Whisper of the Worm Changes Coming with Destiny 2's Season of Opulence

Bungie has pulled back the curtain on some upcoming sandbox changes coming to Destiny 2 with the Season of Opulence update on June 4, and they include substantial nerfs to some of the game’s most popular weapons.

The weapon change that will undoubtedly make the most shockwaves throughout the Destiny community is to Whisper of the Worm, the powerful Exotic sniper rifle that refills its magazine with three successive precision hits. Well, it used to — the gun will still refill its magazine, but only from reserves, meaning you will eventually run out of ammo. This effectively makes the gun not worth using in many scenarios.

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Whisper of the Worm Nerfed in Destiny 2 – Season of Opulence

“For Season of Opulence, several notable weapons are being adjusted,” Bungie’s dev team say in their weekly blog post. “We want to ensure that encounters—raids and other endgame content, for example—remain a challenge. Some of these weapons have been overwhelming that challenge. Our first choice is to buff underused weapons, but if we continue to push every weapon up higher and higher, it will be impossible to maintain challenging experiences. This is not a full list of changes, but some of the most impactful.”

Bungie will also be adjusting Sleeper Simulant, Lord of Wolves, and Ace of Spades, along with Exotic armors that help regenerate Super energy.

“We felt they are increasingly becoming “must-pick” gear choices,” said Bungie. “Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your Super generation. These Exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players’ orbs.”

More Sandbox Changes Coming on June 4 with Season of Opulence

More changes to more weapons and armors are likely coming on June 4, but for now, these announced changes are sure to shake things up when Season of Opulence begins.

“We’re sympathetic about the fact that the changes we make in the interest of balancing combat and game design can be jarring,” Bungie said. “It was important that we have this conversation before you read the patch notes. We know many of you have a lot riding on day one of Season of Opulence. Hopefully, this intel will assist you in building the perfect monster-killing machines for the next Season of play.”

You can check out the full list of changes revealed by Bungie today, along with the reasoning behind them, below:

Whisper of the Worm

Whisper of the Worm was already adjusted in Season of the Drifter, but an Exotic that can generate an infinite amount of Heavy ammo is still a gigantic outlier and renders many weapons irrelevant for certain encounters. While Exotics are intended to be powerful and novel, bypassing the ammo economy can tend to force us to adjust enemies to compensate. This effectively results in Sniper Rifles as a whole being punished because of Whisper’s unique ammo ability. As a result, we’re removing the ammo generation ability so that we can increase the effectiveness of all other Snipers that don’t have an endless ammo supply.

• White Nail pulls ammo from reserves rather than creating it
• Reserve ammunition increased to 18 (without ammo reserve perks)

Sleeper Simulant

The reduction of bounced shot damage for Sleeper Simulant is already present on several important enemies. We are now making this reduction part of the weapon. The difference in damage is too large between a single precision shot of Sleeper Simulant and an angled shot that pierces the target and then also hits the target again with the bounced projectiles. Much like Whisper, we’ve had to adjust enemies around that potential. By making these changes a permanent part of the weapon, we can get it into a more balanced position.

• Reduced ricochet/bounce damage on boss combatants
• Modified precision behavior—total damage is unchanged, but non-precision shots are significantly more forgiving

Lord of Wolves

Lord of Wolves received a massive increase in damage with the full benefits of the Shotgun changes in Season of the Drifter. This made it a lot more popular, but we got a significant amount of feedback that Release the Wolves activating on every kill made it difficult to control the weapon’s ammo consumption. As a result, we’re allowing you to swap between the two states to control the output, while also reducing its output slightly.

• PvE damage reduced by 20%
• Release the Wolves perk has been reworked:
  • • No longer triggers automatically on kill
    • This effect is now triggered by holding reload, similar to “The Fundamentals” on Hard Light and Borealis
    • PvE damage and range bonuses on this effect has been removed and replaced with a universal damage bonus instead

Ace of Spades

Ace of Spades is pretty hot in the Crucible, and has been since its inclusion in Destiny 2: Forsaken. The number of perks on the weapon, combined with the semi-permanent effect of Memento Mori gives the weapon too many advantages compared to other weapons. Now that Memento Mori ends when you stow the weapon, you’ll need to make a decision on whether or not you’ll keep the weapon drawn to retain the bonus.

• Memento Mori now ends if the weapon is stowed
• The PvP damage bonus of Memento Mori was slightly reduced to prevent two-tapping Guardians while Vengeance (One-Eyed Mask) was active
  • • Specifically, you need four resilience to survive this
• Memento Mori is active for six shots again (up from five)

Exotic Armor

Along with the weapons above, we will also be making some changes to some Exotic armor pieces. Primarily, we’re paying attention to pieces of Exotic armor that grant back Super energy. We felt they are increasingly becoming “must-pick” gear choices. Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your Super generation. These Exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players’ orbs.

Also, because these items are so overwhelmingly strong in situations where players face off against large numbers of enemies, some activities were designed considering the use of armor such as Orpheus Rigs, Phoenix Protocol, Skull of Dire Ahamkara, etc. This means if someone in your fireteam doesn’t have these Super Exotics equipped, the activity becomes far more difficult.

We are making some changes to these armor pieces to try to preserve their power fantasy and still leave them as viable choices for difficult activities without making players feel like they must have them equipped or be at a huge disadvantage.

Super-Generating Exotic Armor Changes

• Skull of Dire Ahamkara, Orpheus Rigs, and Phoenix Protocol now receive Super energy back with diminishing returns, making it rarer to get a full Super back
• Shards of Galanor and Ursa Furiosa had their Super gain caps reduced to be in parity with other Super Exotic changes
• Gwisin Vest had its energy reduced from 15% to 8% for killing one to two Guardians
  • • Still scales up similar to before when killing three or more Guardians
    • PvE energy return remains similar to before