Here are all the biggest changes in Destiny 2's massive Season of the Drifter patch notes

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Nerfs, buffs, and quality of life changes galore

After several weeks of teasers and trailers, Destiny 2 Season of the Drifter and the Joker's Wild annual pass DLC have finally arrived. Everything goes live today, including a massive patch which is chock-full of balance changes, bug fixes, and some much-needed quality of life updates. We've already heard about some of these changes, so we're just going to call out the biggest ones that were revealed today via the full patch notes (which you can read here by the way). 

Weapon balance 

  •  Nerfed the pants off the Full-Auto shotgun perk (more on that here)  
  •  Machine gun damage against bosses and minibosses reduced by 21% 
  •  Buffed rocket launchers and grenade launchers (more on that here)  
  •  One Thousand Voices PvE damage increased by 25% 
  •  Two-Tailed Fox PvE damage increased by 26% 
  •  Wardcliff Coil PvE damage "increased by 115% against boss combatants and scaling up to 160% against weaker combatants" (I'm assuming this is a typo because what) 
  •  Sleeper Simulant ammo reserves reduced to 9 from 13 without armor perks or masterwork  
  •  Whisper of the Worm ammo reserves reduced to 9 from 20 without armor perks  

Armor balance 

  •  Year 2 armor can now drop specced for mobility, resilience, or recovery 
  •  Major nerfs to One-Eyed Mask's Vengeance duration and effect (more on that here)  
  •  Khepri's Horn now fires two solar groundflows that deal double damage in PvE 
  •  Vesper of Radius damage tripled in PvE 

Abilities 

  •  Fixed Titan skating 
  •  Reduced Super gain on Titan Code of the Juggernaut to prevent infinite Supers  

Activities and vendors 

  •  Major changes to Gambit tiebreakers, invader spawns, Blockers and more (more on that here) 
  •  Gambit, Crucible, and Vanguard vendors are now offering new pinnacle weapons and rank weapons  
  •  The Ascendant Primeval bonus Gambit boss will now spawn much more frequently regardless of the Dreaming City Taken curse status  
  •  Xur may now sell Forsaken Exotics, but Fated Engrams do not currently award Forsaken Exotics (more on that here) 
  •  Clan daily bounties replaced by original activity-driven XP system, clan rewards greatly improved (more on that here)  

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Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.