Also, it’s busted in the crucible. Which is probably the real reason why Bungie disabled it.
Let’s be honest: compared to most expansion launches, Destiny 2’s Beyond Light has been relatively smooth. Sure, there were a few server issues on launch day, but those were mostly resolved by the evening. There haven’t been any reports of anything game-breaking, and Telesto hasn’t even completely shattered as it almost always does.
But there is one Exotic weapon that has run into issues in Beyond Light. Two issues for the Witherhoard grenade launcher, actually. The first is a bizarre graphical bug that makes Witherhoard stick around even after you swap to a different weapon. Stranger still, the bug even turns Witherhoard into a component of the weapon you swap to, which can be pretty hilarious in certain combinations.
For example, here we have the Witherhoard as the Gatling barrel for Sweet Business.
And here we have a few examples of the Witherhoard suddenly shooting arrows instead of blight grenades.
If it was just this bizarre texture bug alone, Bungie probably would have let people keep using the Witherhoard, but alas, there was another glitch attributed to this wonderful Exotic. The blights that Witherhoard leaves behind whenever a grenade strikes the ground had become too powerful in the Crucible, necessitating Bungie disable the weapon temporarily.
As noted by Destiny YouTuber Cheese Forever, the Witherhoard’s blights would continue to damage players even after they’d escaped the blight’s radius. This often meant that even touching the blight for a split second would be a death sentence.
Bungie announced that Witherhoard would remain disabled as they investigate the cause of the issue. A shame, since Witherhoard is a top-tier Exotic weapon only recently introduced in Destiny’s previous season.
Bungie also disabled Rose for still being a 150 rpm hand cannon even after the archetype was removed in Beyond Light. This seems to be a simple oversight, but one that also resulted in Rose being disabled so that Crucible players don’t all immediately swap to it for that ideal time-to-kill.
Source: Reddit, Twitter/Bungie, GameRant