Destiny 2 shows weapons for Witch Queen – are playlist strikes finally worth it again?

In yesterday’s blog, Destiny 2 announced the first changes to playlist activities and also gave a sneak peek at the rewards. We’ll tell you what’s changing, what weapons await you, and if it’s worth it.

Following the release of the weekly This Week at Bungie (TWaB for short), playlist activity will now receive a small boost. There was also a weapon look at the new Vanguard rewards from Dawns, which you can hunt at the start of Witch Queen in Season 16.

The reason for these adjustments to the Vanguard reputation gain is the fact that the different difficulty levels in the Vanguard playlists in particular were not played as expected. Many players only play the weekly twilights on the low challenge levels.

Bungie will therefore make adjustments in the coming Season 16 to make these activities on higher levels of difficulty more palatable to players in the future.

• Vanguard reputation will increase twice as fast starting in Season 16
• Twilights on higher difficulties also grant faster gains
• The changes should also be closer to the reputation gain from the Crucible playlists in the future

Adjustments to strike modifiers in Season 16

Additionally, there will be adjustments to Vanguard Strikes and Dusk modifiers. In Season 15, players’ actions in twilights were often very tactical because the incoming damage from bosses was too strong. This should change in Season 16 and encourage guardians to master such challenges more with their good builds. Bungie will therefore make the following adjustments:

• Boss specific damage modifiers are removed from Dawns with Witch Queen on Hero difficulty and higher.
• The Scorch modifier (damage dealt by a specific element) is replaced with Acute. This modifier will increase damage from a specific element by 25%, both incoming and outgoing. This means players have 50% more incoming damage and 25% more outgoing damage.
• Seasonal Strike modifiers from Season 15 are being moved to the Vanguard Dawn playlist
• In Season 16, Strike modifiers for Hero, Legend, and Grandmaster difficulties are themed around Glaive and Void use and rotate weekly.

That changes in Season 16 with the Trials of Osiris

While the reputation rank gains in the regular Crucible remain the same, there will be a change in the Trials in Season 16. Apparently in Season 15, the Trials of Osiris reputation gain was about 30% slower than expected. In addition, it could not be increased further at higher ranks.

For Season 16, Bungie plans to grant a reputation rank multiplier increase for more replays and for each round won during a game in Trials of Osiris. Depending on the number of wins a player has on their respective ticket.

Overall, this should bring a 50% increase in Trials replay wins, giving more value to players who have 20-round wins and 7-wins on their Trials Pass.

These are the changes in detail:

• At the end of each Trials match won, Season 16 and later players will receive a small point bonus to their Trials reputation rank
• Reputation rank will continue to increase based on the number of wins on your pass
• Each round won will grant 21 points more than in Season 15
• The gain in reputation rank can thus increase to up to 105 additional points per game

These changes should also increase Trials of Osiris reputation gains by 50% or more for players who don’t regularly reset their ticket.

Far-reaching adjustments are also planned for Gambit: Many players have long felt that Destiny 2’s hybrid PvPvE mode, Gambit, deserves more attention. This seems to be the next thing to do.

Then Gambit will not only get a proper overhaul, but something should also change in the reputation rank. The developer wants to present more information about this in more detail in one of the upcoming TWaB blog articles.

Activity boost display will soon bring more clarity: So that you always know which weekly bonus is currently active and you can use it to optimally level up your reputation ranks, there will be a new start page info. At Witch Queen and the start of Season 16, such information will then be displayed directly on the start screen, so that you always have it in view.

You can hunt these weapons in Season 16

In addition to the information on the reputation rank points, there was also a first look at the weapons that players can hunt in the respective playlists from season 16. Including two well-known weapons, which the players can earn as an exclusive reward from the Vanguard Dawns and an equally well-known Trials weapon. All three weapons will then also be available as master versions from Season 16.

The Trials is the Solar Auto Rifle The Summoner. The weapon could already be earned in Season 11 as a master version in the trials. It has a 600 fire rate and a good TTK of 0.7 seconds.

In addition, there should be another weapon for the trials. However, Bungie did not want to reveal which and whether this is a new one.

The two twilight exclusive weapons are both kinetic. On the one hand, this is what was once very popular 600 Auto Rifle Bound by Duty as well as that Silicon Neuroma Sniper Rifle.

Interestingly, both weapons come from planets (Io and Titan) that are currently being swallowed up by the pyramid ship anomaly as part of the story and are therefore in the content vault.

Finally, some info for graphics fans among Destiny 2 players: Bungie has also given a first hint of a hardware upgrade in Witch Queen. Starting in Season 16, Destiny 2 will support Windowed HDR. Players may get improved game performance in windowed full screen mode and nicer graphics.

This change is thanks to some upgrades under the hood of the Destiny 2 game engine. There are also some HDR calibrations available in the settings. However, it should be noted that players also need the appropriate hardware to fully enjoy this change.

Weapon recycling continues: Whether this change is an incentive for the players is questionable. Above all, the weapons are already well-known, albeit popular weapons. They bring little fresh wind into the playlists. After all, it cannot be ruled out that this was only a small foretaste and especially for the trials, at least one more weapon will find its way into the reward pool of PvP activity.

What do you say about the changes? Are these weapons that you have also missed and that is why you will definitely get them? What are your thoughts on the changes to Reputation Ranks? Will that make you jump into the higher level challenges in the Dawns in the future? Tell us in the comments.