Destiny 2 no longer wants you to run through PvE overpoweringly and blow everything away with mini-nukes. Therefore, the powerful Warmind Cells are being nerfed. Bungie has been threatening this for a long time, but now they are actually serious in Season 15.
Guardians can create powerful builds in Destiny 2 from various classes, hefty exotics, and mods that have a tremendous impact on the player’s power. The mods play an important role in this, and there are 3 builds depending on the mods.
However, Bungie saw the powerful Warmind Cell mods as a thorn in their side and they will receive severe nerfs in Season 15, which starts on August 24. As compensation, the unpopular elemental well mods will be buffed. MeinMMO explains the changes to you in detail and also states how Bungie justifies the decision.
Here are the mod options for builds in overview:
- Warmind Cells: This focuses on the small orbs, which are actually a kind of mini-nukes. Because the marbles explode upon being shot and send entire hordes of adds to the virtual afterlife at once. Additionally, Warmind Cells also provide buffs for guardians and debuff enemies.
- Charged with Light: Guardians collect stacks of energy and can use this for bonuses such as more damage or higher defense. This mechanic remains unchanged for now.
- Elemental Wells: The newest mechanic works similarly to Charged with Light, places a bit more emphasis on teamwork, but is significantly weaker.
- Warmind Cell builds were particularly often combined with “Charged with Light” builds. Elemental Wells were mostly neglected so far, which is why Bungie wants to make them a bit more attractive in Season 15.
This is what happens with Warmind Cells in detail
This is what the nerfs look like in Season 15:
- Base Warmind Cells
- The radius of the explosion/effect range of Warmind Cells has been reduced from 10 to 6 meters.
- The damage of the explosion from Warmind Cells has been reduced (from 200–400 to 50–250).
- Global Reach
- The cost of the mod “Global Reach” has been increased to 3 (was previously only 1).
- The value of how far the radius can be increased has been reduced from 20 to 10 meters.
- Cellular Suppression
- The duration of the suppression effect when using “Cellular Suppression” has been reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
- Rasputin’s Fury
- The bonus solar damage has been reduced (from 100–200 to 25–100).
Bungie is mainly adjusting the range and overall damage. Starting from Season 15, it will therefore be significantly harder for you to clear an entire room with an explosion. Additionally, the most popular and inexpensive mod “Global Reach” is specifically being nerfed.
This is the buff for Elemental Wells: To make the rather rarely used Elemental Wells more attractive, initially 2 mods are strengthened. The changes are not really drastic, but who knows if new Elemental Well mods will be added in Season 15 that will provide incentives for corresponding builds.
- With “Elemental Armament,” there is now a higher chance of generating an elemental well based on the strength of the defeated enemy.
- The base duration of “Source of Power” has been increased to 10 seconds and the granted damage bonus from 10 % to 25 %.
“This is no surprise – Warmind Cells are just too powerful”
This is how Bungie explains the changes: Bungie states in the course of the announced changes that the nerfs for Warmind Cells are “no surprise” (via Bungie.net). Even at the introduction of the mechanic in spring 2020, the developers were aware that these builds would become “much too powerful”.
They created Warmind Cells with the idea that they would eventually disappear from the game after a year. However, since they abolished the sunsetting of weapons since then, Warmind Cells (and the associated Seraph weapons) remained relevant without restrictions.
Bungie then concludes with a harsh nerf to the mods: “If we didn’t do this, we would soon have constant problems with activity design and weapon rewards.” You would hardly use new weapons, and one would have to always plan for missions that someone would immediately blow up a nuclear bomb.
You should now blow everything up and enjoy the mini-nukes because from August 24th, your Warmind Cells will hit less hard, have a reduced explosion radius, and the most used mod will become more expensive.
What do you think about the changes? Will the cells still remain meta in PvE, or will you now actually try Elemental Wells in your PvE builds? Let us know in the comments.
