Destiny 2 Witherhoard disabled due to a bug in Beyond Light

Destiny 2 Witherhoard disabled
(Image credit: Bungie)

Update - November 19: Witherhoard has been re-enabled as of today's patch. Huzzah! 

Original story:

Many Guardians were surprised to find their Destiny 2 Witherhoard disabled following a recent hotfix, but it turns out there was a good reason for the emergency change.

The official Bungie help Twitter confirmed that Witherhoard was disabled "until further notice" around 10pm on Wednesday, November 11. However, Bungie didn't specify its exact reasoning in this tweet. But if you've been in the Crucible lately, you probably already know the reason why Witherhoard was disabled: it was melting everyone in sight.

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Granted, Witherhoard always does that, but due to a bug it was killing Guardians in the Crucible way too fast. It went from damage-over-time to instant death, which isn't ideal for a PvP environment, even one filled with wildly uneven Stasis abilities. Ironically, something similar happened to Witherhoard when it was first released, only its bugged insta-kill applied to bosses rather than players. Somewhere, the Sanctified Mind is smiling in its interdimensional grave as we suffer the same buggy fate. 

This isn't the first time Bungie's disabled an Exotic (and as long as Telesto exists it surely won't be the last), and fortunately these sorts of issues generally don't take too long to fix. At the latest, we'd estimate that Witherhoard will be re-enabled on Tuesday, November 17 with the weekly reset. That's just our guess though; Witherhoard could return much sooner through a hotfix, so stay tuned to the Bungie help Twitter for official updates. When we know more, you'll know more. For now, you'll need to find something else for your kinetic slot. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.