In this week’s TWAB, Bungie discussed the plans and design philosophy for Destiny 2’s machine guns and their buffs, but they might not be enough.
Destiny 2 is a game with a complex sandbox that is made of many pieces; from abilities and skills related to subclasses, to all the different weapon archetypes and sub-archetypes that exist. This includes every Light subclass' node and its effect, including the new revamped system for Aspects and Fragments for both Stasis and Void, as well as including all the various perks and values available for all the guns in the game. Balancing the sandbox in Destiny 2 is not an easy feat, and changes can have an impact on other functionalities of the game, especially now that Bungie is getting better at separating PvE values from PvP ones.
As such, every big sandbox patch calls for extra attention both in the testing phases and after launch, and major changes often come at a slower pace as a result. This is the case for Destiny 2's machine guns, which have been stagnant for the most part because of the design philosophy behind their functions, as Bungie wants them to be battlefield control guns with add-clearing potential that go in the Heavy slot. This is slightly changing for the better, as announced in this week's TWAB for the sandbox patch in Season 17, and machine guns are getting a substantial buff to damage against all enemies and bosses, but it's unlikely this will change the meta much.
Thursday's TWAB explained that Bungie wants machine guns to be better than they currently are, which is why the studio is buffing the guns' damage by 40% in PvE, and only by 20% against bosses. This is to make machine guns more impactful in general play, but less so against bosses due to the fact that these weapons naturally have larger magazines and deeper reserves than most guns in the game. Thus, making machine guns too strong against bosses would make them the best in slot weapon archetype by a mile.
This doesn't change anything for PvP, though, where machine guns are almost never used and could easily be part of another sandbox entirely, mainly because of the ammo economy for Heavy guns in the Crucible. For PvE, the problem is that bosses and Champions remain the top priority targets to deal with in all content, which means that weapons that are capable of dealing massive amounts of damage in a short span of time are still going to be likely picks above all else. Destiny 2's rocket launchers are a great example of this logic.
Machine guns lack the sustained damage that linear fusion rifles are capable of, and they lack the burst of rocket launchers, making them a weird hybrid that's more a jack of all trades than a master of them. Buffing damage against bosses too much would make them almost mandatory for Raids, but even then, they would still find less play in Champion-focused activities like GMs. The current changes are likely to do close to nothing about their state in the game when Destiny 2's Season 17 drops, and particularly so if new powerhouse mods like Particle Deconstruction are introduced and associated with weapons that are not machine guns.
Overall, machine guns are not bad weapons and could definitely see some use if they were buffed more, or if the competition wasn't so harsh. However, the main issue behind why they're not used as much lies in the design of Destiny 2's activities. In an environment with fewer Champions and no Match Game, machine guns could fare better than they currently do. Likewise, if the overall better damage dealt by rocket launchers and linear fusion rifles wasn't as impactful, machine guns could find their own niche. Seeing how this is not changing with Season 17, it's unlikely that the role of machine guns in the meta will.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Andrea became a gamer for life at 7, thanks to a Pokemon Red cartridge and her Game Boy. She knew she wanted to be a writer early on, back when she got a floppy disk and she wrote “My Book” on it. Her Italian lineage means she thrives on pizza and cosmic horror because that’s a typical Italian Sunday. She loves games featuring deep lore, sci-fi elements, and strategic thinking. She is often found playing Destiny 2, for which she also makes guides.