For Destiny 2 players, one-hit kills will soon be a distant memory. In yesterday’s This Week at Bungie blog (TWaB), Bungie announced the first extensive changes. The dominance of player abilities will be significantly curtailed by the upcoming update. The developer continues to pursue its goal of putting gunplay more in the foreground in PvP.
Bungie calls it “The Winds of Change”, and it will soon bring some shine back to the slightly dusty space abilities. The first changes for the major update on December 7 will introduce fundamental adjustments to ability regeneration and a realignment of Crucible gameplay towards weapons. Additionally, this is also preparation for the new Light subclass system (Void 3.0) in “The Witch Queen”.
This will be the biggest balance patch of all time: Kevin Yanes, Bungie’s Sandbox Discipline Lead, emphasized the importance of these changes in the TWaB from November 18, 2021:
The team has worked on almost every aspect of a Guardian’s abilities with this version, and I am convinced that this will be our biggest balance patch of all time.
He is not wrong. The update in December will include buffs, nerfs, tuning changes, and a clear separation between PvE and PvP.
Various weapon changes Bungie already presented in detail last week. Now they are specifically addressing the abilities (grenade, melee, class ability, super) of the Guardians. This may feel unfamiliar for some players starting in December.
What does this mean for abilities in Destiny 2? Instead of establishing universal cooldowns for all supers, grenades, and melee abilities as before, Bungie is now adjusting them individually. This means each class’s ability cooldown will be modified directly based on the strength of that ability.
The extensive balance changes in the upcoming update include, for example:
- Different cooldowns for abilities and supers in PvP and PvE
- The intellect stat, the passive cooldown of the super, will no longer be that important
- Players will receive additional super energy when using a primary weapon
- Supers will be ranked into cooldown tiers
- There will be drastic PvP nerfs for one-hit kill abilities
There will no longer be a clearly defined meta
The different cooldowns and performance values are designed to make the game more dynamic and will add more depth to your builds. Each ability and each super will have more identity, making them unique. A firmly defined meta will no longer have relevance and will be less important. Player builds will become more flexible.
More dynamic gameplay with clear cooldowns: Pulse grenades will no longer have the same cooldown as firebolt grenades. Each of these abilities will be toned down and will receive a new cooldown, depending on the strength Bungie wants to bestow upon them.
A good example of how this will look in the future is a comparison of the Arc Bolt Grenade of the Hunter and the Firebolt Grenade of the Warlock.
The Hunter’s Arc Bolt Grenade will change as follows:
- The base cooldown will be increased from 82 to 182 seconds
- The attached detonation damage will be increased from 150 to 250 (one-hit kill without exotic)
- Damage against PvE combatants increased by 15% (in addition to the base damage increase)
- Projectile tracking removed
- A small aim assist has been added
- Throwing speed increased by 117%
- Now sticks to all surfaces
The opposite direction is the Firebolt Grenade of the Warlock. It has a short cooldown (especially with Tier 10 discipline) and inflicts only minor damage.
- The base cooldown will be reduced from 82 to 64 seconds
- The damage per bolt will be reduced from 90 to 65
- Damage against PvE combatants will be increased by 15%
Each super now regenerates individually: The same applies to supers, which will be divided into tiers to determine which super regenerates faster than others and why. The Well of Radiance will have the fastest cooldown. Spectral Blades, Hammer of Sol, Chaos Reach, Glacier Grenade, and Winter’s Wrath will have the slowest cooldowns in the game.
Here again is the tier list of super regeneration rates with which Bungie will start on December 7:
- Tier 5: Well of Radiance
- Tier 4: Blade Barrage, Storm and Stress
- Tier 3: Shadowshot, Dawnblade, Arcstrider, Nova Bomb, Thundercrash
- Tier 2: Golden Gun, Chaos Reach, Nova Warp, Stormtrance, Daybreak, Sentinel Shield
- Tier 1: Spectral Blades, Fists of Havoc, Hammer of Sol, Glacier Grenade, Winter’s Wrath
Cooldowns will be displayed individually: To ensure it doesn’t get too complicated, you will be able to see the base cooldown of your abilities in-game when you select the subclass screen after the update. On the character screen, the actual ability cooldown will be displayed, as it is influenced by equipped ability and armor stats. In a later version, cooldowns for class abilities will also be visible.
Ability spam in the Crucible will be significantly reduced
Bungie has clarified that the PvE experience should not suffer because of PvP balance. They are generally satisfied with the current values. Therefore, the fantastic space magic with the super cooldown will remain unchanged in PvE, if not slightly higher. Grenade damage against PvE combatants has even been increased by 15% or more.
The cadence of supers and abilities in PvP games, however, is too dominant. Bungie wants to change that so that a victory in the Crucible is no longer solely based on ability spam. Primary weapons play a significant role in heavily reducing ability spam in the Crucible.
- More expression of player skill: Players will need more team coordination, positioning skill, and smart use of their abilities in PvP again starting in December.
- Shooting will take center stage for PvP.
- The “super clock” is a thing of the past: A victory in a PvP match will no longer be determined three minutes after the start of the game by twelve supers simultaneously.
- More super energy regeneration through primary weapons: The energy gain scales based on the damage source (both outgoing and incoming).
Benefits from buildcrafting will be reduced: The upcoming changes will also affect buildcrafting in PvP. Players should be less reliant on their ability energy and that it is regularly available. To make this more sustainable, ability energy regeneration in PvP will be reduced by about 50%. Bungie has aggressively rescaled energy refunds in PvP.
- Super kills with the subclasses Titan’s Striker and Warlock’s Dawnblade will no longer refund as much energy as before.
- Exotics like “Contraverse Hold”, “Frost-EE5”, and “Heart of Inmost Light” will also not recharge your abilities as quickly in PvP.
Armors and mods for PvP will also be changed: The changes for PvP also affect exotics that support ability regeneration as well as all armor mods, such as Bomber, Focusing Lens or Impact Induction. The energy return of these mods will be reduced by about 50% in PvP, depending on the number of mods players use in their build.
This is important: Bungie repeatedly emphasizes that these changes only affect PvP. There will be no changes to refunds for PvE combatants.
Many melee abilities are no longer one-hit kills
Also, Stasis and some melee abilities will receive adjustments to provide more balance in PvP and make them more enticing in PvE.
PvE stasis crystals deal more damage: The most important change regarding Stasis is probably the fact that stasis crystals will now slow players in PvP. Previously, they froze players directly. Additionally, their detonation damage has been reduced in PvP. This means the Hunter’s Shatterdive is no longer a one-hit kill and cannot kill another Guardian at full health.
In PvE, however, these crystals not only freeze enemies, but also deal significantly more damage when you break them. The modifier “Whisper of Chains” also grants you increased damage reduction.
Also, the hand supernova and shoulder charge are no longer one-hit kills. The hand supernova now deals a maximum of 150 damage, which is not enough to kill a player with.
This is what the community says about the balance update
The community is already excited about the upcoming changes. The well-known content creator True Vanguard posted on Twitter about it:
[…] this change in the way super generation works sounds VERY promising. Dealing damage and taking damage to recharge super is a great idea. And different cooldown rates depending on how strong the supers are, that’s brilliant.
G1 Makowski expresses on his Twitter account that Bungie has listened to player feedback.
[…] I am very excited to try out these changes. It looks like they’ve hit the sweet spot between balance and power fantasy. LFFGGG thank you for listening to community feedback.
Bungie’s community manager also had a few comforting words for Titans. He posted on his Twitter account after the release of the TWaB:
Shoulder chargers, don’t be too upset. There is still an exotic that will help you maintain your one-hit kills in the Crucible. It comes at the cost of the exotic slot, but hopefully, it will be of great value to you on December 7. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about this old friend…
This refers to the Wanderfalken boots. All shoulder charge abilities (Seismic Strike, Hammer Strike, or Shield Explosion) will deal bonus damage when activated in the air.
These are extensive changes that will affect abilities, grenades, melee, class ability, and supers. Together with the weapon balance announcement from the previous week, one thing is quite clear: Starting in December, Destiny 2 players will have to rely much more on their unique weapons and less on spamming abilities. This also means that Hunters will need to rethink their 100 mobility builds.
When will the changes go live? The major balance patch goes into effect on December 7, 2021. This will likely be a crucial moment for the entire gameplay of Destiny 2. Additionally, we can expect further adjustments (this was actually not all), which Bungie will release in the coming weeks.
Now we want to hear your opinion. Do you like the changes so far, or is this going in the completely wrong direction? Do you see pros or cons with the introduction of differentiated cooldowns?
