It’s been just over a week since Destiny 2 players got their hands on Wicked Implement, Season of the Deep’s latest Exotic weapon, but the reception to it has been lukewarm, to say the least. Despite its raw potential in the Crucible, the scout rifle has failed to impress in PvE, and it turns out Bungie knows this as well.
In today’s This Week in Destiny blog, the developer announced that Wicked Implement is already slated for a number of buffs to the base weapon in the future. No release date was given for the changes, but the earliest players can expect it is probably next season with Season of the Deep’s mid-season update revealed to be coming on July 18. The post, however, did reveal other tweaks to things such as PvP spawns and Whisper of Chains that are slated to hit Destiny 2 far sooner, which players can look forward to.
While Bungie did tease buffs to come, the discussion around Wicked Implement in the TWID first centered around its poorly received catalyst. “When designing catalysts, our teams aren’t there to create something you need to get, but something to entice you to let your weapon achieve its full potential,” Bungie said. “The main thing we wanted to facilitate is getting you into a rhythm with your precision hits.”
The ability to overflow your magazine with the catalyst equipped does accomplish this, even if the effect doesn’t feel as impactful as other Exotic weapon catalysts have been in the past to the functionality of their weapons, much to the lament of the player base.
It’s because of the inherent power that Wicked Implement’s perk, Creeping Attrition, has that this lack of impact exists, though. “Being able to potentially slow targets with a Primary weapon in the PvP neutral game is already kind of spicy,” Bungie said, although its current usage rate in the Crucible suggests its potential hasn’t been felt yet in the arena. “We also heard feedback on the base weapon and have a few buffs on the way. Among other things, we were cautious with the timing window for Creeping Attrition, but we’re looking at adjusting that in the future. Keep an eye out for that.”
Related: How to get the Wicked Implement Exotic scout rifle in Destiny 2
For players looking for updates that have a more concrete date assigned to them, the TWID had that as well in the form of changes coming to the Crucible for the July 18 mid-season update. Namely, a PvP-specific nerf to the Whisper of Chains Stasis fragment. The fragment gives the player damage reduction while near friendly Stasis crystals or frozen targets, but the amount of damage reduction it gives in the Crucible is getting reduced from 15 percent to five percent. A few out-of-bounds spots in certain PvP maps have been patched up too as an added bonus.
A little further into the future, Bungie also wants to address the changes they made to Crucible spawns in Destiny 2 recently that drew a lot of ire from the community. “In the first hotfix after the mid-season patch, we are going to be increasing the influence of enemy player sightlines and proximity back to where it was before,” the blog reads.
The weight of the spawns had been recently changed to further favor friendly players over friendly objectives, allowing for players to ideally respawn closer to the action instead of at the back of the map. But Bungie admitted that it “turned the influence of enemy player sightlines down too far” in the end. “This causes a number of problems that many players reported (you can often spawn in the middle of a firefight, and spawn trapping is easier on many maps). This also led to a sharp increase in the number of matches ending in a Mercy.”
The adjustments back to a similar spawning behavior to before will be a welcome improvement for PvP players, even if we don’t yet have a date for when we can expect this hotfix to land. The devs also said to stay tuned in the coming weeks as they “have some exciting reveals coming before Season 22” pertaining to the Crucible.
It’s an exciting few weeks to be a Destiny 2 fan, with the mid-season update and the annual Solstice event starting next Tuesday, July 18, as well as more details still to come on the sandbox shifts and content coming with season 22.
