Bungie is sure having a week when it comes to Exotic weapons. First it was Jotunn, now Grand Overture is broken in Destiny 2. As of this writing, the heavy Exotic hasn’t been disabled yet, but it almost certainly will be in advance of the World’s First Raid race this weekend. Why? Well, Grand Overture is causing some… problems for enemies.
See, Grand Overture’s catalyst in Destiny 2 gives its secondary missiles a blinding effect. You know how Cabal enemies sometimes fire blinding missiles at you? It’s like that. Well, that’s a pretty useful effect on its own, and Grand Overture is pretty fantastic for burst damage to begin with. But for whatever reason, the weapon’s catalyst is currently bugged.
If you Grand Overture equipped with the catalyst, any other weapon you have with Explosive Payload or Timed Payload will blind enemies. Yes, even primary weapons. That means that a simple Night Watch with Explosive Payload can be used to indefinitely blind and stagger even many bosses. So, yeah, Grand Overture is almost certainly getting disabled before contest mode goes live on Friday.
Why does this even happen? It’s hard to say. At this point, Destiny 2‘s code seems like something out of Warhammer 40,000 — a complex, ancient system of mechanisms that nobody really understands. The best anyone can do is burn some incense to try and say some prayers to try and appease the Machine God, but sometimes things like this still happen.
If you’re looking for alternate options for burst damage in the Raid this weekend when Grand Overture inevitably gets shut down, your best bet is probably still Starfire Protocol if you’re a Warlock. If you’re a Hunter, Tractor Cannon plus your Strand super is fantastic. For everyone else, get a Strand Hunter on your team and try the no-reload trick for rockets.
EDIT (3/9/23): Since the publication of this article, Bungie has announced that both Grand Overture and Thread of Ascent (which enables the Strand Hunter no-reload trick) will be disabled for the Root of Nightmares raid race weekend.
