There’s a new weapon perk in Destiny 2 Lightfall called Kinetic Tremors. This perk is designed to help Kinetic damage-type weapons compete with the elemental ones, giving the archetype a perk to compete with the likes of Voltshot.
I’m going to be going over what Kinetic Tremors does in Destiny 2 Lightfall. I’m not promising that the perk will be any good – but I will explain how it works.
Destiny 2 – Kinetic Tremors Explained
The Kinetic Tremors perk reads as follows:
“Sustained Kinetic damage to a target emits a shockwave that damages nearby targets.”
What does that mean, though? Well, the logic of this perk is to try and give Kinetic weapons a chance to compete with the new 3.0 weapon perks, being:
- Repulsor Brace.
- Incandescent.
- Voltshot.
With the exception of Repulsor Brace, these perks have dominated the PvE META for some time thanks to their AOE add-clear potential. Kinetic Tremors aims to replicate that by letting Kinetic weapons deal AOE damage for sustained damage on a single target.
So, when you shoot the same enemy for a little while with this perk equipped, it will eventually cause an AOE explosion that deals damage to anything caught in it.
From our initial bout of testing, it looks like the amount of damage needed to trigger Kinetic Tremors is rather high. It seems unlikely that this will be triggering during your regular add-clear gameplay, calling into question the usability of the perk.
The perk sill trigger in the event you’re blasting down a yellow bar or major with it – perhaps leaning into Bungie’s desire to make primary weapons usable back-ups for DPS.
Related: How to Get Armamentarium Chest Piece in Destiny 2
Destiny 2 – Is Kinetic Tremor Any Good?
It depends on what you want Kinetic Tremor to do. If you’re looking for an add-clear weapon, this perk is useless to you. It takes around four or so bursts from a Pulse Rifle to trigger it – at which point most adds will be dead on anything that’s under Legendary.
However, picking back up on the idea of pushing primary weapons for DPS – this perk actually deals decent single-target damage. The shockwave that it triggers has a great radius and deals good damage, so it’s not entirely useless depending on the context.
However, primaries will never, ever, be considered for PvE DPS, so I can see this perk falling through the cracks going forward into Season 20.
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