One of Destiny 2’s most notorious damage perks is getting a major nerf

Ever since The Immortal was added to the loot pool of Trials of Osiris in Destiny 2, it has made a name for itself as one of the most deadly weapons in competitive PvP. This is in no small part thanks to Target Lock, a damage perk that synergized perfectly with Rangefinder to make the weapon’s time to kill (TTK) value a nightmare to compete with.

That’s finally set to change in Season of the Deep’s mid-season patch, according to a preview blog released by Bungie today. Alongside balance changes coming to weapon archetypes and Exotics such as Graviton Lance, one of the more notable updates concerns Target Lock. While its potency in PvE remains, its maximum damage output against players has almost been halved—reduced from 40 percent down to 25 percent.

“Target Lock has had its time in the sun, but the ability to get such a large amount of damage with relatively minimal effort (for accurate players) has made this perk an overwhelmingly obvious choice in whatever slot it rolls for PvP,” said Mercules, an associate weapons designer at Bungie.

“Overwhelmingly obvious” is a fitting description, considering just how much use the weapon has seen over the past few months. Even on the weekend of its release in March, the Adept version of The Immortal managed to become the most used weapon in Trials of Osiris in just over 72 hours after it went live. This was entirely due to the presence of Target Lock on the weapon when paired with the gun’s impressive base stats. The Immortal itself already received a range nerf, but Bungie believes one of its star perks needs to be taken down a peg as well now.

Target Lock isn’t the only perk being targeted by this update, though. Gutshot Straight and Slickdraw, two perks that have gained little traction with the community due to their negative effects, are getting those negative effects reduced to make their attributes more appealing.

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“When we initially made Slickdraw and Gutshot, we wanted to make sure we weren’t giving out substantial positive effects that had almost constant uptime for free,” Mercules said. “We leaned a little too hard on their penalties in a way that made them often feel more like a punishment than a worthwhile trade off.”

As such, the adjustments to perks coming in the Season of the Deep mid-season update are as follows:

• Gutshot Straight: The auto-aim penalty has been reduced by 37.5 percent.
• Slickdraw: The auto-aim penalty has been reduced by 33 percent.
• Target Lock: The maximum damage against players has been reduced from 40 percent to 25 percent.
  • The damage in PvE remains unchanged.

The changes coming to a few of Destiny 2’s recent perk additions are joined by buffs and nerfs targeted at various weapon archetypes as well. The updates are minor for the most part due to “substantial changes” set for season 22’s launch instead but still notable in their own right for how they bring up otherwise underused archetypes.

• Lightweight Bows
  • The fixed damage falloff start distance has been increased from 15 meters to 25 meters.
  • The fixed damage falloff end distance has been increased from 20 meters to 45 meters.
  • The final accuracy has been increased by around 10 percent.
• Lightweight Shotguns
  • The spread angle of the outer horizontal pellets has been reduced by 15 percent.
• Pulse Rifles
  • The auto-aim angle at zero aim assist has been reduced by around 10 percent.
    • This is mainly targeted toward nerfing archetypes such as the High-Impact Frame

Bungie is similarly playing coy with balance updates to the Exotic weapons as well in this update, with Graviton Lance being the only one to receive any sort of significant treatment. There’s good news for fans of the gun in PvE, though—it’s getting some hefty buffs to make it compete better against other Exotic pulse rifles. It’s bad news for those using it in the Crucible, however, where Bungie is curtailing its return to glory via nerfs to its explosive capabilities.

• Graviton Lance
  • Increased PvE damage by 67 percent.
  • Removed the extra aim assist provided by the catalyst.
  • Reduced the damage dealt by the Cosmology explosion by 40 percent against players.
    • The damage in PvE remains unchanged.
• No Time to Explain
  • Reduced range stat by 10.
• Fighting Lion
  • Fixed an issue where the Chimera perk on the catalyst wasn’t applying the buffs to Kinetic and Power slot weapons.

All of these changes are scheduled to go live with Destiny 2’s next mid-season update, although the date for that is still yet to be announced by Bungie. Players looking for when the next set of sweeping sandbox adjustments will come need to look toward seasons 22 and 23, where Mercules teased drastic changes to the zoom statistic focused on “range compression” and buffs to things such as Touch of Malice, the new Bipod perk, and Glaives across the board.