Destiny 2 Season of the Witch update 7.2.0 patch notes: Exotic & abilities changes, mission rotator & more

Destiny 2 Season of the Witch is here, bringing Bungie's loot-shooter/MMO moving ever closer to its next expansion - The Final Shape - and these Destiny 2 update 7.2.0 patch notes will have you up to date on all of the latest exotic and ability changes, Strand updates, and plenty more.

Season 22 and Season 23 will lead us there, though, and with Season of the Deep completed, it's time to check out those all-important changes in the Destiny 2 Season of the Witch update 7.2.0 patch notes. Don't forget, with any new Destiny 2 season or expansion, there's likely to be a significant degree of server downtime.

Here's everything we have for the Destiny 2 Season of the Witch update 7.2.0 patch notes.

• We've got Destiny 2 as one of the best MMORPGs in 2023, but check out what we selected for our other picks

Early Destiny 2 Season of the Witch Update 7.2.0 Patch Notes

Exotic Changes

Hunter Exotic Changes

• Knucklehead Radar: The functionality of the Foetracer Exotic helmet has been completely removed from that Exotic and added to Knucklehead Radar, on top of its existing benefits.
• Foetracer: We took some cues from the popular Monochromatic Maestro artifact perk for this one. When you deal damage with one of your abilities, you gain a damage bonus with weapons that have damage types matching your subclass damage type. Additionally, when you defeat an enemy you’ve damaged with one of your abilities (either with another ability or with a weapon with a damage type matching your subclass type), you will spawn one of the collectable objects associated with your subclass, such as Ionic Traces or Firesprites.
• Lucky Raspberry: This Exotic was a little too unreliable in its current form, so we’ve taken a crack at streamlining its energy gains, while leaving some of its benefits intact. The Exotic still expands the chaining capabilities of Arc Bolt grenades. But now instead of basing the grenade energy gains on those chains, each time you damage an enemy with the lightning strikes from the jolted condition—as well as each time you pick up an ionic trace—you gain additional grenade energy. We've also given this grenade the intrinsic ability to stun Overload Champions. Now you don’t have to jolt them and then trigger the jolt lightning strikes just to stun them, making these grenades a more reliable tool against Overload Champions.
• Renewal Grasps: We’ve undone the previous nerf to Duskfield grenade cooldowns when using this Exotic.

Titan Exotic Changes

• Icefall Mantle, Doom Fang Pauldrons, Path of the Burning Steps, and Eternal Warrior: Season 21 included some changes to Eternal Warrior and the Path of the Burning Steps. We added an escalating damage bonus to Arc and Solar weapons, respectively, when you get kills with those damage types. We liked that this gave players another way to get surge-like bonuses, but the Eternal Warrior seemed to have the most reliable way to get up to the Tier 4 damage bonus. We’ve made some further changes to these perks to make them a little more reliable, while also expanding the functionality to two other Exotics.
• Icefall Mantle: Grants an escalating bonus to Stasis weapon damage when getting rapid Stasis kills. When you activate your class ability, you immediately gain the highest tier bonus.
• Doom Fang Pauldrons: Grants an escalating bonus to Void weapon damage when getting rapid Void kills. When you get a Void melee kill, you immediately gain the highest tier bonus.
• Path of the Burning Steps: Getting a Solar Grenade kill now grants the highest tier Solar weapon damage bonus.
• Eternal Warrior: Since the exotic only grants its highest tier damage bonus automatically when your Super ends (which is a rarer occurrence), the duration of the Arc weapon damage bonus when your Fist of Havoc Super ends has been extended to 30 seconds (up from 10 seconds in Season 21).
• ACD/0 Feedback Fence: This Exotic got a complete mechanical rework and now ties into the Armor Charge system, increasing its versatility and making it more useful in scenarios where you might not be taking a lot of melee damage. With the new perk (which completely replaces the old), when melee hits give you an Armor Charge, you take reduced melee damage while you have that Armor Charge. Taking melee damage causes you to emit a burst of damaging Arc energy that jolts targets, consuming your Armor Charge and dealing more damage based on the number of stacks consumed. (Note that the damage dealt by the burst of Arc energy should be comparable to its current damage for 0-3 stacks of Armor Charge.)
• Hallowfire Heart: This Exotic often stands in the shadow of the more ubiquitous Heart of Inmost Light. To remedy that, we’ve removed its base energy to Solar abilities and replaced it with a perk that will let you build more into Sunspots. We think you’ll be seeing many more Sunspots on the battlefield as a result. As for the perk that greatly increases your ability regen rate when your Super is fully charged, we left that as-is. 

Warlock Exotic Changes

• Astrocyte Verse: We’ve added two more pieces of functionality to this Exotic. Enemies near you when you Blink become volatile. Additionally, when you’re using the Nova Warp Super, the Dark Blink ability no longer consumes Super energy.
• Geomag Stabilizers: While we’ve often heard calls to restore the perk that let you top off your Super energy by sprinting, the legacy of that incentive still creates some pretty silly play patterns. Instead, we wanted to give players a way to get more Super energy, no matter how charged their Super is. Now picking up an ionic trace while wearing this Exotic will grant Guardians additional Super energy.
• Wings of Sacred Dawn: Leaning into the “orbital weapons platform” fantasy, we wanted to help players have a way to stay aloft longer (especially in target-rich PvE environments). Typically, reloading was the main cause for a float to end. This Exotic now automatically reloads Solar weapons (including the weapon you are holding) from reserves each time you get a kill while aiming down sights. Try this one out with Xenophage!
• Winter’s Guile: Due to the nature of the Stasis warlock’s melee ability, this Exotic was previously a disappointing choice for that subclass. We’ve added a new perk to this one, specifically for when you are playing your Stasis subclass. Now combatants encased by your Penumbral Blast melee will automatically shatter after a short delay.

Exotic rotator

Destiny 2 Season 22 will reintroduce Exotic missions in a rotation format with seasonal weapons attached.

Once Destiny 2 update 7.2.0 drops, here are the missions that will be rotated, as well as their rewards:

Presage (Requires ownership of Beyond Light or Season of the Chosen)

• Exotic weapon: Dead Man’s Tale (now craftable, with a new trait pool)
  • Armor and weapons from Season of the Haunted
    • Seasonal weapons
      • Nezarec's Whisper
      • Bump in the Night
      • Tears of Contrition
      • Hollow Denial
      • Firefright
      • Without Remorse
    • Opulent weapons
      • Austringer
      • Drang (Baroque)
      • Beloved
      • CALUS Mini-Tool
      • Eidolon Pursuant armor set

Vox Obscura (Requires ownership of The Witch Queen or Season of the Risen)

• Exotic weapon: Dead Messenger (now craftable, with an additional trait)
• Armor and weapons from Season of the Risen
  • Seasonal weapons
    • Explosive Personality
    • Recurrent Impact
    • Under Your Skin
    • Sweet Sorrow
    • Thoughtless
    • Piece of Mind
  • Tusked Allegiance armor set

Operation: Seraph’s Shield (Requires ownership of The Witch Queen or Season of the Seraph)

• Exotic weapon: Revision Zero (still craftable!)
• Armor and weapons from Season of the Seraph
  • Seasonal weapons
    • Fire and Forget
    • Tripwire Canary
    • Disparity
    • Path of Least Resistance
    • Judgment of Kelgorath
    • Retrofit Escapade
  • IKELOS weapons
    • IKELOS_HC_v1.0.3
    • IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3
    • IKELOS_SR_v1.0.3
    • IKELOS_SMG_v1.0.3
    • Warmind’s Avatar armor set

Bungie's blog notes that completing each mission will award the Exotic Deepsight weapon, which can be extracted or dismantled to grant the weapon pattern.

Ability changes in Destiny 2 Season of the Witch 7.2.0 Patch Notes

As per Bungie's blog post on August 9:

Titan changes:

• Towering Barricade
  • Base cooldown increased from 48 seconds to 70 seconds.
• All Barricades
  • Maximum health reduced from 600 to 500.
  • Damage resistance vs. PVE combatants increased to compensate.

• Thundercrash
  • Increased base cooldown time from 500 seconds to 556 seconds, matching the majority of our roaming Super roster.

• Knockout
  • Reduced damage bonus vs. players from 50 to 30.

Strand changes:

Wondering what these changes mean? Check out our Destiny 2 Strand guide for a deep dive into the green subclass.

• Suspend
  • Reduced base Suspend duration vs. non-Champion PvE combatants from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Thread of Continuity now extends this duration to 7 seconds, down from 12 seconds.
  • Reduced base Suspend duration vs. Champion combatants from 8 seconds to 3 seconds (4 seconds with Thread of Continuity).
  • Increased snap damage dealt to Suspended boss combatants by 67%.
• Thread of Mind
  • Reduced class energy gain, based on the tier of the defeated target:
  • Minor combatants reduced from 15% to 10%.
  • Major combatants and players reduced from 25% to 15%.
  • Bosses, Champions, and minibosses reduced from 50% to 25%.
• Thread of Generation
  • Reduced the overall energy gain per damage event against PvE enemies by about 20%. 
  • Rebalanced the energy gain multiplier across primary weapon archetypes. We wanted to bring the energy gains for dealing damage with precision weapons and fully automatic weapons closer together.
  • Overall, we’ve reduced the efficiency of fully automatic primary weapons and increased the efficiency of precision primary weapons to compensate.

• Threadlings
  • Increased Threadling damage vs. PvE combatants by 30%.
• Tangles
  • Reduced Tangle creation cooldown time from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
• Sever
  • PvE combatants affected by Sever now have their outgoing damage reduced by 40% vs. 30%.

• Silkstrike
  • Increased Silkstrike damage resistance from 40% to 45%.
  • Reduced suppression time between Silkstrike super air attacks.
  • Reduced vertical lift provided by Silkstrike heavy air attack to reduce instances of missing the primary target.

• Threaded Specter
  • Increased Threaded Specter lifetime from 10 to 12 seconds.
  • Increased Threaded Specter health vs. PvE combatants.
  • Threaded Specter now takes longer to detect nearby PvE combatants at the beginning of its lifetime.
  • PvE combatants now more consistently focus on Threaded Specter instead of the Hunter.
  • Allied players no longer have reticle magnetism toward Threaded Specter.

• The Wanderer
  • Destroying a Tangle now creates a delayed Suspending detonation.
  • Increased Suspend detonation radius from 6 to 7 meters against PvE combatants.
  • Increased thrown Wanderer Tangle detonation damage to match standard Tangle detonations.

• Grapple
  • Grapple melee always takes priority while active, regardless of whether or not a target is within range.

Strand Fragment changes:

• Thread of Propagation
  • Now grants +10 Strength.
• Thread of Continuity
  • No longer grants +10 Strength.
• Thread of Wisdom
  • No longer requires a precision kill to activate.
• Thread of Isolation
  • Reduced the number of precision hits required to activate by an average of about 30% (varies by weapon archetype).
• Thread of Rebirth
  • The number of created Threadlings now increases based on the tier of the defeated target:
  • Minor combatants: 1.
  • Elite combatants or players: 2.
  • Boss, Champion, or miniboss combatants: 3.

Destiny 2 Season of the Witch weapons update 7.2.0 patch notes

The following changes are being made to the weapons sandbox in Season 22:

General

• Fixed a bug where using two special weapons granted more heavy ammo than intended
• Changed zoom and damage falloff to reduce massive variance between weapons of the same range
• Removed damage falloff scaling from zoom and added new ADS scalar to replace it

Weapons

• Hand cannons buff - Increased damage by 20% to minors (red bars) and 75% to majors (orange bars), increased reload speed across the board, added Heavy Burst and added Warden's Law
• Bows buff:
  • Increased projectile velocity at full draw for longer distance shots
  • Reduced minimum time for reload animation to allow for higher reload speeds
• Sidearms nerf - Reduced base damage for aggressive frames from 32 to 30
• Pulse Rifles buff - BxR Battler zoom returning to 20
• Swords buff:
  • Energy recharges on a short delay after using guard
  • Huge increase to damage resistance when guarding
  • Guard no longer loses energy when taking damage
  • Full power heavy attacks no longer require full energy

Exotics

• Monte Carlo Catalyst - Adds bayonet melee attack to Markov Chain for massive melee damage that can be chained into further attacks
• Verglas Curve buff - Whisper of Fissures now generates Hail Barrage stacks
• Le Monarque PvP nerf:
  • Reduced damage profile to that of a lightweight bow
  • Reduced damage over time effect but increased poison damage by 50% in PvE
• Vex Mythoclast PvP nerf - Reduced RPM from 390 to 360, increased PvE damage to minors and majors by 25%
• Tommy's Matchbook buff - Changed Scorch to 15 + 5
• Touch of Malice buff:
  • Increased final shot damage in PvE by 25%
  • Reduced self-damage from 10 to 7, will no longer kill the user but keep them at 1HP if they continue firing
  • Improved Touch of Mercy, Ball of Darkness now deals arc damage and stuns unstoppable champions
• Cloudstrike nerf - Reduced lethal distance of lightning strike against other players
• Wicket Implement buff:
  • Creeping Attrition timing window increased from 3.5 to 4.5 seconds
  • Can activate Tithing Harvest by destroying Stasis crystals
  • Catalyst now includes Headstone perk

Perks

• Bipod - Reduced damage penalty from 40% to 25%
• Envious Assassin - Removed time limit for activation
• Under-Over:
  • Bonus body damage against players using Woven Mail
  • Increased damage against shields, significantly increased damage against enemies shielded by Dark Cabal overshields or Lucent Moths
• Under Pressure - Reduced maximum accuracy scalar from 0.5 to 0.75
• Shoot to Loot - Now activates with explosive damage, and removed unintended interaction where the perk would grant ammo to overflowed magazines without consuming the ammo brick
• Valiant Charge - Deactivates after single swing
• Ambush - Fixed issue where the perk deactivated after healing, taking fall damage or being shot by allies
• Explosive Light - Fixed a bug where the enhanced perk would grant two stacks on initial orb pickup
• Chill Clip - Reduced slow stacks from 60 to 40, Wolfpack Rounds no longer trigger the perk

Crafting

• Increased weapon progression from activity completions and PvP kills. Weapon progression that exceeds the current level will roll over to the next level; can use Glimmer and Enhancement Cores to increase weapon level
• Resonant and Harmonic Alloys will be depreciated and can be traded in with Rahool for Glimmer
• First Neomuna weekly pinnacle story mission completion will grant guaranteed Neomuna weapon progress, both Neomuna and Throne World vendor engram upgrades will increase drop chance of Deepsight weapons from those locations

Aside from those updates, players can also expect new weapons, armour, and seasonal activities when the Destiny 2 Season of the Witch update 7.2.0 patch notes roll around. We'll be sure to update this patch notes guide as soon as we have more, but in the meantime make sure to check out our Destiny 2 homepage for our other guides.