Destiny 2 TWAB Preview: Season 18 Buffs, Nerfs, and Major Changes

Destiny 2 TWAB Preview: Season 18 Buffs, Nerfs, and Major Changes

The 8/11/22 This Week at Bungie dropped a lot of new information on the weapon sandbox for Season 18.

There are some large perk, archetype, and exotic changes that we will get into with some added thoughts on how these changes will affect next season’s meta.

Let’s take a look!

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Exotics

These exotic changes will create massive changes to the current PvE meta.

The main benefit of these changes is adding intrinsic anti-champion capabilities to many exotics similar to how Arbalest, Lament, and Divinity have anti-champion capabilities.

The affected exotics are here:

• Le Monarque will have Overload Rounds on poison arrows
• Thunderlord will have Overload Rounds
• Malfeasance will get Unstoppable Rounds on the weapon’s explosion perk as well as +25 airborne effectiveness
• Wish-Ender will get Anit-Barrier, damage to non-minors by 10%, and 8 ms faster draw time
• Ticuu’s Divination gets the benefit of the lightweight bow draw time changes listed below (32 ms faster draw time for Ticuu’s)
• The catalyst for Legend of Acrius will give Trench Barrel
• Calus Mini-Tool and MIDA mini-tool will have their airborne effectiveness and zooms matched at 28 and 14 respectively
• Drang will have airborne effectiveness increased from 21 to 23
• Sweet Business will have airborne effectiveness increased from 27 to 32
• The 5% damage buff to Fighting Lion will be reintroduced as an 8% damage buff and increased the timing window of thin the herd from 5 to 6 seconds

These are some big changes. The ones that are the most interesting are Legend of Acrius and Thunderlord due to upcoming Arc 3.0 changes and Le Monarque for the added in Overload Rounds. Malfeasance can see some good use in taken strikes as well as more use in PvP due to the 180 RPM hand cannon buffs and now the added in AE changes. The other airborne effectiveness changes probably won’t have too much impact unless you are very into pretending you’re an attack helicopter with Sweet Business and heat rises.

Archetypes

Some underutilized archetypes are getting love in the next season in the hopes of pushing them into relevancy. Some archetypes you may not even know existed listed below as they have been so bad for so long.

Here are the changes to archetypes:

• ALL Scout Rifles will have increased 10% damage to minors
• High Impact Auto Rifles will have a baseline stability increase of 6-12
• Lightweight Bows will have quicker draw time of 5% and a wider “perfect draw” timing window that will be expanded by 0.20 or 0.25 seconds
• Dire Promise’s zoom is going back to 14 from 13
• Glaives’ melee attacks will interact with the ACD/0 Feedback Fence, Karnstein Armlets, and Necrotic Grip exotic gauntlets
• Breech Grenade Launchers will no longer roll with concussion grenades
• Heavy Grenade Launchers (excluding Parasite) will have increased 10% damage to majors and higher enemies (this includes bosses)

The biggest change for PvE will most likely be the scout rifles. Scouts are great for Grandmasters due to being able to play safely with them. This 10% will really help clearing out trash mobs faster.

The Glaive change will help them in PvE as you can easily heal or spread damage with those exotics, but Glaives may become a menace in PvP if paired with Karnstein Armlets.

Glaives are actually quite strong in PvP due to their damage resistance, the one thing that holds them back a tad is the ability to escape after a kill once the block is utilized, Karnstein will allow Warlocks to heal after a beat down and sustain before you can charge a block again.

Otherwise the other changes most likely won’t be all too impactful. Grenade launchers probably won’t become a better damage option than current top damage dealers as there is greater than a 10% DPS difference.

Lightweight bows and autos may have some ease of use changes, but that won’t make their damage dealing better. Lastly the breech grenade launchers will just have one less perk clogging up a column which is nice but by no means earth shattering.

Perks

Underperforming perks will be getting some changes to them, including origin perks which will make them more applicable outside of their origin playlist. The following perk changes are below:

• Invader Tracker will be renamed to Run and Gun and will give sprint speed after multi kills
• Skulking Wolf will now proc on kills at low health
• Ambitious Assassin magazine overflow for primary kills will increase from 10% to 20% and maximum overflow cap will go from 50% to 150%
• Wellspring will no longer have an internal cooldown to it, so the perk can be activated at any time
• The audio/video feedback of Perpetual Motion will no longer pop up when the perk is active (no functional change)
• Lead from Gold will properly split special ammo bricks
• Linear Fusion Rifles will not benefit from the Veist Stinger origin perk
• The wording of the Zen Moment and Particle Repeater perks will be rewritten (no functional change)

To be honest I don’t think any of these perk changes will have much impact on the game outside of Ambitious Assassin which may become a solid alternative to Overflow. Skulking Wolf’s removal from radar ability can be nice for those who use Riiswalker to disorient some enemies from trading out a kill.

The changes to the Wellspring perk are nice and it’s a solid perk, but the change only really affects splash damage weapons which means it only affects using these heavy weapons in a group of enemies rather than for boss damage. Special ammo grenade launchers that can have this perk do get the benefit of extra ability energy from multi-kills which is a small buff.

Weapon and Armor Reworks

These reworks are addressed mostly for PvP with some PvE bits sprinkled in. Lord of Wolves and Omnioculus are the headliners here and are introducing much-needed changes to these 2 oppressive exotics.

All the changes are listed here:

• Lord of Wolves ammo in PvP reduced from 15 to 10, burst size and speed of release the wolves reduced from 10 to 5 and 60%, base damage reduced by 20% in PvP only
• Dead Man’s Tale’s cranial spike perk no longer boosts damage on headshots in PvP, but rather increases reload, aim assist, and reload speed. When max cranial spike stacks are hit the fire rate changes to 180 RPM and damage is reduced by 20%
• The raid exotic Collective Obligation will have its leeching perk duration increased from 10 to 15 seconds in PvE, a 20% damage bonus to PvE combatants when leech is active, void leech takes fewer hits to charge, the leech cooldown is reset with a kill to a debuffed target or the use is affected by a void debuff, and Umbral Sustenance only activates on Void shields
• Omnioculus and Whisper of Chains will have PvP only damage resistance changes
  • Tier 1: 10% to 2.5%
  • Tier 2: 15% to 5%
  • Tier 3: 20% to 7.5%
  • Tier 4: 25% to 10%

These are some large changes. Lord of Wolves will be far less effective and slug shotguns will most likely become the go-to for long-range shotgun kills. Mouse and keyboard users who enjoy the Dead Man’s Tale will be quite disappointed with these changes (as one of these people, I can confirm).

The newly buffed legendary scout rifles will most likely be better options than DMT due to these changes. The cranial spike perk will become an alternate version of killing wind rather than a damage-dealing perk and the rate of fire changes will have to be played with before being judged upon. Unfortunately in general you become acclimated to a firing cadence of a weapon and if that cadence changes while firing the weapon it may feel off.

The only PvE changes which are to Collective Obligation look quite interesting. This exotic has been a bit of a disappointment, but increasing its ease of use and giving it a 20% damage buff that shouldn’t be difficult to upkeep makes this weapon worth trying out next season, especially with void 3.0 classes that can activate Umbral Sustenance and gain elemental bonuses off the weapon.

Last and certainly not least are the Omnioculus and Whisper of Chains changes. Per our exotic tier list Omnioculus is an S tier exotic, and will still most likely remain there with these changes, but it will be far less oppressive.

Even if the damage resistance was removed altogether this exotic would be strong as you can make 2 or more allies invisible and get your smoke bomb back. The Lord of Wolves and Omnioculus combo will definitely be reigned in, and will most likely become Omnioculus and a different shotgun.

Outro

There are a lot of sandbox changes to look forward to at the start of next season. The TWAB also listed a few changes that will come in the middle of Season 18 or at the start of Season 19 to also look forward to.

These upcoming changes will include shotgun spread changes, perk changes, Trace Rifle buffs, sniper PvP flinch, other PvP outliers, and more. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on meta changes once the new season comes out as there will certainly be some shake-ups with these changes, arc 3.0, and a new seasonal artifact.

For more articles, check out our Destiny 2 guides on armor and weapons.