Bungie disables Destiny 2's Telesto rifle after players find exploit to instantly recharge supers

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Telesto removed from all activities to stop the exploit.

This week, Destiny 2 players discovered an exploit that allowed them to recharge their super ability within seconds without killing any enemies: all they needed was the Telesto fusion rifle and a single grenade. Bungie has responded by removing the exotic weapon from all activities, with no word on when it might return.

The exploit, described above by Destiny YouTuber Ehroar, required players to first shoot rounds at the ground. Telesto's projectiles don't detonate on impact, and so you can squeeze the trigger seven times to lay down all its particles without them exploding. Then you'd throw your grenade—the area of effect grenade worked best—and the game would count every particle destroyed by your grenade as an enemy killed, juicing your super bar.

The exploit worked in PvP as well as PvE, according to Ehroar, potentially giving players a massive advantage over the competition: if you've recently been murdered by a player that was constantly popping their super, they may well have been using this exploit.

It worked best with the Ashes to Ashes perk, which gives you additional super charge on grenade kills, ideally double stacked as an armor perk and a class item mod. With both equipped, all it took was a few squeezes of the trigger and a single grenade to get your super. The only limiting factor was your grenade recharge, and you could get round that by slapping the demolitionist perk on a second weapon: it fills your grenade meter on every kill. It worked without Ashes to Ashes too, but it just took a little longer. 

The Bungie Help Twitter account said yesterday that the weapon had been temporarily disabled, and that it would post additional updates as the dev team investigated. 

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.