Destiny 2 Guns With Longer Barrels Apparently Have Better Range

A Destiny 2 streamer has found that the length of a gun’s barrel in the game can actually increase its range, but probably not by enough to make you a Crucible pro.

Destiny 2 players are always looking for a new way to get one over on their opponents, and that’s led to some pretty intricate breakdowns of different weapons’ pros and cons. One thing that no one seemed to consider before, though, was that the actual length of the barrel on a gun’s model could give it a damage boost. There’s no reason anyone would think that, but apparently, it’s true.

Well, it turns out that at least one player did have some suspicions that shotguns with longer barrels had a slight edge. Streamer and YouTuber Fallout says that he had wanted to test this theory for a while, and a gun called The Chaperone recently gave him a chance. The Chaperone has a cosmetic ornament called Panama Ravine, which was crucial for the test. Panama Ravine doesn’t change the gun’s stats or affect it in any functional way, but it does make the barrel a little longer. With that fact, Fallout was able to test his hunch by enlisting a friend willing to take a couple of shotgun blasts to the face, then firing one shot at them with the standard Chaperone, followed by one with Panama Ravine equipped.

You can see from the damage numbers that appear that The Chaperone does do a little more damage with the Panama Ravine on, but before you start building an arsenal of long-barreled guns, keep in mind that the difference in damage was only four HP. Not enough to make a difference in most fights, but Fallout did find a distance where a Chaperone with Panama Ravine resulted in a one-shot kill, but the standard Chaperone left its target just barely alive.

As Fallout notes, this isn’t going to change the way you play Destiny 2, but it is a funny quirk that just changing the look of a gun can change the way it performs, even in a small way. It works because of how Destiny 2 deals with weapon range. Each weapon has a stat that determines its optimal range, and using it at longer distances will cause its damage to drop off dramatically. Shotguns have the most pronounced effect, doing extreme damage up close and quickly falling off to pitiful damage at just a few meters. Based on Fallout’s video, it appears that the game calculates the distance between the very end of a gun’s barrel and its target when scaling damage for range. It’s not likely to make any difference when you’re using a long-range gun, but with the shotgun, it’s enough to be noticeable.

So there you have it. Like we said earlier, Fallout’s discovery isn’t going to shake up the meta, but it does give a little more insight to how Destiny 2 works under the hood, and makes some ornaments look just a bit more attractive.