You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Contents hide Destiny 2 has begun 2025 with the release of Revenant Act 3, and the unfortunate news is that it has failed to impress. The finale has been disappointing in the eyes of many fans, but, in better news, Bungie is on the verge of releasing a new patch full of significant balance changes. These balance changes include an assortment of huge buffs and nerfs for weapons in Destiny 2, with some of the guns practically considered useless with one specific other labelled oppressive. Destiny 2 set to nerf oppressive pulse rifles and buff struggling SMGs In the final TWID blog post for Destiny 2 in 2024, Bungie announced a slew of balance changes for the week of January 14th. There are many weapons and perks listed, but arguably the two biggest are the pulse rifles and SMGs. Bungie believes that the high-impact pulse rifles are too OP in the hands of highly skilled players, so they are delivering nerfs to make them feel less oppressive to others. Following the update, players will need to hit six crits to achieve their optimal Time to Kill against all resilience levels over one, and Bungie is also decreasing their range via the aim down sights damage (ADS) falloff scalar to make them more similar to Adaptive Hand Cannons. As for SMGs, Bungie has admitted that they are currently struggling in both high-end PvE and PvP, which is basically an admittance that they are useless. To make them better, Bungie is increasing their magazine size by approximately 10%, while also slightly increasing their damage versus Minor combatants in Heresy. All Destiny 2 buffs and nerfs Below are all the buffs and nerfs set to be released in Destiny 2 on January 14th: Weapon ArchetypesSidearmsHeavy Burst We preemptively nerfed Heavy Burst Sidearms before we made the Destiny 2: Into the Light sandbox changes because they had one of the most forgiving body shot Times to Kill in the game. We have not walked back those changes entirely, as that goes against the spirit of the current PvP sandbox, but we do feel that increasing the strength of some close-range Primary weapons is a worthwhile endeavor given the relative power of other close-range engagement options.Increased body shot damage from 30 to 33.Increased critical hit damage from 48 to 52.8.Submachine GunsGeneral SMGs are currently struggling in both high-end PvE and PvP, where combating more resilient enemies is making their small magazines feel overly punishing. We are bringing their magazine sizes up a small amount globally and will also be slightly increasing their damage versus Minor combatants in Heresy.Increased magazine size by approximately 10%.Auto RiflesRapid Fires Increased damage slightly to remove a resilience gate from their optimal Time to Kill.Increased body shot damage from 13.5 to 13.6.Increased critical hit damage from 23 to 23.1.Pulse RiflesHigh-Impacts We have heard your feedback that, in the hands of highly skilled players, High-Impact Pulses can feel oppressive. We are removing their last bit of baked-in forgiveness, requiring them to hit six crits to achieve their optimal Time to Kill against all resilience levels over one. At the same time, to reduce their top-end effectiveness, we are decreasing their range via the aim down sights damage (ADS) falloff scalar, which will bring them more in line with Adaptive Hand Cannons and reduce their range below all other Pulse Rifles.Reduced body shot damage from 22 to 21.5.Reduced critical hit damage from 39.6 to 38.7.Reduced ADS damage falloff scalar from 1.7 to 1.6.Lightweights Lightweight Pulses can feel too difficult to use for their Time to Kill and Time on Target requirements, so we are bringing their optimal TtK forgiveness up through all resilience levels.Increased body shot damage from 17 to 20.4.Increased critical hit damage from 31.45 to 31.6.Hand CannonsPrecisions Precision Hand Cannons have seen a small bump in usage and effectiveness with the recent buff to body shot damage, but we wanted to lean harder into the fantasy of the intrinsic perk. This change will affect Lunas Howl, Not Forgotten, and Malfeasance.The intrinsic Hand Cannon Precision Frame now reduces your ADS movement speed penalty by 10%.Scout RiflesLightweights For a brief period we buffed Lightweight Scouts to bring down their body shot Time to Kill (which is among the slowest in the game) and to make them more forgiving in terms of their optimal Time to Kill, but these changes were quickly undone when we moved to the Into the Light Crucible sandbox. We have re-implemented these changes, tuned for the new health values in PvP.Increased body shot damage from 32 to 38.Increased critical hit damage from 64 to 64.6.Sniper RiflesGeneral We are continuing with our work to reduce the visual flinch experienced by Sniper Rifles in Crucible to a more reasonable level. The intent is to maintain the difficulty of shooting through flinch to allow for counterplay, without it feeling too jarring to be damaged while scoped in.Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 20%.Whisper of the Worm We have further reduced the flinch experienced by Whisper of the Worm to compensate for it being a Heavy weapon.Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 50%.Weapon PerksSkulking Wolf (Iron Banner Origin) We felt like the Iron Banner origin perk could use an effect to make it worthwhile in PvE, and we think this addition is in line with the fantasy of the perk itself. The perk description string will be updated in a future release to reflect the new functionality.Now activates in PvE, and makes enemies slightly less accurate in targeting you when active (this is like the effect Manticore has when airborne).Target Lock With the increased magazine sizes on SMGs, keeping this perk in its nerfed state rendered it effectively useless. We will keep an eye on how this perk changes the strength of SMGs in Crucible, and we are interested to see how it performs alongside the multitude of other very strong CQB options that currently exist.Removed the custom tuning to make the perk less effective on SMGs.Exotic WeaponsGraviton Lance Graviton Lance is arguably the strongest Primary weapon in the game when viewed across both the PvE and PvP sandboxes. While it is not proving to be too problematic in high-skill Crucible lobbies, it is dominating lower- and middle-skill lobbies to an unhealthy degree, as well as seeing extremely high uptime and potency in all levels of PvE content. As such, it needs to be brought more in line for both sandboxes. One option we considered was bringing down the stats to be closer to other Heavy Burst Pulse Rifles, but that felt like too much of departure from the spirit of the weapon. Instead, we settled on reverting the RPM back to its previous value of 300. In PvE, the RPM reduction will effectively be a small DPS nerf, while in Crucible it will move the weapon back to how it was performing pre-Episode 2.Reverted its RPM to 300.Malfeasance This gun feels noticeably different to shoot compared to other 180 Hand Cannons because it was missing some of the intrinsic benefits provided by the Precision perk.Added the remaining intrinsic effects from the Precision Hand Cannon perk, including accuracy bonuses and the new ADS movement speed penalty reduction (the airborne effectiveness was already baked into the stats).Exotic ArmorStoicismSpirit of Alpha Lupi The healing impulse was tuned around barricade, which has significantly less uptime than Thruster. Now that Alpha Lupi can work on Thruster, we needed to branch the effects strength accordingly.Reduced heal impulse when using Thruster to 30 HP that can roll over into shields.For more Destiny 2, check out the 2025 roadmap along with leaked cel-shaded armor for the imminent return of Bungies Game2Give charity fundraiser. Destiny 2Platform(s):Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Web, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Adventure, First Person, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter8VideoGamerRelated TopicsDestiny 2 Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share