Linear Fusion Rifles have dominated the Destiny 2 DPS meta for over a year now; Cataclysmic, Taipan-4FR, Stormchaser, Reed's Regret, Raid throughout The Witch Queen era, Dungeon, and Nightfall, and was the default choice. So when Bungie first announced the heavy weapon overhaul in next month's Lightfall expansion, we instinctively knew a significant nerf was on the way.

And so it was. In yesterday's Season 20 weapon tuning preview, Bungie revealed that all legendary linear fusion rifles will now do 15% less damage against champions, mini-bosses, bosses, and vehicles. Enough said.

Well, maybe it's not completely over. It wasn't just damage output that made Linear a champion. It was also thanks to perks like Clown Cartridge, Fourth Times the Charm, and Triple Tap, which in most cases extend the size of the magazine well beyond the default limit. It is ideal for sustained DPS, which makes it ideal for raid and dungeon bosses with long damage phases, i.e., most raid and dungeon bosses. Also, if you don't hit headshots, your damage will drop completely, but this can be easily mitigated if you have a Divinity user on your team.

Even the Divinity nerf last year didn't do enough to make Linears less popular. And to be honest, there is a chance that Linears will still be in the game after Lightfall's launch due to their ease of use. In particular, the exotic linear has not been touched. As you can see from this breakdown of numbers, "Sleeper Simulant" would be an attractive pick.

If Linear is the big loser in the upcoming update, there is also a clear winner. Machine guns will do about 10% more damage and have more spare ammo.

Will that be enough? Machine guns are currently in a strange place. The main reason is that the community has decided that adding a clear weapon is not appropriate for the current sandbox. This is mainly due to the Light 3.0 rework, and how much stronger the abilities are because of it. If you can clear an entire room with a Vortex grenade that can be instantly recharged, there is no need to equip a heavy weapon made for the same purpose.

Despite this, I think they are getting laid, and there are plenty of non-raid boss encounters, such as the Totems in King's Fall and the Exhibition in Vow of the Disciple, for which machine guns are best suited. Also, the more Bungie experiments with forced power scaling (e.g. Heist Battlegrounds locks you below your current power level), the more I see a place for sustained multi-target firepower. Especially when combined with Volatile Rounds, it can clear the field quickly.

Meanwhile, the Heavy Grenade Launcher receives a significant buff, increasing damage against champions, mini-bosses, bosses, and vehicles by 20%. In addition, bullet impact is improved and the blast radius is increased, making it easier to land hits. Bungie writes, "These changes should make the Heavy Grenade Launcher much more usable in PvE and easier to use in both PvE and PvP."

It has been several years since the Heavy Grenade Launcher has had a place in the meta, but thanks to this update, one major exception could also be revived.

The anarchy is an exotic grenade launcher that fires sticky projectiles, damaging enemies it hits. This means that you can fire a couple of grenades at a boss and then switch to a high-damage secondary to jump up the damage. In Season 14, this mod was topped by the Breach and Clear artifact mod, which increased the enemy's damage when the grenade hit. Then in Season 15, it incurred the wrath of Bungie and nerfed the damage to bosses by 30% and significantly reduced the total amount of ammo.

The Lightfall update will not bring it back to its former glory, but it may once again be a solid choice for the special use of Fire-and-Forget. This is a great weapon to pair with an excellent boss damage secondary - i.e., sniper rifles may make a return - and the damage-over-time effect makes it a great option for warlocks running starfire protocol builds. It would not be suitable for raid DPS, though.

As for whether the legendary Heavy Grenade Launcher is finally worth using, I can see it; according to the RokDC tweet thread, the Godroll Interference VI would definitely work. It will be worth hunting for a good Wendigo GL3 when it returns as a nightfall weapon on February 21: Spike Grenades in the second row, Explosive Light in the fourth row, Auto-Loading Holster in the third row, Clown Cartridge, or Field Prep in the third row would be perfect.

As an effect of the linear fusion meta, exotic heavies are used less and less; Sleeper Simulant does a ton of damage, but its legend has the advantage of being able to use ammo perks. As a result, Bungie is reworking most of the Exotic Heavy to make it more intrinsically tied to the game's build crafting by giving it access to some of Light 3.0's effects.

The result is my favorite upcoming change, giving a stack to "One Scorching Voice.

1KV is Last Wish's Raid Exotic, a (non-linear) heavy fusion rifle that fires bursts of plasma that explode regardless of where they land. Noisy. It's nasty. Easily suicidal. Everything I want in an exotic weapon. It shined in Season 15 thanks to the Particle Deconstruction artifact mod, but it hasn't made an impact this year. Bungie said, "With the addition of Scorch, we wanted to lean further into Solar's chain of explosions: when equipped with Ember of Ashes, landing a full burst on a single target will cause it to ignite instantly." Perfect. No notes. I will be using this constantly.

Leviathan's breath, an exotic heavy bow, similarly applies light verb-it on a perfect draw and increases damage to the champion by 30%. It will now apply volatile (large void explosion) on the perfect draw, increasing damage to the champion by 30%. This bow is already a great pick for grandmaster nightfalls thanks to the many buffs so far, and this change will make it an absolute no-brainer pick. Who Needs an Arbalest

These are two exotic changes that one immediately senses could shake things up, but there are many other intriguing changes planned. Most interesting is the proposal that a third arc-verb will be added to the Two Tail Fox, a rocket launcher that fires solar and void rockets simultaneously, along with a catalyst. Also, each rocket will be updated to apply the appropriate verb for the element, so it may finally be available in the sandbox.

In addition to the heavy changes above, Bungie also announced some more tantalizing changes regarding weapon damage in the Kinetic slot; feel free to crunch the numbers in Bungie's blog post, and you'll see that the Kinetic slot has been updated to include the new "one thousand voices" option. Personally, I plan to take a long look at One Thousand Voices. It's coming soon, my friends. Soon.