Snipers solidify themselves in Destiny 2’s PvE meta for Echoes Act 2

Destiny 2‘s PvE meta has shifted once again, and now, for the first time in a long while, sniper rifles are looking to be the premiere damage option for most encounters. While this may not bode well for Guardians who aren’t as precise as they’d like, a new set of Episode: Echoes Act 2 Artifact Perks and some additional tuning make the weapon class hard to pass up.

Throughout a Destiny 2 expansion’s lifecycle, Bungie periodically adjusts the status quo, boosting some weapons, abilities, and Exotic effects while nerfing others. With the switch to Episodes for The Final Shape, the studio can do this more frequently as new Acts for the episodes air. Alongside some manual tweaks, Act 2 of Episode: Echoes added a new row to the Hunter’s Journal Artifact. While optional, these Artifact Perks offer some massive buffs to Solar sniper rifles in particular.

Episode: Echoes Act 2 power creeps sniper rifles

While the new Perks added to the Hunter’s Journal Artifact are strong in their own right, sniper rifles got a little extra love via a manual adjustment. Per the July 11 This Week in Destiny communication, snipers got a 50% flinch reduction in PvE. This change won’t directly increase the potency of these weapons, but it allows for easier, uninterrupted fire, triggering one of the more powerful new Artifact Perks. 

When players log into Destiny 2, they’ll find a new row of Artifact Perks at the bottom of the Hunter’s Journal.

• Anti-Barrier Sniper Rifle
• Authorized Mods: Scavenger
• Incendiary Rifle Rounds
• Solar Fulmination
• Sniper’s Meditation

In the first column, Anti-Barrier Sniper Rifle is available, followed by Authorized Mods: Scavenger in the second. However, things start to heat up with the third column, granting Incendiary Rifle Rounds. These apply Scorch to enemies targeted by Solar sniper precision hits. To combo off that, the fourth column offers Solar Fulmination. This Artifact Perk causes Ignitions to do more damage in a larger AOE. Finally, the last column has Sniper’s Meditation, granting stacking damage, stability, and reload speed the longer players continue to hit enemies with sniper shots.

Not only will players wielding Solar sniper rifles be able to steadily Scorch and Ignite targets, but as time goes on, the weapon itself will do more damage and become easier to continue laying into foes. Players will get the most use out of these Perks in prolonged damage phases during boss fights, but Anti-Barrier Sniper Rifle and Authorized Mods: Scavenger can help make Solar snipers more like a Swiss army knife. Anti-Barrier can make short work of any Barrier Champions foolish enough to cross a Guardian’s path, and cheap Scavenger mods ensure the sniper always has ammo.

A sniper rifle meta

The Whisper of the Worm Exotic sniper makes particularly fantastic use out of these Perks with its White Nail Intrinsic Trait. White Nail allows Whisper of the Worm to refill its magazine if players can hit all precision hits with its small clip. If Guardians play their cards right, they can blow through all of Whisper of the Worm’s reserves without interruption, leading to some absolutely wild results with Sniper’s Meditation. Also, being a solar sniper, the exotic weapon gains functionality from Incendiary Rifle Rounds and Solar Fulmination, adding even more damage output to the gun.

Of course, Whisper of the Worm isn’t ideal in all situations, as it requires long damage phases to make full use of its potential. But Solar sniper rifles have an answer for shorter damage windows, and it’s called Still Hunt. This Exotic Solar sniper appeared alongside The Final Shape, quickly attracting attention for its ability to churn out Golden Gun Super shots on a semi-regular basis. While the gun saw a bit of a nerf going into Act 2, its explosive damage is still competitive and fast to put into action.

Looking at the alternatives, Exotic sniper rifles are poised to solidify themselves as the PvE damage meta. In longer damage phases, Whisper of the Worm will outpace most linear fusion rifles, and using it is simple; just hit your crits. The same can be said when compared against some Exotic outliers like Xenophage. For quicker damage windows, it’s hard to deny Still Hunt. Even against rocket launchers, Still Hunt is still attractive as it’s perfectly capable of being part of a Bipod or Bait and Switch rotation. As an Energy weapon, players can still take a non-Exotic Heavy weapon, folding in a rocket’s damage potential instead of competing against it.

Some encounters will still work best with other weapon types, like Salvation’s Edge’s sword-friendly second encounter. But by and large, Solar snipers are now the way to go for PvE damage. Episode: Echoes Act 2 makes the weapons too good to ignore and makes them easier to use in the process — at least until the next shift in meta comes into play.