Destiny 2: Season 22 – Season of the Witch

Exotic Weapon

• Monte Carlo: “We finally did it. It was mechanically the most complex catalyst we have ever done, requiring a host of custom animation work and a lot of things we have never done on a weapon before, but we hope you enjoy it!”

• Quicksilver Storm 
  • Fixed an issue where ammo was loading into Quicksilver Storm slightly too late in the reload animation.
• Dead Man’s Tale
  • Fixed the displayed impact stat. This is cosmetic only. Damage per bullet is unchanged.
• Two-Tailed Fox –
  • Two-Tailed Fox now fires a three-shot burst with the catalyst, instead of firing three rockets in a two-shot burst.

• Verglas Curve
  • Whisper of Fissures detonations now generate Hail Barrage stacks if the Stasis crystal was created by this weapon.
  • Shiver Quiver now activates when slowing enemies.
  • We increased the slow stacks from 40 to 60 when hitting players directly with Hail Barrage arrows. This allows for a freeze if two Hail Barrage arrows hit the same player.
• Le Monarque 
  • Reduced draw time from 684ms to 612ms.
  • Reduced body shot damage from 100 to 85.
  • Increased critical hit multiplier from 1.5x to 1.6x (crit damage against players goes from 150 to 136).
  • Changed the poison DoT effect.
    • Reduced poison DoT duration from 3 seconds to 1.75 seconds.
    • Moved from 8 damage ticks to 6, but poison deals the same total damage to players.
    • Poison damage increased in PvE by 50%.
• Vex Mythoclast 
  • RPM reduced from 390 to 360 to match other high-impact Auto Rifles.
  • Increased damage against minor combatants (red bars) and major combatants (orange bars) by 25%.
• Tommy’s Matchbook 
  • Updated Scorch value
    • It was previously 14 + 7 (with the Ember of Ashes fragment equipped). Now it’s 15 + 5.
• Touch of Malice
  • Increased final round damage in PvE by 20%.
  • Decreased the self-damage from the final round from 10 to 7.
  • Final round damage can no longer kill the user.
  • Increased the health awarded by the Touch of Malice perk from 30 to 75.
  • Set up Touch of Malice to work like Unrelenting. (Guardians and major combatants give more points towards activation, and we increased the time allowed between kills.)
  • Ball of Darkness now appropriately deals Arc damage and will blind combatants and stun Unstoppable Champions.
• Malfeasance
  • Fixed an issue where the Vorpal Weapon catalyst wasn’t displaying the status buff text.
• Cloudstrike
  • Reduced the lethal kill distance of the lightning strike against players.
• Wicked Implement
  • The timing window for Creeping Attrition has been increased from 3.5 seconds to 4.5 seconds.
  • You can now also active Tithing Harvest by destroying Stasis crystals.
  • The Wicked Implement Exotic catalyst now also includes the Headstone perk.

Source: Bungie.net

Changes to Perks

• Bipod
  • Reduced the damage penalty from 40% to 25%.
• Envious Assassin
  • There is no longer a time limit after kills within which you must activate the perk or get another kill.
  • The perk will now activate even if the magazine is overflowed. (It will stop activating once you hit maximum magazine size of 2.5x or greater.)
  • Enhanced Envious Assassin now provides fractionally more ammo per kill, instead of a longer window of time after a kill.
• Under-Over
  • Now provides bonus body shot damage against players with Woven Mail.
  • Increased the bonus damage against combatant shields.
  • Deals significantly increased damage to enemies who are enhanced by Dark Cabal overshields in addition to enemies shielded by Lucent Moths.
• Under Pressure
  • Reduced the maximum accuracy cone scalar from 0.5 to 0.75.
• Shoot to Loot
  • No longer triggers the reload when shooting a Special brick that could not be picked up while also having an overflowed weapon equipped.
  • Explosive damage now interacts with Orbs of Power.
• Valiant Charge 
  • Perk now deactivates after the initial Sword swing.
• Ambush –
  • No longer deactivates from healing, fall damage, or being shot by allies.
• Explosive Light 
  • Fixed a bug where the enhanced version of the perk was granting two stacks on the initial Orb pickup.
• Chill Clip 
  • Reduced the slow stacks from 60 to 40.
  • Wolfpack Rounds no longer trigger this perk.

Source: Bungie.net

Abilities

Bungie’s goals for this release:

• Reduce the uptime and potency of Barricade abilities, particularly in high-level PvP activities.
• Reduce the potency of Striker Titan in high-level PvP activities—both in neutral game and when Supers come up.
• Correct the one-size-fits-all nature of Suspend in the combat sandbox.
• Rebalance our Strand fragment suite to bring up some underperforming options and normalize the potency of overperformers.

Barricade (Titan)

• Towering Barricade
  • Base cooldown increased from 48 seconds to 70 seconds.
• All Barricades
  • Maximum health reduced from 600 to 500.
  • Damage resistance vs. PVE combatants increased to compensate.

Striker (TItan)

• Thundercrash
  • Increased base cooldown time from 500 seconds to 556 seconds, matching the majority of our roaming Super roster.

• Knockout
  • Reduced damage bonus vs. players from 50 to 30.

Strand

• Suspend is currently a skeleton key that solves combat problems against all combatant types.
• Its current duration heavily steps on the toes of Stasis Freeze, which we want to keep as the highest potency disable in the sandbox.
• The uptime of Suspending atoms doesn’t allow for meaningful player decision-making when choosing when and where to place a hard disable.

Strand – Suspend

• Suspend
  • Reduced base Suspend duration vs. non-Champion PvE combatants from 8 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Thread of Continuity now extends this duration to 7 seconds, down from 12 seconds.
  • Reduced base Suspend duration vs. Champion combatants from 8 seconds to 3 seconds (4 seconds with Thread of Continuity).
  • Increased snap damage dealt to Suspended boss combatants by 67%.
• Thread of Mind
  • Reduced class energy gain, based on the tier of the defeated target:
  • Minor combatants reduced from 15% to 10%.
  • Major combatants and players reduced from 25% to 15%.
  • Bosses, Champions, and minibosses reduced from 50% to 25%.
• Thread of Generation
  • Reduced the overall energy gain per damage event against PvE enemies by about 20%. 
  • Rebalanced the energy gain multiplier across primary weapon archetypes. We wanted to bring the energy gains for dealing damage with precision weapons and fully automatic weapons closer together.
  • Overall, we’ve reduced the efficiency of fully automatic primary weapons and increased the efficiency of precision primary weapons to compensate.

Strand – Suspend Supporting Atoms

• Threadlings
  • Increased Threadling damage vs. PvE combatants by 30%.
• Tangles
  • Reduced Tangle creation cooldown time from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
• Sever
  • PvE combatants affected by Sever now have their outgoing damage reduced by 40% vs. 30%.

Threadrunner Silkstrike Super (Hunter)

• Silkstrike
  • Increased Silkstrike damage resistance from 40% to 45%.
  • Reduced suppression time between Silkstrike super air attacks.
  • Reduced vertical lift provided by Silkstrike heavy air attack to reduce instances of missing the primary target.
• Threaded Specter
  • Increased Threaded Specter lifetime from 10 to 12 seconds.
  • Increased Threaded Specter health vs. PvE combatants.
  • Threaded Specter now takes longer to detect nearby PvE combatants at the beginning of its lifetime.
  • PvE combatants now more consistently focus on Threaded Specter instead of the Hunter.
  • Allied players no longer have reticle magnetism toward Threaded Specter.

Broodweaver’s The Wanderer Aspect (Warlock)

• The Wanderer
  • Destroying a Tangle now creates a delayed Suspending detonation.
  • Increased Suspend detonation radius from 6 to 7 meters against PvE combatants.
  • Increased thrown Wanderer Tangle detonation damage to match standard Tangle detonations.

Strand Grapple

• Grapple
  • Grapple melee always takes priority while active, regardless of whether or not a target is within range.

Strand Fragments

• Thread of Propagation
  • Now grants +10 Strength.
• Thread of Continuity
  • No longer grants +10 Strength.
• Thread of Wisdom
  • No longer requires a precision kill to activate.
• Thread of Isolation
  • Reduced the number of precision hits required to activate by an average of about 30% (varies by weapon archetype).
• Thread of Rebirth
  • The number of created Threadlings now increases based on the tier of the defeated target:
  • Minor combatants: 1.
  • Elite combatants or players: 2.
  • Boss, Champion, or miniboss combatants: 3.

Source: Bungie.net

Weapon Archetypes

• Hand Cannons
  • General
    • Increased reload speed at 0 stat by 15%.
  • PvE Damage
    • Increased damage against minor combatants (red bars) by 20%.
    • Increased damage against major combatants (orange bars) by 75%.
  • Heavy Burst
    • Changed Warden’s Law to be the first member of a new sub-family, Heavy Burst
    • Fires a 2-round burst.
• Bows
  • General
    • Reduced the minimum reload animation duration from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds. (This means that applying reload speed scalars on top of a high reload stat will still have an effect.)
    • Increased the projectile velocity at full draw so that the projectiles will continue to perform as if they were hitscan at longer distances at higher frame rates.
  • Lightweight Bows
    • Equalized the full draw projectile velocity with precision Bows.
• SMGs – Corrected a longstanding visual bug that prevented the RPM stat from displaying correctly. This does not change the actual RPM of the weapons; they have always fired at 720 RPM.
  • Aggressives
    • Fixed the RPM stat display to correctly show 720 RPM.
• Sidearms 
  • Aggressives
    • Reduced base damage from 32 to 30.
• Pulse Rifles 
  • BxR Battler
    • Increased zoom back to 20.
• Shotguns
  • General
    • Fixed the impact stat on The Comedian.
• Fusion Rifles
  • General
    • Fixed an issue where Adept Masterworks and Enhanced Intrinsic perks were decreasing the damage dealt by fusions when they changed the charge time stat.
• Wave Frame Heavy Grenade Launcher
  • General
    • The size and damage of the self-damage AOE is now reduced.
    • This should make it much safer to fire the projectile closer to your feet.
• Swords
  • Sword Guard
    • Energy now recharges after a short delay when used, but recharges much faster.
      • The delay before recharge and the recharge rate are both governed by the guard charge rate stat.
      • This delay ranges between 2.7 seconds and 1.05 seconds, decreasing with charge rate stat.
      • We’ve massively increased the rate energy returns after the delay to compensate, and they increase even more at higher charge rate stats. Even after the delay, Swords now return to full energy from empty faster than before this rework.
    • Full-power heavy attacks can now be used with any nonzero amount of Sword energy, rather than requiring full Sword energy.
    • We massively increased Sword guard damage resistance, >giving it between 82.5% and 95% damage reduction, depending on guard resistance stat.
      • This damage resistance value is sharply reduced against other players, like Glaives. Then it provides between 52.5% and 65% damage reduction, depending on guard resistance stat.
    • Sword guard no longer loses energy when taking damage.
      • As a result of the above, guard efficiency has been removed as a stat.
    • Sword guard duration is now increased across every guard type, with those with shortest durations benefiting most.
    • Sword guard talent nodes have had their stats squished down.
      • Combined with the above, even though their stats have been reduced, their damage reduction, charge rates, and guard durations are now increased across the board.
      • This allows origin traits and other Sword perks more room to increase these stats and allow performance beyond their previous maximum.
    • Sword guard talent nodes now visually affect the “charge rate” bar on the inspection screen when you hover over or select them, similar to other stat-affecting nodes.
    • Sword movement speed while blocking has increased from a 0.75x multiplier to 0.85x multiplier.
    • The Lament Exotic Sword has been special-cased so its charge rate and delay are unaffected, but it still benefits from the increased guard damage reduction and duration.

Source: Bungie.net