A new season in Destiny 2 typically means a new weapon meta comes into play depending on the patches and artifact perks for said season. The latest season, the Season of the Lost, is proving to be a fusion meta following buffs to fusion and linear fusion rifles along with nerfs to various other weapons like 120 RPM hand cannons and shotguns. However, one weapons seems to have been hit with a nerd seemingly on accident and a Destiny 2 player has taken notice.
Leviathan's Breath is an Exotic heavy bow first introduced in Destiny 2: Shadowkeep's first season, Season of the Undying, and is still the only weapon of its type in the game. The heavy bow was originally available as the seasonal exotic quest where players were tasked with completing a task for Banshee-44 to unlock a weapons safe tucked away in a corner of the Tower. Leviathan's Breath was also one of the first Exotics to include an intrinsic damage perk targeting Champions, specifically unstoppable Champions, in endgame content.
Reddit user TheSting117 posted their thread on Destiny's official subreddit calling attention to the reduced damage Leviathan's Breath is dealing. They said they discovered the issue while farming a legendary Lost Sector and noticed a precision, stunning shot to a Champion was doing significantly less damage than the second precision shot after the Champion was stunned. It is a change from earlier in the season, which saw the Exotic heavy weapon dealing consistent damage to Champions.
Leviathans Breath no longer does full damage on its first shot against Unstop Champs from DestinyTheGame
Following the regular sandbox patch to start off the new season, Leviathan's Breath was dealing significantly more damage on the opening precision shot. The opening shot was typically doing around 58,000 points of damage on precision hits and an additional 6,000 points of area-of-effect damage, followed by a dropoff to around 44,000 points and 2,300 points of damage on precision hits and AoE, respectively. However, TheSting117 said the opening shot was only doing around 14,000 points of damage on precision hits.
It wasn't the only weapon TheSting117 found was having this problem either. They said they used Exotic linear fusion rifle Sleeper Simulant in a legendary Lost Sector and the opening precision shot was doing less damage compared to the subsequent shots.
TheSting117 suggested the nerf was likely an accidental one and fairly recent as they only noticed the reduced damage around the middle of September 2021. This would line up the nerf with one of two recent patches put out by Bungie, the latest being on September 23 though there was no listed weapon tuning as part of the patch.
It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened, as both weapons and subclass abilities have been accidentally nerfed due to patches. In May 2021, players noticed Hunters' Golden Gun super was not killing past 34 meters. Players suggested this was likely due to a range nerf on hand cannons in general, and had unintended consequences on the super. That said, it is now a question of how long until Bungie addresses the damage issue in another patch or hotfix.
Destiny 2 is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.