Powerful exotic shotgun Lord of Wolves won't be facing a nerf or balance change until later this Summer, Bungie creative director Luke Smith said during the company's block of the GuardianCon2019 charity stream last weekend.
Lord of Wolves is a House of Wolves weapon from the second ever Destiny expansion that was brought back to the franchise in its second release. Armed with high range, and deadly pelts, a change to it's 'Release the Wolves' perk now means the shotgun is tearing Guardians apart in Crucible, mainly due to the manual switch between 5 and 10 bullet burst shots.
The bug, or really an exploit, sees Guardians able to activate the perk by reloading, meaning as long as you're quick on that trigger you can unload an obscene amount of damage into an unsuspecting enemy pretty quickly. Add that to the long range, and you've got a nightmate gun.
Bungie knows it too. Smith addressed it as one of the main features of his comments on stream, and revealed Summer would be when the Wolfpack might finally be brought down. It's still a while yet, but at least now we have an idea of how long the Lord of Wolves will reign.
"The most recent changes to Lord of Wolves created a monster," Smith admitted. "There's been a lot of discussion online about it. Once honourable, the Lord of Wolves has become a hard-to-stop Werewolf in Lord Saladin's contest.
"Whether you've been tamed by it, or are running around as a pack in Iron Banner, we’re going to bring the Wolf to heel later this Summer."
Smith also wanted Guardians to understand why there wasn't going to be an immediate change for the weapon. In essence, Bungie is okay with "OP-definied periods" as long as they're not ongoing, or painful for every Guardians in the solar system.
"Sometimes, Destiny is going to have goofy outliers, or periods of time where something is overpowered. We don't want these periods to last too long (post-Forsaken launch Voidlocks for example), but they can be memorable moments," Bungie's director said.
"Internally, we had a bunch of spirited debate this week around whether or not we should just prevent players from equipping Lord of Wolves throughout the game. In this instance, Lord of Wolves dominance didn't rise up to meet the bar of "this is broken enough to turn it off in all activities.
"If the Wolf Pack continues to grow, we can revisit turning it off. From our perspective, this feels like a week where the Wolves run wild and supers trample their way through Iron Banner a little less. Ultimately, video games are incredible places for memories to form and we do want Destiny to be a game world that remembers."
Smith also confirmed Bungie would be crafting up a "special Triumph" for those that lived under the shadow of the Lord of Wolves. Anyone who finishes an Iron Banner match will be given the Triumph, and an associated nameplate for their efforts, or struggles.
As for an exact date for LOW being nerfed or changed - that's anyone's guess. It's likely going to be July. We'll just have to wait and see, and for now may just have to hope that Xur brings the deadly shotgun in his wares next time around.
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