Rise of Iron may not be the total revamp of Destiny that the Taken King was, but it will bring major changes to Destiny nonetheless. Today, we’re talking about some major changes to armaments coming this September. The perks on Legendary weapons will not be drastically overhauled; expect to see the same perk options that are available now.
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Massive Breakdown
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New Guns
The Trespasser is the new burstfire Exotic Sidearm, supposedly associated with Shiro-4, the Vanguard’s representative in Felwinter Peak. It looks to be much less of a potato in comparison to Dreg’s Promise, so we can only hope it doesn’t play like one. GameInformer recently featured some gameplay of it, but we don’t yet know what makes it Exotic.
The Wail is a Future War Cult vendor Hand Cannon in the very popular mid-Impact class that currently dominates high level competitive play. Unfortunately, the video we’ve seen shows it has only 7 in the mag, so here’s hoping Luck in the Chamber falls somewhere on the perk table.
The B-29 Party Favor, likely named for the World War II-era US aircraft, is a new Vanguard Pulse Rifle that will arrive with Rise of Iron. In an exciting turn, it appears that this may be a new entry into the low Impact class for Pulse Rifles, entering the field alongside Hawksaw, PDX-45, and Aegis of the Reef. It’s great to see we’re getting a new entry to the most popular and effective Pulse Rifle class in the Crucible right now, although the Mag size of 24 is slightly low.
Another exciting entry is Angel’s Advocate, the new Vanguard Scout Rifle. This weapon marks the return of the MIDA-class Scout Rifles, as we haven’t seen any Legendary Scout Rifles in the Rate-of-Fire 42 / Impact 38 archetype since Year 1. We’ll have to wait and see if this gun can replicate MIDA’s popularity, but a .9 second optimal Time to Kill for the archetype sounds promising.
Dead Orbit’s Extremophile 011 Auto Rifle came with the most impressive roll that we saw, although it’s unlikely these rolls will show up anywhere by in RNG when Rise of Iron launches. A mid-Impact Auto Rifle with 37 rounds in the mag, it comes with some great scope and perk options on display. Unfortunately, these weapons aren’t all that competitive right now, but they work great in story missions and patrol, and are very easy to pick up and play with. Click here to watch a few Supremacy games with this auto rifle.
We also saw a new Dead Orbit Shotgun, Last Ditch 001, which looks amazing. It appears to share a type with the Year 1 Matador 64, a maximum Impact Shotgun that OG Guardians will remember well. Assuming it can hit the Range cap, this one has serious potential, and if a good Vendor roll shows up, you can expect to see between 6 and 12 of them in every Crucible match. Click here to watch this shotgun in action.
New Monarchy has something to show us too: the Deposition VII Sniper Rifle debuted last week alongside these weapons, featuring the classic red and white. It falls into the same 26 Rate-of-Fire / 22 Impact class as Defiance of Yasmin, which means that it can rez-snipe, but can’t one-shot Supers, if that sort of thing is important to you.
Rise of Iron will also mark the return of 77 Wizard, a Year 1 Crucible Fusion Rifle in the maximum Impact class. Pre-charging enthusiasts should be very excited by the return of this powerful weapon, especially if we see a strong Vendor roll on September 20th. We can also see here that the perk table has been changed significantly from the original, as this gun never had access to perks like Braced Frame or Feather Mag in the past. We can hope that this expansion will mark the return of many more old favorites with updated perks to Destiny’s sandbox.
Bonekruscher, the Vanguard’s new Machine Gun, might be the best-named Gun of 2016! This extremely hard-hitting weapon shares an archetype with Bane of the Taken, the Prison of Elders Heavy weapon, which means it has a stunning 3 shot Time-to-Kill of .4 seconds! The starting range is a bit low, but if that can be mitigated then this thing will definitely live up to its moniker. We didn’t see any Range perks in the reveal videos.
One other thing about each of these new weapons is the perk columns. The layout is different from any current Vendor or Foundry, and the rolls don’t match up to any known perk tables. So even though there won’t be brand new perks, we’re looking at new possibilities when it comes to balance and combinations.
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Take a Knee 2.0
The Take a Knee perk never got much love, but that may be changing! In the current build of Destiny, it rewards you with a hefty Accuracy bonus when crouching, helping your shots to fly in a straighter line and mitigating the effects of Bloom. It shows up on Legendary Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles, Scout Rifles, Sniper Rifles, and Machine Guns, but with Destiny’s highly mobile gameplay, we tend to spend a lot of time not crouching.
But based on what we saw in the gameplay from Gamescom, the lack of love could change after September 20th when this perk gets a major buff. This screenshot clearly illustrates the point: an Accuracy + Stability bonus, faster Aim-Down-Sights, and reduced flinch under fire.
While we’ve seen some early criticism of the perk for potentially encouraging camping (and it might), we’d be remiss to ignore the fact that crouching includes sliding and firing from behind cover, making this perk an enhanced version of Guerrilla Fighter as well. Most of us may not be doing too much sliding while trying to Snipe, but it might be wise to start getting low with your primaries and Machine Guns to take advantage of the built-in Stability bonus that happens as part of that mechanic, even without Take a Knee.
Oh, and one more thing: Take a Knee currently appears on a few Common (green) Fusion Rifles. With all of the new weapons and perk table updates, maybe we’ll see it show up on some Legendary Fusions as well – and that’s a place it could really shine!