One of the most common Destiny 2 mods used alongside Orbs of Power is Protective Light, which provides substantial damage taken reduction for a few seconds after a Guardian’s shields are depleted, often associated with Taking Charge to become Charged with Light by picking Orbs up. However, things are going to change with The Witch Queen expansion, as Bungie announced that Masterwork weapons will no longer generate Orbs of Power on their own, but rather when players score kills with specific damage types while using the respective helmet mods. While this change has upset the community due to how inconsistent some builds will supposedly become without further adjustments, Orbs of Power being generated by Masterwork weapons also reduced the potential number of perks every gun could have.
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How Destiny 2 Weapons Could Change After Losing Orb-Generation Abilities
All this comes from a comment Chris Proctor from Bungie made last year, stating how the fact that weapons had four different columns of perks, a Masterwork perk, kill tracking, and the ability to generate Orbs of Power was all too much going on for a single gun. As such, with weapons losing their ability to generate Orbs of Power on their own, but rather having to use mods that match the damage type of that specific gun, it’s very likely that Bungie will be able to delve more into additional perks with The Witch Queen’s weapon crafting system.
Weapon crafting also seems to be part of the reason why this change was made in the first place, seeing how Bungie stated that Destiny 2 players would need to dump a lot of resources into Masterworking weapons that they only used for a few hours before eventually stopping using them altogether. It seems that a requirement for crafting weapons in The Witch Queen could be either scoring kills with a bunch of different weapons, or generating Orbs of Power with them, hence why the decision to make mods that work with a whole category of weapons to do that, instead.
Still, if this change actually takes some weight off of weapons, Bungie could indeed let them have more perks in the future. Something that Bungie developers have been sharing online since the recent announcement is an old statement regarding how identical weapons could only differ in terms of the foundry producing them. The question was how one could tell those weapons apart if the only difference is their foundry, and this led many to believe that it was the developer’s intention to add foundry-based perks to Destiny 2 weapons, much like Borderlands games add new archetypes or abilities to guns made by different manufacturers.
Yet, not all weapons in Destiny 2 have a foundry, and some are just made by a specific race or found on a specific planet (such as Fallen weapons, Awoken weapons, or those found on the Moon). Still, it remains a possibility that Bungie might make Destiny 2 weapons more diverse either by adding extra perks to compensate for the loss of Orb-generation or taking advantage of the change to finally explore another side of weapons that has remained a mere background trait all along. Overall, while the change to Orbs of Power being good or bad for the game remains to be seen, it might as well bring something new with it that players will enjoy.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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