All Exotic Weapon Changes Coming To Destiny 2 The Final Shape

Destiny 2 has consistently been one of the most played live service games throughout the years, and as players embark during the Lightfall DLC, we’re slowly approaching The Final Shape.

Now, Bungie has given us some insight into the exotic weapon changes coming. 

Here's what we know. 

All Exotic Weapon Changes Coming To Destiny 2 The Final Shape 

The Final Shape was originally slated to release in February of 2024, and this is also around when most players expect annual Destiny 2 updates, so it wasn’t much of a surprise for players.

However, the DLC is now coming in June of 2024, and will bring the following exotic changes per Bungie. 

EXOTICS 

Divinity's ability to bypass combatant gameplay by generating a weak spot (called a "cage" internally) on command has too high an uptime as it stands, particularly with trigger feathering. We're not changing how effective the cage is or how feathering works, but we are increasing how long it takes to generate the cage, which will make it less ammo-efficient and less useful against targets that break aim frequently. 

• Increased the number of shots required to generate the cage by 75% against combatants (PvP unchanged). 

Rat King's firing animation makes the weapon hard to control at high rate of fire, so we've updated it. 

• Swapped the firing animation to the same one used by other auto-fire Sidearms. 

Devil's Ruin could be made to apply its firing animation to other equipped Sidearms. 

• Fixed an issue where the firing animation from Devil's Ruin would get applied to other equipped Sidearms if the weapon was swapped during the firing animation. 

Symmetry needed a little attention, particularly its reload speed and handling, so we took this opportunity to increase those via the catalyst. 

• Catalyst now provides +10 reload speed, +10 handling, and the Eddy Current perk, in addition to its existing effects. 

Gjallarhorn's Wolfpack Rounds always looked like Arc projectiles, regardless of the weapon's actual damage type. 

• Updated the visuals of Wolfpack Rounds to match the damage type of the weapon.For example: 
  • On Gjallarhorn, they will use Solar effects. 
  • On the Royal Entry Void Rocket Launcher buffed by Gjallarhorn, they will have Void effects. 

Touch of Malice's burn from the Darkness Ball didn't last long enough to be useful in PvE. 

• Increased duration of burn applied by the Darkness Ball against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. 

Osteo Striga made it too easy to spread poison across a whole encounter from a couple of kills of weak combatants. 

• Now has a 4-second cooldown on the poison burst on kills. (Poison burst from sustained damage doesn't receive this cooldown.) 

Necrochasm's add clear role wasn't as strong as we'd like, so we've buffed it and replaced the Outlaw perk on the catalyst with a new, custom perk that leans into this role. 

• Intrinsic perk now provides increased reload speed after precision kills. 
• Increased duration of burn applied by the Cursed Thrall explosion against combatants from 2 to 3.5 seconds. 
• Catalyst has been rebuilt. 
  • One for Thrall: Damaging 3 combatants in quick succession provides a period of increased damage, range, and aim assist. 

While The Lament’s damage is roughly equivalent to other Swords, the healing on hit largely removes the intended downside of using a Sword for boss DPS, and the chained heavy attack was too strong. 

• Reduced healing effect by 20%. 
• While this weapon does inherit the 7% global buff to Swords, we've reduced the damage of the high end of the chained heavy attack by 20% from that point. 
  • This means combos at lower stacks are less affected by the change than combos at higher stacks. 

Dead Man's Tale's rapid-fire hipfire fantasy isn't landing as well as we'd like, so we've bumped up the rate of fire and added a bit of stability to Cranial Spike to make this easier to control. At the same time, its strength is skewed a little high on mouse and keyboard and a little low on controller, so we've tuned accuracy and magnetism (controller reticle friction) to address this. 

• Baseline: 
  • Cranial Spike stacks now grant stability in addition to aim assist stat and range (+2 per stack). 
  • Increased reload speed benefit of Cranial Spike stacks. 
• With catalyst, iwhen hip-firing: 
  • Slightly reduced accuracy benefits. 
  • Increased magnetism falloff scale (1.6 to 1.7). 
  • Increased baseline rate of fire from 130RPM to 140RPM. 
  • Removed PvE-only damage buff that scaled with stacks of Cranial Spike and added a 15% damage bonus at maximum stacks of Cranial Spike. 

The Colony's fantasy of spawning self-replicating insectoid robots is something we've wanted to juice for a while now. This update allows The Colony to deal with waves of combatants in a unique way. 

• Now spawns additional insectoid robots on final blows. More robots (up to five) spawn from tougher combatants. 

Truth has fallen far behind other Exotic Rocket Launchers, largely due to its lackluster damage, and we wanted to lean further into total rocket count. 

• Increased area-of-effect (AoE) damage such that it doesn't lose noticeable damage due to not dealing impact damage. 
• Increased total reserves by 3. (This is on top of the reserves change to high impact Rocket Launchers from the 7.3.5 update.) 

The Queenbreaker's damage output is outpaced by Legendary Linear Fusion Rifles, so we've increased its damage and reserve ammo to compensate. We do see frequent requests to move Queenbreaker to the Energy slot, but given the number of Special ammo damage options in this slot, we have opted to push it further in the Heavy slot. We're working on some functionality changes to this weapon for a future update as well. 

• Increased damage versus bosses, minibosses, Champions, and vehicles by 12%. 
• Increased reserve ammunition by 3. 

The power from Cerberus+1's focus fire perk from the Exotic catalyst was limited by it being always available. We've changed this to only being available following a kill, allowing us to increase its strength. 

• Focus fire now will activate on Special reloads following a kill and will no longer reduce range or rate of fire. 

In a world where Bastion has competition for a Fusion Rifle in the kinetic slot, we felt that it was time to lean further into emulating Saint-14's combat style. 

• Reworked Saint's Fists perk: Dealing damage with melee increases your charge rate, damage, and reload speed for a short duration. Landing a majority of pellets in a burst increases melee damage. 

Eriana's Vow has fallen behind other anti-barrier Special weapons and, as a Solar weapon, has the opportunity for a subclass tie-in. 

• Breaking a matched shield or piercing a Champion's Barrier will cause the target to ignite. 

Deterministic Chaos didn't have a clear niche when it shipped, so we've redesigned it to be an anti-Champion and weakening powerhouse. 

• This weapon is now intrinsically anti-barrier. 
• The Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal perks have had their locations and behavior swapped. 
  • Heavy Metal now causes every 4th bullet to make targets volatile. 
  • Vexadecimal now causes every 16th bullet to also weaken targets. 

The flexibility offered by The Fundamentals (on the Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger Exotic weapons) is useful, but most of the time there's no need to switch damage types rapidly, so it's irritating having the current damage type clear on death. 

• The Fundamentals now maintains its state across death or respawn.