With Season of the Witch coming to a close, we’re entering the last — and longest — season of Destiny 2 in the buildup for the events of The Final Shape. To prepare you for the new experience, we’re doing a recap of all the important changes you should keep in mind going into next season. Without further ado, let’s look at the all-new features launching this week!
New features coming with Season of the Wish
Fireteam Finder Beta
In-game LFG (Looking For Group) is finally coming to Destiny 2 but not in a completely finished form due to how challenging the development of the feature has been. It will initially just be a public beta test before its full release that’s slated for late January. You can read more about it in our article or you can jump into its initial stress test with Raids only at Thursday’s daily reset (9 AM PST).
Ritual Playlist End-of-match Rewards
You now have a chance to receive an Enhancement Core upon completing any ritual activity alongside increased Glimmer rewards. Winning Gambit or Competitive matches or obtaining a high score in a strike or Nightfall also increases your reward chances and amounts.
Legend and Master Lost Sector Rewards
You can now target farm world-drop weapons from higher-difficulty Lost Sectors on a 4-week rotation. Master Lost Sector completions even allow for multiple perks to roll in the last two columns so it should be the go-to if you’re at a high enough power level.
Sparrow Speed Equalization
All previously 160-speed Sparrows now match the speed of the Always on Time sparrow but AoT still retains some of its advantages like the cheaper boosts and the decreased enemy aggression. Previously slower Sparrows now match the previous highest speed of 160.
Legendary Shards are no more! 🦀
Legendary Shards are being phased out in many places but the complete removal of the currency will only come with The Final Shape in June of next year. Until then, you can still receive Legendary Shards from all existing sources.
New Seasonal Artifact
This season’s Artifact focuses on Solar and Stasis synergies in the hopes that the latter will breathe more life into our cosmic ice subclasses. So far, it appears that it might just make Solar trounce Stasis even harder in the endgame meta but being a Stasis lover, I would love to be wrong on this.
Sparrows in PVP
Following the strangely persistent Sparrow infestation on the Multiplex map in Iron Banner in Season 22, Bungie is rebranding the bug as a feature and bringing it back for the new 6v6 Unranked playlist as a rotating mode! The PVP Strike Team has also overhauled the Crucible menu’s offerings which you can read more about in the November 19 TWAB (or TWID… but no).
System changes coming with Season of the Wish
A new crucible menu and further refinement of the PVP experience
As previously mentioned, the November 19 TWAB laid out a lot of PVP-related changes that simply wouldn’t fit into this recap but there are a few changes worth quickly highlighting and you can read more about them if they catch your interest:
- A new 3v3 Quickplay node is being added that will prioritize connection quality and will rotate between Showdown and Elimination.
- Competitive will now give a higher priority to your rank when matchmaking but if your skill level and rank are wildly different, it will blend the two together.
- Countdown Rush is leaving Labs and entering Competitive.
- The lobby balancing system is getting some much-needed improvements.
- Spawning algorithm improvements for Midtown, Meltdown, and Endless Vale.
PVE Weapon Buffs
Auto rifles are getting a subtle 10% bump to their damage against Minor (”red bar”) enemies to bring them more in line with their role. Pulse rifles are also getting bumped up by 12.5% against Minors and Elites (”orange bars”) since they now share much the same ranges as auto rifles.
While I don’t expect these changes to be significant, they should help make taking down higher-tier Minors like Hive Knights less troublesome. Or you know… just use a special weapon for those enemies. That works too. But the change should nonetheless help these guns feel better on the PVE side of the sandbox.
What WILL absolutely move the needle, however, is the flat 15% damage buff sniper rifles are getting in PVE. And yes, this applies to Whisper of the Worm and yes, it will make it a top-tier DPS option once again. So get ready because you finally have a solid reason other than plain nostalgia to pull it out of your backpack.
Glaive Rework
Glaives are getting an overhaul and some much-needed buffs on the PVE side to go along with it. First off, the 30% increase in their projectile speed should help a ton with reliably hitting shots and them actually registering as well. The projectile is also receiving a 25% damage increase in PVE so it should now finally pack a larger punch than a wet towel.
The delay between firing the glaive and then stabbing someone with it is also getting a massive reduction from 0.75 seconds to 0.2 seconds which should make the action a lot less jarring to do. (Granted, you could technically bypass that delay already but it was finicky, and removing the need to do so is a massive step in the right direction)
The shield energy of glaives will now also recharge passively at the rate of 1% per second and you can expect to take advantage of this mechanic with the newly reworked Exotic class-specific glaives.
Exotic Gear Reworks
There are way too many Exotic gear changes to go over but here are a couple of the more notable ones from the Weapons Preview and the November 22 TWAB:
- Thorn is finally receiving a catalyst alongside a rework. The Catalyst will give 20 Range and 10 Stability and additional stat benefits after picking up Remnants. With the rework, those Remnants will even overflow your mag up to the max of 40 rounds!
- Class Glaives are each receiving a rework to make them more desirable options. All of them can now also activate their respective perks without ammo as the activation will give you 1 ammo for free!
- Osteo Striga’s poison is being reined in to be more in line with the normal Necrotic Grip poison. This translates to a 28.6% to 47.4% nerf to the poison’s damage depending on the tier of enemy you’re up against. But don’t worry, it’ll still be an excellent option.
- St0mp-EE5 no longer requires your Class Ability to be charged for its benefits in exchange for a bit of its bonus to your lateral movement when using your jump ability. It now also provides damage resistance in PVE when you’re airborne.
- Triton Vice now buffs glaive melee damage by 100% in both PVE and PVP - matching Synthoceps. It’s still going to be of very questionable utility to players but at least the buff will be a somewhat respectable amount.
- Peregrine Greaves will now refund your shoulder charge ability when hitting minibosses with it and will also provide a stronger melee damage buff against them. (Champions and Tormentors are considered minibosses too!)
- Synthoceps no longer increases melee lunge distance but will now grant you Handling and Reload Speed benefits while surrounded.
- Aeon Cult exotics have been reworked but it was a lot of words so I won’t even bother summarizing it. Check out the November 22 TWAB if you’re interested, it’s a pretty cool change.
Ability Regeneration Changes
Bungie has decided that things weren’t confusing enough so we’re getting a rework of how perks and mods that grant a chunk of ability energy function. With Season of the Wish, only the fastest-charging abilities receive the full benefit from these perks and mods. Their effectiveness will then start to scale down as you move to slower-charging abilities.
This should result in similar amounts of time being taken off the overall cooldowns of the abilities but I’m personally not looking forward to making the tooltips significantly more complex on community apps for this new “feature”. Well, it is what it is I guess.
Damage Resistance and Healing Rebalancing
First among all of these changes is Woven Mail dropping from 55% to 45% damage resistance against PVE combatants. Frankly, this will likely end up being a minor change and 45% is still incredibly strong but Bungie is toning it down a little bit.
Restoration x1 and x2 are getting hit with a 12.5% and a 23% nerf respectively in both PVE and PVP. The healing effects are still going to be more than strong enough but maybe not quite to the point of being able to tank nearly everything that doesn’t outright kill you.
Lastly, Devour is getting tied closer to the Voidwalker power fantasy as its healing effect will drop from 200 HP to 100 HP unless you have the Feed the Void Warlock aspect equipped. Said aspect will now also double grenade energy gains from kills with Devour active.
Slide Melees are no more — kinda
In a change targeted squarely at the PVP sandbox, you will no longer be able to fire your weapon in a slide and chain that into a slide-activated melee ability activation. Be that a shoulder charge ability or the Tempest Strike Hunter ability, this will no longer be possible. Although this comes at the expense of some One-Two Punch PVE builds, I think it’s a step in the right direction for the health of the PVP sandbox.
Titans were finally nerfed!
Jokes aside, Banner of War and Bonk Hammer (Throwing Hammer) are finally being reined in a little after their long-lasting dominance in PVE. Banner of War will now need roughly twice as many kills to reach its maximum of four stacks but to compensate, each kill will add more time to its duration than previously. This will add a bit more risk to getting your initial stacks as the healing pulses from the aspect will be less frequent at the start of the engagement. But I personally don’t see it leaving the meta anytime soon.
Bonk Hammer on the other hand will be getting a rework so that it no longer instantly refunds your hammer upon picking it back up but will instead do so over a 1.4-second period. While it’s sad to see it go, I think it will still have a place, especially considering that with Roaring Flames active, even your unpowered melees are pretty impactful due to them applying 30 and 40 scorch with and without Ember of Ashes.
Well of Radiance and Ward of Dawn prepped for nerfs
As a first preliminary pass at these super abilities, their base cooldowns are moving from 417 seconds (6:57) to 455 seconds (7:35). This will be the rough equivalent to the fart of a fly but should tone them down ever-so-slightly in PVP activities.
Stasis Rebalancing
The stat penalties of several Fragments were rebalanced and many of the abilities and Aspects received minor buffs. The main highlights of the change are Withering Blade (Hunter melee ability) being able to bounce an extra time and Winter’s Shroud now applying 60 Slow on dodge in PVE which will allow you to freeze enemies a bit more reliably.
Shiver Strike (Titan melee ability) regained its ability to slow players upon contact and Glacial Quake once again freezes nearby players on super cast as well. Nice to see these behaviors being brought back from before their nerfs.
Glacier Grenades now have a 31-second shorter base cooldown as well at 121 seconds down from the previous 152 — this translates to a 15.5-second cooldown reduction at T10 Discipline. Coldsnap Grenades also received some improvements to make them a bit more reliable.
There are more long-term Stasis changes planned as well but those still need some time to cook in the oven.
