This Week in Destiny, we are getting ready for our next developer stream. These things take time, so we are also telling you all about one of the biggest systemic changes we are introducing with The Edge of Fate. It's a topic that you may not have heard about yet, so get ready for it. And for the rest of our weekly topics, of course.
Join us on Tuesday, June 24 at 10 AM PT as we give an in-depth look at The Edge of Fate. We'll have the dev team on the floor ready to share many details about Armor 3.0 and the new ability stat system, to show you some new weapons, and more!
Everyone watching our developer stream on the Bungie Twitch channel for at least 15 minutes and with their BungieID linked will earn the Astromancy emblem as a Twitch Drop.
Guardians, The Emissary and the Nine still require your attention. After making all dungeons available last week, and turning on increased rewards for them, we are entering a new Rite of the Nine cycle. All dungeons remain active and can be played at players' leisure, but only one of them has increased rewards active so you can go back and farm for resources and weapons if you are still chasing some of them.
We have another update coming on July 1. The Emissary will start giving away Nonary Engrams that are filled to the brim with hand-picked cosmetic rewards spanning multiple years of Destiny 2 content. Some are newer, like Holochips, and others are a blast from the past - like Crimson Days emotes.
Check the calendar below so you don't miss anything that's coming.
Hello there! This is the Destiny 2 Sandbox Team, ready to talk about one of the most significant systemic overhauls coming with The Edge of Fate: additive melee damage stacking. The short version is: almost all sources of increased melee damage are buffed, all sources of increased melee damage stack at full efficiency in PvE, and we are using additive damage increase calculation for melee damage.
Currently in Destiny 2, most sources of increased damage in Destiny 2 are multiplicative. Two hypothetical 50% damage increases (a 1.5x increase to damage) are multiplied together for a total 125% (or 2.25x) damage increase. This approach to damage increases has some problems.
For one, the more damage increasing effects applied at a time, the more powerful they all become, which means that the best builds and strategies can start to revolve around simply having as many buffs as possible. This is a pattern we saw in Destiny 2 prior to the mutually exclusive empowering damage buff system for weapons.
Additionally, balancing the game becomes more and more difficult the more sources of increased damage we add. We do not want to have to choose between bosses being one-shot by players who are stacking as many buffs as possible or bosses feeling like bullet sponges to players who are not.
When The Edge of Fate is released on July 15, melee damage increases in Destiny 2 will be additive. That means, two hypothetical 50% damage increases will be added together for a total 100% damage increase.
Now, this does result in a lower damage ceiling for melee abilities, and it is unlikely that most bosses will ever be one-shot with melee abilities going forwards, but because we do not need to worry about someone stacking these melee buffs and trivializing most content in the game, we can do two very cool things:
Our goal with these changes is to make it much easier to create a personalized build that works the way you want. Many, many potential combinations of melee abilities and buildcrafting atoms are now much stronger than they were. We are very excited to see what melee builds y'all cook up in The Edge of Fate with these new changes!
In this new system, every effect that increases melee damage has been converted to use additive damage stacking. Every item that has been changed as part of this has been listed below, with a single exception. The new Melee stat introduced with Armor 3.0 increases the damage of melee abilities when going over 100 points, up to an extra 30% at 200 stat.
The damage bonus provided by this stat is considered to be an increase to the base damage of a player's melee attacks and abilities and is multiplicative with other damage increases. In short, if you're putting together a melee build, you'll want to get your melee stat as high as possible.
Additionally, melee damage no longer scales Scorch and Ignition damage generated by melee attacks. The logic behind this change is similar to the logic underlying the Jolt damage scaling changes we made a while back. We think it's healthier for elemental verbs to have a consistent effect regardless of the source that applied them. We have opted for a more targeted change here, and Incinerator Snap and Consecration Slam remain powerful options both as centerpiece abilities in melee-focused builds and as potent, damage-focused tools in other builds.
As part of our melee overhaul, we are revisiting the role of Glaives in the sandbox. We would like Glaives to find a more permanent home in melee-focused builds, where they provide a defensive tool to help you close in on your targets and a faster and more potent unpowered melee ability than Guardians would have otherwise.
That's right: Glaive melee is considered an unpowered melee ability in The Edge of Fate.
Anything that increases the strength of unpowered melee abilities will now increase the strength of Glaive melee, including the melee stat. This does come at a cost: while Glaives have a much clearer role and have a higher damage ceiling, we needed to reduce their base melee damage in PvE to bring it more in line with an unpowered melee attack, but even after these changes Glaive melee has a much higher damage-per-second output than unpowered melee attacks do.
In short, if your build relies on unpowered melee damage, Glaives will be the best way to increase your unpowered melee DPS even further.
Below, check out the list of melee changes we have made to abilities, Exotic armor pieces and weapon perks so that they can shine in the new system. Be mindful that this list does not cover all the sandbox tuning plans we have for The Edge of Fate, just the melee-focused ones. We are covering Exotic armor changes in a section below, and we'll share everything about weapons and abilities in a future TWID.
Prismatic
Arc
We mentioned a bunch of Exotic Armor pieces in the previous sections, so it felt natural to go over the other Exotics that are changing with The Edge of Fate. Many buffs and reworks here and there, and just a few minor nerfs to keep things balanced and interesting.
It has long felt weird how similar The Dragon's Shadow and Speedloader Slacks are in their effects, with both centered on dodging to get stats. To alleviate some of this weirdness, The Dragon's Shadow has gained many of these stats and had its perk updated to fit better with the new suite of player stats.
With these bonuses given away, we took a more PvE oriented approach to Speedloader Slacks, allowing Hunters to be able to provide a benefit akin to Lunafaction Boots to their allies to be able to carry around during higher end content.
Mask of Bakris has always been an evocative and visually fun Exotic but largely is used as a PvP tool. We've made some changes to let you play into the Fallen Captain fantasy even moreso in PvE while also pairing well with the new stats. It's also now usable on Arc subclasses and supers!
Khepri's Sting has been a fairly niche PvP exotic for some time, so we wanted to rework it to something a bit more broadly useful and with more buildcrafting hooks.
Oathkeepers have not been quite worth the time investment to overdraw for the damage bonus, so we've tuned that a bit for some better ease of use and a higher potential payout of damage.
Blight Ranger's had a rough time, with previous balance changes failing to hit the mark. Despite that, we believe that its most recent rework established a playstyle that fits the fantasy of the Exotic. However, its cancellation effect still didn't feel worth the investment, especially due to a challenging bug with how its damage scaled. So we've given it a bit of extra juice. Actually, a lot of extra juice.
Over the past year, we have seen a lot of love when it comes to the new additions of things like the Support Frame Autos. With The Edge of Fate, we took a look at some of the other clearly support-oriented Exotics that aren't as popular to give them a leg up to modern sandbox standards. Starting with Crest of Alpha Lupi, we wanted to keep it subclass agnostic; while letting it feel like the one-stop shop for the "Support Titan" fantasy.
The next clear option was Phoenix Cradle. There's a lot of ways to generate Sunspots but it always felt like you couldn't create them where you wanted to maximize the effects of Phoenix Cradle. So, we tackled that while also hitting on a VERY common piece of feedback when it comes to your Cradle-enabled Sunspot's visuals.
Ah, Stand Asides, ironically left in the dust. This Exotic lost its role with the introduction of Juggernaut and other changes that made the melee refund less valuable. We removed the melee energy refund on shoulder charge hit and the over shield while sprinting. These were replaced by more Arc-centric perks that turn you (and your allies) into an unstoppable force.
We liked how Path of Burning Steps played in Season of the Wish before the previous changes to this Exotic. To return to its glory days (gleefully frolicking with Polaris Lance), we added back some of its bonus damage by tying it to Roaring Flames.
Abeyant Leap remains a potent choice, but we wanted to add a small nudge in efficacy that won't over tune the whole suspend kit.
These changes to Actium War Rig go along well with the new weapons stat, giving you the option of building your loadout around the Exotic to keep its new kill streak bonus rolling. Think Wormgod Caress for Auto Rifles and Machineguns. Wormgun Caress?
Spirit of Alpha Lupi is also going to be inheriting one of the above changes to Crest of Alpha Lupi.
"Empowering Damage" as it has been written on Starfire Protocol has always felt pretty confusing. With the new world of stats, we figured it was high time to clear up this confusion and give this Exotic a well-deserved boost.
With the release of other items in the game, such as the Manticore SMG, we've seen some gripes when it comes to Exotics that ask the player to survive while airborne. So, to give some help to Wings of Sacred Dawn, we've taken a look at just that.
For many Exotics, it's been hard to keep up with the difficulty progression of activities, oftentimes leading to them being great in on power or lower content but extremely feast/famine in high difficulty activities. For weapons we can usually help remedy this with "On sustained damage" effects and, in the case of armor like Felwinter's Helm, an equivalent "On Hit."
In a world with so many Rift Exotics, it's always been hard to make a "combo-Rift" feel truly good for how many hoops it asked you to jump through. So, with this pass, we've looked at an alternative approach to the "combo-Rift" that will also let players hook into other atoms on the Solar subclass to allow for more versatile benefits.
Currently, Speaker's Sight largely outclasses Boots of the Assembler. Speaker's Sight is similarly potent at healing allies, produces orbs to power your build, and doesn't require you to stand in a rift to get benefits. Plus, Boots of the Assembler's Noble Seekers are just... not that smart. So, we sent them to college: they now target allies more reliably, spread their healing out much more efficiently, and give a more flexible benefit when they find an ally.
We enjoyed watching players shoot out beams of concentrated Arc energy just as much as you all did generating them, but with the launch of The Edge of Fate, we are limiting some of that unlimited power. To compensate, we took a pass at re-tuning its sprinting for Bolt Charge.
We are almost at the end of The Final Shape year, but it's never too late to jump into the game, fight against the hordes of Darkness, and defeat one of our biggest foes yet. Same thing for the year of content after the expansion: all content is unlocked for Episodes Echoes, Revenant, and Heresy for players with the corresponding Seasonal Passes.
As we approach the launch of The Edge of Fate, many of the Bungie Rewards available that require a Triumph unlocked during this year won't be available anymore, so take this as an opportunity not only to earn them, but also to complete your journey. Check out some of our greatest hits of the year below.
Episode: Echoes Bungie Rewards
Episode: Revenant Bungie Rewards
Episode: Heresy Bungie Rewards
Known Issues List | Help Forums | Destiny 2 Team BlueskyKnown Issues List
- The Ascension Aspect isn't working with certain armor mods and Exotic armors.
- Crystals made by the Rime-Coat Raiment Exotic Chest don't reliably grant Devour while Feed the Void is equipped.
- Enhanced Recycled Energy grants no energy back.
- The Champ Title has lost its gilded status.
- When speaking to a vendor, you can hear their ambient dialogue; sometimes you hear vendor voices overlapping... which can be very confusing.
- Steps 6 and 9 of the Drowning Labyrinth quest aren't able to be completed by some players.
- Due to this quest being a fix between character-scoped and account-scoped, if you have an alternate character and make progress on the quest, you need to play on that character to get back into the correct research paper level for your main character.
- Sometimes in the Derealize Exotic mission, the Taken relic can drop below the surface during the Vhriisk encounter.
- When damaging Shrieker bosses in the Sundered Doctrine dungeon, players receive critical damage feedback, but damage is actually regular base damage.
- When tracking Ikora's Drowning Labyrinth quest, completion of certain steps may stop progress on the next steps.
- Sometimes the Tome of Want: A Primer quest does not progress after meeting Step 3 and Step 4 requirements.
- Memento shaders can be previewed on armor in the Armor Management screen. This is not intended, and Mementos aren't being considered for use on armor.
- Secant Filaments and Spirit of the Filaments can't grant Devour while Facet of Protection is equipped.
They are robots, so technically they shouldn't, but they also have Radiolaria in them, and that's kind of an organic... milky thing. So, who knows! All I know is that we enjoyed this Art Deco inspired Vex art very much.
Who doesn't love a good old collateral with a Sniper Rifle? Even better if it wipes the whole enemy team. And even crazier that it's using New Land Beyond, our latest sniping bad boy.
And with that, this TWID is over. Hope you found all those changes coming to your melee builds and Exotic armor pieces interesting. We are pretty sure some of you have already started theorizing about the new builds and combos that will be the most fun to play with when The Edge of Fate launches.
Let us know what got you the most excited!
The Destiny 2 Community Team