Destiny 2: Arc 3.0 Subclass Update

Now Available

Check out patch notes for Update 6.2.0.1 to learn more about the latest changes to arc subclasses.

Hunter

Flow like lightning. Strike like thunder.

• Arc Staff: Form a staff of pure Arc energy and acrobatically take out your foes. [Block] : Hold to deflect incoming projectiles with your Arc staff.
• Gathering Storm: Hurl your Arc Staff forward, embedding it into surfaces or large targets and jolting nearby targets. After a short time, a devastating lightning bolt strikes the staff, overcharging it with Arc energy. While overcharged, your staff discharges lightning at nearby foes.

Abilities

Titan (Striker)

At close quarters, a fist is better than any gun.

Supers

• Fists of Havoc: Supercharge your fists and slam the ground with the force of a maelstrom. While active: [Light Attack] : Quickly charge forward, dealing damage to any impacted targets. [Heavy Attack] : Slam your fists to the ground, dealing damage in an area around you and leaving aftershocks in your wake. Performing a slam from the air deals additional damage.
• Thundercrash: Hurtle through the air like a missile and crash into targets to inflict meteoric damage.

Aspects

• Touch of Thunder
• Juggernaut
• Knockout

Fragments

• Spark of Beacons
• Spark of Resistance
• Spark of Momentum
• Spark of Shock
• Spark of Ions
• Spark of Discharge
• Spark of Frequency
• Spark of Focus
• Spark of Recharge
• Spark of Magnitude
• Spark of Amplitude
• Spark of Feedback
• Spark of Volts
• Spark of Brilliance

Warlock

Harmony within, hurricane without.

Supers

• Stormtrance: Chain Arc Lightning from your hands to electrify targets with devastating streams of Arc Light that intensify over time. Casting Stormtrance creates a shockwave underneath you. [Sprint] : Teleport forward, consuming a small amount of Super energy.
• Chaos Reach: Unleash a long-range channeled beam of concentrated Arc energy. [Super] while active to deactivate your Super early, saving Super energy.

Abilities

Aspects

Fragments

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INSIDE ARC 3.0

from Bungie.net

The Destiny 2 development team has been hard at work on this subclass revamp, making sure that the new version of the Arc subclass brings the thunder.

“Arc is really just, ‘go fast and hit stuff,’” said Destiny designer Sam Dunn, when asked about the core fantasy that powered the Arc 3.0 revamp. “We call it the ‘hold W’ subclass. Everything is built around moving forward and enabling aggression and those abilities.” 

Guardians who have spent some time with the revamped versions of Void or Solar (or with Stasis, for that matter) know the basics of where to begin with Arc 3.0. As with those other subclass options, Arc 3.0 will give players more flexibility over customizing their Guardian’s powers to suit their playstyle, through the introduction of Aspects and Fragments. In addition, new and returning class and melee abilities have been built or refactored for the modern Destiny 2 sandbox, making the subclass more powerful than ever. 

New Abilities

Buff

The new buff—amplified— is key to the Arc 3.0 experience. An amplified Guardian is faster—both in terms of movement speed and in terms of their weapon handling—and more agile, able to perform long slides that can function as a devastating setup for some of the attacks that follow. Unlike other damage type buffs (Void’s invisibility or Solar’s radiant), players don’t need to equip any specific Aspects or Fragments to become amplified. By default, all Arc classes become amplified after rapidly defeating targets with any Arc damage, and equipped Aspects and Fragments offer additional ways to become or benefit from being amplified.

After sprinting for a few seconds, an amplified Guardian will gain another boost in speed (as designer Mike Humbolt put it, “basically as fast as we can make our sprint animation go”), gaining a sizable PvE damage resistance buff, and enabling an even-longer slide ability. (Imagine full-on Metroid speed booster mode, only Samus is now wielding Gjallarhorn). Even if a player is no longer amplified, as long as they keep sprinting, the Speed Booster buff will stay active. 

“[In development], Speed Booster probably took the longest for me to get on board with in that you were already moving faster to begin with,” said Humbolt, when asked about the process of developing and refining the verbs for Arc 3.0. “Adding PvE damage resistance to Speed Booster to cement it as a strong gap-closing tool and seeing it being used to move from one cover to the next in playtesting really brought it all together for me. You start sprinting and then you hear this audio swell start to come up and then you’re like a jet engine, rocketing around the arena. It’s awesome.”

Debuffs

On the debuffs side, Arc 3.0 is bringing two to the party: blind and jolt. Blinded opponents in PvE won’t be able to see (naturally) and will also be disoriented and unable to fire their weapon. In PvP, blinded opponents will have their screen whited out and their HUD removed for a short period of time alongside a distorted, washed-out audio effect. Jolted opponents who are damaged will periodically send slivers of chain lightning out to nearby enemies, damaging them in the process.

Arc 3.0 also democratizes Ionic Traces, which were previously available only to middle-tree Warlocks. Now available to all, Traces are objects that, when collected, will add energy for all your abilities. 

Now that you are familiar with the basics, let’s jump into the classes themselves to see how they’ll be making the most of Arc 3.0.

Hunter

A Hunter dashing forward crackling with the power of Arc lightning is a sight that is sure to strike fear in the heart of any enemy. As with previous subclass revamps, the team had definite images in mind when considering what the new Arc should feel like in combat. For Hunter, the team imagined the “graceful warrior monk,” giving the Hunter the ability to get in close quarters quickly and effectively make a mess of their opponents in the process.

“For Hunters we wanted to reward staying in close and being safe while you’re in close quarters with an enemy, which is very difficult to do in a lot of our content,” said Humbolt. “We wanted to give them tools to stay alive while they either closed the gap or were in a melee combo. That came primarily in the form of giving them crowd control tools.”

To that end, the Hunter’s Arc Staff Super is returning. With Arc Staff, Hunters will be able to block and deflect projectiles with a press of a button as well as perform an armored dodge where, upon dodging, the Hunter is more resistant to incoming damage.

But one Super just didn’t seem like enough to the team, thus the introduction of a brand-new Arc-themed Super, the Gathering Storm. Here, the Hunter leaps into the air, hurling their staff into the ground (or into an unlucky enemy) like a spear. Upon impact, the staff emits a damaging burst that jolts nearby enemies. Soon after, a giant bolt of lightning strikes the staff and overcharges it, creating a large damage zone around it for several seconds—while overcharged, the staff sends out arcs of lightning to damage any enemies that move near it.

On the melee side, the team kept the Hunter’s Combination Blow ability, feeling like it was right in line with the graceful warrior fantasy that they were going for. Kills with Combination Blow will refund dodge energy, increase melee damage, and restore a small amount of health, allowing skilled Hunters to chain their dodges and melee attacks into balletic bursts of beautiful fury. In addition, the Disorienting Blow melee returns, blinding opponents with a devastating palm attack while also now amplifying the Hunter along the way. 

Arc Aspects

Hunters will be able to choose from three Arc Aspects to customize their tactical style:

• Flow State: Defeating a jolted opponent causes you to become amplified. When amplified, the Hunter’s dodge will recharge faster and make you more resistant to damage, and you have quicker reload times.
• Tempest Strike: Allows the Hunter to perform a sliding melee that launches an Arc wave along the ground, dealing significant damage and jolting enemies in its path.
• Lethal Current: After dodging, the Hunter’s melee lunge range is increased and their next melee attack jolts the target and creates a damaging lightning aftershock. When used with the Arc Staff Super, after dodging, the Hunter’s next staff light attack hits twice. In addition, hitting a jolted enemy with a melee attack will blind them. 

Arc 3.0 will also bring back the Blink movement mode for Arc Hunters. In fact, the Blink ability will also include a baseline buff for any class that has access to it (looking at you, Void Warlocks). 

“Blink hasn’t really been touched since Destiny 2’s release, and never quite reached the heights of its previous reign of terror,” Humbolt said. “We felt like this was a good time to walk a few of the tuning changes back a little and bring Blink’s potency at baseline up without needing an Exotic equipped.” In practical terms, that means an increased travel distance and a reworked recharge model for the ability that will keep it fresh while still maintaining its effectiveness. 

Warlock

Player fantasies don’t come any more vivid than what the team had in mind for Arc 3.0 Warlocks. Two separate images were top of mind: the “lightning shaman” and Emperor Palpatine in full lightning-fingers mode while turning Luke Skywalker into burnt toast. 

“We wanted the player to feel like they are channeling the power of the storm through their body,” said Dunn. “Controlling the storm, controlling lightning like an elemental conduit.”

Two Supers will be available for Warlocks: Chaos Reach, where players will be able to shoot concentrated beams of Arc energy out of their hand to decimate opponents, and Stormtrance, which is more akin to the image of Palpatine floating around the world, firing electricity from their fingers. This Super combines both the Landfall behavior from previous bottom-tier Arc (creating a damaging shockwave underneath the player) and the Ionic Blink behavior from the old top-tree Arc (allowing the Warlock to teleport briefly during the Super). 

Warlocks will have two melees available, both utilizing the power of lightning. The Ball Lightning melee will send out a floating ball of Arc energy that detonates, zapping enemies down from above. Chain Lightning will send out arcs of lightning to strike and jolt the primary target and chain damage to surrounding enemies in the process.

“The Warlock’s whole thing is that being amplified modifies their abilities; it powers them up,” said Dunn. “For Ball Lightning, if you’re amplified, the Arc ball will fly out and zap enemies three times instead of just the normal one time, so you can get more damage out of it. For Chain Lightning it chains to more targets.” More specifically, while normal Chain Lightning creates a single set of chains that bounce between a set of number of targets, when amplified, the ability creates two sets of chains, and can potentially jump to twice the number of enemies. 

Arc Aspects

Three Aspects will be available for Warlocks: 

• Arc Soul: The Warlock casts a rift to create an Arc Soul that will assist the player in battle. Allies who pass through the rift will also earn an Arc Soul. The rift charges faster when allies are near. While amplified, any Arc Soul you have or gain is supercharged, increasing its rate of fire. 
• Lightning Surge: The Warlock activates their melee while sliding to transform into a ball of lightning and teleport forward, calling down a field of lightning bolts at the exit point that jolts targets. 
• Electrostatic Mind: Arc ability kills and kills on Arc-debuffed enemies create Ionic Traces. When you collect any Ionic Trace, you become amplified.

Titan

Titans haven’t traditionally been known as paragons of mobility but, with Arc 3.0, the team is shaking things up. The teams had a couple of inspirations in mind for the Titan Arc revamp: the lead-with-your-fists bare-knuckle brawler and the freight train. 

“You don’t get to move the Arc Titan,” Humbolt said, “they move you. The Arc Titan’s ultimate goal is to punch you in the face and so a lot of what we did for Arc Titan was to try and figure out how we facilitate fist-to-face contact as much as possible.”

That desire to punch all the things manifests in a couple of devastating Supers that are returning for Arc 3.0: Fist of Havoc and Thundercrash. While the latter is practically unchanged from before, Fist of Havoc now has an adjusted slam radius that’s halfway between top and bottom path, and the ground slam leaves a damaging field in its wake, while slamming from the air causes damaging AOE effect (from previous top-tree behavior). 

In the case of Thundercrash (and other abilities), uncoupling a subclass’ abilities from the old “subclass diamond” system will result in some substantial buffs depending on how players use it. It’s one of the intrinsic advantages that the new Subclass 3.0 system brings to Destiny. “When you start pairing them with different things, even though nothing changed about the actual ability, they can end up getting significantly stronger as a result, because now they aren’t locked into a canned set of perks that surrounded them,” Humbolt said. “Thundercrash is a great example of that.”

One of the biggest changes coming to the Arc Titan is the new Thruster class ability. By double-tapping a button while on the ground, the Titan bursts in their throttle direction at speed, performing a quick first-person evade, comparable in distance to a Hunter’s dodge. “Arc is the damage type that is about mobility, so if we were going to add a mobility boost anywhere [for Titans] it was going to be here,” said Humbolt.

For melee attacks, Titans will retain the Seismic Strike shoulder charge, which blinds enemies. Performing a Seismic Strike while amplified will increase the radius of the blind and the blinding effect will last longer. Ballistic Slam also returns, where players can slam the ground after sprinting in the air, creating a damaging explosion upon impact. 

Those returning melees will be joined by a brand-new charged attack known as Thunderclap. Here, the Titan player holds the melee button and charges up Arc energy that can be unleashed in either a quick powerful jab or held and built up, to be unleashed in a furious One Punch Man-style blast that will devastate an opponent. The charged state cannot be stored and the Titan must be on the ground to charge the punch. The damage is significant: a 90-percent-charged Thunderclap will one-shot Guardians in PvP; but that reward will be balanced by the time it will take to build up that charge level and the fact that you must remain stationary to charge, always a dangerous move in PvP.

Arc Aspects

Like the other subclasses, Arc 3.0 Titans will have three Aspects to select from: 

• Touch of Thunder: Improves Arc grenades in the following ways:
  • Flashbang: Fires an additional blind impulse on its first bounce.
  • Pulse: When the grenade damages an enemy, it creates an Ionic Trace for the Titan. Pulse Grenade damage increases over time as the grenade lingers after impact.
  • Lightning: Grants an additional charge for Lightning grenade, and jolts targets on initial blast.
  • Storm: Creates a roaming thundercloud that moves and tracks enemies (similar to the Stasis Hunter’s Silence & Squall Super), firing lightning bolts at the ground underneath it.
• Juggernaut: While sprinting and with full class ability energy, the Titan gains a frontal shield that blocks incoming damage. When amplified, the shield is stronger. Once the shield is depleted by taking damage, the player’s class energy is depleted. 
• Knockout: Melee kills trigger health regeneration and make the Titan amplified. Critically wounding an enemy or breaking their shield increases melee range and damage for a brief period. Titan’s base melee becomes Arc-empowered while Knockout is active.

ARC 3.0 FRAGMENTS

To complement the class-specific Aspects, Arc 3.0 will also introduce a suite of new Fragments, which offer new perks to build upon as well as add bonuses (or penalties) to your Guardian’s intrinsic stats. 

Here’s a look at a few of the Fragments to come: 

• Spark of Beacons: When the player is amplified, Arc special weapon kills create a blinding explosion. 
• Spark of Resistance: When surrounded by enemies, the player has increased damage resistance. 
• Spark of Momentum: Sliding over ammo will reload your weapon and grant a small amount of melee energy. Sliding over Heavy ammo increases the amount of energy granted.
• Spark of Shock: The player’s Arc grenades jolt enemies.

In all, the changes that are coming with Arc 3.0 will give Guardians more ways to bring the pain to the enemies of humanity, while also letting players customize their Guardian to the way they want to play. Fans will have their first chance to see Arc 3.0 in action during next week’s Destiny 2 Showcase, which is coming on August 23 starting at 9 AM Pacific. Check out the Showcase reveal page to learn more! 

Source: Bungie.net

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SANDBOX CHANGES

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT

For more details about sandbox changes coming with Update 6.2.0 on August 23, 2022, check out the podcast below (visit their main page for other places to tune in).

If you are avoiding any spoilers, I recommend not looking at comments under the video below until after the Showcase and Season 18 go live (the video itself does not have any spoilers in it).

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SEASON 18 MODS

Returning favorites from Season of the Chosen: Scout/Sniper Targeting, Anti-Barrier Sniper, and Sundering Glare.  

One of the new mods is Bad Amplitude. Bungie created this particular mod to increase access to jolt in Season 18 while also giving players a new answer to the age-old question: “How can I make Champions explode?” Hype Train Conductor and Trace Evidence are also new to the artifact, things will make more sense once Arc 3.0 launches.  

New mods are in bold text below. Anything not bolded is either based on previous mods or are reprisals.  

First row:	After two perk choices:	After four perk choices:	After eight perk choices:	After ten perk choices:
Overload Bows (Arms)	Scout Rifle Loader (Arms)	Glaive Loader (Arms)	Overload LMG (Arms): Uninterrupted fire from equipped Machine Guns will stun enemies with a beam that delays energy regeneration and reduces enemy damage output. Strong against Overload Champions.	Thunderous Retort (Class): Arc Supers do more damage when cast while in critical condition or while amplified.
Unstoppable Pulse Rifles (Arms)	Sword Ammo Scavengers (Legs)	Focusing Strike (Arms): Causing damage with a melee ability grants class ability energy.	Anti-Barrier Snipers (Arms)	Hype Train Conductor (Class): +2 seconds to amplified timer. Stacks.
Anti-Barrier Scout Rifles (Arms)	Machine Gun Holster (Legs): Gradually reloads stowed Machine Guns over time. Stacks.	Combo Arc + Solar Resist (Chest)	Bad Amplitude (Class): Damaging a Champion with an Arc ability causes the Champion to become jolted.	Trace Evidence (Class): Precision hits on Arc debuffed targets will generate Ionic Traces.
Anti-Barrier Auto Rifles (Arms)	Scout and Sniper Targeting (Head)	Machine Gun Ammo Scavenger (Legs)	Surge Detonators (Class)	Lightning Strikes Twice (Class)
Unstoppable Shotguns (Arms)	Bottomless Bounty 1 (Head): Improves two Origin Perks.	Bottomless Bounty 2 (Head): Improves two Origin perks.	Inferno Whip (Class)	Sundering Glare (Class)

Source: This Week at Bungie – August 18, 2022

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LEARN MORE BELOW

https://kyberscorner.com/destiny2/destiny-2-season-18-season-of-redacted/