The Change Destiny 2 Needed Has Begun With Buffs Coming to Long-Forgotten Exotic Weapons

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We all know things have been a bit weird lately for Destiny 2, but it seems Renegades is already preparing some monumental changes, which is what many players wanted. Bungie has announced that it will release one post each week before the release of Destiny 2: Renegades, showcasing some of the changes coming to the expansion, starting with upcoming tuning to some long-forgotten exotic weapons. So, if there’s one particular gun you’ve been wanting to use but was not in the right spot, you’ll want to take a look at the post.

Several Buffs Coming to Old Exotic Weapons in Destiny 2: Renegades

Learn more about how Destiny 2's weapons will be changing — including the ammo system, Exotic weapons, perks, and more — when Destiny 2: Renegades launches on December 2.

📰 Dev insight: https://t.co/A9NId9ESr1 pic.twitter.com/8luze9FHHa
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) November 11, 2025

Bungie shared some of its upcoming plans for Destiny 2: Renegade, mainly regarding exotic weapons. While we’ll list some of the most important ones, you can check the whole article here, which goes into detail about every weapon getting a buff in the new expansion.

Before diving into those forgotten exotics, some other global buffs are coming to the game. Among the first is a change to how buffs show in the player’s HUD. Now, Guardians will be able to see the important buffs onscreen more easily. The ammo system is also getting a revamp, with Ammo Scout returning to helmets, as well as some buffs giving you progress on your Ammo Meter.

Many weapon types are also getting buffs, such as the ones listed below:

Sidearms
- Altered the firing animation for some long-barreled Sidearms to hide the reticle for a reduced duration:
  - Heliocentric
  - Faustus Decline
  - Compact Defender
  - And a handful of older Sidearms with silencers/extended barrels as part of their physical model.
Submachine Guns
- General
  - Increased stability by 10% on controller.
- Lightweight
  - Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.4 to 1.45.
Pulse Rifles
- Rapid Fires
  - Increased base damage from 15 to 15.5, increased crit damage from 27.75 to 27.9.
Bows
- Recurve Bows
  - Rescaled draw time to be slightly faster at base and less punishing if increased
  - Base draw time: 580 to 567.
  - High Tension String draw time: 620 to 600.
- Compound Bows
  - Rescaled draw time to be slightly faster at base and higher stat values, and less punishing if increased
  - Base draw time: 684 to 667.
  - High Tension String draw time: 720 to 700.
  - Elastic String draw time: 612 to 600.
Fusion Rifles
- Rescaled Fusion Rifle charge times.
  - Rapid Fires: 500 to 533.
  - Adaptives and Aggressives: 660 to 667.
  - Precision: 780 to 800.
  - High Impacts: 960 to 967.
- Precisions, Adaptives, Aggressives
  - Increased PvE bonus damage scalar from 2.5% to 6.7%.
- High Impacts
  - Increased PvE bonus damage scalar from 6.7% to 15%.
Shotguns
- Rapid Fires
  - Added a 2.5% PvE bonus damage scalar.
  - Increased ammo per brick in PvE from three to four base, and six to eight enhanced.
- Lightweight
  - Increased damage per pellet from 22 to 23.
  - Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 15%.
- Precision Pellets
  - Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 15%.
- Aggressives
  - Increased damage per pellet from 26.7 to 28.
  - Increased PvE bonus damage from 12.5% to 20%.
Slug Shotguns
- General
  - Reduced Aim Assist cone size by 1% at the low end of the stat, and 3% at the high end of the stat.
  - Corrected the RPM displays in-game to be more accurate (this does not affect gameplay; it is purely visual).
- Rapid Fire Slugs
  - Increased PvE bonus damage from 8.3% to 11%.
  - Fixed an issue where Assault Mag would increase RPM by 50.
- Pinpoint Slugs
  - Decreased damage against players by 6%.
  - Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.2 to 1.25.
- Heavy Burst Slugs
  - Increased ADS Damage Falloff Scalar from 1.2 to 1.3.
  - Increased ammo per brick in PvE from three to six base, and six to 12 enhanced.
Snipers
- Reduced flinch received from players by 40%.
Rocket Pulse Rifles
- Reduced the base reserve ammo for Rocket Pulse Rifles from 18 to 14.
- Reduced enhanced ammo per brick in PvE (as mentioned in the Ammo section) from six to five enhanced.
Swords
- Reduced empty Sword swing damage.
- Empty Sword swings are no longer scaled by melee buffs.
- Fixed an issue where Ascension was activating Sword perks.

All Exotic Weapons Buffs

But now, to the important part. While the above buffs are great as they affect all weapon categories, the truth is that there are many exotics collecting dust that might finally be useful again, and here are some exotic weapons that are getting a well-deserved buff in Destiny 2: Renegades.

Ace of Spades
- Increased the extra PvE damage bonus of Memento Mori from 18% to 30%.
- Ace of Spades’ Firefly.
  - Increased maximum damage in PvE from 65 to 100.
  - Increased minimum damage in PvE from 0 to 20.
  - Increased area of effect size from 6m to 7.5m.
  - Increased damage falloff start from 30% of area of effect size to 50% (will keep full damage for more distance)
Hawkmoon
- Now gets a PvE damage bonus per stack of Paracausal Charge.
  - Maxes out at 70% at x8 Paracausal Charge.
  - Does not include the final Paracausal Shot.
Osteo Striga
- Reduced the cooldown of the poison burst on Osteo Striga’s final blow from four seconds to two.
Suros Regime
- Can now be special reloaded at-will to swap between Spinning up and Dual-Speed Receiver behaviors.
  - Added new hip-fire reticle elements that correspond with each firing mode.
- Grants bonus Special ammo progress with spun up kills while using Spinning Up.
- Grants bonus Heavy ammo progress on Dual-Speed Receiver kills while ADS.
Revision Zero
- Hunter’s Trace rounds now create a small damaging shockwave and Exhausts targets on impact.
Touch of Malice
- Increased the amount of healing provided by the intrinsic perk.
- Reduced the number of kills needed to trigger the healing in PvE, and activating Charged with Blight will now fire the healing impulse.
Collective Obligation
- Added a very slow rate of leeching effects off unaffected targets. Gives each effect in order of effectiveness with around a full mag of hits (per debuff).
  - Volatile -> Weaken -> Suppression
- Also charges the leech mode at the same rate.
Symmetry
- Now builds Bolt Charge with > one stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
  - Grants more stacks at >10x Dynamic Charge.
- Now can spend Bolt Charge with >1 stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode.
- Increased base reload stat by 20.
Still Hunt
- Buffed Still Hunt’s Golden Gun damage while using Celestial Nighthawk by 40%.
- Allowed Sniper’s Meditation to buff Still Hunt’s Golden Gun shots.
Witherhoard
- Reduced Silent Alarm auto-load time from 3.5 seconds to two.
Duality
- Reduced hip fire spread by 6%
The Chaperone
- Changed Chaperone to use the Rapid-Fire Slug frame damage and rate of fire profile.
Ruinous Effigy
- Catalyst now grants a 30% (15% in PvP) damage buff to the Trace Rifle when killing anything with the Transmutation Orb or damaging a miniboss/boss/Champion with a Transmutation Orb.
Izanagi’s Burden
- Special Reload once again scales with the reload speed stat.
Tessellation
- Property: Undecidable
  - Final blows now also grant 2.5% light and dark Transcendence energy, and grant bonus time to Transcendence while active.
  - Fixed an issue where Transcendence grenade chunk energy gains were not scaling based on the grenade stat.
- Property: Irreducible
  - While Transcendence is active, special reload shots now deal 25% more damage when combined with the Transcendence damage buff.
  - Special reloading now reloads the mag from reserves, and you can now special reload while you have zero ammo in the mag.
- Catalyst
  - Increased applied Scorch stacks from 15(+5) to 70(+10), and Slow stacks from 30 to 80.
  - Subclass keyword application is now near immediate, though it still does not apply before the primary explosion.
- Misc
  - Updated the timing of the reload for Tessellation and Jötunn so that ammo is added to the mag slightly sooner, properly lining up with the animation.
- Deathbringer
  - Reduced the spread of the secondary cluster munitions after they are created.
- Black Talon
  - Heavy attack now suppresses on hits. If the target is already suppressed, it spreads to nearby targets.
  - Catalyst:
    - On hit gives a 10% damage boost per void debuff on the target for 2s.
  - Reduced heavy attack cost to three ammo from four.
  - Added Duelist’s Trance trait.
  - Increased max reserve ammo.
- Deterministic Chaos
  - New effect: Releasing the trigger after a Vexadecimal projectile pulls 12 rounds into the magazine from reserves.
- Worldline Zero
  - Fixed an issue where Tesseract was only hitting one instance of damage instead of the usual five.
  - Increased the damage instances via Tesseract from five to seven (~40% damage increase).
    - Reduced time between these instances from .66s to .44s.
  - Fixed an issue where chaining Tesseract was inconsistent if the player had the Wordline Zero catalyst equipped.
  - Reduced the cost of chained tesseract blinks from 20% Sword energy to 10% per.
- Wolfsbane
  - Increased damage of light attack by 8.5% (closer to lament or aggressive Swords).
  - Increased nano assault duration from 10s to 12s, which makes the tornadoes feel a little more forgiving.
    - Increased Swarm-nado damage by ~20%.
  - Retuned Axe Handles
    - Increased damage resistance on each handle by ~5%.
    - Increased damage resistance linger time from 3s to 5s.
  - Reduced internal cooldown on Subroutine: ~Recursion’s extra nanites from 5s to 2s.
  - Adjusted damage increased when used on ~A F F L I C T E D targets to ramp slightly quicker.

As you can see, these exotic weapon changes clearly show that Bungie is pulling out the big guns for Destiny 2: Renegades, quite literally. In truth, this is exciting, especially since it is the first of three articles coming that will discuss the significant changes in the expansion. If things continue like this, many Guardians will be excited to jump back into this shooter.