Early Look At Ability Tuning Changes In Destiny 2 Season 21

In a recent blog post, Bungie shared their plans regarding abilities tuning that will be introduced in the upcoming Season of the Deep. What buffs and nerfs should we expect for each class? What general balance updates will the studio introduce? Read on to find out!

Need an Extra Fragment Slot? Now You Can Have It!

In their post that introduced a comprehensive preview of the upcoming alterations, Destiny 2 Combat Gaming team announced that after receiving community’s feedback about single-Fragment-slot Aspects, they decided to change that. Thus, in Season 21, the Fragment slot allotment will be increased to two but only for the following Aspects for now:

Hunters: Gunpowder Gamble, Shatterdive, and Trapper’s Ambush
Titans: Bastion and Juggrnaut
Warlocks: Chaos Accelerant

Super Changes: Big and Small

Let’s start with a global thing. After looking closer at roaming Supers, the devs decided to increase their viability. For that, they tweaked the PvE damage resistance, so in Season of the Deep, all Supers will get their damage resistance against PvE increased by 20%.

Now, with that being said, let’s move on to more specific changes class by class.

Hunter

The changes for their class will be made to the Solar, Arc, and Void subclasses.

Golden Gun (Marksman and Deadshot)	Increased damage against PvE enemies by 20%
Arc Staff	PvE damage increased by 20%
Spectral Blades	PvE damage enhanced by 35% Heavy attack weakens targets on hit A problem where some high-velocity right-hand attacks fail to connect fixed
Gathering Storm	Direct impact damage vs. players increased from 200 to 300 Delayed lightning strike damage vs. players increased from 300 to 500 Lingering lightning tick damage vs. players increased from 40 to 60 Now deals increased damage vs. Well of Radiance and Ward of Dawn

Titan

This class will get some PvE damage buff for their roaming Arc, Solar, and Stasis Supers.

Fists of Havoc	Light attack cost reduced from 8.5% to 6% Heavy attack cost reduced from 18% to 12% Increased heavy attack PvE damage by 33% Heavy attack now blinds targets near the center of the slam area
Glacial Quake	Shiver Strike thrust speed while in Super increased by 10% Increased light attack damage by 20%
Sentinel Shield	PvE damage increased by 20%
Hammer of Sol	Buffed PvE damage by 10%
Burning Maul	PvE damage increased by 10% Creates a Sunspot on cast when Sol Invictus is equipped, matching the behavior of Hammer of Sol Heavy attack cyclone applies scorch over time

Warlock

These guys will receive Super updates for their Void, Arc, Stasis, and Solar subclasses

Nova Warp	PvE damage buffed by 15% A fully charged attack makes enemies Volatile on hit
Nova Bomb	PvE damage increased by 20%
Stormtrance	PvE damage enhanced by 25% Damage ramp while attacking occurs more quickly (over 3 seconds) Landfall detonation and seekers jolt targets
Chaos Reach	Buffed PvE damage by 25% Sustained damage on a single target creates a jolting lightning strike at the target’s location Increased damage resistance vs. players from 40% to 50% Increased maximum strafe speed from 3.5m/s to 4.5m/s Adjusted Super camera to avoid the player’s body blocking view of targets when strafing
Winter’s Wrath	Increased PvE damage by 10%
Daybreak	Adjusted Super camera to allow the player to look down further and avoid VFX blocking view of targets when moving quickly

And now let’s talk about other updates and tuning Bungie has prepared for us in the next season.

What’s New for Strand?

According to the blog post, Destiny 2 Combat Gaming team is still observing the new subclass and its performance. However, it doesn’t stop them from making a few adjustments to improve our gaming experience. So, here’s what’s coming the following season.

Class	Ability	Changes
Hunter	Threaded Spike	Increased projectile travel range before beginning to return to the player by 30% Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by ~55% Slightly reduced speed of the dart as it returns to the player to make catching it easier Increased energy gain for catching the dart based on the number of enemies hit Now pierces Cabal Phalanx shields No longer prioritizes the catch action over the grapple melee if an enemy target is within grapple melee range
Titan	Frenzied Blade	Decreased cooldown based on how many melee charges the player has stored At 0 charges, cooldown reduced by 15%. At 2 charges, cooldown reduced by 30%
Warlock	Arcane Needle	Decreased cooldown based on how many melee charges the player has stored At 0 charges, cooldown reduced by 15%. At 2 charges, reduced by 30% Increased projectile speed based on the projectile’s flight time Initial velocity increased to 40 meters per second, up from 30 Final velocity increased to 70 meters per second, up from 60 Increased projectile tracking strength by ~10%

Other Changes

Grapple

Reduced base cooldown from 105 seconds to 82 seconds
Reduced the minimum time between grapple activations from 2.5s to 0.2s

Thread of Generation

Reduced energy generation provided by some damage-over-time mechanics
Reduced energy generation provided by Trace Rifles by 36%

Stasis Ability Updates Are Coming Too

With addition of Strand and Subclass 3.0, Bungie wanted to reexamine some of the tuning changes they made to this subclass in Season 14 and 15 and tweak them to keep things balanced in the new season. So, here are the results.

Class	Ability	Changes
Hunter	Withering Blade	Increased projectile tracking search range on bounce vs. players by 20% Increased maximum tracking strength by 12.5%
Titan	Shiver Strike	Maximum thrust while in flight increased by 16% Decreased maximum downward influence of gravity while in flight by 18%
Titan	Howl of the Storm	Increased width of freezing cone vs. players by 31%
Warlock	Frostpulse	Now provides 2 meters of additional melee lunge range after activation for 1.2 seconds

Introducing Light Tuning Updates

As was mentioned by the devs in their post, the changes to these subclasses will be made to a variety of abilities, especially to those that are currently overpowered or, on the contrary, underpowered. Yes, there are going to be lots of buffs and nerfs.