This week in Destiny, we are TWIDing a bit early.
Thursday is Thanksgiving in the United States, and many at Bungie are taking the day to spend time with their loved ones. One reason to be grateful is the amazing community that has grown for years around Destiny. Thank you for being here, Guardians.
Also, this is the last TWID before Season of the Wish launches! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's what we have for today:
Ready? Let's go.
Saladin might call him the White Wolf. Mara Sov would refer to him as Gwynbleidd. And the Cabal would revel in the stories about the Butcher of Blaviken. He has many names, but for us he is Geralt of Rivia, whose gear is the focus of our latest collaboration. We'll share more details about it, as well as a trailer, very soon. For now, gaze at the amazing art we shared yesterday.
It's high time we show you the upcoming Season's Artifact perks so you can start thinking about new builds. We are focusing on three elements: Solar, Strand, and Stasis. There's also a focus on Rocket Launchers, some new and very strong perks around ignitions and shatter, and even some beloved perks making a comeback.
All in all, the Queensfoil Censer allows for several outstanding combinations.
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 | Column 4 | Column 5 |
| Anti-Barrier SidearmYour equipped Sidearms fire shield-piercing rounds and stun Barrier Champions. Additionally, Sidearms are always overcharged when that modifier is active. | Flame, Fiber, and FreezeCombines the Solar/Strand and Solar/Stasis Siphon mods into one. | Flint StrikerRapid Solar weapons precision hits and rapid Solar weapon final blows grant Radiant. | Unravelling OrbsPicking up an Orb of Power grants Strand weapons Unraveling Rounds. | Horde ShuttleDamaging unraveled targets with a weapon occasionally spawns a Threadling. |
| Unstoppable Hand CannonAiming down the sights of a Hand Cannon for a short time loads a powerful explosive payload that stuns unshielded combatants. Strong against Unstoppable Champions. Additionally, Hand Cannons are always overcharged when that modifier is active. | Kindling TriggerRadiant causes Solar weapons to apply Scorch to unscorched combatants. | TorchWhile radiant, deal increased weapon damage to combatants affected by Strand and Stasis debuffs. | Pillar of IceKilling an encased combatant spawns Stasis crystals. | Hail The StormShattering encased targets and Stasis crystals deals increased damage. Shattering a Stasis crystal releases shards of ice that damage and slow targets. |
| Unstoppable BowHolding a Bow fully drawn for a short time loads a powerful explosive payload that stuns unshielded combatants. Strong against Unstoppable Champions. Additionally, Bows are always overcharged when that modifier is active. | Blast RadiusRapid final blows with Rocket Launchers and Grenade Launchers grant Armor Charge. | Heart of the FlameCasting your Solar Super grants nearby allies Radiant and increases the damage of your Super for each nearby ally. | Revitalizing BlastCausing damage with a Solar ability weakens Champions and bosses for a short duration. | Rays of PrecisionWhile radiant, Solar precision final blows cause combatants to ignite. |
| Overload Auto RiflesSustained fire from Auto Rifles disrupts combatants, stunning them, delaying ability energy regeneration, and lowering combatant damage output. Strong against Overload Champions. Additionally, Auto Rifles are always overcharged when that modifier is active. | Origin Perk Specialization IImproves the benefits provided by the Sundering, Nano-Munitions, and Nanotech Tracer Rocket Origin Traits. Additionally, weapons with these traits are always overcharged. | Origin Perk Specialization IIImproves the benefits provided by the Noble Deeds, Unsated Hunger, Head Rush, and Dragon's Vengeance Origin Traits. Additionally, weapons with these traits are always overcharged. | Overload Rocket LaunchersRocket Launchers are especially effective against Overload Champions. | Solo OperativeWhile you are the only member of your fireteam, you deal increased damage to all combatants. |
| Overload Pulse RifleSustained fire from Pulse Rifles disrupts combatants, stunning them, delaying ability energy regeneration, and lowering combatant damage output. Strong against Overload Champions. Additionally, Pulse Rifles are always overcharged when that modifier is active. | From Whence You CameIncreases ability damage to Taken and Scorn combatants. | Wished Into BeingWhile your Super is nearly fully charged, ability final blows spawn Orbs of Power. Wearing Season of the Wish armor decreases Super amount threshold. | Dragon's BiteBreaking a combatant's shield with a Strand or Stasis weapon has a chance to suspend or freeze that combatant. Wearing Season of the Wish armor increases this chance. | Argent OrdinanceFiring a Rocket Launcher consumes one stack of Armor Charge, granting increased damage and reload speed until you reload or stow your Rocket Launcher. |
Here's a preview of the coming sandbox tuning in Season of the Wish and beyond. To set the stage, let's lay out our overall goals for this release:
Let's get started. We've laid this out a number of times in previous posts, but it's worth repeating. We believe that powerful abilities need to come at a meaningful cost to the player, to force difficult decisions about what fits best in their build. To put it plainly: we're not hitting that goal. There are many buildcrafting avenues that grant flat chunks of ability energy and ignore ability cooldown tiers. This gives them extremely inconsistent value, depending on what grenade, melee, or class ability you have equipped. Here's an example:
When players stack these buildcrafting elements together (e.g., Grenade Kickstart + Innervation + Absolution + Demolitionist + a chunk energy fragment), it results in long-cooldown abilities having uptime that is dramatically higher than what we intend for their potency level.
With Season of the Wish, we're taking a first step at addressing that problem. Starting in update 7.3.0, the base passive cooldown tiers for abilities will also influence the amount of chunk energy they receive from perks. For our fastest-charging abilities, things are not changing. But as we progress through the passive cooldown tiers into the slower-charging abilities, that immediate burst of energy will be reduced to a floor of 50% of base for our slowest-charging grenade and class abilities, and 60% for our slowest-charging melee abilities.
With Season of the Wish, we're only implementing this change for grenade, melee, and class abilities—perks that add Super energy are unchanged. We're also excluding any perk that either intentionally grants a full refund (like Knock 'Em Down) or targets only a single, specific ability (like Shinobu's Vow). These will still work identically to their behavior in the live game.
In our playtesting, this results in more of the intended variance between high- and low-uptime abilities and an opportunity cost that more closely matches potency, but we don't expect (or desire) that anyone's build is going to be made obsolete overnight by this change. We're going to keep iterating on this new system going forward, so expect future updates as we see how it plays out alongside all of you.
As our roster of Player-Elected Difficulty (PED) activities has expanded in recent years, we've shifted the sandbox to enable more of our (often risky) gameplay loops to feel effective against increasingly difficult lineups of combatants. This can be seen in the addition of more defense- or support-focused tools, including the standardization of overshields, expanded access to healing through Restoration and Cure, and the development of keywords like Woven Mail.
However, we still need our aspirational content to remain challenging. We're currently in a position where applying combat pressure to a well-buildcrafted player is extremely difficult, which doesn't leave our activities teams with many options for tuning difficulty while still having things feel fair across a broad spectrum of player types.
In short, player survivability at the top end is too high (a problem we've touched on in the past), and we need to find a better balance between the two extremes of enabling players to heedlessly dive into the fray or making it feel like long-range chip damage is the only option to clear an encounter. To that end, we're making an initial pass at tuning some of our top-end outliers, but we anticipate that this will be a process that takes place over many releases, so that we can ensure that things are trending in a healthy way.
For this first pass, we're targeting a small number of subclass keywords that we believe most strongly contribute to excessive survivability in combat: Woven Mail, Restoration, and Devour.
With Update 7.2.0, we took a small stab at Woven Mail's PvE damage reduction, but with Update 7.3.0 we're reducing it a further 10%. While this is a relatively small change, we want to evaluate it alongside some changes to Banner of War (that you'll read about later on) before taking any larger swings.
Restoration's heal rate is being reduced in both PvE and PvP. Similar to the Woven Mail case, we want to see how this feels sitting alongside some changes to Throwing Hammer and Sol Invictus further down.
Last up is Devour, whose potency is largely due to the ease-of-use of the Echo of Starvation Fragment, which was initially developed when there were fewer Orbs of Power being generated. We're making a targeted change to Devour that excludes Voidwalkers, reducing its heal amount from 200hp to 100hp unless Feed the Void is equipped. For our Voidwalkers out there, we're also increasing the amount of grenade energy that Devour defeats grant with Feed the Void, to offset some of the chunk energy changes detailed above.
This is going to be an ongoing process for us, so please continue to give feedback on how things are feeling, and we'll adjust accordingly as we go forward.
In Update 3.4.0, we made the decision to remove the capability for shoulder charge abilities (Shield Bash, Seismic Strike, and Hammer Strike) to one-shot enemy players. This was part of an ongoing effort to make sure that any one-shot ability in the game comes with significant risk or cost, whether that's a significant windup time (e.g., Thunderclap or Consecration), aim skill (e.g., Flux Grenade), or a specific buildcrafting choice (e.g., Peregrine Greaves). We believe that this is still the right call, and we want to maintain the intended level of risk for using powerful melee abilities against players.
Players are currently able to circumvent this change by sliding, firing their weapon, and still being able to initiate a shoulder charge or slide melee. This results in an effective one-shot kill that is extremely difficult to track or understand if you're on the receiving end. Starting in Season of the Wish, firing your weapon while sliding will now prevent the activation of sprint- or slide-activated melees. We originally intended for this change to be isolated to Shoulder Charge abilities, but in our initial playtesting we quickly realized that the Shoulder Charge was easily replaceable with a Tempest Strike, Lightning Surge, or our other slide melees, so we're including them in this change as well.
Alongside this change, we're also increasing the potency of Tempest Strike, which has felt somewhat left behind given the powerful synergy between Flow State and Lethal Current.
With Season of the Witch, we released Banner of War, which has quickly jumped to the top of the Aspect list for our Titan players. It's currently equipped for nearly 20% of all Titan playtime for Season of the Witch PvE activities. This is rivaled only by Into the Fray at 15% of playtime, which is Banner's natural pairing. We're very happy with the way Banner of War has supported the Berserker class fantasy and don't want to reduce its ability to do so when at maximum charge. However, it's currently too easy to build up to that maximum charge very quickly in content with sufficient density of combatants, especially with the help of your teammates.
With Season of the Wish, we're making a change to slow down the charge progression, increasing the number of defeats required to level the Banner up at each tier. As part of this change, we're also slightly increasing the timer extension granted by each enemy defeated to compensate.
Let's talk bonk. Prior to Solar 3.0, Throwing Hammer was in the Code of the Devastator subclass tree which didn't have much in the way of survivability tools, other than picking up the hammer after a hit. This meant that players needed to be significantly more careful in their play and generally weren't as capable of standing in a Champion's or boss's face with impunity while they chucked a hammer at its torso over and over again. While this makes for a fun visual, we don't believe that this behavior is healthy for the game, so alongside the changes to Restoration detailed above, we're looking more fundamentally at how Throwing Hammer functions.
We started this section off talking about the relationship between potency and uptime, and how the rules of the sandbox begin to break down when these don't match up for a given ability. Throwing Hammer isn't currently matching up. We don't want to remove the full energy refund on pickup because the conventional gameplay loop is still really fun, but we do want to add some downtime between throws to discourage the stand-next-to-the-boss-and-bonk-them behavior.
To that end, picking up a Throwing Hammer will now return its energy over a short duration, rather than instantly. We're also increasing the projectile's tracking strength so that players who choose to chuck the hammer at longer ranges are more consistently rewarded for taking that risk.
Part of this equation is also Sol Invictus, which offers reliable safe havens in Sunspots. Similarly to our Throwing Hammer changes, we don't want to discourage players who want to move from position to position, advancing through the combat space, but do want to make sure that players who bunker in dangerous positions (such as at the feet of a boss) aren't able to do so for too long.
With Update 3.4.0, we made a change to our Super cooldowns, placing Well of Radiance and Ward of Dawn in the fastest recharging tier. This decision was largely based on their kill potential versus Supers that deal burst damage or allow you to roam the field for potential team wipes. The game has changed significantly since then, and with changes to Trials of Osiris (Dominion as the game mode and shorter round times in general), we want to reevaluate their placement.
In Season of the Wish, we're increasing their base cooldown times by one tier, matching the passive cooldowns of some of our burst Supers, like Blade Barrage or Chaos Reach. Our goal is for Well and Ward to have stronger competition in round-based modes, giving other players more tools to effectively deal with them under the time pressure that a mode like Dominion has.
On a longer timeframe, we're evaluating Well and Ward's place in the sandbox more fundamentally. These two Supers are currently operating in too similar a space, leaving little room for them to breathe on their own. Well of Radiance in particular offers too much, and its effective invulnerability is not something we believe the sandbox can or should continue to support. We're not making further changes to Well or Ward with Season of the Wish, but we have a suite of future changes planned to reduce Well's dominance in PvE and push the gameplay space of these two Supers further apart. We'll provide more details on that closer to their release.
A week and a half ago, Stasis turned three years old. A lot has happened in that time: We've seen massive changes in the sandbox as we released the Light 3.0 subclasses, we added Strand as a fifth damage type in Lightfall, and the overall power bar of the sandbox has shifted significantly, resulting in Stasis feeling like it's been left behind. We've given Stasis some tuning updates here and there, but we believe it's time to give it a bigger shot in the arm.
Starting in Season of the Wish (and continuing in The Final Shape), we're making a number of quality-of-life changes to improve Stasis's reliability in combat, and we're reevaluating some of our previous tuning changes for Stasis abilities with the goal of bringing them up to the current abilities power bar.
Let's start off with the Fragment suite. For this release, we focused on our stat bonuses and penalties, removing those that felt unnecessary, tweaking them to make underperforming picks a little more attractive, or shifting them to better suit the gameplay of the Fragment.
For our Hunters, we're making changes targeted at improving the reliability of Withering Blade in all content and Winter's Shroud in PvE. Withering Blade now travels faster, has longer lifetime, bounces an additional time before expiring, and is more consistent in finding a target—both before and after a bounce.
Winter's Shroud is getting an update to be more forgiving against PvE combatants, with a longer slow duration and increased area of effect. We're also increasing its slow stack count against PvE combatants from 40 to 60, enabling things like Sixth Coyote to more easily freeze enemies, or for a freeze to occur more quickly after a quick Duskfield/dodge combo.
For Titans, we're walking back a few changes made in Hotfixes 3.1.1.1 and 3.2.0.3 to Shiver Strike and Glacial Quake that no longer fit the current sandbox. We've returned the ability to freeze nearby players on cast with Glacial Quake (with a reduced radius from its previous version), making casting it in close quarters significantly safer than its current iteration. For Shiver Strike, we've restored its slow application to players on hit. This was previously removed in a world where collision damage was still lethal to players. Now that targets don't need to be able to air brake with a movement mode or risk being splattered, we're more comfortable giving Shiver Strike a bit more offensive spice.
We're also implementing a change to improve Howl of the Storm's consistency against players because seeing a target touching a Stasis crystal created by Howl and not being frozen was a frustrating experience.
For Warlocks, we're making a couple of quality-of-life improvements to Frostpulse and Penumbral Blast. Shadebinder is a strong pick already, and we don't feel like it needs much of a push, so we're focusing on areas where it can sometimes fail the reliability test. Frostpulse's area of effect is being increased against PvE combatants, and we've improved its network performance.
Penumbral Blast is intended to be a skill shot with a high payout, but the change made in Hotfix 3.2.0.3 to reduce its detonation size when impacting the environment can sometimes make it feel too inconsistent. With Update 7.3.0, we're increasing that detonation size by 33% to increase its ease-of-use.
Shadebinders will also directly benefit from a tuning change being made to Glacier Grenade. Currently, Bleak Watcher's cooldown is directly tied to the base cooldown of Glacier Grenade, regardless of what grenade you have equipped. With Update 7.3.0, Glacier Grenade's cooldown is being reduced, which will also translate to a lower Bleak Watcher cooldown.
While Coldsnap Grenade's reliability has significantly improved with our recent passes, there are still instances where it can fail to meet expectations, so we're making further tweaks.
Finally, we're increasing the bonus damage that Special weapons deal to frozen targets by a small amount, to help make shattering enemies feel more consistent.
These aren't the only changes for Stasis that we have in the works, and we have some long-requested changes for a future release that we'll discuss once they're closer. Here's a quick sneak preview:
Tune in next week for the full list of patch notes, which will include a few items we didn't mention here. As always, we'll continue to digest feedback as it's coming in, so please keep it coming.
It's time for another set of Exotic armor balance changes! We once again wanted to buff some underused Exotics, with a particular focus this time on broadening the number of viable melee-oriented Exotic options for all three classes. We also wanted to improve the two least popular Aeon cult sects, with the goal that running a team of Aeon would provide more value in high-end PvE play. We also snuck in a few miscellaneous changes that we feel improve the armor sandbox.
Here are the details, broken down by class. Please note that, unless otherwise specified, the following changes leave the rest of the Exotics' benefits intact.
Shards of Galanor
Ophidia Spathe
St0mp-EE5Feedback about the previous St0mp-EE5 change indicated that requiring full class ability made movement while wearing this Exotic feel too variable between its states and disproportionately hurt certain builds. In this update, we have removed the requirement of having full dodge energy to activate the benefits and have reduced the bonus to airborne lateral acceleration that the Exotic provides to be more in line with its other bonuses (sprint speed, grounded acceleration, airborne vertical acceleration, slide distance, and jump height) in terms of effectiveness. We also added damage resistance while airborne in PvE, to make St0mp-EE5 a more desirable option outside of the Crucible and jumping puzzles.
Mechaneer's Tricksleeves
The Bombardiers
Triton Vice
Celestial Nighthawk
Severance Enclosure
Peregrine Greaves
Wormgod Caress
Ashen Wake
SynthocepsWhile we wanted to bring the generic melee bonus down a bit to give space for other, more specialized melee Exotics to shine in their specific niches, we felt it was safe to bring Synthoceps' Glaive melee bonus back up a substantial amount. We have also swapped the increased melee lunge range for increased weapon handling and reload speed.
Precious Scars
Ballidorse Wrathweavers
Apotheosis Veil
Felwinter's Helm
Karnstein Armlets
Aeon CultAeon Swift, Aeon Safe, and Aeon Soul Exotic armor all received the following changes to their "sect" mods.
Sect of ForceThis has been reworked to be all about providing your allies significant bonus weapon damage against powerful combatants. The bonus grenade and melee energy has been moved to be the special benefit granted to Aeon cult allies using a different sect.
Sect of InsightSect of Insight had a strong role in endgame PvE teams, and we don't want to change that. The one modification we do want to make is changing the Aeon cult ally bonus to be Super energy instead of weapon damage, as we want Sect of Force to be the source of weapon bonuses.
Sect of VigorSect of Vigor already had a strong theme as the supporting role in the Aeon cult. We wanted to boost its effectiveness by having it provide damage resistance in PvE, in addition to its class ability benefits. Our goal is to make Sect of Vigor players shepherds for their team, keeping their allies near to protect them from harm.
Those are all the changes planned for Exotic armor that will be available the moment Season of the Wish launches. As always, let us know how you feel about these, try them in your favorite activities, and keep that precious feedback coming!
In addition to the Exotic changes listed above, we're also adjusting several Armor Mods. To reiterate what was touched on in the Gameplay section, the high potential power output of abilities means they need to have proportional uptime and require meaningful (and sometimes difficult!) buildcrafting choices. Currently, the high-water mark for ability uptime is higher than we'd like. In order for us to hit our broader goals of reigning in ability energy sources across the sandbox, we need to reduce the amount of energy fed into the energy economy via Armor Mods.
We believe these changes will help return some meaningful choice to both ability usage and the Armor Charge system, while still allowing each Armor Mod to provide a valuable effect.
After almost two years of hard work, we will start Fireteam Finder's beta test shortly after Season of the Wish launches. Starting on November 30, players will have access to the first public Raids Stress Test of the new group-finding tool, while we gather data to help get things working smoothly.
This first test will focus only on raids. Be aware that this is one of the most ambitious launches we've had for Destiny in a long time, so please be patient and share with us all your feedback, so we can work the gremlins out of the system. Our goal with this launch is clear: to ensure Fireteam Finder scales properly for millions of players and to deliver a world-class LFG tool for all activities in the near future. We have a lot more to share about this in the article dedicated to Fireteam Finder, so go check it out if you haven't already.
The Destiny 2 Cutscene Archive has grown a lot since we started this project a year ago. Today, we couldn't be happier to bring two more Seasons and an expansion to our YouTube playlist.
Shadowkeep
Season of the Undying (Season 8)
Season of Dawn (Season 9)
And since we have you here, why not check our Light and Darkness Saga Story Moments video to relive some of the memories of the past years, before jumping into the new Season?
For those looking to upgrade their Destiny 2 catalog, we have good news for you: Lightfall and other content packs are up to 67% off on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam until November 28! It doesn't stop there though. Starting November 24, the Bungie Store begins its biggest sale of the year and relaunches limited quantities of previously retired Bungie Rewards.
Those participating in the sale will receive the Darkstar emblem with any purchase made during this period. Also, throughout the sale, all orders shipped in the 48 contiguous US states, EU, and UK will have a $7 flat rate shipping. The Bungie Store sale ends on December 1 at 8:59 PM PST. And last but not least, the new Wishing Well emblem will also be available for purchases made on November 24 and later during the Season of the Wish.
Darkstar
Wishing Well
Give thanks, the Fifteenth Wish is here!
Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help TwitterEnd of Season Approaches
Season of the Witch concludes on November 28, 2023, at 9 AM PST. Players should make sure to claim all engrams and other rewards before the new Season begins. Any rewards not claimed from non-Seasonal vendors will be removed at the beginning of the next Season.Updated Text Chat Filtering
One of our core values is "creating worlds that inspire friendship," which includes protecting players and encouraging positive teamwork. With this aim, in early December we will begin implementing significant improvements to text-chat language filters. Some things to note:
- To minimize unintended behavior, this will be the first step of a multiphase rollout. We will continually audit the filter's performance and update its rules.
- Players can still toggle "Allow Profanity" on and off through the in-game social settings. However, in the initial rollout, some of these settings may be overridden by the new filters. This means some players may temporarily see terms that were previously hidden by their personal settings. We are working to resolve this in a future phase.
- The system will prioritize the thirteen languages/dialects officially supported by Destiny 2. Players chatting in non-supported languages may experience the system filtering out words that do not violate the Code of Conduct. We're working on an FAQ with details about this and related questions.
- Initially, the filter system will automatically filter language but not affect any player accounts. However, while auditing system performance, Bungie staff may manually act on behavior that violates our Code of Conduct.
Players who encounter unexpected filter behavior will be able to report it via a dedicated submission form in the near future.Known Issues
While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help forum:
- The Ascendancy Rocket Launcher does not appear in the preview screen of the Legacy Gear Menu at the Monument to Lost Lights.
- The All for One Crota's End raid challenge may not be completing for players who correctly meet the conditions for the challenge.
For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
UPDATE: We have picked a new MOTW after noticing the previous one had already been featured in the 10/26 TWID. Pardon our dust.
We love cowboys. We love Tex Mechanica. And we love this video, too. (Some strong language, be advised)
Movie of the Week: Let's be Cowboys! Yee-haw
This impressive #Destiny2AOTW reminds us of our Season of the Wish key art from another angle. Hopefully you are not afraid of all the sharp teeth, claws, and muscles. Amazing creation!
Art of the Week: "Wish once more, O Guardian mine" by @theEverdrift via Twitter/X
We hope the info shared today will help you assemble the most powerful build to face the many challenges that are coming. We can't wait to see what crazy combinations you end up making while playing the new Season. We wish you all the best!
That said, maybe we should avoid wishing so carelessly? Just for the foreseeable future... You never know who or what might be listening, and wishes are a very powerful type of magic. Last time someone (not pointing fingers) went too far with them, we ended up having a whole city trapped in a temporal loop. So, let's cut this outro now to avoid any problems.
See you next week, O Reader Mine.
Destiny 2 Community Team
We are NOT Bungie, Inc.! Bungie Inc. are bungie.net!
Destiny © Bungie Inc., 2010-2024
Intellectual © destiny.bungie.org, 2012-2024
BUNGIE™, DESTINY™, MARATHON® and the Bungie, Destiny and Marathon logos
are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Bungie, Inc., used with permission.
