The speaker gives a detailed and critical assessment of Act 2 in Destiny Rising, expressing strong dissatisfaction with the game’s current balance, event design, monetization practices, and lackluster content updates. While a few positive aspects are noted, especially regarding new characters, the overall sentiment is that the update caters mainly to paying players and leaves most of the community behind.

New Characters and Kits

• Hel Hesse and Rossi 11 are introduced as new characters with intriguing and distinctive kits. Notably, Hel Hesse has built-in heavy ammo generation, and Rossi 11 offers promising utility.

• The speaker finds both kits appealing but has had limited opportunity to test them for meta relevance, mainly due to poor luck with event banner pulls and limited in-game access.

• The speaker is frustrated by being unable to obtain Rossi 11 after a significant number of pulls and by the repeated acquisition of less desirable rewards from the banner.

Event & Reward Structure

• The new loot events are seen as shallow, essentially functioning as extended login or simple challenge events that grant only minor rewards, such as clusters and other small items.

• The Hellhest upgrade event is highlighted as being particularly problematic; many of the best rewards are locked behind requirements to purchase character skins and perform up to 240 pulls on event banners. Non-spenders or low-spenders are therefore excluded from earning the featured, top-tier rewards.

• Shards needed to progress or “focus” are limited unless additional purchases are made, making it impossible to max out without spending money.

• Core event rewards—such as Incandescence Clusters, Exotic Weapon Infusion Cores, Catalyst Chests, Artifactual Essences, and exotic mod choice chests—are inaccessible unless the player fully invests in Hel Hest and spends heavily.

• This event model is sharply contrasted with past events, such as Estella’s, which offered meaningful rewards through free participation and were much more inclusive.

• The speaker describes current events as lacking substance, reducing them to mere extensions of daily objectives and making progression feel stagnant for most players.

Artifact and Item Critiques

• Newly introduced artifacts are considered underwhelming, with most effects being overly niche, dependent on rare conditions, or less useful than current best-in-slot alternatives (e.g., Ring of Conversion).

• Artifacts like Biding Axiom and Resonating Axiom are criticized for their highly specific activation requirements, making them of limited practical value. Confined Axiom, despite offering a high damage bonus, is hampered by restrictive range and conditional usage.

• United Axiom is particularly criticized: if it worked as written, its damage bonus would be game-breaking; in its current state, it seems underpowered. Either case is seen as harmful to overall balance and gameplay.

• The speaker’s assessment is that most of the new artifacts are either unusably niche or simply inferior to options that already exist, adding little value to the game’s meta.

Monetization & Accessibility Issues

• The cost of acquiring old Battle Pass exotic weapons after their initial season is described as prohibitively high, potentially totaling around $200 worth of in-game currency (12,000 silver). This calculation includes both acquiring the necessary weapon tokens and additional upgrade materials, many of which have very low drop rates.

• The system locks essential rewards and weapon upgrades behind significant monetary investment, especially for players who missed the original Battle Pass or want to catch up.

• Players can also be locked out of accessing new content, such as character quests (e.g., for Rossi 11), simply due to poor luck with gacha pulls, with no alternative way to obtain them.

• Most of the event and reward structures now favor “whales” (high spenders) with easy paths to exclusive gear and upgrades, leaving regular or free-to-play players at a significant disadvantage.

• The new character Rossi 11 and his quest can be entirely inaccessible for unlucky players, and there is no way to obtain him from the shop if missed on the banner.

Content Additions & Community Impact

• The update adds very little in terms of substantial new content—a single mythic weapon (Yoshimoto Bow) is the only notable addition, which the speaker finds disappointing.

• Once main activities (Calamity Ops, Expanse, limited triumphs and seals) are completed, there is little left to engage players who do not participate in heavy spending or have poor luck with banner pulls.

• Technical issues, such as significant uncommunicated maintenance delays, further contribute to player frustration and dissatisfaction.

• The update is perceived as a “slap in the face” to non-whale players, with the event structure and reward gating making the game feel exclusionary and unwelcoming.

Summary of Overall Sentiment

• The speaker describes this patch as one of the worst yet, especially for players who do not spend heavily. The update is considered a major step backward, favoring monetization over meaningful content or fair progression.

• While the new character designs are acknowledged as positive, these highlights are overshadowed by a range of systemic issues: pay-to-win mechanics, lack of engaging content, and a feeling of neglect toward the wider player base.

• The update leaves players with little to do beyond daily routines once core activities are finished, diminishing long-term player motivation.

Questions / Follow-Ups

• What is the developer’s plan for future event reward accessibility? Will future updates remain this exclusive?

• Are there upcoming improvements planned for artifact balance and their viability across a broad range of character builds?

• How does the developer intend to address the growing negative feedback regarding aggressive monetization and player dissatisfaction?

• Will there be changes to make new and existing content more accessible to players who are not high spenders or who have poor gacha luck?

So, first impressions of Act 2, it's looking pretty abysmal, to be completely honest. There are a lot of really, really questionable decisions. Now, going through the stuff, obviously there's the new characters, which...

I mean, I will say Hel Hesse and Rossi do look pretty interesting. I don't really know how this is going to, if there's going to be any significant portion of power creep. Can't really tell. I mean, she does have a pretty interesting kit.

I do like the fact that she has some heavy ammo generation built in. I haven't really had the time to properly test her on a meta perspective though. Same thing with Rossi 11, but I do like both their kits, especially Rossi 11s.

I just wish I was able to get Rossi 11 instead of another 9 Finales from this banner. It is honestly a drag, okay? However, the other things that were set to release with this update were the loot events, alright?

And I already wasn't really like super stoked about them. I mean it was basically just like two challenge events where it's like complete some basic objectives. Like it's essentially just a login event and sure you get a couple of clusters, you get some minor amount of other rewards. It's decent for what it is but for this being one of the only extra things to do for the update is kind of a drag. However when we get to the uh Hellhest upgrade event, this is where some of the big issues start popping up so obviously you know you've got some rewards to level up hellhest you know you get like some of the royal contravene shards to focus the engram and also you know leveling her up it's similar to it's basically similar thing okay uh so some of the shards are locked behind buying her ornaments buying her skins so you you're going to be missing out on these charts.

You can only get a maximum of 120. So if you don't buy her skins, you aren't going to be able to get all of them. But if we go to the main section of the rewards, the featured rewards, okay, you can only get these by spending up to 240 pulls on Helhest's banner and also maxing out T6 and Curve. If you just get Helhest, and just level her up, do nothing else, you can't even focus one Royal Contravie.

You get 30, half of what you need. In order to get the rest of them, you would need to pull another 60 times, like granted if you hit pity, you need to pull another 60 times, up to 120, just to be able to focus one Royal Contravie. And if you want to focus two, and if you want to get the actual good rewards from this event, like the Incandescence Clusters, Exotic Weapon Infusion Cores, Catalyst Chests, more Incandescence clusters, a lot more Artifactual Essences than we've seen in any of the other events, and exotic mod choice chests, you need to max out Hel Hes. You need to wail on this banner in order to get any of the rewards from this event.

This event is basically useless to anybody who is not already spending money on this game. It's baffling to me. It's honestly baffling. Now, they did also release some new artifacts, and I have taken a look at them. Okay, and I'm just gonna say straight up, these artifacts are not really any better than what we've already had, which is kind of saying something, because most of the artifacts effects in this game are already kind of terrible.

Buying Axiom, it's extremely specific. You have to be affected by a healing over time and a damage bonus effect. And it's only effective against damage that's taken from more than 15 meters away. Really, really, really niche.

I mean, it's a first slot one, so there's not really that many amazing, outstanding damage resistance artifacts in the first slot. It's just so restrictive in its usage that I can't really say that it's any good at all. A resonating axiom, when the wielder is healed over time by their own abilities, healing received is increased by 4.2% for 6 seconds, stacking 5 times. A maximum of 1 stack can be gained every 2 seconds.

This is also just like really niche. It's only for healing over time effects. And it's only an increase to the amount of healing that you received.

That you have to receive like really, really constant healing. So if you drop your healing over time effect, you lose all the stacks. And it's a second slot one.

Do you want to know what's a much, much better second slot artifact that requires healing? Right here, Ring of Conversion. Why would you not just use Ring of Conversion?

It's going to be such a more potent effect. It basically doubles your effective health bar. It has the same restrictions as Resonating Axiom and like essentially the same use cases because you would pretty much only want to have Ring of Conversion if you have that much active...

regular healing sources it's just why would you ever use this over ring of conversion okay then we get to confined axiom right here when a combatant is confined they take higher long-range weapon damage from the wielder for the next 10 seconds it's a 20 meter restriction or a 30 meter restriction So it's up to almost a 60% damage increase at 30 meters while they're confined. And I mean, I will say it's a pretty high damage bonus, but like again, with the range restrictions as well, it's just going to make it a lot more difficult to proc for how potent it is. And again, you do have to confine targets as well. So it's kind of like Hawkeye token, but even more restrictive.

And I already didn't like Hawkeye token for how restrictive it was, especially because there's going to be so many engagements in this game where you are going to be focused into close quarters regardless. so I'd say it's niche at best. But then we get to this one right here, United Axiom.

Now I will say, thankfully this does not seem to be working as intended or working as described, and you'll probably not ever hear me say that about anything else in this game, but like, if we take a look at this, you'll 140% weapon damage while affected by allied damage bonus effects. And this can only be equipped on Tantu, Hel Hest, and Etel because it's hard coded to not work on anybody else. So if this was working as intended, this would be more than triple the damage bonus compared to like the next best thing in a slot three. Because the only other thing you can compare it to is calming token, which is a 46% damage increase.

Yeah, 46% damage bonus. So if this was working as described, which currently it isn't, it doesn't seem to be really doing much. I'm getting like maybe a 5% damage increase. But regardless of if the way it's working right now is the intended or if the way it's described is intended, it's terrible each way because like one way it's, niche and not powerful artifact and the other way is that it's a niche and completely oppressive damage bonus. Either one is just not good for the game regardless because we don't need more bad artifacts.

I mean if we take a look at the spreadsheet obviously I updated it so many of these artifacts just are either like niche only usable on a couple characters or just straight up terrible and if we take a look at the new one we've got like a bad one a bad one a niche one and I don't know yet. That's not really all the stuff that I have to talk about because we also have to talk about the transition between act one and act two. What's different?

How is the stuff that was exclusive to act one going to be going forward? And one of the biggest things that people were asking about was what is going to happen to Furious 3. Now I will say Furious 3 is still available in the Battle Pass exotic shop for 60 Battle Pass weapon tokens. So that means if you miss the previous Battle Pass, you would have to get two 140 Battle Pass tokens. Now you already don't get 100. Even if you get the Enhanced Battle Pass.

If you get the $10 Battle Pass, you get 70. Which isn't even enough to get all the copies of Trinity Ghoul. And also, I just want to say, I am super upset that Trinity Ghoul is the Battle Pass weapon. This is a 6-year-old weapon. It... literally has like zero development costs other than just porting it over and it costs $35 to max it out because it takes $10 to get the 70 tokens and the two copies from the battle pass and you have to spend another $15 to get the last 30 tokens from the black market.

So let's say you're somebody who missed out on Furious 3. Okay, you didn't get the enhanced battle pass. You only got like one copy or maybe you started playing late and you want to get Furious 3. Okay, so you would have to go to the black market. You'd have to go to the black market special and you would have to buy this 24 times and it costs $50,000.

Black market tokens and black market tokens. You would only be able to get that much from purchasing it with silver So that means it would be 500 silver per purchase and I already did the math on this already But i'll do the math on it again 60 tokens per copy four copies to max it out So 240 tokens every single set of 10 tokens. It costs 500 12 000 silver 12 thousand silver to get a battle pass weapon after the battle pass is over.

How much is 12,000 silver you may ask? $200 worth of silver to get a previous battle pass weapon maxed out. And that's just the copies.

It's not talking about the superposed photons, which you need seven of them. 7 of which you will almost definitely have to purchase in the black market because they have a 1.5% drop chance on a pinnacle reward and a 4% drop chance on a weekly lockout. So if we add on those 7 Superpose photons, so multiply that by 7 that's another 1400 black market tokens.

Okay, and let's just it's one silver per 100 black market token. So it's 1400 silver. So I'm huge with the Leftover from the bonus, you'd have enough to get the super post photons, but you still have to get the 390 weapon cores. So $200 for a maxed out exotic in this game.

That is insane. I don't think that like... This is just probably the worst possible thing that they could have done with the black market weapons. I'm gonna be completely honest.

So that means if you don't get Trinity Ghoul this update and you went to the next update, you would have to pay $200 to max out a six-year-old Destiny 2 weapon. And that is just, that is just absolutely insane to me. You know, like one of the new characters that they released this update, Rossi11.

You can just straight up get unlucky. You can do like... I did 70 pulls on this banner.

I got like 11 four stars. And it was only Icores and Finales. It was on stream as well. So I did 70 pulls.

Not a single Rossi 11. Tier 1 Hellhast. Before I even get a Rossi. That's even if I pull.

But I straight up... I'm not able to get Rossi 11. I can't get him in the shop either. Because like, you know, go to the Fortuna shop.

He's not here. So one of the only actual pieces of content that got put into this game, Rossi 11 and his character quest, you just can get unlucky and just not get it. Like you could potentially pull like tier three Hellhest and get zero Rossis. Okay.

And they specifically nerfed Mahamuri so that you won't be able to go through the expanse like normal. Like you won't be able to use Ningfei on the piercing side. Or at least not well.

I mean, there's probably people who are just going to do it anyway because Ningfei is still just that cracked. Let's see, Eternity. Yeah, I mean like people are struggling to get their sub 7 on Ningfei now because they specifically nerfed Mahamiri to work not as good in the expanse and Calamity Ops for this.

I mean, most people are probably going to use them on the rapid fire side regardless. But you know, if you just didn't want helihest or didn't want to pull or build a piercing unit right now then well sorry it's just i seriously cannot comprehend how they thought this would be a good drop and these aren't even really good events these are essentially just like login events this is basically just a A login event where it's like do daily activities. It's basically just an extension of your daily bounties. And this is literally just T6 your Hellhest and you get more rewards. You get an extra six clusters for T6ing your Hellhest.

You get an extra six clusters and an extra two Royal Contravenes, 20 cores and an exotic mod and like a hundred freaking artifactual essences for T6ing your Hellhest. And everybody else doesn't get crap. And also, you know, if you want that final Royal Contravene, you gotta buy the skins. That cost silver. And comparing this to how it was for Estella, Estella got all of her rewards, like, all of her bonus rewards with the Efforts Rewarded event.

Which was completely free! You didn't have to pull a single time. It was literally just basically the same deal as right here. It just had the good rewards in it.

Like, you get two... two incandescence clusters. And like, considering it's a really, really easy event, like it's literally just log into the game, essentially.

When it comes to the new mythics in this game, the new mythic weapons, we got one bow, the Yoshimoto. That's it. One singular mythic weapon.

That is the only new mythic weapon in this update. I honestly do not have words. This is, I mean, I hope the character quest is good. Everything else, it just kind of feels like a slap in the face to everybody.

Like, this basically just tells me, if you're not a whale, don't bother. Because, like, the whales, they don't need this. They don't need an event that gives them more rewards for whaling. They already have access to so many of the extra stuff through the black market, through the Pandora's Deals, on a daily basis.

I really, really, really wanted this to be a good patch. It's just... It's just not it. I honestly don't really know what else to say.

Okay, don't get me wrong. Like, the new character seems pretty fun. I wish I had materials to build her. I mean, I saved up a decent amount of stuff.

Like, I can build her. Like, I'm being a little bit hyperbolic. obviously, but at the same time, it's just, I'm gonna complete Calamity Ops, I'm gonna complete the Expanse, and then it's just like, now what?

Now I just log in, do my dailies, log out. I've only got so many triumphs left to complete. I've only got so many seals left to chase. I've only got a couple new character quests, and I can't even play Rossi 11s because I didn't get it from the polls, but it's just, I don't know.

I don't know man. I really really don't know. I don't really have anything more to say on this update.

If you're enjoying it, good for you man. Good for you. Wanna bring up the fact that we had to wait an extra hour and a half I think it was. Yeah yeah like, or was it two hours? Two and a half hours?

The maintenance was extended and we weren't even notified about it until it already happened. Yeah, that's about all I have to say on the Acts 2 patch of Destiny Rising. Let me know if you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the update in the comments below.

If you like Hellhast or if you like Rossi better, let me know in the comments below. If you're enjoying my coverage of this game and would like to see more of it along with coverage of both Duet Night Abyss and Ananta because I will be covering those games as well in the future. Be sure to subscribe to the channel for more.

And with that all out of the way, thank you all so much for watching. And as always, I will see you all next time.

Machine Gun Bow was patched, changing the best perks on the bow we have in this game

Increased the Ranking of Spread Artifacts after some retesting for them

-Unrelenting Shell was due for a buff ever since I found its synergy with Unrelenting Evolution, unfortunately it only functions well on a single-shot weapons, so its use cases are very limited making it niche

-Bloodthirsty Shell's Description was updated, cluing me in that it's not actually on hits, but on final blows. Which the final blow requirement is only 2 enemies, which makes it easy enough to proc, and with a primary GL you can constantly proc Unrelenting Shell lessening the need to run Unrelenting Evolution for consistent DR

-Scattering Shell's description was updated to include that it increased damage as well as blast radius, and the hit requirement has also been found to be 2, making it an extremely high damage multiplier that unfortunately has the multi-hit enemy requierment. This greatly enhances its viability for major/ad clear, however is still significantly limited by the fact that it is completely non-functional in a single-target Damage scenario, making it significantly more limited (the damage increase is also removed on swap making it relatively janky to work around.

Added Updated sheets for artifacts and status

United Axion has an incorrect description

Act 2 will save us... right?

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