The latest This Week In Destiny blog gave us a lot of information on changes coming to Destiny 2 in Season of the Wish launching Nov. 28. Apart from specific class Aspects and abilities, another mechanic that got hit pretty hard is the armor mods.
In the This Week In Destiny blog post on Nov. 22, Bungie revealed adjustments to the armor mods aimed to hit “broader goals of reigning in ability energy sources across the sandbox,” by reducing the amount of energy you get from mods. There are lots of nerfs but the most notable one was the added 10-second cooldown to the Heavy Handed, Firepower, and Reaper mods. Reaper will now also require a kill to be secured within 10 seconds after using a class ability to create an Orb of Power.
The community didn’t take the change lightly, saying a 10-second cooldown is “ridiculous” and even though the cooldown itself isn’t necessarily a bad addition, 10 seconds seems too much. An alternative suggested by the players is to make the armor mods cheaper and “make the value match the cost,” otherwise there’s a risk of losing the fun factor of build crafting. It’s hard to argue that the most fun I’ve had in Destiny 2 lately was in builds focused on a certain ability.
These aren’t the only mods that will get nerfed. A notable change is made to Melee Kickstart, Grenade Kickstart, and Utility Kickstart, all three now require at least a single Armor Charge consumed. Previously, the Armor Charge was optional and would give you bonus energy on top of the base effect.
As noted by several players the nerf is likely aimed at stopping the ability spam builds and lean more into gunplay. “Bungie will always want Destiny to be a gun-forward game as it’s the grind, the thing that keeps you looting,” one fan wrote, which makes a lot of sense. Bungie teased a support auto rifle archetype coming in The Final Shape and is putting a lot of effort into the gunplay-focused PvP mode, Checkmate.
The direction is more or less clear but a 10-second cooldown is still a drastic nerf that might be overkill. Although we’ll have to see how it actually plays out in Season of the Wish, Bungie loves to revert nerfs only years after they were implemented, so starting off somewhere with five seconds would’ve been better. Especially since there are no gunplay innovations yet to complement the nerf (I’m talking about the support auto again).
