The Witness is coming for the Light, and it seemingly already started by taking out one of the most popular Titan Exotics in Destiny 2. Heart of Inmost Light will receive a hefty nerf when Lightfall launches, severely diminishing the effectiveness of one of the best neutral Exotics in Destiny 2.
In today’s Lightfall patch notes, Bungie outlined the litany of changes coming to the game when the expansion launches at 11am CT tomorrow. Heart of Inmost Light showed up among the Exotic armor pieces seeing some changes, showcasing a strong reduction to its ability regeneration. Its damage bonuses will seemingly stay equal, though.
The class regeneration provided by Heart of Inmost Light will drop to a meager 25 percent across PvE and PvP, down from 150 percent in PvE and 38 percent in PvP. The duration of Heart of Inmost Light’s Empowered buff will also drop to five seconds starting tomorrow (down from 10).
“This change is intended to decrease how easy it is to get and maintain a 2x empowerment bonus in PvE, as well as reduce the total amount of bonus ability energy provided,” Bungie wrote in the patch notes. “The goal is for Heart of Inmost light to remain strong in ability-focused builds, while giving room for other Exotics to shine as well.”
Heart of Inmost Light carved its way as one of the most popular Titan Exotics due to its impressive ability to provide ability energy. Ability-focused builds would have plenty of room to shine with Heart of Inmost Light, making it easier to start loops and continue using abilities. Heart of Inmost Light also improved ability damage, which seems to remain the same in the post-Lightfall sandbox.
The heavy nerf to Heart of Inmost Light is compounded by across-the-board changes to the ability economy, which Bungie outlined in a blog post on Feb. 8. Passive cooldown gains will have smaller returns when compared to the pre-Lightfall sandbox. “In general, the regeneration provided by a tier 10 stat is now roughly equivalent to a tier 8 in the previous system,” Bungie wrote in the blog post.
Combined with the two sets of changes, Titans may have to find themselves reworking their builds soon. Since Heart of Inmost Light was a great neutral Exotic, players could easily use it for multiple subclasses. Instead, guardians may have to focus on subclass-specific Exotics such as Hallowfire Heart or lean into general Exotics such as Mask of the Quiet One, which were all far less powerful than Heart of Inmost Light.
Ditching Heart of Inmost Light is just one of the many changes Titans will have to face when buildcrafting in Lightfall. In addition to the new ability economy, Bungie is also reworking the buildcrafting systems—and that’s before throwing Strand into the mix. Players can dive into Lightfall starting on Feb. 28.
