Destiny 2’s Season of the Witch patch adds hand cannon buffs and a reprised Crota’s End

polygon.com:

At the 2023 Destiny Showcase on Tuesday, Bungie announced (and launched) a brand new season of the game.

Season of the Witch sees the return of Savathun, the big bad from 2021’s The Witch Queen expansion. Guardians will need to resurrect her with the help of her Ghost, Immaru, before they’re able to travel inside the Traveler inThe Final Shape.

Here’s the complete list of patch notes for the new Destiny season, as well as a breakdown of all the biggest additions coming to the game in season 22.

As with each season, Season of the Witch brings a host of new activities and weapons to Destiny 2. Players can jump into new story missions (which should help prep them ahead of The Final Shape) and earn some sweet loot in the process.

Bungie does seem to be mixing things up this season as well, allowing players to collect cards that change how they play the seasonal activities. This seems like a big leap away from the cookie-cutter seasonal model players have been dealing with since back in 2019.

Crota’s End, the second raid added to the original Destiny, is finally headed to Destiny 2 as this year’s free-to-play reprised raid. Game director Joe Blackburn also spoke about wanting to make the day-one experience for Crota players “brutal” in anticipation of The Final Shape’s raid.

Crota’s End will come to Destiny 2 on Sept. 1.

Hand cannons have been in bad shape for a few years inDestiny 2 — at least in PvE content — but Bungie has finally done something about them in Season of the Witch. Hand cannons now do more damage to red bar enemies, which is great, and they do even more damage to high-tier enemies like those with orange health bars.

This change helps differentiate hand cannons from other weapon types, making them quality