Destiny 2 PvP is dominated by one unlikely weapon in season 22

When Season of the Witch was released last month in Destiny 2, one of its more notable under-the-hood balance updates was to zoom and its relationship with damage falloff on all weapons. This change was mainly focused on reining in some close-quarters outliers, such as SMGs, but the full ramifications of this sandbox shift have finally begun to make their mark on PvP usage rates.

The Ammit AR2—an auto rifle released almost a year ago in Season of Plunder—has surged up the leaderboards to become the most used weapon across quickplay, competitive and Trials of Osiris, according to statistics from DestinyTracker. Previously, auto rifles have been effectively non-existent in PvP ever since the sun set on the 600 RPM meta, making Ammit AR2’s dominance all the more sudden.

To understand why Ammit AR2 has become so popular, it’s important to look at what exactly happened with damage falloff. The zoom stat on a weapon used to act as a scalar for damage falloff distance, but in season 22, Bungie decoupled these two elements and re-balanced damage falloff for each weapon type individually. Through this, auto rifles ended up with a damage falloff scalar identical to pulse rifles. Now, an auto rifle and a pulse rifle that both have 100 range have effectively the same damage falloff start distance.

As PvP content creator SayWallahBruh pointed out in his video on the gun in season 22, it’s possible for some auto rifles now to have better range than pulse rifles due to this drastic update to weapon range modifiers. Ammit AR2’s success is due to its notably high base stats and the fact that it is craftable and thus has easy access to strong PvP perks such as Enhanced Tap The Trigger and Enhanced Dynamic Sway Reduction. It may not have been released to much fanfare back in Season of Plunder last year, but the potential it always had is finally coming into play.

That led to Ammit AR2 having a 2.86 percent usage rate in quickplay, narrowly beating out the newly released Unending Tempest SMG at 2.75 percent. In the more competitive arenas of the Crucible, the weapon’s monopolization of player loadouts is far more palpable. It currently sits at a 3.97 percent usage rate in competitive, with Matador 64—a shotgun—being a distant second at a 2.93 percent usage rate.

In Trials of Osiris specifically, where its pick rates began to turn heads after it was second in the leaderboards in season 22’s first Trials weekend, it now sits atop the throne of popularity with an impressive 6.01 percent usage rate. Despite the nerfs it received, the Adept version of The Immortal still sits at number three, but only 4.3 percent of the population uses it now.

Whether Ammit AR2’s reign will continue or if other auto rifles will begin to creep up the order as more players test out the changes to range and damage falloff will be one of the key ways that Destiny 2’s PvP meta is defined going forward.