Destiny 2's 2021 Solstice of Heroes event will arrive on Tuesday, July 6 alongside the Master-level Vault of Glass raid, and the same update is bringing an early batch of weapon balance changes too.
A short Solstice of Heroes trailer introduced the returning event, which will once again take players to the European Aerial Zone to kill a zillion mini-bosses and open just as many chests while completing bounties to level up an exclusive armor set. It's a familiar grind, but at least the new armor looks good, plus there's a new shotgun to chase as well. You'll have until August 3 to get all the Solstice out of your system.
The Master version of the Vault of Glass raid is also coming on Tuesday, letting players finish the Fatebreaker seal and collect Timelost versions of the raid's weapons. This is the first time since Year 1 that Destiny 2's added an extra-hard version of a raid (day-one contest mode notwithstanding), and it sounds as tough as you'd expect of Master-level content. Enemies will be 1350 Power, more Champions will appear, and you'll have additional modifiers to contend with.
At least the loot sounds worth it: Timelost weapons "can be comparable to Adept weaponry from Grandmaster Nightfalls or Flawless Trials passages," Bungie says, and will roll with additional perks and support adept weapon mods. A new Timelost weapon will drop each week, not unlike the Grandmaster Nightfall loot rotation.
One important note on Timelost guns: only the Master version of the raid can drop these, and you can only loot the raid once per character each week. This means you can't double dip on normal guns or raid spoils in the normal version, so if you're only interested in Timelost weapons, be sure to always clear the Vault of Glass on Master.
To make the July 6 update even bigger, Bungie's rushing out an extra-large mid-season weapon sandbox update. In the studio's latest blog post, weapons feature lead Chris Proctor explained that this update was largely bumped up by "a handful of weapons sucking all the air out of the room," and stressed that future mid-season changes "won't typically be this large or numerous."
As expected, Tuesday's update is a big mix of buffs and nerfs. More tweaks will arrive with the launch of Season 15, but for now, here are the high points of the forthcoming sandbox changes:
- Shotgun damage falloff range reduced to make it tougher to land one-hit kills at longer ranges. Slug shotguns are unaffected, while aggressive shotguns are getting their bullet spread widened.
- 120 RPM hand cannons will deal less precision damage, preventing small damage bonuses like one stack of Rampage from enabling two-hit kills. Their damage falloff range is also being reduced by a few meters depending on their range stat, letting them perform at long range but not absurd range.
- Dead Man's Tale's hip-fire damage falloff range and aim assist reduced to make rapid hip-firing less effective at longer ranges. ADS performance unaffected.
- Sleeper Simulant damage buffed 16.5%, correcting its accidental 3% buff and slightly exceeding the 15% damage buff applied to other linear fusion rifles.
- Rewind Rounds, a special Vault of Glass magazine perk, is getting a bug fix to ensure it always triggers when your magazine is emptied.
Proctor offered a preview of the changes to come in Season 15, but with fewer details. Machine guns, scout rifles, and hand cannons are finally getting those PvE buffs, while fusion rifles are due for a "larger rework" that will hopefully give them a place in the meta. Breech grenade launchers and the special ammo economy, meanwhile, will be toned down a bit in PvP. Then there's the megaton: Anarchy, the go-to weapon for basically everything, is getting nerfed to make it "great at a couple roles rather than being the jack of all grenade launchers."
Interestingly, Bungie says it's working on ways to encourage Exotic primary use in PvE, as well as a solution to the problem of letting all Exotics generate Orbs of Light, even those that haven't received an Exotic Catalyst yet. That last one is such a pain point that it might cancel the sting of Anarchy, our beloved and undeniably hideously broken favorite, finally tasting the nerf bat.
On top of all this, the July 6 update will re-issue 12 guns from the Forsaken and Shadowkeep loot pools.
