Destiny 2 has buffed its Guardians many times over with the introduction of 3.0 elemental subclasses, full of “verbs” that allow synergies between aspects, fragments, abilities and keywork perks on weapons.
This has already created a few different problems with some Destiny 2 weapons, including primaries, as perks like Voltshot or Incandescent or Hatchling often feel too good not to use over anything else. But nothing has suffered more from the introduction of the 3.0 subclasses and their magic words like Kinetic weapons, a longtime Destiny staple which now feel almost entirely irrelevant in PvE.
This was inspired by me getting a hilariously fun gun, a Feeding Frenzy/Onslaught Adjudicator SMG from the new Prophecy dungeon loot pool. It dumps its entire magazine in about a after a few kills and can tear through mobs.
Will I…ever use it? The fact that it’s Kinetic makes it close to impossible to justify. Why? Despite some buffs like slightly more damage for Kinetic weapons over others, it just doesn’t work with the current build system:
- There are never going to be any Kinetic-specific perks in a seasonal artifact boosting that type of weapon. The best you can hope for is an anti-champ mod for whatever Kinetic you like, but there will never be any elemental bonuses because it’s…not an element.
- Putting on mods for Kinetic weapons only will work for a weapon in that slot, because you can’t have Kinetic heavies, and the mods cost the exact same. Cheaper harmonic mods do not work for Kinetic weapons. Kinetic surge mods for extra damage will again only work for the top slot, not two out of three.
- Kinetic weapons do not have any keyword perks that synergize with 3.0 subclasses because there is no Kinetic subclass. The best it can do is get something like Kinetic Tremors, a perk Bungie introduced to try to increase Kinetic relevance, but that’s wholly situational and doesn’t trigger as often or offer as much value on weapons compared to something like Voltshot or Incandescent, both in terms of damage/mob clearing or 3.0 synergy.
Bungie does not really even seem close to fixing this problem, and it’s tough to know what to actually do. I used to think Bungie should just blanket convert all kinetic weapons to Strand or Stasis at this point, but maybe that’s more work than it’s worth as you’d have to put a bunch of new perks on them. And there are a lot of Kinetic guns, especially older ones.
Bungie’s only real fixes so far are nudging up the damage and making Kinetic Tremors, both of which have done nothing of significance to close the gap. The lack of synergy is just too problematic. I have heard some suggestions about mods, saying that Kinetic weapons should benefit from any elemental mod you have on automatically, probably a better idea than my own thought of making all Kinetic mods zero cost (they’d still take up a slot, after all).
This just seems like it’s probably not a priority for Bungie and it won’t really get fixed any time soon, if there even is a fix. Not the biggest deal, perhaps, but I was reminded of it and my poor Adjudicator which is never getting used over IKELOS, Mini-Tool or Sunshot, sadly.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
