Bungie finally announces a nerf for Destiny 2’s most talked about Exotic

After a few weeks of minor updates, Bungie released a massive blog post for Destiny 2 on Thursday. The article offers a ton of information about upcoming weapon and balance changes, and is extremely long.

For our purposes here, we’re mainly going to be discussing the Exotic changes coming in season 19 (coming Dec. 6) and beyond. Specifically, let’s talk about the changes coming to Destiny 2’s most controversial weapon: Divinity.

In the blog post, Bungie revealed that Divinity — which weakens enemies, causing them to take more damage, and creates a massive crit spot on their body — will now only offer a 15% debuff on targets, down from 30%. This is a significant nerf, and should make way for players to use other debuffs that have gone unused for several years.

This nerf comes about a month after the weapon caused some drama in the Destiny community. In September, three-time world first raider, Saltagreppo, tweeted a thread about Divinity, essentially complaining that the weapon has felt mandatory for nearly three years, since it was added to the game with Shadowkeep’s Garden of Salvation raid.

This caused a massive stir in the Destiny community. Some players agreed that the weapon needed to be nerfed, while others called Saltagreppo an elitist who wanted to make the game more difficult for non-streamers. However, while some might blame the conversation Saltagreppo spawned around Divinity for this nerf, Bungie claims it’s been testing a fix for months.

Overall, this nerf should add a bit more variety to Destiny 2’s raiding scene, which has gotten stale after years of using Divinity.

Outside of the Divinity nerf, Bungie mentioned that 26 Exotics will see changes in season 19, with some being substantial and others being relatively light touches. The studio is also looking for ways to add both Champion stunning functionality and subclass 3.0 verbs to more Exotics.

In the blog post, Bungie also made a small nod toward the next reprised raid coming to Destiny 2. One of the questions in the post alludes to what Bungie would do if the reprised raid either didn’t have an Exotic tied to it or if the original raid Exotic had already been added into Destiny 2 — Bungie said it would simply make a new Exotic that fit thematically with the raid.

This question suggests that Bungie is toying around with bringing Wrath of the Machine — the fourth and final original Destiny raid — to Destiny 2 next year. Wrath of the Machine’s original raid Exotic was Outbreak Prime, which Bungie reprised in Destiny 2 as Outbreak Perfected back in 2019. Wrath of the Machine is the only Destiny raid to have its Exotic added to Destiny 2 without the raid coming with it, which makes this a fairly obvious tease. The only other raids that didn’t launch with an Exotic at all were the original Destiny 2 Leviathan raid lairs: Eater of Worlds and Spire of Stars.

The last major reveal in the blog post focused on Adept raid weapons, which only drop from the hyper-difficult Master version of the raid. These weapons currently pale in comparison to the crafted versions of the same weapons, and Bungie is looking to spice them up. Starting in Lightfall, Adept raid weapons will be able to drop with enhanced perks. However, Bungie was clear that players still won’t be able to craft Adept weapons. The studio promised to reveal more about this new Adept system closer to Lightfall’s Feb. 28, 2023, date release.

If you’d like to see the answers to the rest of Bungie’s questions, we recommend setting aside some time and reading the full blog.