Highlights
- Destiny 2’s recent patch nerfs Envious Assassin and disrupts the godroll meta by resetting magazine overflow when swapping loadouts.
- The altered mechanic hampers loadout flexibility in PvE encounters, especially with popular weapons like Edge Transit, where loadout-swapping was popular.
- A workaround exists by consistently swapping armor pieces with the same mods to maintain magazine overflow benefits. However, this may not be a good-enough fix in some cases.
Destiny 2 is in a strange spot right now after the recent Bungie layoffs and the company’s restructuring, leaving fans wondering if the game has a future as the high notes of The Final Shape expansion are slowly fading. The game just released the 2024 version of the Solstice event for additional content ahead of Echoes’ Act 3, scheduled for launch at the end of the month. While the seasonal event may not be enough to keep players interested, the accompanying patch was supposed to improve a few key areas – like farming Exotic class items in Destiny 2. However, bugs are plaguing the game at this time, and the patch included some general fixes, with one of them essentially changing the godrolls for many endgame weapons.
Godrolls are a big part of grinding weapons in Destiny 2, as each gun typically has at least one for either PvE or PvP, if not both, or even multiple amazing rolls. The hunt for godrolls has been lessened over time with weapon crafting, though some weapons are still only available with random perks, such as the Brave Weapons. A perk that has long been considered one of the best in endgame PvE content is Envious Assassin, but Destiny 2‘s Update 8.0.5 may have changed that.
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Destiny 2’s Godrolls May No Longer Include Envious Assassin and Similar Perks
Why Destiny 2’s August Patch Broke Loadout-Swapping With Envious Assassin
While the patch itself makes no mention of Envious Assassin changes, there is a line reading “Fixed an issue that allowed swapping between regular armor mods and Reserves mods to enable a higher ammo count than the current maximum.” What this means is that using any Destiny 2 weapon with Envious Assassin while the magazine is overflowed will revert it to its original capacity if any weapons or mods are changed in the players’ current loadout. Though it may not seem like much, especially with the update changing ammo reserves for all weapons and the cost of Scavenger mods, it can be a deal-breaker in some content.
For example, it’s common in high-end PvE content to swap loadouts while playing, which is often referred to jokingly as “menu gameplay.” Not all players use this technique, but it can be quite helpful in Dungeons and Raids to swap weapons and mods around before damage phases or while looking for ammo during add-dense sections. As such, this can no longer be achieved when using guns like the very popular Edge Transit Brave weapon in Destiny 2, which has been a DPS monarch for a while.
This is because the godroll for Edge Transit is Spike Grenades in the second column, and then Envious Assassin and Bait and Switch in the third and fourth. However, Envious Assassin will now reset any progress on overflowing the magazine when changing weapons or mods, even when swapping loadout between the saved ones. This breaks Envious Assassin’s loadout-swapping use, meaning players will have to stick to a specific loadout throughout the entire encounter if they want to preserve their overflowed magazine.
There is a “workaround” to avoid resetting overflowed magazines, be it with Envious Assassin or other guns, such as with the Origin Trait Cast No Shadows. Players can swap to different armor pieces without losing extra shots in the magazines, even
changing Destiny 2 Exotics
on the go, as long as they swap to armor pieces with the exact same mods as the original ones.
Loadout-Swapping Remains Accessible at The Cost of Envious Assassin Rolls
This doesn’t exactly solve the problem, though, as swapping gear in the middle of an encounter is quite common in Destiny 2‘s Dungeons and Raids. For example, it’s great to have guns like Graviton Lance in the first two encounters in Warlord’s Ruin for clearing adds quite easily, but the weapon doesn’t really help with DPS, so it’s commonly swapped out for something else right before the damage phase starts. What follows is that loadout-swapping is still very much a thing, despite this patch, but guns with Envious Assassin are mostly no longer usable in this scenario.
Swapping loadouts in the middle of an encounter is something Bungie may want to tackle in general, but killing a perk like Envious Assassin may not be the most sensible solution. It remains to be seen if the company will find a different fix, but for the time being, players will need to look at their Destiny 2 loadouts.