We are closing in on the mid-season patch for Destiny 2 which will bring us a lot of sandbox tuning. Apart from weapon balancing changes, Bungie will heavily nerf Hunter’s exotic Young Ahamkara’s Spine.
In the weekly TWID posted on Oct. 5, Bungie revealed its aim to “bring its total bonus grenade energy more in line with other Solar ability-focused Exotics like Athrys’s Embrace and Caliban’s Hand.”
These are the changes coming to Young Ahamkara’s Spine in the mid-season patch:
- Reduced the Tripmine Grenade’s bonus health from 100 to 70 and removed the bonus 50 percent damage resistance.
- Grenade energy is now provided on ability kills instead of damage with abilities.
Young Ahamkara’s Spine can be unstoppable in PvP with Hunters throwing Tripmine after Tripmine after Tripmine. However, these nerfs will also apply in PvE and make your builds much weaker in high-level raids. In a Reddit post on Oct. 5, players agreed that PvE will suffer far more than PvP.
Exotics like Caliban’s Hand have other means of getting ability energy back like the Knock ’em Down aspect. This will put Ahamkara’s significantly behind, especially in master-level raids and higher where enemies may not always die from your grenade.
Another Destiny 2 player highlighted that “YAS needed a nerf for PVP, instead Bungie killed it for PVE and just made it worse but still viable for PVP.” Many agree that Bungie should have kept the nerfs separate as PvE builds with this exotic are fun to use without breaking the meta.
As for PvP, Young Ahamkara’s Spine will get weaker, but you should still be able to make it work if you are smart with your grenades. Despite being an Ahamkara’s user myself, I agree that a PvP nerf is long overdue. In the current state, games can get out of hand too quickly. Just look at the clip below from GernaderJake.
I don’t really understand why Bungie couldn’t nerf the exotic only in PvP though. It used to do exotic and weapon tuning for individual sandboxes before and it needs to keep doing that. It is impossible to feel like a powerful god-slaying Guardian when your equipment is designed to be balanced in PvP.
It is not the first time Destiny 2 PvP nerfs spilled over to PvE, but definitely one of the most outrageous. We will have to see how it plays out when the mid-season patch goes live supposedly on Oct. 10, but I don’t keep my hopes up.
