What you need to know
- Destiny 2 players have discovered a glitch with the Vorpal Weapon perk that causes it to make certain types of damage-over-time (DOT) last forever when you switch to a weapon with the perk on it.
- Both Osteo Striga poison and Strand Unravel work with the glitch, and stack together.
- Vorpal Weapon also has a beneficial interaction with the Incandescent perk. While gear with Vorpal is held, enemies that die from incandescent-based Scorch DOT will explode with deadly Ignitions, regardless of whether they had 100 Scorch stacks or not.
- Aside from raid bosses, the only enemies this glitch can't easily kill are Overload Champions (they heal too fast) and Barrier Champions (their shield stops the glitch if you don't break them quickly).
While Destiny 2's weapon perks have been influenced by bugs in the past, the resulting effects usually don't give players a benefit. For once, though, that's not the case, as there's currently a glitch affecting a popular PvE perk that will make several forms of difficult content an absolute cakewalk.
That perk is Vorpal Weapon, and strangely, the bug affecting it has nothing to do with the damage buff it provides when you're shooting a vehicle, Champion, boss, or Guardian using their Super. Instead, it has the ability to break certain types of damage-over-time (DOT) and either make them last forever or buff their functionality whenever you proc this damage and then pull out a weapon with Vorpal Weapon on it.
For example, if you poison an enemy with the Osteo Striga Exotic SMG and then switch to a weapon that rolled with Vorpal, the poison damage will tick infinitely until the target dies as long as you keep that weapon out. If other enemies are near the first when it dies, Osteo Striga's Toxic Overload perk will spread the infinitely ticking poison to them, too. The damage won't be enough to overpower Overload Champion healing and Barrier Champions will stop the glitch from working if you don't quickly break their shields, but every other foe on the battlefield, including bosses, is fair game. Destiny 2 YouTuber Fallout Plays shows off how the glitch works in the video below.
This interaction extends to the Unravel effect from certain Strand builds and Unraveling Rounds. Normally, once you've Unraveled an enemy, continuing to damage them creates a swarm of small green projectiles that fly out of them and hit other nearby hostiles (or come back and damage the original target, if none are around) for a short amount of time. When holding a weapon with Vorpal on it, though, the Unravel effect lasts indefinitely as long as your target keeps taking damage from something. This includes Osteo Striga poison damage, meaning that in addition to infinitely poisoning a foe, you can also use that poison to infinitely Unravel them and send out non-stop swarms of damaging Strand bolts. Poison something with Osteo Striga, Unravel it with something like the Warlock's Arcane Needle, pull out a Vorpal weapon, and watch as whatever you're fighting succumbs to endless DOT.
The Vorpal glitch also affects the Incandescent perk, too, though the way it does so is a little different. Instead of infinitely ticking enemies with Incandescent's area-of-effect Scorch damage, it makes every enemy killed by it explode with a high-damage Ignition, regardless of whether or not they had 100 Scorch stacks built up. This makes it extremely easy to clear out rooms of ads, especially if you're using Solar 3.0 Fragments that buff Scorch and Ignitions like Ember of Char, Ashes, and Eruption.
Unfortunately, the bug doesn't work with other tick-based damage sources such as Le Monarque, Thorn, and Witherhoard, but even so, it's a fantastic glitch to fall back on if you're struggling in Nightfalls or Legend and Master Lost Sectors. Strand subclasses with access to Unravel, Osteo Striga, and Incandescent weapons are all popular PvE options right now anyway, and since Vorpal Weapon is such a common perk, there's a very good chance you have some spare gear that rolled with it.
Destiny 2: Lightfall is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles, Windows PCs, and PlayStation systems. In it, you'll take the fight to Emperor Calus, gain access to Strand subclasses and their unique abilities, and more.
