Destiny 2's new Season of the Splicer launched less than a week ago, and it introduced many new things: From its overarching seasonal story involving Eliksni from the House of Light, to new weapons and armor pieces, from a Stasis kinetic sidearm, to Fallen babies. That's not all, of course, and the content will come over time starting with Override, Expunge, Trials of Osiris, Iron Banner, the Vault of Glass Raid returning from Destiny, and the Solstice of Heroes event. Old legends are also returning, with one of Destiny's best weapons coming to Destiny 2 in the form of the very popular, king of DPS, Hung Jury scout rifle.
As is customary with each season, another addition to Destiny 2 with Season of the Splicer came in the form of the seasonal artifact, called "Paradrome Cube." A new set of mods that players can pick and add to their armor pieces are here for players to spec into this season. Among these mods, there is one that has already become extremely popular thanks to just how powerful it is, and that is the new "Breach and Clear" mod. This mod is brutal when it comes to PvE content, especially in the high end, including Raids, Grandmaster Nightfalls, and basically every other activity with tough bosses.
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Breach and Clear grants Destiny 2 Guardians the ability to apply a detrimental effect to bosses or Champions they hit with any grenade launcher. This effect applies a debuff that makes them take 30% increased damage, and the duration is not that short if this mod is used with weapons like the exotic Anarchy grenade launcher. Players can deal increased damage, while already dealing damage constantly with Arc bolts chaining between mines. The detrimental effect inflicted with Breach and Clear is even more potent than the exotic trace rifle Divinity, and it does stack with things like top tree Void Hunter's tethering anchors, allowing for automatic crits on the enemy.
Breach and Clear is obtained when the player is rank 35 in the Season of the Splicer, give or take, and it does have a very expensive energy cost to compensate for its incredible power. The mod can be applied to any armor piece at the cost of 9 energy out of 10, which is huge, but having Breach and Clear can be what differentiates speedy runs of Destiny 2 Raids and other endgame content and slower completion. Anarchy is Breach and Clear's best friend, and the current Destiny 2 raiding meta would still require the exotic grenade launcher for many specific encounters, making the combination ideal.
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Recently the Destiny 2 content creator and theorycrafter Ehroar has demonstrated how the newest Hunter exotic, Star-Eater Scales, is capable of dealing more damage to bosses with the bottom tree Golden Gun Solar class than with Celestial Nighthawk. What the Star-Eater Scales do is grant players more Super energy when picking up Orbs of Power, and they also provide a stacking buff that is not lost over time when picking Orbs at full Super energy, called "Feast of Light." Feast of Light can be accumulated up to four times this way, and it massively increases the damage from players' Supers.
This is important because another content creator for Destiny 2, KackisHD, showcased a Riven kill in one of Destiny 2's Raid with a group of six Guardians. They were all using the bottom tree Gunslinger Hunter combined with Breach and Clear, Anarchy, and Star-Eater Scales. The fireteam is able to take down Riven with Supers, foregoing Celestial Nighthawk in favor of the new exotic boots, and with the Breach and Clear debuff active, the Last Wish's boss goes down in 30 seconds. Could Breach and Clear shift the meta towards one where Nighstalker is less viable? Only time will tell, as Guardians prepare for the Vault of Glass raid race this season.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.