Among the multiple weapon changes discussed by Bungie in a post on Oct. 25, the development team might have teased a feature of an upcoming auto rifle archetype.
In the very beginning of the dev insights post, Bungie talked about its approach to weapon balancing, using auto rifles as an example, and mentioned, “They all use Primary ammo (for now),” hinting that we will receive a special or heavy ammo auto rifle in the future.
During the Destiny 2 Showcase 2023 back in August, Bungie revealed a new support frame auto rifle subfamily that will come out with The Final Shape expansion on Feb. 27, 2024. The support frame is a type of legendary auto rifle that will allow you to “switch seamlessly from firing at enemies to healing your allies.”
The community is now certain that the upcoming support frame will be a special ammo weapon or a special/primary hybrid, which makes sense since you don’t want to give the weapon infinite healing through primary ammo. I’m really fond of the hybrid idea because I won’t have to choose what to spend my special ammo on, shooting or killing (I think we all know what most players would choose).
Some fans are still skeptical about the support weapon in general, as there’s no such thing as playing as a support in Destiny 2 because each class has multiple tools to stay alive and deal damage. You could have a dedicated support Warlock build but as one player noted: “Why play support warlock when you could just run warlock that kills everything and spam wells.”
Another possibility is that Bungie is working on an Exotic special auto rifle to release in Season 23, similar to how we already have Eriana’s Vow and Forerunner. Many fans pointed out that if the devs ever decided to rework Cerberus+1, it should become a special weapon to be a more viable choice in the sandbox.
Regardless of what Bungie is planning, there are multiple changes to weapon damage in PvE, a Glaive rework, and multiple Exotic armor changes coming in Season 23 so we will have things to play around with until the release of The Final Shape.
