Destiny 2’s Starfire Warlocks mourn as top exotics are nerfed

pcgamesn.com:

Destiny 2 Warlocks are waving goodbye to Starfire Protocol as the iconic gear piece, long among the best Destiny 2 Exotics, feels the full force of Bungie’s nerf hammer. In a hefty update that’s also hitting some other fan favourites such as the Hunter’s ST0MP-EE5, the FPS game is being heavily shaken up – but it’s good news for some Destiny 2 gear that’s had new life breathed into it.

A wave of Exotic armour rebalancing is set for Destiny 2 season 21, titled Season of the Deep. Bungie states two primary goals for this update: “Identify underused armour pieces and revamp them to increase their appeal, and tune down outlier armour pieces that are probably too powerful.” There’s a few notable nerfs among the pack, but a couple in particular stand out as real painful adjustments.

Starfire Protocol has stood for a long time as a hallmark of the best Destiny 2 Warlock builds. Its ability to rapidly regenerate your Fusion Grenades and effectively spam them near-infinitely has, by Bungie’s own admission, “been strong for a long time, ever since Solar 3.0 dropped.” That’s about to change dramatically, as each instance of damage will now grant just 2.5% grenade energy, down massively from 20%. Empowered weapon kills will grant 20% energy, so there’ll still be use against groups, but it’s a killer nerf regardless.

Hunters are left feeling a little sad, too, as their mobility-boosting ST0MP-EE5s have also been struck by the update. Bungie says its “permanent uptime for potent movement benefits” made it too automatic a choice. It’ll now only apply those benefits when your dodge energy is full, although the recent airborne effectiveness penalties have been removed to compensate. It’s still a change that hurts, though; ST0MP-EE5 makes