In the upcoming “Season of Wishes” of Destiny 2, Guardians can expect drastic changes. In particular, the popular Titan class is hit by a nasty 5-fold nerf that has already been criticized by the community as an overcorrection and ridiculous. MeinMMO tells you what awaits in the “Go Slow” update from Bungie.
Harsh nerfs for popular abilities: As Bungie announced in the weekly TWiD (“This Week in Destiny”) on November 22, players can expect significant melee, survivability nerfs, and adjustments to many exotic armor pieces in the upcoming Season 23.
- Your survivability abilities, like the “Banner of War” or “Restoration” will be weakened because you are just too hard to kill.
- Titans receive nasty restrictions that hinder their most popular killing tactic with shotguns.
- Additionally, Bungie has announced initial steps for adjustments to the “Well of Radiance”, “Dawnshield” (Bubble), and the neglected Stasis abilities.
MeinMMO has looked at all the changes and explains why your powerful abilities will be associated with significant costs in the future and how much your survivability is at risk.
So severe will the 5-fold nerf be
Here’s why Titans are currently shocked: With the information about the upcoming patch, changes for all classes were introduced. But especially for the Guardians with a Titan, it quickly became clear that they would be particularly hard hit by a 5-fold nerf.
For the Solar Titan, the cooldown of the small “Bonk” hammer, the healing-based Solar Verb “Restoration”, Sunspots, the armor exotic “Synthoceps”, and frequently used mods are being nerfed. The last of which affects all three classes.
- You will no longer immediately get your melee energy back when picking up the small solar throwing hammer, but only after 1.4 seconds. This will probably still be S-Tier, but not quite so overpowering.
- For the Sunspots, the maximum duration is reduced from 20 to 12 seconds.
- The exotic “Synthoceps” no longer has extended melee fall-off distance, and the PvE bonus for surrounded melee damage is reduced from 200% to +165%. In exchange, there is now 100% more melee bonus on glaives instead of 50%.
- In the mods, “Heavy-handed”, “Firepower”, and “Reaper” will be adjusted starting Season 23. They will have a cooldown of 10 seconds for generating an orb of power, thereby reducing the number of generated orbs as well.
- But also the reimbursement of energy for the Kickstart bonuses, as well as “Momentum Transfer”, “Detonation Boost”, “Impact Induction”, “Focus Attack”, “Range”, “Distribution”, and “Bomber” have been reduced by Bungie.
Why is this being adjusted? Bungie believes that these changes will help restore meaningful choices, both in ability use and armor loadout systems, while also giving each armor mod the opportunity to achieve a valuable effect.
No more sliding, shooting, killing
The new motto is “Go Slow!”: The era of fast melee attacks in PvP is also coming to an end, which has long been the preferred way to take down opponents primarily by the Titans. First slide, then fire the weapon, and also perform a shoulder attack or a slide melee.
- In the future, this kill method will be associated with significant risks and cooldowns.
- Starting from the “Season of Wishes”, firing your weapon while sliding will prevent the activation of sprint or glide-activated melees.
Why is this attack being adjusted? The reason for the adjustment is, according to Bungie, that such quick kills are extremely hard for other Guardians to recognize and understand.
However, the arc aspect “Stormstrike” will receive slight improvements in the upcoming update. This includes an increase in base damage, more accurate tracking at longer distances, and improved accuracy.
“They really want us to suffer!”
It’s always about balance: Guardians have become increasingly stronger in recent seasons. This has led to hardly anything feeling challenging anymore.
For Bungie, it has thus become increasingly difficult to apply pressure in combat on players with optimal builds. However, Destiny 2 should feel fair for all target groups, including those who may not use builds. At the same time, well-tuned difficulty levels for top-equipped players should be available.
In short: the survivability of Guardians at the top end is too high, and that’s why in Season 23, your survivability is at risk. This includes the “Woven Armor”, “Restoration”, “Devour” as well as the “Banner of War”.
- Woven Armor: Damage resistance with Strang against PvE fighters is reduced from 55% to 45%.
- Restoration: Now only grants a reduced healing rate for solar abilities.
- Level x1 = 35 HP/s in PvE and 17.5 HP/s in PvP
- Level x2 = 50 HP/s in PvE and 25 HP/s in PvP
- Devour: The healing amount for Void, both upon activation and refreshing, will be reduced from full healing. Unless “Feeding the Void” is equipped.
Only a minor change: While some Guardians already see their life massively dwindling here, we assume that these changes will not have significant effects. To achieve a noticeable effect in the game, one would have had to halve the reimbursement. Additionally, Bungie explicitly mentioned that this is only “a small change”.
Furthermore, the currently most popular Strang aspect “Banner of War” is also being adjusted.
Here’s how the Strang aspect “Banner of War” will change:
- The number of enemy kills required to level up the banner will be increased by about double.
- To slightly offset this disadvantage, the duration at each level of the banner will be correspondingly increased. This varies according to the type of defeated target.
You will definitely feel these changes in the game. It will make it more difficult for you to achieve maximum healing with the Titan’s War Banner aspect in the future.
Bubble and Well nerfs are in planning
The question remains what Bungie plans to do with the two best options for healing and protection in Destiny 2, the healing “Well of Radiance” of the Warlocks and the protective Titan bubble “Dawnshield”.
- In the “Season of Wishes”, Bungie will increase the base cooldowns of these two Supers from 417 seconds to 455 seconds to ensure they have stronger competition in round-based modes.
So far, the cooldown nerf is targeting PvP and does nothing in PvE. But Bungie also wants to fundamentally reassess the place of these two options in PvE in the future.
Why does Bungie want to adjust these options? In particular, the “Well of Radiance” offers too much according to the developer. Its effective invulnerability is not something that the sandbox can or should continue to support.
The Content Creator Saltagreppo also believes that Bungie must take even stronger action with these two ultis because otherwise nothing will change. He thinks a damage reduction of an average of 10% like with “Woven Armor” is not needed.
So enjoy the protection for a while longer until more changes come in Season 23, which will also adjust the dominance in PvE.
And what about Stasis? For the coolest of all abilities, expectations have lagged somewhat. Bungie did mention changes, but the big “wow!” was not there yet.
- There will be some tuning changes for your Stasis abilities, focusing primarily on stat bonuses and penalties.
- Stasis now finally has a verb, which Bungie is temporarily calling “Frost Armor”. This is intended to increase survivability.
- Stasis grenades will be improved, such as the cooldown of the Glacier Grenade being reduced from 152 seconds to 121 seconds or that the Cold Snap Grenade can better track targets.
- Weapons with special ammo will also receive a stronger damage bonus of 5% to 10% against frozen targets, aiming to make smashing enemies more consistent.
What the community says about the adjustments
Excitement sounds different: The community immediately reacted with over 1500 comments on the Destiny subreddit to these announcements and many players expressed their dissatisfaction with the perceived overcorrection.
Some even describe the changes as ridiculous and argue that the popularity of the Titan class does not mean they are too strong, but that they are enjoyed by many players. Others hinted that Bungie will certainly not win back players with these adjustments.
- The player Savenura55 comments that Titans be made too weak: “Titans have already been significantly weakened in 3/4 of the last adjustments, making them unplayable outside of ‘Banner of War’. I don’t understand why Bungie thinks this is the right way given the poor state of the game. Maybe they haven’t actually fired the people who were the problem, as they claimed.”
- wandering_caribou on the other hand sees another Strang season coming with regard to the new artifact: “The first impression for the Titan in PvE is that with the Solar Hammer nerfs, I will rather play the ‘Banner of War’ more than less. [The nerf] won’t really significantly impact it and the Stasis changes won’t make much difference.
- The content creator and 4-time world’s first winner Saltagreppo comments: “This was one of the best editions of ‘This Week in Destiny’ in a long time. [Bungie] actually addressed many balance issues, and most of the changes were well thought out and justified. Of course, not everything is perfect yet, but overall very positive steps.”
Also, the Destiny editorial team at MeinMMO believes that the changes are actually solid and fair. On paper, this may feel bad to some players, but without trying them out, it’s hard to say whether these changes are truly exaggerated or not. These new cooldowns with dynamic regeneration could still be intuitively enough.
When can you test the changes? Starting November 28, you can play the new Season 23. And from then on, most of these changes will go live in the game, so you can try them out and evaluate them.
While Bungie emphasizes that this is the first step in a long-term process to improve balance in the game, the community’s reaction will show whether these changes have the desired effect or whether further adjustments are necessary.
What do you think about the drastic changes to Titans in Destiny 2 “Season of Wishes”? Does this affect your gameplay? And do you believe Bungie’s decisions to weaken the abilities will have the desired effects? Feel free to let us know in the comments.
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