With the latest patch for Destiny 2 comes a very important buff to Hard Light, an exotic auto rifle that’s always been mediocre but never great. With the 2.7.1 release, there was one simple but effective change to Hard Light that’s made it vastly better than its previous mediocrity.
Hard Light is an exotic auto rifle that’s been around since the original Destiny, but it’s always been an average-at-best weapon to use for an exotic slot. It’s a high RPM, over-penetrating auto rifle with no damage falloff and projectiles that ricochet off surfaces. Originally, it was a kinetic weapon in the first Destiny, but in Destiny 2, it’s an elemental weapon that can swap between Solar, Arc, and Void via a special reload. This all sounds great except for its one main drawback; the weapon shakes violently during continuous fire, making it very hard to aim for precision damage.
Although now it’s more appropriate to say shook, since now Destiny 2’s Hard Light is one of the more stable auto rifles in the game. This most recent Destiny 2 patch made one simple change to Hard Light: adjusted scope feedback and camera shake on Hard Light firing. The camera shake was Hard Light’s main drawback, as it would make the gun practically unplayable for anyone looking to use a stable/accurate auto rifle. Now the gun is much more bearable under continuous fire and pair that with it’s Masterwork Catalyst which increases weapon stability, and the end result is a buttery smooth auto rifle that has an easily manageable recoil pattern.
Since this change, opinions have been slightly positive on the usefulness of this gun, but that’s still a huge step up from before the patch when all players seemed to write off Hard Light as painfully mediocre or worse. Some players are saying this weapon is going to be a monster in PVP, while others feel it’s going to end up like every other auto rifle in PVP and just be sub-par in comparison to other Destiny 2 weapon types in the meta.
Hard Light’s stability change is very positive in and of itself, but pairing that with the gun’s main perk of no-damage falloff at any range makes this buff much more significant. Now that’s not to say players will be using Hard Light to get cross-map kills, as there’s still an inherent range issue with auto rifle accuracy suffering at long range, but using Hard Light as a mid-range weapon is where this exotic is going to excel the most. It overpenetrates targets as well, meaning it will melt shields in PVP as well as do high accurate precision damage. Consistent time-to-kill with Hard Light means for any mid-range Crucible maps this gun will be fantastic.
But in the end, it’s still an auto rifle, and an exotic one at that. Auto rifles are not very common in Crucible for understandable reasons, since their time-to-kill is vastly out-classed by submachine guns, hand cannons, scout, and pulse rifles. Not to mention special weapons are more powerful and have more situational uses in Crucible than auto rifles do. Even more importantly is the fact that Hard Light takes up the one exotic weapon slotted allotted to players, meaning if a player has any other exotic weapon type that’s better for PVP and surpasses Hard Light even slightly, why use Hard Light?
It’s a toss up, because if a player enjoys using auto rifles in PVP, then the Hard Light should be used if they have the exotic slot for it. But if optimal viability is a greater concern to the player, Hard Light should be skipped over for a better exotic in PVP specifically.
Hard Light will likely find more use in PVE modes like Strikes because of its Fundamentals perk, allowing it to swap to different elements on the fly. The nature of PVE is more suitable for the Hard Light’s design, as it allows bonus elemental damage on whichever enemy type the strike focuses on as well as having a very high stability for constant automatic firing. High health bosses are well-suited to be destroyed by Hard Light with persistent precision damage that’s easy to manage. Even if it’s not the strongest gun, because of it’s high fire rate and stability, it has a solid time-to-kill on several different enemy types depending on their elemental weakness.
The negative impact of using Hard Light is lesser in PVE because weapon viability has a much larger spread. Players aren’t going to suffer if they use Hard Light as their exotic when there’s plenty of situational Kinetic and Heavy Weapons they can switch up to adapt to the Strike or Raid they’re doing. And since the release of Shadowkeep, auto rifles in general received a damage buff for PVE activities, so there’s no inherent disadvantage to using auto rifles anymore. Hard Light takes the centerpiece of any loadout, and as an auto rifle it’s a very good all-rounder to handle any situation.
It’s possible we see more Hard Lights in Crucible and other PVP activities, but so long as submachine guns and pulse rifles and hand cannons are still top-tier weapon choices, there won’t be a rush to get the gun any time soon. But it’ll be nice to have, especially for PVE if the player enters a strike they’re not used to and/or haven’t done before, Hard Light will be a good adaptable choice. Overall, Hard Light should see more usage in Destiny 2 now that the weapon shake is less seizure-inducing and easier to handle.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.
