The Destiny 2 community is in an uproar over the coming changes to how Orbs of Power will be generated starting in Season 16. The announcement was made during yesterday’s TWAB, and while fans were generally positive about being able to fully unlock the season artifact’s mods and being able to cheaply change the elemental affinity of masterwork armor, they were less enthused about what’s happening to Orbs of Power.
Currently, generating Orbs of Power in Destiny 2 is mostly done using masterwork weapons. A fully upgraded weapon (or Exotic with a complete Catalyst) will generate Orbs of Power on a multi-kill. Orbs provide Guardians with additional Super energy and through various mods can form the core of some of Destiny’s most powerful builds.
That will change come Season 16 and The Witch Queen expansion. Rather than being tied to weapons, Orbs of Power will instead be generated via an armor mod. The mod will cause Orbs of Power to drop on weapon multi-kills of a particular damage type (kinetic, solar, arc, or void).
Destiny 2 fans complain that this new system has several drawbacks. First, Destiny’s mod economy is becoming quite bloated with too many mods competing for the same slots. As the Orb of Power mod will be located in the head, this competes with ammo finder mods, Dynamo, targeting mods, and more.
Second, masterworking weapons will feel far less impactful as it will now only offer 10 additional stat points. The main reason for masterworking a particular weapon in Destiny 2 was to generate Orbs of Power, while the stat bonus was a minor and often unfelt benefit.
Because the mod only counts weapon kills of a particular damage type, this will ultimately mean fewer Orbs of Power in high-end content where players are forced to take a variety of damage types to deal with enemy shields. And finally, gathering Orbs of Power are the easiest way to become Charged with Light via the Taking Charge mod. With fewer Orbs, Charged with Light Builds will become significantly less potent.
Various threads have appeared in the Destiny 2 subreddit disparaging the coming changes. However, community manager dmg04 has hinted that future announcements will mitigate the damage of these coming Orb changes, while content creator Kujay notes that removing Orbs of Power from weapons frees up space for additional weapon perks.
Every new expansion brings sweeping changes to Destiny 2 and there will undoubtedly be more announcements between now and Witch Queen’s arrival on February 22. We’ll just have to trust that Bungie will address these complaints in the coming weeks.