In last week’s TWAB, Bungie confirmed that the popular Destiny 2 weapon Divinity is getting nerfed. This trace rifle, obtained from a quest involving the Garden of Salvation Raid, has two main effects that account for its popularity in Raids. First, it weakens enemies, increasing damage they receive by 30%. Second, it creates a large field that counts all incoming hits as criticals, meaning that aiming is less of a concern. In Season 19, Divinity’s weakening effect will be reduced by half, to 15%. That might have you looking for other options, so here are some possibilities to take a look at.
Tractor Cannon
Before Divinity in Destiny 2, we had Tractor Cannon and we liked it. A Heavy shotgun that fires a weakening burst, Tractor Cannon applies the same 30% debuff that Divinity currently does and has the advantage of not needing to be held down. Instead, it can be refreshed every few seconds. Of course, since it’s taking up your Heavy slot, you’re going to be limited to Special weapons for DPS, and you can’t use Izanagi’s Burden since Tractor Cannon is an Exotic. Probably the best use case for Tractor Cannon in Destiny 2 moving forward is going to be for Dawnblade Warlocks using a Starfire Protocol build who are focused on throwing Fusion Grenades rather than doing weapon damage.
Void Grenades
With Echo of Undermining, Void grenades apply a 15% weaken effect to enemies. Add on Echo of Remnants, and your Vortex and other lingering grenades will last longer. The nice thing about using Void Grenades in this way is that it doesn’t take long to throw them and you aren’t sacrificing any weapon slots to get access to a weakening effect. The downside, of course, is that the effect doesn’t last long. Best utilized by Hunters and Titans, whose Void subclass supers can also provide debuffs and buffs, respectively.
Tether
Speaking of Void subclasses, Nightstalkers are going to see their stock rise when Divinity gets nerfed in Destiny 2. At that point, Shadowshot will be one of the very few 30% damage debuffs in the game. If you play a Hunter and don’t normally use it, you should play around with it now — because you’ll likely be called on to tether bosses a lot more in Season 19.
Nothing
Divinity is great, and weakening effects in general can be very useful in Destiny 2, but they usually involve one player sacrificing their damage in order to boost everybody else’s. If the entire fireteam is hitting their shots, especially with damage-boosting perks like Firing Line, you might find that your damage output actually isn’t suffering that much. Of course, everyone does have to land their crits for this to work.
