Long-forgotten Destiny 2 Exotic returns to its former glory after latest buffs

Merciless? That’s a name most Destiny 2 players may barely remember—and some of the New Lights may not have even heard about it at all. After the latest buffs to the weapon in Season of the Seraph, though, this fusion rifle may come out of obscurity and go back to the radar due to its firepower, even if it comes at the expense of your ammo reserves.

This week’s round of buffs touched on underused Exotics, including Merciless. The changes tweaked a few key elements of the weapon, tuning its intrinsic perk and its damage potential to 11 while still leaning into its unique identity.

Before the changes, Merciless gained a stacking bonus to charge time per shot, and killing a target would grant bonus damage at the expense of those stacks. Now, though, killing a target will maintain the bonus to charge time, allowing you to maintain bonus damage and get fast charge times.

Reddit user u/Zommander_Cabala outlined how the changes to Merciless made the weapon shine. Since the stacking bonus to charge time applies per bolt, it takes a couple of shots to bring Merciless to full charge speed. “Once you just fire off two volleys you can clear entire rooms, burst down champions, destroy majors, all in the same magazine,” they said, also outlining some of the weapon’s advantages.

Some of these aspects weren’t available in the This Week at Bungie blog post that outlined the changes to Merciless, and fans were surprised when they actually took the weapon to a gunfight. The Reddit user’s discovery, though, drew the attention of the community—including Bungie senior community manager, Dylan Gafner.

“Sometimes it’s nice to have a little surprise. Player discovery is super important at Bungie,” he said in a comment. “We definitely want to be clear in patch notes on what we’re changing / why. Sucks when we miss things (buffs or nerfs). Sometimes we know things are going to be spicy, but want to leave it to y’all to find it and get excited.”

Don’t expect to use Merciless as a Primary weapon, though. Despite its machine-gun-like rate of fire when fully buffed, it holds eight shots in the magazine and another nine in reserves at default values. While a couple of Fusion Rifle Reserves mods will give you some more ammo to burn through, Merciless’ ammo economy is bound to be the main limiting factor in encounters. Paired with a linear fusion rifle, though, Merciless might climb up the DPS charts and even be used in raids again.

Merciless used to be a meta DPS option for Calus, the final boss in the Leviathan raid, since the fight allowed you to be somewhat close to him. Though the Leviathan raid is long gone, players might dust off their Merciless and bring them to other raids. Taniks won’t stand a chance.