like that these effects made those pieces of armor basically must-use items for much of the game, so it’s weakened pretty much all of them.
It’s not all bad news, though. Bungie is strengthening Fusion Rifles pretty much across the board, with a few extra buffs going to Exotic fusions such as Merciless and Jotunn. Other Exotics, such as the Aeon Cult armor pieces, have been buffed as well, which should make them much more viable in different situations. In general, it looks like Bungie’s goal is to decrease players’ reliance on a particular set of weapons and armor, while making things a lot of people ignore more useful. We’ll have to see if these changes actually accomplish those goals.
That’s not all that’s about to come to Destiny 2, though. On Thursday, June 6, Bungie is set to announce the “next chapter” for the game. Speculation has it that Thursday will see the announcement of new expansion content now that the current annual pass has come to an end.
Check out the full patch notes below.
Update 2.5.0.1 Notes
Season of Opulence Begins
Imperial Summons
All players who have completed Forsaken may acquire an Imperial Summons from Benedict 99-40 in the Tower. This quest grants Power Surge gear. Crown of Sorrow raid begins at 4 PM PDT.
Sandbox
Weapons
Ace of Spades
- No longer two-taps when paired with One-Eyed Mask’s Vengeance perk if the victim has at least 4 resilience.
- Memento Mori restored to 6 bullets, but bullets are now lost on stow.
Lord of Wolves
- Release the Wolves perk can now be activated on special reload instead of on kill.
- Normal burst damage decreased by 20%.
- Release the Wolves non-precision damage decreased by 23%; precision damage decreased by 34%.
Sleeper Simulant
- Reduced bounce damage against bosses, minibosses, and vehicles by 95%.
- Reduced precision multiplier, but increased base damage by 66%.
- This change results in precision shots dealing approximately the same damage as before, but you are punished less for landing non-precision shots.
Sturm and Drang
- Storm and Stress max overcharge rounds increased to 99.
- “Sturm Overcharge” buff text now displays the number of overcharge rounds.
- Overcharge damage increased by 100% in PvE.
- Fixed an issue where a 10% precision damage bonus remained on Sturm when it had used all its overcharge rounds.
Whisper of the Worm
- White Nail perk now loads the magazine from reserves.
- Increased ammo reserves to max 18 without armor perks.
- Fixed an issue where White Nail would fail to activate under certain network conditions.
Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten
- RPM changed to 150; damage was adjusted to match other 150 RPM (lightweight) Hand Cannons.
- These weapons still retain the Precision sub-archetype benefits and firing animation.
- Magnificent Howl has been reworked.
- Rapidly landing two precision hits now increases damage and range on your next shot.
- The damage increase affects only non-precision damage, but the bonus range is applied regardless.
- Fixed an issue where Magnificent Howl would be slow to activate under certain network conditions.
Fusion Rifles (Non-Exotic)
Damage increased against PvE combatants:
- High-impact increased by 30%.
- Precision increased by 44%.
- Adaptive increased by 44%.
- Rapid-fire increased by 47%.
Exotic Fusion Rifles
Note: Changes to Exotic Fusion Rifles are due to archetype tweaks and not direct changes; most of these are minor.
Jötunn
- Changes affect PvE damage only.
- Impact damage increased by 10%.
- Detonation damage reduced by 15%.
- DOT damage increased by 10%.
- This results in an overall 5% increase in total damage.
Merciless
- Damage of first bullet at slowest charge time increased by 30%, which decreases as the weapon reaches its fastest charge time. Damage at the fastest charge time is unchanged.
Telesto
- Impact damage increased by 49%.
- Detonation increased by 3%.
- This is an overall damage increase of 4%.
Submachine Guns
- Minor adjustment to idle pose for SMG archetype to help set it apart from the rifle archetypes.
- Updated firing animations to better reflect the shooting experience of an SMG.
Dev Commentary: These changes apply to hipfire only, and do not impact accuracy. The goal of this change was to enhance the feeling of shooting an SMG. We’ve added a random fire pose that will add variation and make the gun feel a little more unstable and lively in your hands. We’ve also added a progressive fire animation that will give your Guardian a feeling of gripping and controlling the more active weapon during sustained fire.
Swords
- General
- Ammo capacity increased to a max of 70.
- Starting ammo increased by 10.
- Black Talon
- Ground and aerial projectile ammo cost increased from 3 to 4.
- Adaptive Frame
- Ground uppercut ammo cost increased from 3 to 4.
- Aggressive Frame
- Now lunge at target with their aerial light attack.
- Light attack consolidated into a single damage event.
- Slam attack consolidated into a single damage event.
- Slam attack ammo cost increased from 3 to 4.
- Lightweight Frame
- Tuned damage output.
- Ground light attack increased by 17%.
- Aerial light attack decreased by 21%.
- Ground dash attack increased by 87%.
- Aerial dash attack increased by 78%.
- No ammo aerial light attack decreased by 49%.
- All other no-ammo attacks decreased by 15%.
- Ground dash attack ammo cost increased from 2 to 3.
General
- Fixed an issue where magazine-size indicators didn’t display the proper arrows when changing magazine perks on the Breath of the Dragon and Trackless Waste SMGs.
- Truesight’s “weakened” enemy highlight or glowing will no longer appear to flicker erratically.
Armor
Super-Generating Exotic Armor
- Skull of Dire Ahamkara, Orpheus Rigs, and Phoenix Protocol now grant Super energy back on diminishing returns, making it rarer to get a full Super back.
- Shards of Galanor and Ursa Furiosa had their Super gain caps reduced to be in parity with other Super Exotic changes.
- Adjusted amount of Spectral Blade Super restoration when defeating enemies with Gwisin Vest.
- 1 PvP kill = 11.1% → 8.3%
- 2 PvP kills = 19.1% → 12.5%
- 3 PvP kills = 20.8% → 14.2%
- 4 PvP kills = 21% → 15.8%
- 5 PvP kills = 21% → 16.7%
- 1 Dreg kill = 7% → 11.1%
- 2 Dreg kills = 17.7% → 14.3%
- 3 Dreg kills = 20% → 16.5%
- 4 Dreg kills = 20.9% → 16.9%
- 5 Dreg kills = 21% → 17.1%
- Minor adjustments to the Heavy Ammo Finder perk.
Gemini Jester
- Increased duration of disorient and no-radar effects by 0.5 seconds.
Aeon Gauntlets
- Potency of energy given by Aeon Arms increased for all classes.
- Titans now trigger Aeon Arms off of melee kills instead of barricade, and they receive melee energy.
- Visual effects on Aeon Gauntlets altered for all classes to distinguish between a player whose energy is full or not.
Abilities
- Fixed an issue where “Six-Shooter” refunds a bullet when destroying Titan barricades.
- Fixed an issue where “Entropic Pull” melee and “Devour” melee were applying a physics impulse that pushed enemies away.
- Fixed an issue where using Chaos Reach with Geomag Stabilizers could sometimes lead to weapons disappearing.
- Fixed an issue where players could gain full grenade energy when canceling out of a Nova Warp Super.
- Fixed an issue where Combination Blow’s melee damage buff was buffing the Arc Staff Super in PvP environments.
- Note: This was addressed for PvE in a previous update.
- Moving between overlapping Wells of Radiance no longer lead to removing the buff earlier than expected.
Investment
Clans
- Clan XP has been reset for Season 7 start.
- A new weekly bonus bounty has been added for Season 7. This bounty is available at the max clan rank.
Emotes
- The Luxurious Toast emote now allows players to sit for as long as they desire.
Eververse
- The Eververse storefront has been updated.
- Cayde’s Exotic Stash items have been added to Eververse’s Bright Dust inventory for weeks 1–4.
Rewards UI/UX
- The Pursuits inventory has been moved to the Director menu.
- Players may now hold up to 63 pursuits at a given time.
- Catalysts are now tracked on the Triumphs page.
- Updated Taken and Fallen armor mods to follow the same naming convention.
- All shader items have had their icons updated.
- Fixed an issue where the action for applying shaders, ornaments, holograms, or using consumables was getting cancelled and not applying on the first attempt.
Note: There are still actions that will cancel the apply function, such as hitting the “Preview” button, exiting Inventory early, letting up on the “Apply” button too early, or completely moving the cursor off of the item being applied.Vendors
- Benedict 99-40
- Relocated to the Annex in the Tower.
- The Gunsmith
- Now offers three daily and two weekly weapon-focused bounties, rewarding Enhancement Cores, mod components, and mods.
- Scrapper bounties will no longer drop when dismantling gear.
- Existing scrapper bounties will remain in your inventory until expiration or completion.
- Xûr
- Now properly offers random rolls on Exotic armor after refusing to do so in Destiny 2 Update 2.2.1.
- We’ve had a chat with him; if something like this happens again, he’ll be in trouble.
- Drifter/Vanguard
- Weekly reward packages from the Allegiance quest have been retired with the conclusion of Season of the Drifter.
- Fixed an issue where some players wouldn’t see updated vendors and bounty lists after the weekly reset occurred.
General
- The Sony-exclusive Hunter armor set “Red Moon Phantom Suit” should no longer appear in Collections for Xbox and PC players.
- Fixed an issue where weapon engrams were incorrectly appearing as Masterworked in the loot stream if a player’s inventory was full when walking over them.
- Fixed an issue where Arbalest could not be acquired by players who do not own the Annual Pass.
Activities
Raids
- Further addressed GUITAR errors that could occur in the Last Wish raid.
Crucible
- Players can no longer win Crucible matches by getting kills after the timer has expired.
- Fixes an issue where a player could hear the audio for a 20-kill streak but not receive the medal if the 20th kill happened after the match ended.
- The Triumph “We Ran Out of Medals” (20-kill streak) will be rewarded if the final kills happen before the match timer ends.
Patrol
- After activating the totem, killing the weekly wanted targets will now correctly complete the activity and bounty.
Heroic Adventures
- Fixed an issue where players would sometimes load into a different Heroic Adventure on Mars than what was being displayed on the Totem.
Tower
- Fixed issues with two Ghost scannables in the Tower
- “The one about the Speaker’s quarters…” was moved to outside his door along the walkway.
- “The one about Banshee-44 and his old location…” was moved and placed on the ground in the corner.
Niobe Labs/Bergusia Forge
- Fixed an issue where players on PC were experiencing crashes traversing Niobe Labs and Bergusia Forge spaces.
Commando/Zero Hour
- Fixed bug where players could freeze the activity timer in Zero Hour mission.
- Fixed bug where the Heroic version of Zero Hour would be available only on the first character to complete the activity on each account.
Misc.
- Fallen mines are no longer impervious to being destroyed while on the ground.