Summary
Destiny 2’s Season 22 is less than a week away, with it launching on the same day as the Destiny Showcase that will reveal a lot of what The Final Shape expansion is going to be about, with many fans on edge to learn more and others on the fence about it after the Lightfall debacle. Season of the Deep’s lore drops about The Veil and the origins of The Witness significantly helped with the concerns players had after Lightfall, and Bungie also made a few impactful changes to the sandbox. However,Destiny 2’s Season 22 will likely move the needle even more thanks to a plethora of big fixes to the PvE and PvP sandboxes, as well as the introduction of new features, and one weapon class could finally reign supreme in its own niche.
Ever since Bungie started makingDestiny 2Exotic weaponsand Legendary guns all fulfill their separate functions, some guns became stuck in limbo, waiting for the time to crawl back into the limelight. A great example is swords, which not only started to become obsolete based on the endgame activities introduced inDestiny 2, but The Witch Queen expansion also added glaives to the mix, with them providing similar functions. However, a weapon type that has been long-neglected in PvE will soon have its own dedicated niche in Season 22, and that is hand cannons.
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Destiny 2’s Season 22 Buff to Hand Cannons Explained
In a recent post detailingweapon changes inDestiny 2’s Season 22, Bungie stated that hand cannons have been going through scrutiny after the feedback about them being, or at least feeling, underpowered in PvE. This is true for most guns in this weapon class, as the damage dealt to red-bar enemies can feel rough compared to semi-automatic or full-auto weapons, like SMGs. On top of that, the damage dealt to orange-bar enemies and bosses is negligible when using hand cannons over any other weapon type.
This is because hand cannons are Primary weapons and inherently deal less damage than Special or Heavy weapons, and then the rate of fire mixed with slow reload times and mediocre damage makes them easily obsolete. However, this is likely changing for the better in Season 22, asDestiny 2’s hand cannonsare getting an umbrella buff to reload speed that applies to all variants and archetypes within this weapon class, and also a damage buff that makes them heavy-hitting guns.
Hand cannons will benefit from a 20% increase in damage dealt to red-bar enemies, but more importantly, they will deal a whopping 75% more damage to orange-bar units in the game, which can single-handedly turn these guns into meta-defining gear. Defeating orange-bar enemies is often a job for Special weapons, and making aPrimaryDestiny 2weaponachieve that more easily can shake up the current loadout preferences for endgame activities. Furthermore, the other changes to the sandbox could become the perfect storm that will make hand cannons stand out above all other options in most scenarios.
In recent news, Bungie announced thatDestiny 2’s double-Special ammo economywas about to change with Season 22, and this is further stated in the weapon sandbox preview post. Double-Special loadouts have been erroneously providing players with extra Heavy ammo on kills, which was never intended according to Bungie, and it’s something that the studio is adjusting to the same level as double-Primary weapons or the standard Primary + Special loadout. As such, running two Special weapons will no longer be good for DPS and swiftly dispatching big threats, and hand cannons' new buff could kill two birds with one stone.
Destiny 2is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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