Destiny 2 Auto Rifle, SMG and Machine Gun Changes Coming in Season 17
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2023-04-10 15:38
Auto Rifles, SMGs and Machine Guns are set to receive some major changes in Destiny 2 Season 17.

Bungie dropped a Season 17 sandbox patch preview bomb for Destiny 2 Thursday, going over a healthy amount of topics from an overhaul to airborne gunplay, to massive buffs to Exotic and Glaives.

Covered as well in the near-9,000 word developer blog was a breakdown of several major changes coming to Destiny 2's weapon arsenal, with Auto Rifles, SMGs and Machine Guns finding themselves having some promising changes coming to each of their weapon classes come May 24.

In Season 17, the sandbox team is making changes across all aspects of the sandbox to improve the player experience of PvP. Here are the weapons team's goals to support that.Bungie staff designer Chris Proctor

With Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles, Bungie staff designer Chris Proctor mentioned that the team feels as though they haven't been as competitive as they'd like at mid-range.

As such, the following changes were made to make Auto Rifles and Pulse Rifles better compete with Hand Cannons in mid-long range and outrange standard zoom Submachine Guns:

Auto Rifle

Pulse Rifle

For submachine guns, Proctor wrote that "zoom is too important a factor" for the weapon class, noting that SMGs with low zoom especially haven't felt competitive in PvP.

As such, the variance in zoom between these weapons has been reduced, and the damage falloff distance has been increased in order to make SMGs more competitive in PvP:

Submachine Guns

Adaptive Submachine Guns

Lastly, with Machine Guns, Proctor shared that they still aren't where Bungie wants them to be in PvE.

As such, without also simply making them even better against bosses, this change has been made with the idea in mind that they'll shred most enemies:

Ultimately, there were plenty of more teases for upcoming moves and in-depth discussion on the state of the sandbox in Destiny 2, so be sure to check out the full TWAB post.

Tags pve weapon auto rifles nerf combat bungie glaive update machine guns season 17 buff airborne aerial class smgs destiny 2 exotic sandbox pvp patch