Destiny 2 nerfs Star-Eater Scales, Boots of the Assembler in latest hotfix

Two of the latest Exotics in Destiny 2 took a hit to their power capacity. Bungie nerfed both Star-Eater Scales (Hunter) and Boots of the Assembler (Warlock) in Hotfix 3.2.0.2., which went live today. The two pieces of armor made their way to the game in Season of the Splicer but already saw a nerf.

Star-Eater Scales took the brunt of the hit. Bungie fixed an interaction that boosted all outgoing damage when using the exotic instead of only increasing the power of Supers. In practice, the glitch meant that hunters could use a Tether to receive a long buff to weapon damage instead of just Shadowshot. In addition, developers doubled the number of Orbs of Power needed to get the full increase—eight, up from four.

Bungie previously acknowledged the armor piece was doing more damage than intended and disabled it during the first 24 hours of Destiny 2‘s Vault of Glass raid. The damage boost should only extend to supers now, but collecting eight Orbs of Power to get extra firepower can be a tricky task, especially since they reset on death.

Boots of the Assembler also took a heavy-hitting nerf. Class ability regeneration will now pause while the Exotic extends the duration of a rift. The change aims to prevent crashes originating from too many rifts and to offer Sanguine Alchemy an advantage over Boots of the Assembler, according to Bungie.

Sanguine Alchemy extends the rift timer after getting a kill, while the new Exotic that so passively if allies were in close proximity. Although Boots of the Assembler isn’t completely obsolete, the nerf makes it considerably less useful.