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This Destiny 2 fix is an all-timer: a gun designed to kill Barrier Champions was dealing 40% less damage to barriers and 'not correctly' getting a 67% damage bonus
Destiny 2's recent update 8.0.5.4 bafflingly revealed a hidden -40% damage scalar for Eriana's Vow against Barrier Champions, despite the gun's already poor performance, leading to questions about Bungie's balance decisions.
Sometimes your favorite live service game gets an update so head-turningly baffling that you just have to laugh. Enter Destiny 2 update 8.0.5.4, which arrived earlier today and, among other things I find less amusing, made a significant change to Eriana's Vow, an Exotic special hand cannon which was once the go-to pick for killing Barrier Champions, but later fell behind other options like Arbalest.
Eriana's Vow, it seems, had a "-40% scalar" specifically "for dealing damage against Barrier Champion shields." Note that Bungie did not specify an unintended -40% scalar. Not only that, Bungie has also "fixed an issue where Eriana's Vow was not correctly dealing 67% increased damage to Barrier Champions." So Bungie took off Eriana's shield-piercing training weights and bumped up its damage to the Champions themselves. Great!
Also: how and why and what in the blue hell?
Reader, let's be clear on something. Eriana's Vow exists to kill Barrier Champions. It is Screw Barriers: The Gun. From the day it could walk, it has been training to break Champion shields. Eriana's Vow wakes up at 6am every day, walks past a "Down With Barrier Champions" poster on its way to the bathroom, takes off its "Kill Barrier Champions" pajamas to take a shower, gets out, brushes its teeth, brushes its hair, eats a bowl of Barrier Champion hopes and dreams with a splash of Vex milk, puts on its hat, and just before it walks out the door it stops to look in the mirror and say to itself: "You're gonna kill some Barrier Champions today."
And Bungie had a -40% scalar on its ability to damage Barrier Champion shields. For who knows how long! I'm sure there was, at some point in time, a valid balance or technical argument for muzzling Eriana's Vow. I'm sure other scalars like this exist as a lightweight way to tweak guns. But this gun hasn't been great in years, and plenty of other Barrier killers have utterly lapped it. For this little detail to come out now alongside the news that its new damage buff was "not correctly" applied feels a bit like learning that your 10-2 pick in the horse race only placed third because somebody tied anvils to its hooves.