During a recent sandbox and combat livestream, Bungie provided a series of new in-depth details regarding how Destiny 2’s combat and weaponry will be tweaked when the game’s Forsaken expansion launches next month.
If you want to watch the full hour-and-a-half presentation for yourself, we’ve included a YouTube VOD of the livestream below, but if you’d rather just have a quick recap of what was discussed during the livestream, we’ve got you covered there as well. Here are some specific talking points gleaned from the developer commentary that was provided during the livestream:
- A weapon’s assigned gear slot and ammo type will no longer be synonymous. It will be possible to find a Kinetic slot weapon that uses Special (green) ammo drops and an Energy slot weapon that uses normal (white) ammo. Power weapons will continue to use Heavy (purple) ammo.
- Crucible PvP players will always respawn with some normal and Special ammo, but the amount of Special ammo they start with will be limited and will actually be split amongst the player’s arsenal if they have multiple Special ammo weapons equipped.
- Each weapon will have 10 Masterwork levels, with each level gained providing a slight bump in the weapon’s stats. Initially, upping a weapon’s Masterwork level will only cost Glimmer, but reaching Masterwork level 10 will also require the spending of Legendary Shards and Masterwork Cores.
- When a weapon reaches Masterwork level 10, a new row of perks will be unlocked, allowing the player to select between a PvE kill tracker and a Crucible kill tracker (both perks will be free to equip).
- Randomized perk rolls will incentivize players to keep multiple copies of the same weapon.
- Mods no longer provide a Power increase and instead grant passive perks that can augment a player’s preferred playstyle.
- When a weapon is dismantled, its mod will be returned to the player’s inventory, which means players will no longer be penalized for putting a mod on a weapon they later decide they don’t like.
- Mods will no longer be acquired from the Gunsmith. Instead, every Legendary tier weapon that drops will have a mod equipped, which means that the primary method for acquiring new mods will be by dismantling unwanted weapons.
- Exotic weapons will always have a fixed series of perks.
- Two melee attacks will be enough to kill enemy players in Crucible PvP, and special melee moves like the Titan’s Shoulder Charge will be a guaranteed one-hit kill (if they connect of course)
- Scoring kills in the Crucible will be noticeably faster, but only if you can reliably land precision hits (i.e. headshots).
- The power of the Warlock’s Rift ability has been boosted to account for the faster kill times in PvP.
- Existing supers such as the Titan’s Ward of Dawn and the Hunter’s Shadowshot have been reworked to make them much more viable in PvP.
Now is as good a time as ever to hop back into Destiny 2, especially with the recent announcement of a new Legendary Collection that bundles the base game and its first three expansions (Forsaken included). Many of the above changes will also be included in Destiny 2’s upcoming Forsaken pre-patch, affording players some time to acclimate ahead of Forsaken’s full launch on September 4.