Destiny 2: 30th Anniversary December 7 Update

All info on this page is from Bungie.net

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BUNGIE’S FINAL PATCH NOTE PREVIEW OF 2021

Info below is directly from an article by Bungie:

Our 30th Anniversary release will be our last content drop until The Witch Queen. Sure, we might have a hotfix or two before the year is out, but this will be our last “big” patch. We’re excited for Dares of Eternity and the new Dungeon, but we’re also looking forward to releasing some QOL improvements that have been requested by players for some time. 

Photosensitivity Changes 

  • Screen Explosions 
    • Reduced the bright flash/intense glows. 
    • Updated near fade on particles. 
  • Hive Headshot and Darkness Blast 
    • Hive headshot VFX intensity reduced. 
    • Hive Darkness blast detonation and projectile intensity reduced. 
  • Taken projectiles and muzzle flashes 
    • Arc rifle, Taken slug rifle, Necromancer VFX reduced intensity and normalized lights. 
  • Hallowed Lair Boss Fight 
    • Adjusted intensity/particle near fade for multiple VFX in boss fight. 
    • Area of Effect tell intensity (how players understand the boss is casting Lightning). 
      • Lightning Strike particles and light intensity reduced. 
      • Impact particle near fades updated. 
  • Cloud brightness animation frequencies slowed down. 
    • Decals reduced in intensity. 
  • Scorn VFX 
    • Intensity of spawn/object effects. 
    • Performance and near fades updated on spawn. 
    • Toxic muzzle flash, projectile, performance and intensity tweaks. 
  • Finisher Intensity 
    • Adjusted shader and lights on finisher to not bloom.  
  • Arc Abilities & Screen Effects 
    • Arc object effect debuff have reduced intensity when in close proximity/first person. 
    • Reduced on/off flashings of Arc screen effects. 
    • Reduced on/off flashing of Arc screen shaders. 

Blind Well 

  • Dreaming City weapons now drop more frequently upon successful Blind Well completions. 
    • If you’re looking to round out your Dreaming City weapon collection, we highly recommend giving the Blind Well a few runs! 

Exotic Ornaments: Previews and Purchases Starting next Tuesday, we’ll be adding a new avenue for players to discover and acquire Exotic ornaments. While players may still hop in to the Eververse to purchase Exotic ornaments, they will also be visible and purchasable when inspecting a given Exotic weapon or armor piece. 

As an example, Le Monarque will be receiving a sweet new ornament in the 30th Anniversary release (thanks to a recent community poll for future ornaments – thanks to all who voted!) When booting up Destiny 2, you can inspect your beautiful bow, tab down to the ornaments section, and purchase the ornament straight from the weapon itself. For armor pieces, this can be done either by inspecting the armor itself, or through the Guardian Appearance screen. 

Featured ornaments may be purchased with Silver. If the ornament is available for Bright Dust on a given week, it will also be available for Bright Dust on the inspection screen.

We hope this makes it a little easier to find these items as we continue to build new looks for existing Exotic weapons and armor pieces. 

Rusted Lands: Bring Back the Booms 

  • Fixed an issue where dynamic objects, like barrels or bricks with physics and Hive exploding objects, were missing from this map 

The Corrupted: General Strike Fixes 

  • To reduce the overall length of the strike and make it less painful after hard wipes in the elevator encounter, we have removed the Taken combatants in the dark Ascendant Plane hallway leading up to the elevator. 
  • If a fireteam hard wipes during the final phase of the boss fight in the Ascendant Realm, when they respawn the portal to the Ascendant Realm will take them straight to Phase 2, instead of making them replay the platforming section between Phase 1 and Phase 2. 
  • When a fireteam arrives at the platforming area before the boss fight in The Adytum, any fireteam members or Ghosts left behind in earlier parts of the strike will now be teleported forward to join their fireteam. 
  • When players begin the elevator encounter, any straggler players or their Ghosts will be pulled forward to join their fireteam. 
  • Fixed an issue where Sedia’s shields would regenerate faster than expected on Nightfall difficulties. Her shields now regenerate based on health threshold in Nightfalls, just like they do in Direct Launch or the Vanguard Playlist. 
  • The portal to the Ascendant Realm after Phase 1 of the boss fight should now reliably place players facing the correct direction. 
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing the combatants from walking to part of the right-side area during the first half of the boss-fight. Psions should now spread out a little bit more on that right platform. 
  • Fixed an issue where a Taken Acolytes was spawning and immediately falling to its death during the floating platform area before the boss fight.
  • Fixed an issue where, in certain conditions, the relic would de-spawn and never respawn during the boss phase. 
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue where the relic spawners during the boss would spin before the relic was spawned. 

Wait, What about Dunemarchers?! A few weeks back, we let players know that a few issues with Dunemarchers would be addressed in the upcoming patch. The goal is to remove instances of players being “double chained” by lightning created by these Exotic legs upon a successful Titan punch. Please note that it will still be possible to die to chain lightning when having low health. If you’ve taken damage from a different opponent or been hit by some AOE damage from a well-placed ballistic slam, you may still fall victim to the Dunes… 

  • Once a player is hit by a Dunemarchers lightning chain, they cannot be hit again by Dunemarchers for 2s.
  • Dunemarchers lightning now only chains on targets that are alive.

Icefall Mantle

  • Stasis overshield can now be cancelled by pressing the class-ability input once more.

Next Tuesday, we’ll have the full list of patch notes available for your reading pleasure. Our goal is to get the article out a bit earlier in the morning so our sandbox-focused players can get some eyes on more details for the upcoming Abilities changes. Expect timers for grenades, melee’s, and other abilities that were not covered in our previous TWAB! 

Source: This Week at Bungie – Dec 02, 2021

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30TH ANNIVERSARY UPDATE

Info below is from this article by Bungie

The 30th Anniversary is coming up quick and the new dungeon and cool rewards aren’t the only thing Bungie is adding to the game. They are also making a hefty tuning pass to weapons and perks. They still have a little bit of time before these changes go live on December 7, but in the spirit of transparency let’s get into it early. Please welcome to the stage Design Lead Chris Proctor! -Bungie

ARCHETYPES 

Shotguns – In Season 11 we wanted to see if slugs could be viable in PvE with a high enough reward for the risk of being close and the time it takes to aim at a head. Good news, they’re viable! However, they currently outclass pellet Shotguns and many other Special ammo options (not to mention being part of a dominant boss-melt tactic), we’d like to equalize this a bit. However, since pellet Shotguns are easier to use than slug Shotguns they don’t need as large a bump. 

  • Reduced slug Shotgun PvE damage bonus from 30% to 20%. 
  • Gave pellet Shotguns a 10% PvE damage bonus. 

Linear Fusion Rifles – In Season 14 we bumped these up but believe that while their potential damage output competes numerically, and they’re extra hot right now because of the sweet Particle Deconstruction artifact mod, they can’t compete with the ease of use of other damage options. Last time they got a precision damage buff, this time it’s a flat damage buff. 

  • Increased PvE damage by 10%. 

Caster Swords – We shipped this with a high Heavy attack ammo cost to offset a great melee weapon that also has a good ranged attack, but now believe it’s safe to reduce the ammo cost. 

  • Reduced Heavy attack ammo cost from 8 to 5. 

Bows – In Season 11 we bumped Bow damage up 10% vs  rank-and-file enemies, having seen this in game for a few Seasons it seems safe to nudge them up again. Increased damage vs rank-and-file enemies by ~10%. 
Sidearms and Fusion Rifles – Due to an ancient data entry error, Sidearm and Fusion Rifle projectiles were non-hitscan. Behind the scenes, the engine does math converting a projectile from non-hitscan to hitscan if it would cover a specific distance in one frame, so this would only occur running at 60fps or higher – shoutout to a specific community that provided us with evidence on this issue, you know who you are. 

  • Increased Sidearm and Fusion Rifle projectile speed from 999 to 9999 (which makes them hitscan regardless of framerate). 

EXOTICS 

Vex Mythoclast – Yeah we over buffed this, and while it’s kept in check by the peekshot potential of Hand Cannons etc., it’s definitely melting faces. In playtests we feel it’s still strong enough to be desirable, without feeling free. 

  • Reduced Aim Assist stat by 25. 
  • Reduced the Linear Fusion Rifle mode Aim Assist Cone scalar from 1.1 to 1.05. 
  • Now requires 3 eliminations for full Overcharge instead of 2. 

Fighting Lion – This wasn’t a specific problem, but given increasing frustration with breech Grenade Launchers in Crucible, it seemed like a misstep to say “we hear you” and “here’s an infinite ammo version of that thing you’re frustrated about” in the same patch. It should be clear to everyone that a full nerf isn’t needed, so we’re adjusting it. (Note: This is not a full rollback — there’s still a difference between “almost infinite ammo” and “actually infinite ammo” in how weapons are used, and in playtests where we tried to abuse infinite ammo, it was extraordinarily oppressive, much more so than we expected given that it had a ton of ammo previously.) 

  • Removed the multi-hit requirement  
    • I.e., dealing any damage will grant the buff. 
  • Increased the buff to the reload stat from +50 to +70. 
    • I.e., reload will still be slow if you miss, but if you land any damage, Fighting Lion will reload faster than it did before the nerf. 
  • Increased the buff duration to 7s. 

Arbalest – We always wanted this to have utility in high difficulty PvE, but its lack of Champion mods prevented that, and it’s all about shield breaking already, so we’re fixing that.  

  • Now has intrinsic anti-barrier. 

Sleeper Simulant – The delta between Sleeper and the best Legendary Linear Fusion Rifle wasn’t large enough to make this a compelling option, so while it benefits from the 10% damage buff above (really, this time), we’ve given it some additional love. 

  • Increased magazine size from 3 to 4, increased PvE damage by 6%. 

Suros Regime – Dual Mode Receiver always made Suros a worse 360 RPM auto rifle but fixing that is a straightforward stat bump. This may not make this mode dominant, but at least makes it do what was intended: turn it into a high-impact Auto Rifle. 

  • Dual Mode Receiver mode now grants the following in addition to its current effects: +30 range, +3 zoom. 

Cryosthesia 77K – Given the state of Stasis in PvP at the start of Season 14, we deliberately shipped this weapon in a weak state (which almost physically hurt us, but was the right decision), not wanting to contribute to the problem. Now that we’ve had more time to evaluate the state of the sandbox, we’ve reworked this Exotic to address its weakness in PvE. Specifically, the following pain point: Fire on release with the charge trigger, losing all ammo on firing the freezing shot. 

  • Removed Variable Trigger completely. Now fires on trigger press instead of release (this will make it feel much more responsive). 
  • Charged Shot moved to special reload. Getting a final blow with the Sidearm enables access to the special reload. 
  • Once the Charged Shot is fired, the weapon reverts back to standard Sidearm mode. 
    • This does NOT cost your entire magazine. 
  • Charged Shot now causes an AOE which freezes AI and slows players (direct hits still freeze). 

Leviathan’s Breath – This Bow is underused, so we wanted to give it a bump, while also making its catalyst more interesting (expect this type of catalyst tweak to become more common moving forward). 

  • The catalyst now grants the Archer’s Tempo perk in addition to its other effects. 

Whisper of the Worm – The original DPS king has fallen out of favor, with the delay before the damage buff kicking in making the weapon less usable in short damage phases, and optimal sustained damage requiring all critical hits but not sufficiently rewarding precision. 

  • Reduced delay on activating Whispered Breathing from the catalyst from 2.1s to 1.2s. 
  • White Nail magazine refill changed. Was 3 from inventory but now pulls 2 from inventory and 1 from thin air. 
  • Increased damage in PvE by 10%. 

D.A.R.C.I. – This Sniper Rifle’s damage has fallen behind as other options have been buffed, and its damage is dependent on crits, while also requiring 100% time on target, so we’ve improved its ease of use and bumped the damage up. 

  • Reduced flinch, recoil, and accuracy degradation by 50% while Personal Assistant is active. 
  • Personal Assistant now has a 1s delay before deactivating when off target (was instant). 
  • Increase damage in PvE by 20%. 

Malfeasance – For a weapon all about explosions, this Hand Cannon’s explosions were a bit underwhelming. 

  • Increased explosion damage by 50%. 

Dead Man’s Tale – We’ve seen this Scout Rifle’s usage drop dramatically on console since the recent nerf.So we spent some time tuning it in a way that benefits controller much more than mouse and keyboard (i.e. we don’t believe this buff will improve the weapon much on mouse and keyboard), specifically touching hip fire with the catalyst. 

  • Note: This isn’t actually branching the tuning between input devices, but the bits we touched are either only present or are much more impactful on controller: 
    • Increased reticle friction falloff distance (no effect on mouse and keyboard). 
    • Less recoil (reduced effect on mouse and keyboard). 
    • Improved accuracy (reduced effect on mouse and keyboard). 

Heir Apparent Catalyst – There was a data error in the Heir Apparent catalyst resulting in it granting too much damage resistance against players, this has now been corrected. No effect in PvE. 

  • Reduced damage resistance against players from 75% to 25%. 

Lorentz Driver – The bonus ability energy feels extraneous when the damage buff is so strong, and we’re limiting certain weapon sources of ability energy. 

  • Removed ability energy regeneration on picking up a telemetry. 

Traveler’s Chosen – The ability energy granted from the perk was on a curve that isn’t intuitively understood. Similar to Lorentz Driver, it seemed appropriate to adjust this in PvP. These changes aren’t noticeable in PvE. 

  • Now grants 10% ability energy per stack on activation (was previously more generous on low stacks, less generous on high stacks, the average and amount for 10 stacks are unchanged). 
  • Reduced stacks granted on a Guardian defeat from 3 to 2. 

PERKS 

Adrenaline Junkie – This perk wasn’t performing as well as intended, and the path of least resistance was making it live up to its dev name (grenadebuckler). 

  • Eliminations with the weapon can add single damage stacks or extend existing ones. 
  • Grenade eliminations boost the stacks immediately to x5. 
  • Lowered the duration to compensate for weapon activation. 

Vorpal Weapon – A perk that grants 15% bonus damage against all targets I’m going to use my Heavy weapon on? This was a non-choice and sucked the air out of the room for other damage perks. At the same time, it was failing its original role: giving players a reason to run a primary weapon against tough targets. 

  • Was 15% damage on all weapons. 
  • Now 10% on heavy weapons, 15% on special, 20% on primary. 
  • No change to damage vs players in Super. 

Whirlwind Blade – This was too obviously the best Sword damage perk around, so while we’re fine with it being good at sustained damage, we’ve pulled it back for shorter fights. 

  • Increased number of stacks needed to hit maximum damage from 5 to 10. 

Pulse Monitor – What if instead of activating on what feels like a fail state, this activated on a state you’ll be in in almost every encounter, even if you’re winning? 

  • Changed threshold for activation from 90% health to 30% shield (i.e., this now requires much less damage to trigger). 

MODS 

Quick Access Sling – The usage on this mod is very telling — it’s extensively used on Bows and breech Grenade Launchers, and barely used at all on other weapons. At the same time, we’ve pulled down some options players had for improving their swap speed, and wanted to make an option available for building towards that on all Legendary weapons. 
We’ll be watching how this feels in the wild and may revisit it later. 

  • Functionality changed: 
    • Was: +100 handling, 0.9 * ready/stow/aim down sights time for 0.4s after running out of ammo. 
    • Now: 0.9 * ready/stow time all the time. 
  • This change also applies to the Swap Mag perk, as they use the same perk behind the scenes. 

Full Auto Retrofit – We’ve seen plenty of requests for an accessibility option allowing full auto fire, particularly on fast-firing semiautomatic weapons. We have a settings option in the works for a season after The Witch Queen launches but decided to put in a stopgap to help players until we are able to ship it. Please keep these types of suggestions coming! 

  • Added a Full Auto Retrofit weapon mod that enables full auto while the trigger is held, usable on Legendary Hand Cannons, Sidearms, Scout Rifles and Pulse Rifles. 
  • This is unlocked by default for all players. 

THE NEAR FUTURE 

Annual expansions are a good time for system-level changes, since they get so much more playtest time over a longer duration compared to a normal Season.  

Bungie doesn’t like that the desire for Exotic catalysts is largely driven by the orbs of power generation they provide, and have something in the works to let players build around that limitation. 

Weapon differentiation — if I have two Void adaptive Hand Cannons, one from the Suros foundry, and one from the latest raid, why do I care about one more than the other? The stats tend to be fairly close. Perk pools can be different, but there are only so many perks, and it’s a stretch to say the perk pool gives the weapon its identity. They have got something shipping on all new and reissued weapons in The Witch Queen that addresses this issue directly and are working to expand the same solution to all weapons that drop in the future. 

Bungie mentioned in the last patch notes that they are not done with Special ammo economy in PvP, and have a further tweak coming that should help bring down the amount of ammo floating around. 

Exotic primary weapons already advance Ammo Finder mods much faster, but they want them to feel better in hard PvE content and are adjusting all of them to reach this goal. 

They are adjusting some Exotics, some that consistently top the PvP usage charts in an oppressive way, some that had their perks limited to a degree that’s no longer warranted. (We’re looking at you, Chaperone…) 

All info above is by Bungie and directly from https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/50820

Info below is directly from This Week at Bungie article by Bungie on Nov. 18, 2021

NEW LEGENDS WILL RISE 

Hey all, Kevin Yanes here to give you a quick intro before I hand off to fellow designers Eric Smith and Mike Humbolt. A few TWABs ago I gave a brief roadmap leading towards our 30th Anniversary, The Witch Queen, and beyond. A new roadmap update will likely not happen for some time after this as the team is heads down on more than a few initiatives. One of the initiatives you’re going to hear about today is an adjustment to ability regeneration as a whole, and a refocusing of Crucible gameplay on weapons. The team has touched almost every piece of abilities content with this release, and I’m fairly convinced that this will be our biggest balance patch ever.  

Earlier this year, we heard overwhelming feedback that the Crucible has been largely dominated by ability usage. Players felt that abilities were firing off too frequently, with too much potency, and too little investment. At its core Destiny is a game about space magic, so any adjustments to our abilities must be made with care. We believe the changes we have made will keep the heart of what makes Destiny abilities fun intact, while shaving down some of the excessive cases we’ve seen out there. I feel it’s important to reinforce here that part of Destiny’s strength is that it’s a live game and we’re able to iterate and improve the game as time goes on. This means that we’re building new foundational systems like the one you’ll read about today with that in mind. We’re giving ourselves more balancing knobs to tune than we’ve ever had before, and we hope you’ll start to see why that’s so important as you read on.   

We hope 30th anniversary shakes up the sandbox in new ways and gets you excited for even more changes coming in the The Witch Queen. The team will likely go heads down for a bit as we still have Solar and Arc to 3.0ify alongside other insanely cool initiatives. The team takes player feedback seriously and as Destiny players ourselves, we have an intrinsic fire to keep improving things for everyone. We hope what you’ve seen over the last year reinforces that this team is both about competitive balance and making incredibly dope new shit. Ok, now I am going to fade away into the ether as Eric Smith takes us into what’s coming next! 

THE WINDS OF CHANGE 

Eric: In 30th Anniversary, we’ve changed the way ability cooldowns work. Up until now, cooldowns across individual ability types (grenade, melee, class, Super) have generally been identical between all abilities of the same type. For example, all the grenades in today’s Destiny 2 share the same cooldown time (with the exception of Stasis grenades). This shared cooldown means that all grenades need to have roughly the same power output because they have the same time “cost.” For the 30th Anniversary, we’ve made a change that allows us to tune the cooldown of each ability separately. This gives us a new knob to turn when balancing abilities that are too powerful or not powerful enough. Now that we have this new system in place, we’ve done a cooldown-tuning pass of all the subclass abilities in the game, tuning each ability’s cooldown time against its power output. We’ve also tuned ability power outputs and assigned cooldown times accordingly. The best example of this might be the Flux Grenade. Take a look: 

Flux Grenade 

  • Increased base cooldown from 82 seconds to 182 seconds. 
  • Increased attached detonation damage from 150 to 250 (one-shot kill in PvP). 
  • Increased damage vs PvE combatants by 15% (on top of base damage increase). 
  • Removed projectile tracking. 
  • Added a small amount of aim assist. 
  • Increased throw speed by 117%. 
  • Now sticks to all surfaces. 

As you can see, the Flux Grenade now has a very long cooldown, but it’s a one-shot kill in PvP if you manage to land it. It also hits harder in PvE. As a reminder, the Flux Grenade is currently only available to Hunter Arcstriders.  
Now here’s an example in the opposite direction. The Firebolt Grenade: 
Firebolt Grenade 

  • Reduced base cooldown from 82 seconds to 64 seconds. 
  • Reduced damage per bolt from 90 to 65. 
  • Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 15%. 

The Firebolt Grenade has a low cooldown time (especially at tier-10 discipline), and it also has low damage output. 
These kinds of varied cooldowns and power outputs should make the game feel more dynamic and give more depth to buildcrafting. To make buildcrafting around cooldowns easier, you’ll now be able to see the base cooldown time of your abilities when selecting them on the subclass screen. 

On the Character screen, you’ll see the actual cooldown time of your abilities as they’re affected by your equipped ability and armor stats. 

A couple things to note about cooldown times in the UI: 

  • The “Base Cooldown” time is actually the cooldown time at tier 3 of the relevant armor stat (Strength, Discipline, etc.) This is because the system technically penalizes you for tanking your stats below tier 3, in which case your cooldown would be longer than the base. We are looking into updating this to be more intuitive in a future release.   
  • Cooldown times for class abilities are not currently displayed due to a technical issue. We plan to fix this in a future release. 

We’ve been calling this the Variable Ability Cooldowns system, and we think it’s the beginning of a big change for the Destiny 2 sandbox. It’s a foundational change in preparation to move the Light subclasses over to the Subclass 3.0 system that Stasis currently uses. For the 30th Anniversary, we’re using it to change the cooldown of nearly every ability in the game.  
One of our design goals this year was to reduce the amount of ability spam in the Crucible and put the focus back on gunplay. To this end, we’ve made ability cooldown times longer on average than they were before. We don’t want the PvE experience to suffer for the sake of PvP balance though, so we’ve tried to compensate where possible. For example, we’ve increased all grenade damage vs. PvE combatants by 15% or more. This should make grenades feel like bigger power moments than they do in today’s game. Melee ability cooldowns haven’t been increased quite as much as grenade cooldowns, and some of the less-aggressive melee attacks have lower cooldowns than before. Class ability cooldowns have also generally increased, but the changes vary depending on which ability is equipped.

We’re excited to see how these changes feel once they hit the live game, and we’ll be monitoring and adjusting accordingly in future releases. I’ll now pass the mic to Mike Humbolt to talk about big changes to Super cooldowns. 

INTO THE FRAY 

Mike: Since Destiny’s launch in 2014, Super energy gain has been almost entirely passive. Your Intellect stat dictates how quickly your Super regenerates, with a few other elements like Orbs of Power, armor and weapon perks, and defeating targets as active sources. This system worked well for a long time but has issues that have grown more obvious as the game has evolved and overall player skill—especially skill in evaluating how to play around their character build—has increased.  

Example: In high-stakes game modes like Trials of Osiris or Survival where each life is precious, passive play becomes more common as players sit back and wait for their Supers to close out a tied game. In general, we want the most efficient way to gain Super energy to be actively engaging in combat. That doesn’t mean you need to win every fight, but we want you to try.

To get us closer to that goal we’re making a big change to the system. Super regeneration will still have a passive component scaled by your Intellect stat, but at a significantly reduced rate. On top of your passive regeneration, you will also gain Super energy by dealing and taking damage to or from opponents. 
Here are a few key goals for this new system: 

  • In PvE, Super uptime should be relatively unchanged from the live game, if not slightly higher.  

We are pretty happy with the frequency of Supers in most PvE content, and don’t want to make big changes right now on that front. 

  • Everybody should get at least one Super in a 6v6 match that goes to the score or time limit as long as they engage in regular combat. 

Expression of power through using your awesome space magic is a core part of what makes Destiny special, and we’re not looking to change that. We think the cadence of Supers in 6v6 modes is slightly too high, but we don’t expect a dramatic change in Super uptime for most players in playlists like Control or Iron Banner as a result of these changes. 

  • Supers should be less frequent in 3v3 modes than in the live game, where two Supers per match is a fairly regular occurrence.  

These modes are about expression of player skill. We want that skill to be primarily about team coordination, positioning, intelligent use of your abilities, and—first and foremost—gunplay. While there is absolutely skill in outmaneuvering active Supers or playing around Super uptime, Supers in general are purposefully designed to be accessible power fantasies for all players, and that inherently creates asymmetry that we need to account for in more competitive play.  

  • Primary weapon play should have a noticeable benefit in Super energy regeneration.  

With this new system, we are scaling energy gains up and down granularly based on the source of the damage (both outgoing and incoming). Outgoing Primary weapon damage has a significantly higher return of Super-energy-per-damage-point than any other type of damage. 

  • Different Supers should come online at different times in a given match, and your Super of choice should have an impact on how quickly it regenerates.  

To reiterate what we mentioned above, we have always lived in a world where nearly every Super in the game shares the same cooldown, regardless of their efficacy in a given game mode. Now that we have made the foundationalchange to differentiate cooldowns per individual ability, we want to address the “Super o’ clock” issue in the Crucible, where three minutes into a match twelve Supers are simultaneously popped and chaos ensues. We also want to open up buildcrafting space where your Super’s cooldown time is an important element in your decision-making beyond how high you want your Intellect stat to be. 

To that end, we’ve separated Supers into cooldown tiers that affect both the passive regeneration rate as well as the damage-based regeneration rate. This tiering was primarily influenced by each Super’s kill potential, where most one-off Supers are unlikely to wipe a team or a room of combatants, but a long-lasting roaming Super can and should have a tradeoff as a result.  
We’ve also taken into account the general potency of the subclass kits where possible. For example, later on we’ll discuss Shatterdive and changes we’re making which impact how effective the Revenant Hunter is in the neutral game, causing us to shift some of that potency to the Super’s uptime as a result.

It’s also important to stress that this is the first iteration of this system – where any given Super will fall into the recharge rate tiers will change over time as we continue tuning. These are the Super regeneration rate tiers that we’re launching with on December 7:  

  • Tier 5 (Fastest Regeneration) 
    • Well of Radiance 
  • Tier 4 
    • Blade Barrage 
    • Silence and Squall 
  • Tier 3 
    • Shadowshot 
    • Burning Maul 
    • Arc Staff 
    • Nova Bomb 
    • Thundercrash 
  • Tier 2 
    • Golden Gun 
    • Chaos Reach 
    • Nova Warp 
    • Stormtrance 
    • Daybreak 
    • Sentinel Shield 
  • Tier 1 (Slowest Regeneration) 
    • Spectral Blades 
    • Fist of Havoc 
    • Hammer of Sol 
    • Glacial Quake 
    • Winter’s Wrath 

As Kevin and Eric mentioned, this sets us up for the future as we move towards the Subclass 3.0 system. As an example, for the 30th Anniversary, things like the Deadfall and Moebius Quiver variants of Shadowshot will share the same cooldown tier, but with the Void 3.0 launch in February, they could exist in different tiers based on their potency. By that same token, Ward of Dawn—which is currently tied to Sentinel Shield’s cooldown—will be moved into the Tier 5 group as a standalone Super with Void 3.0. 

TAKING IT DOWN A NOTCH 

Mike: Let’s talk about non-Super abilities for a moment. In the 5/27/2021 TWAB, Kevin shared our foundational pillars for the role we want abilities to play in the PvP combat sandbox. As a quick refresher, this is where we want to be: 

  • Weapons are the primary way players engage with combat. 
  • Non-Super abilities accentuate or augment the combat but should rarely solve an encounter by themselves. 
  • Abilities have clear strengths, weakness, and counterplay. 
  • Buildcrafting is rewarding within the moment-to-moment combat loop of Destiny. 

We’re not there yet. In general, ability uptime in the Crucible is too high for their current potency and it’s difficult to understand when an opponent will regain an ability after using it. Some of that uptime comes from passive cooldowns, but many of our outliers also come from elements of the buildcrafting system that have previously been unified in ability energy returns between PvE and PvP.   
With the 30th Anniversary, we’ve taken a pass at a significant number of these elements. Across subclass perks, armor mods, and Exotic armor pieces, we have tuned PvP energy regeneration separately from their base PVE values, which we are not changing.   

Per our pillars, we want buildcrafting to be rewarding, but in its current state, the combinatorial nature of these perks and items leads to an unsustainable ability energy economy that diminishes weapon play in PvP. For this tuning pass, we’ve focused primarily on items that feed into self-perpetuating loops of ability energy gains. Here’s a brief list of the affected items: 

Subclass Neutral Game Perks – These perks have had their ability energy regeneration reduced by roughly 50% in PvP. We targeted perks that can either activate out of combat, with a single button press, or those that were returning amounts of ability energy that were significantly out of band. 

  • Whisper of Shards (Stasis Fragment) 
  • Arc Web (Stormcaller Warlock) 
  • Rising Storm (Stormcaller Warlock) 
  • Ionic Traces (Stormcaller Warlock) 
  • Electrostatic Surge (Stormcaller Warlock) 
  • Aftershocks (Striker Titan) 
  • Inertia Override (Striker Titan) 
  • Benevolent Dawn (Dawnblade Warlock) 
  • Practice Makes Perfect (Gunslinger Hunter) 
  • Dark Matter (Voidwalker Warlock) 

Subclass In-Super Perks – These perks scale down energy returns as you get kills in your Super (i.e., the first kill while in Super returns more Super energy than the third kill). These perks often result in Supers being able to roam the map for much longer than is healthy for the game and mean that a victim can frequently die to an active Super, respawn on another side of the map, and be killed by that same Super again. We’ve rescaled this energy refund decay more aggressively in PvP so that the minimum energy refund is reached roughly twice as quickly. No change has been made to the refund decay against PvE combatants. 

  • Everlasting Fire (Dawnblade Warlock)  
  • Trample (Striker Titan) 

Exotic Armor – Each Exotic below had a custom tuning pass focused on their ability energy return in PvP: 

  • Frost-EE5 – No longer stacks multiplicatively in PvP with other regeneration buffs, is now an additive scalar. 
    • No change in PvE. 
  • Heart of Inmost Light – Ability energy regeneration scalars reduced by 50% in PvP.  
    • Reworked so activating multiple abilities will now reliably result in multiple Empowered stacks. The stacking behavior was previously a bug, but this seemed like a good opportunity to promote it to a feature. 
  • Contraverse Hold – Duration of the grenade regeneration buff is no longer random between 1 and 4 seconds and is now a fixed duration of 1.75 seconds. Reduced grenade energy regeneration scalar by 50% in PvP.  
    • The previous average duration due to weighting was 1.71 seconds, with a 1 second duration being most common, so this should improve the Exotic’s consistency across the game with a lower return in PvP. 
  • Doomfang Pauldrons – Reduced Super energy gain on activation when an opposing player is killed by a Void melee by 50%. 
    • No change in PvE. 
  • Shinobu’s Vow – Reduced grenade energy gain on hits vs players by 66%. 
    • No change in PvE. 
  • Crown of Tempests – Grenade, melee, and Super energy regeneration scalar buff duration reduced from 7s to 4s in PvP. 
    • No change in PvE. 
  • The Stag – Reduced class ability energy refund on shield break by 50% in PvP. 
    • No change in PvE. 

Armor Mods – In general, we’ve reduced energy returns from these mods by roughly 50% in PvP, depending on the number of copies of the mod you have slotted. 

  • Melee Kickstart 
  • Grenade Kickstart 
  • Utility Kickstart 
  • Perpetuation 
  • Bolstering Detonation 
  • Focusing Strike 
  • Bomber 
  • Outreach 
  • Dynamo 
  • Distribution 
  • Momentum Transfer 
  • Impact Induction 

This is a big foundational shift for us and we expect to do a lot of tuning as time goes on, so as always, we’ll be on the lookout for how things are feeling across the game and will adjust accordingly.

Now, I’ll throw it back over to Eric for some spicy details on more abilities tuning changes you can expect with the 30th Anniversary. 

DANG THIS IS LONG 

Eric: In case you haven’t caught on yet, the list of abilities changes we’re making in the 30th Anniversary is massive. We’ve touched nearly every ability in the game in some small way. We won’t go over the full patch notes because it’s mind-numbingly long, but let’s take a look at some of the more provocative balance changes. 

STASIS CRYSTALS 

Stasis crystals do a lot. On top of freezing players when they’re created, they also block line-of-sight, block movement, and act as explosive barrels. It’s all a bit too much for PvP. With this release, Stasis crystals will now slow players instead of freezing them, and they’ll do much less damage to players when they detonate.  
As far as PvE is concerned, Stasis crystals will still freeze combatants, and we’ve increased Stasis crystal detonation damage vs PvE combatants. Looking at the numbers, it was almost always better to shoot directly at a combatant instead of at a crystal near a combatant. This change should help crystals better live out their explosive-barrel dreams.  

Stasis Crystals 

  • While forming, Stasis crystals now slow nearby players instead of freezing them. 
    • They still freeze PvE combatants while forming. 
  • Increased slow/freeze radius while forming from 1.75m to 2.6m. 
  • Reduced crystal detonation damage vs players by ~55%. 
  • Increased crystal detonation damage vs. PvE combatants by ~60%. 
  • Increased crystal detonation radius from 6m to 8m. 

HUNTER

DODGE 

In order to meet our goal of less ability spam in the Crucible, we’re reducing how often Hunters can dodge. Gambler’s Dodge is getting hit the hardest here because it can completely circumvent melee-ability cooldown times. It also completely changes the Hunter’s silhouette in PvP, making it very powerful. In addition, Hunter dodges will no longer break projectile tracking, meaning it’s less of a get-out-of-jail-free card when a tracking rocket or another slow-moving projectile is flying toward you. 

Hunter Dodge 

  • No longer breaks projectile tracking. 
  • Marksman’s Dodge 
    • Tier 10 Mobility cooldown increased from 11s to 14s. 
    • Base cooldown unchanged at 29s. 
  • Gambler’s Dodge 
    • Tier 10 Mobility cooldown increased from 11s to 18s. 
    • Base cooldown duration from 29s to 38s. 

REVENANT 

You guessed it—the Stasis Crystal changes detailed earlier mean that the Hunter Revenant’s Shatterdive will now almost never kill a full-health Guardian. Shatterdive may still kill if the Hunter is using Whisper of Fissures, Touch of Winter, and the target is in the very center of all six crystals, but that has been incredibly rare in our playtesting. 
I think we can all agree that Shatterdive was too powerful—we tried a number of fixes over the past few releases, but the truth is that as long as Stasis crystals froze players and Shatterdive shattered players, it was going to be too good. But it’s not all rainclouds and puddles for Shatterdive Hunters—the increase in Stasis crystal damage vs PvE combatants makes Shatterdive a great choice in PvE. On top of that, we’re increasing Shatterdive damage vs frozen combatants by 100%. Have fun melting frozen monsters. 

Shatterdive 

  • Much less lethal vs players due to Stasis crystal changes. 
  • Much more lethal vs combatants due to Stasis crystal changes. 
  • Increased shatter damage vs frozen PvE combatants by 100%. 

Grim Harvest Aspect 

  • Increased fragment slots from 2 to 3 

TOP-TREE ARCSTRIDER 

This change to the Combination Blow melee was made possible by our Variable Ability Cooldowns system. Previously, top-tree Arcstriders were basically required to use Gambler’s Dodge with this tree. We hope this change will make this ability viable even if you’re using Marksman’s Dodge. 

Combination Blow 

  • Reduced base cooldown duration from 96s to 15s. 

BOTTOM-TREE NIGHTSTALKER 

The Vanish in Smoke melee has low damage output but high utility. Our data shows that this subclass tree is struggling in PvP, so we’ve decided to increase how often Pathfinder Hunters can go invisible. 

Vanish in Smoke melee 

  • Reduced base cooldown from 96s to 75s. 

TITAN 

SHOULDER CHARGES 

In our effort to put the emphasis back on gunplay in the Crucible, we’ve decided to reduce the number of abilities that can one-shot a full-health Guardian. As such, the Titan’s three shoulder charges are no longer one-shot abilities in PvP. To balance this out, we’ve made the shoulder charges quicker to activate, easier to hit with, and travel farther. We’ve also increased their damage in PvE. In our experience, they’re still powerful in PvP in combination with short-range weapons and when used as a movement tool. We wanted to curb shoulder charge’s potency now that we’ve tuned down shotguns as their current counter. We’ll be monitoring the data and feedback and adjusting accordingly. 

All Shoulder Charges 

  • No longer one-shot players. 
  • Sprint activation time reduced from 1.5s to 1.25s. 
  • Increased range from 5.5m to 6.8m. 
  • Targeting-cone width increased by ~10%. 
  • Increased damage vs PvE combatants by 25%. 

Seismic Strike (Arc Shoulder Charge) 

  • Reduced AoE damage from 90 to 40. 
  • Now blinds enemies in the area on hit. 
  • Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s. 

Shield Bash (Void Shoulder Charge) 

  • Reduced AoE damage from 90 to 40. 
  • Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s. 

Hammer Strike (Solar Shoulder Charge) 

  • Reduced direct impact damage from 170 to 120. 
  • Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s. 

BARRICADE 

Even with the Rally Barricade changes we made in Season of the Lost, using this ability during a firefight is still a risky proposition. We’ve spaced out the cooldowns of the two barricades to make the choice slightly more interesting. 

Towering Barricade 

  • Increased base cooldown duration from 37s to 40s. 

Rally Barricade 

  • Reduced base cooldown duration from 37s to 32s. 

BEHEMOTH 

We agree with the general community feedback that the Behemoth could use some love in PvE. We’re hoping these changes to Diamond Lance make this Aspect a top-tier PvE pick. Shiver Strike is getting a big damage buff during the Glacial Quake Super. The Whisper of Chains fragment buff here is also very spicy and should help the Behemoth’s survivability in pinnacle PvE activities. Whisper of Chains can be used by all Stasis subclasses, but making crystals is kind of the Behemoth’s thing so we’re listing it here. 

Diamond Lance 

  • Increased fragment slots from 1 to 3. 
  • Now spawns a Diamond Lance upon: 
    • Killing a PvE combatant with a Stasis weapon. 
    • Killing three players with Stasis weapons in a single life. 
    • Killing an enemy with a Stasis ability. 
    • Shattering an enemy. 

Shiver Strike 

  • Increased Shiver Strike damage while in Glacial Quake by 50%. 

Whisper of Chains 

  • Increased damage resistance vs PvE combatants from 25% to 40%. 

BOTTOM-TREE STRIKER 

This class is absolutely dominating PvP this Season, so we’re turning it down a notch. The changes we made to Fist of Havoc in Season of the Lost helped top tree as intended, but they also turned bottom tree into a monster. On top of that, the Stasis nerfs and other changes we’ve made over the past few releases created a power vacuum that Striker Bot filled with extreme prejudice. We hope these changes put Striker Bot back into the pack instead of towering high above everything else. 

Knockout 

  • Melee lunge range and melee damage bonus now deactivate after a melee kill. 

Trample 

  • Super-energy gain from Fist of Havoc light attack now decays to minimum amount over 3 PvP kills (down from 7). 

Frontal Assault melee 

  • Increased base cooldown from 82s to 106s. 

Fist of Havoc  

  • Heavy-slam radius reduced from 8m to 6m (bottom-tree only). 

WARLOCK 

UNCHARGED MELEE 

Warlocks have been losing slap fights for too long. Yes, up until now, Warlocks haven’t been able to melee back-to-back as quickly as Titans and Hunters. NO MORE! With the 30th Anniversary, Warlocks will be able to melee just as quickly as Titans and Hunters. We’re also removing the 1m range extension Warlocks received to compensate. We still think the idea of each class having unique qualities to their melee is interesting, but we want to do it in a way that won’t cause one class to consistently lose slap fights. Maybe someday in the future. 

Uncharged Melee 

  • Reduced melee range from 5.5m to 4.5m (now matches Hunter and Titan). 
  • Reduced suppression time after melee (can now melee back-to-back at the same speed as Hunter and Titan). 

MIDDLE-TREE VOIDWALKER 

In our effort to do away with one-shot abilities that are frustrating to be hit by, Handheld Supernova is also getting the Shoulder Charge treatment. That’s right—Handheld Supernova will no longer one-shot in PvP. To compensate, it now travels farther and pushes enemies back. We also increased the damage of Handheld Supernova and Nova Warp vs Champion and Boss combatants. We had increased their damage in Season of the Lost, but it felt like they could use even more juice. 

Handheld Supernova 

  • Reduced damage vs players. 
  • Now deals 150 damage max. 
  • Increased damage vs Champions and Bosses by 30%. 
  • Increased projectile range from 12m to 14m. 
  • Now pushes targets away from the Warlock on detonation. 

Nova Warp 

  • Increased damage vs Champions and Bosses by 30%. 

SHADEBINDER 

We feel the Shadebinder is in a pretty good place with a couple of exceptions. One—Winter’s Wrath is still the best Super for shutting down other Supers, and it’s not even close. Winter’s Wrath must now freeze and shatter other Supers twice to kill them. As a general rule, roaming Supers shouldn’t be able to one-shot other Supers. Two—the Penumbral Blast melee is too difficult to land against PvE combatants. When we made the ability harder to land in PvP, it had a negative effect on the PvE experience. We’ve increased the proximity-detonation radius against PvE combatants to make it easier to land. 

All three Stasis grenades now have different cooldown times, so we made a change to Bleak Watcher to avoid a situation where it was always best to use the grenade with the shortest cooldown time. This results in an overall cooldown increase for Bleak Watcher, which fits its incredibly high-power output. 

Winter’s Wrath 

  • Reduced shatter-pulse damage vs enemy Supers. 
  • Must now generally freeze and shatter all Supers twice to eliminate.

Penumbral Blast 

  • Increased proximity-detonation radius vs PvE combatants by 100%.

Bleak Watcher 

  • While Bleak Watcher is equipped, all Stasis grenades charge at Glacier Grenade rate. 

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW, FOLKS! 

Eric: Okay, I think we covered the big stuff. There are a bunch of other small changes coming in the 30th Anniversary, but we will cover everything else in the official patch notes. As you can see, the team has been hard at work adjusting the sandbox globally. We hope the picture we’re painting here reinforces the statements we’ve made in the past: “The sandbox is going to evolve alongside the game.” As we hit Year 5 and beyond, this statement will become even more true with new and exciting changes coming with the Subclass 3.0 experience. Stay tuned for the patch notes when the 30th Anniversary goes live on December 7! 

Source/Credit: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/50829

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ARMOR MODS UPDATE: LET’S TALK GLIMGLAM

All info below is from an article by Bungie

Starting next week, you can swap out your armor mods instantaneously, at any time, with no Glimmer or currency required. The goal of the team is to better enable build crafting on the fly, whether you be loading into a PvP match or prepping for a Nightfall.

Bungie has also seized this opportunity to make “free and reversible” socket actions available to all 3rd party Destiny 2 apps starting on December 7. So, in addition to equipping gear and transferring items to/from the Vault, your favorite D2 apps will be able to apply Armor 2.0 mods, weapon perks, shaders, ornaments, and ghost projections on your behalf. 

While this may not be a solution to every build craft feedback item, it is a step forward as the team looks to dialing in build crafting and loadout opportunities for Destiny 2 in the future. The Bungie team will also be looking at Artifact mod resets and costs in the future, but general armor mod swapping is a great first step. 

As Bungie said earlier, this enables third party community apps to change mods at the tap of a finger on your phone screen, or the click of a mouse on browsers.

Source: This Week at Bungie – Dec 02, 2021

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CROSS PLAY: TEXT CHAT CHECK-IN  

All info below is from an article by Bungie

It’s been a while since our last Cross Play update from the Social team. In a previous TWAB, they provided a nice roadmap of what to expect as we brought Cross Play online in Season of the Lost, but also on what to expect for future updates. Today we have a quick run-through on text chat and what to expect in the winter timeframe. Hello everyone, the Social team wanted to give you a quick update on our progress towards a unified text chat system. We recently rolled out cross-platform text chat between our two PC platforms, Steam and the Microsoft Store. We also let you know we’d be adding display-only support and then USB keyboard support in ‘winter.’  So, what does ‘winter’ mean? It’s time for an update! 

  • Display-only text chat will be available for all consoles with the release of the 30th Anniversary Pack on December 7.  
  • With the launch of The Witch Queen, USB keyboard text chat will arrive for consoles.

What is Display only text chat on consoles (30th Anniversary)? 

  • You’ll be able to turn on text chat display in your settings.
  • By using the Ghost menu, you’ll be able bring up the display again if you’d missed a message.
  • You will not be able to send messages, but you will finally be able to read what your PC fireteam mates are chatting about.

What does USB keyboard text chat on consoles mean (The Witch Queen)? 

  • You will NOT be able to move your character via the keyboard.
  • You’ll be able to invoke the text chat window by pressing enter.
  • You’ll be able to text chat using the full suite of chat channels in Destiny.
  • You will be able to pick from five different font size display options.
  • IME support will follow in an update shortly after Witch Queen.

We can’t wait for our console friends to be able to join into text chat when in Cross Play.  Now you’ll be able to see raid callouts in the middle of an encounter, or set up some strategy before starting a round of Trials. As always, keep the feedback coming, as these features roll out.  

–The Social Team 

Source: This Week at Bungie – Dec 02, 2021

This page may be periodically updated before the update on December 07, 2021.

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