One-Eyed Mask, Recluse, Xenophage all set for major changes in December's Season of Dawn

The One-Eyed Mask, infamous competitive submachinegun the Recluse, and the Xenophage are all set for major balance changes in the new Season of Dawn that will be released in December, Bungie confirmed in their latest This Week at Bungie.

The Recluse Submachine Gun has been one of Destiny 2’s strongest weapons since its release as the Crucible Pinnacle weapon in Season of the Drifter back in March. The weapons signature perk ‘Master of Arms’ allowed The Recluse to get a substantial damage buff when a kill was scored with any weapon in the Guardian’s arsenal.

The damage buff timer was also refreshed with every new kill allowing the weapon to have a 100% up-time on the Master of Arms perk. To compound the weapon’s strength even more, during the release of Shadowkeep many primary weapons had their precision damage scaled back while The Recluse stayed somewhat untouched.

In the upcoming sandbox update releasing with Season of Dawn, Bungie is making a significant change to how The Recluse will behave.

The Recluse

• Changed the effects of Master of Arms
• Removed the precision damage modifier
• Recluse will continue to receive a damage bonus from Master of Arms, but the damage will not default to precision values when the perk activates

These changes left many players scratching their heads, and Bungie's community manager Dylan "dmg04" Gafner was forced to clarify what it could mean for Guardians on Twitter.

“The Master of Arms perk defaults all damage to crit," he explained.

"You can spray at a boss or enemy, hit their body, and it gives a damage buff AND crit damage. Now, you have to aim for the head.”

This nerf to Recluse seems to favor PC players as with the reduced gun recoil of using a mouse and keyboard, hitting precision hits will be much easier than on console.

Next on the chopping block is the Titan exotic helmet ‘One-Eye Mask’. This armor piece gained its infamous reputation due to the obnoxious amount of power it gives the wearer when playing in the Crucible. If the wearer is damaged by an enemy, the wearer will receive a marker on their HUD that will update in real-time showing the location of the enemy that damaged them, this is commonly known as a ‘wall-hack’.

If the wearer kills that enemy they are given an over-shield and a small weapon damage buff that lasts approximately 7 seconds. This exotic essentially gives the wearer everything they would need to dominate in the Crucible and frustrate their enemies. The changes to One-Eyed Mask are as follows:

One-Eyed Mask

• Changed the effects of Vengeance
• Removed the over shield granted from defeating an opponent that inflicted damage on you

According to many Guardians, these changes are "not enough."

"Calling it now, this OEM nerf will still not be enough to dethrone it," said 'nethermaker' on Reddit. Another Guardian agreed and said nothing will still come close to its latent power.

"There's still nothing even CLOSE to a 7-second wallhack and health regen as an exotic for another class," disgruntled Guardian 'legionfresh' stated. "Still going to be on a tier of its own."

Lastly on the patch notes preview is a much-needed change to the newly released Xenophage exotic Machine Gun. This exotic released alongside the newest dungeon ‘Pit of Heresy’ but received little fanfare as players quickly realized that it was essentially useless.

The weapon had low DPS when compared to Grenade Launchers and other exotic Heavy weapons, but also lacked the enemy clearing capabilities of other Machine Guns.

Xenophage

• Increased PvE damage by +50%
• Ammo pulled from PvP crates has been increased to 4/6 from 3/4 from shared and solo Heavy ammo crates, respectively

Even though this damage increase is a welcome change it still does nothing about the weapons lack of ability to quickly clear out enemies and its damage does still not hold a candle to some of the better DPS options in Izanagi’s Burden, Wendigo GL3, Love and Death and Whisper of the Worm.

Destiny Tracker will update Guardians when more changes are confirmed.