This Week In Destiny - 09/19/2024

This Week in Destiny, we have been playing Iron Banner and finished tons of Triumphs and challenges from Episode: Echoes, so now we are ready to start sharing more about what's to come with Episode: Revenant, our next content drop arriving on October 8. Are you ready for it? (Dun. Dun. Duuun.)

• New Dev Insight next week
• Improved rewards for Nightfalls and Lost Sectors
• Let's talk Power Band increases
• A preview of the next big abilities update
• NERF LMTD Ace of Spades blaster early access
• Our first art show is a success
• Bungie Foundation at TwitchCon
• Chill with us in orbit

Let the TWID begin.

Save the Date: Next Week's Dev Insight

We told you we would have more Dev Insights in the coming weeks, and we really meant it! On Wednesday, September 25 we will have a new article delivered directly by the Destiny 2 developers and focused on answering some questions you all have about Codename: Frontiers. Patience is a virtue, so for now visit our hub article and give our previous three articles a read.

Upcoming Rewards Changes

And now, let's talk about some of the changes coming with Episode: Revenant, which is launching on October 8. We leave you in the incredibly capable hands of the Destiny 2 Dev Team.

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Morning, all! Economy team here with some updates focused on Nightfalls and Lost Sector rewards. First, the drop chances for non-Adept weapons have been increased in Advanced, Expert and Master Nightfalls when earning Platinum and Gold tier upon completion. With this change, non-Adept Nightfall weapons are now guaranteed to drop when completing a Platinum run in a Master Nightfall, and a 50% chance to drop if it's a Gold completion.

In addition, Adept weapon drops from Grandmaster Nightfalls have been slightly increased when getting Gold completions, although Platinum remains the best course of action for earning them as completion guarantees a drop.

Nightfall Focusing

Zavala’s Focused Decoding has also received a minor update in regard to Nightfall weapons. The weekly featured Nightfall weapon, and the Adept version of said weapon have been moved to a new “Featured” category with updated costs.

Weekly featured Nightfall Weapon

• 1 Vanguard Engram
• 1 Nightfall Cipher

Weekly featured Adept Nightfall Weapon

• 1 Vanguard Engram
• 50,000 Glimmer
• 10 Nightfall Ciphers

Lost Sector Rewards

Finally, starting in Revenant, the world pool weapons will be farmable in Lost Sectors the very season they are added to the game. Previously, players had to wait until the next season or Episode launch to obtain them this way.

Lost Sector weapon availability will continue to rotate daily, with the table below showing the rotation for Revenant.

Power Band Increasing in Next Episode

And now, our Power Systems experts take the room to share an update on Power Band increases in Revenant.

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Hey, all! With The Final Shape, we introduced a wonderful feature called Fireteam Power with the goal of making it so friends could always play together no matter what their Power levels are. We’ve been very happy with Fireteam Power and how it’s removed the Power barrier that was previously preventing players of different engagement levels from playing together.

With this improvement in place, we’re revisiting some of our previous decisions that sought to achieve the same goal, namely Power Band increases. Before the Lightfall expansion, increasing Power caps by 10 each season provided new goals for end-game players to aspire to and added value to completing pinnacle activities such as Raids and Dungeons.  Fireteam Power will still be there so friends can always play together, even if some players choose not to pursue the new Power caps.

Starting on October 8 with Revenant (and again in the next Episode), we’ll once more be increasing Power caps by 10 to return that pursuit to end-game players. The resulting Power Bands in Revenant will be:

• Power Floor: 1900
• Soft Cap: 1950
• Powerful Cap: 2000
• Hard Cap/Pinnacle Cap: 2010

Titan's Week in Destiny

Last but not least, our Sandbox team has a hefty update on abilities, with a focus on Titans. But remember, all our Guardians are perfect and equally loved whether they wear shoulder pads the size of a stadium, owe you Glimmer that you know is lost forever, or  they lecture you about Vex portals on your way to Europa.

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Howdy, folks. Combat Gameplay team here with a preview of what to expect with the launch of Revenant. It’s been a minute since our last article back in May, and since then we’ve seen the launch of the Prismatic subclasses which seismically shifted the sandbox landscape. From multiple Warlock buddies to Diamond Lances as far as the eye can see, we’ve been extremely pleased to watch players push Prismatic to its limits as they combine gameplay atoms in ways that weren’t possible before The Final Shape.

Now that the Prismatic subclasses have had time to settle, we’re making some adjustments. We’ve collected a mixture of player feedback and game data about abilities across the sandbox, and we have slew of ability changes coming for both Prismatic and non-Prismatic subclasses alike.

We’ll cover most of this Season’s ability changes in this writeup, but you can read the full patch notes when Revenant launches. 

Today we’re going to focus on:

• Titan class-identity reinforcement
• Super ability changes
• General ability tuning

So, let’s get right into it.

Unbreakable Will

Titans are the bulwarks of their fireteam. They live and die on the frontline of battle, barking out orders while never backing down from an encounter. Titans wield defensive staples like Barricade and Stasis Crystals with practiced ease. They specialize in doling out lifesaving buffs like Void Overshield and Woven Mail to their grateful fireteams. And they throw a mean right hook, to boot. But Titans deserve a class identity that’s more than the sum of its fists.

We’ve heard your cries for more depth to Titan gameplay and more viability in high-tier endgame content, and we agree with you. Titans have so much more to give than mere blunt force trauma. They’re frontliners, damage mitigators, and battlefield commanders. Now, we don’t want to take away from or replace what the Titan already has. Instead, we want to find nondestructive ways to add depth to the Titan’s kit. These kinds of shifts take time, but we’re starting down that road in Revenant.

Starting with Revenant, we're testing a change to barricades and other shields that will give the Titan more of a traditional “tank” role:

• Titan Barricade now taunts enemies in front of the barricade.
  • This taunt only occurs while there is a player standing behind the barricade.

This is a substantial change for Titans and for Destiny. For the first time, Titan players can use their defensive abilities to draw enemy fire, thereby shielding their fireteam from harm.

The Titan’s Unbreakable shield and Sentinel Shield’s guard also taunt enemies, allowing you to become a mobile aggro magnet. If this change plays well, we’re hoping to add this functionality to more of the Titan’s defensive abilities, such as Ward of Dawn, in the future.

While enemies will typically prioritize bringing down the Barricade above all else, there are combat situations where combatants may have higher priorities than the Barricade, such as a Vex Wyvern with a directive to march toward a conflux, or a Cabal Legionary desperately trying to bring down a Guardian in their Super. The Barricade taunt doesn’t turn enemies into mindless zombies, and enemies who are on a mission may prioritize that mission over the barricade. But for the general rank-and-file enemies you see in activities from patrol to raids, this has been quite fun in our playtests. One important detail about this change is that combatants now shoot at the Barricade itself instead of at Guardians behind the Barricade, making aiming at enemies from behind your Barricade safer than before.

We’ll be monitoring this change closely, and you can expect tweaks in the future as we see how these changes play out in the live game.

To support the Titan’s new aggro lifestyle, we’ve made some adjustments to Barricades and Unbreakable:

• Towering Barricade and Rally Barricade (all subclasses)
  • Reduced non-boss combatant damage dealt to the Barricade by 50%.
  • Increased splash-damage reduction from combatants for players behind the Barricade from 20% to 60%.
  • Barricades now grant moderate damage resistance vs. combatants during cast animation.
• Unbreakable
  • Damage blocked by Unbreakable now generates grenade energy.
  • Increased max duration the shield can be held.
  • Forward movement speed now slows down briefly when the shield is shot.
  • Reduced Unbreakable’s throw attack damage vs. players by 20%.
  • Increased damage bleed through from players by 15%.
  • Fully charged Unbreakable attacks will now one-shot Barricades in PvP except when the Barricade is under the effects of Heart of Inmost Light.

While we’re here on Unbreakable and Titans, we should mention Void Overshield. This is a staple of the Sentinel kit, and we think it could use a little help in PvE to better compete with other damage-mitigation options.

• Void Overshield
  • Increased Void Overshield PvE damage resistance from 50% to 70%.
    • This increases maximum effective HP from 90 to 150.

Next stop, Prismatic Titan. While Prismatic Titans will inherit all applicable changes to Barricade, Unbreakable, and Sentinel Shield, we're also buffing several other Titan abilities featured in the Prismatic Titan subclass. These changes are global, meaning that they are applicable to both the ability’s standard subclass and Prismatic.

• Consecration
  • Scorch and slam waves now shatter Stasis Crystals.
• Diamond Lance
  • Thrown or slammed Diamond Lances will now shatter Stasis Crystals.
  • Slamming a Diamond Lance will grant you and nearby allies two stacks of Frost Armor.
  • Changed the weapon tray HUD to display how many seconds are remaining before the Diamond Lance disappears, like a Tangle.
• Knockout
  • Melee kills now cancel health and shield stun, in addition to healing, allowing you to immediately start regenerating.
    • Note: this is a revert of a previous nerf that had too much of a negative impact on PvE.
• Shiver Strike
  • Now attaches a Stasis explosive to the target on impact.
    • This detonation slows players and freezes combatants.
  • Now refunds 80% melee energy on whiff.
  • Increased energy recharge rate by 12.5%.
  • Immediately after landing a Shiver Strike attack, the attacker’s melee ability is now suppressed for 0.5s.

While not specifically a Prismatic Titan-only option, we know they felt the nerf the most when Facet of Command’s cooldown was moved to 11 seconds. We agree that 11 seconds feels too long.

• Facet of Command/Echo of Domineering
  • Cooldown reduced from 11 seconds to 4 seconds.

Alas, the Titan buff train approaches its final destination. Yes, there’s more to Titans than brute force, but at the same time, one of the pillars of Titan class identity is physical strength, so they should punch harder than the other classes, right? Well, we’re increasing the Titan’s unpowered melee to be more powerful than a Hunter or Warlock unpowered melee. We’re also increasing the likelihood that the Titan’s unpowered melee will stun enemy combatants.

• Titan Unpowered Melee
  • Increased damage against players by 5%.
  • Increased damage against PvE combatants by 20%.
  • Increased stun multiplier.

Unlimited Power

We want Super abilities to feel like the ultimate expression of a Guardian’s power, and we’re dedicating some time in this release and in future releases to make sure we’re delivering on that. For this release, we’ve primarily focused on making certain roaming Supers feel better, particularly in terms of survivability.

• Warlock
  • Stormtrance
    • Increased damage resistance from 53% to 58%.
  • Chaos Reach
    • Increased damage resistance from 45% to 55%.
    • Fixed an issue where Chaos Reach would not Jolt at high framerates.
    • Fixed an issue where Chaos Reach would not go through Sentinel Shield’s guard or a Citan’s Barricade.
  • Nova Warp
    • Increased PvE damage by 20%.
    • Increased damage resistance from 51% to 58%.
    • Now any Nova Warp detonation applies Volatile, regardless of charge duration.
• Hunter
  • Golden Gun – Marksman and Deadshot
    • Increased damage against base, elite, and miniboss combatants by 30%.
  • Spectral Blades
    • Increased PvE damage by 20%.
    • Increased damage resistance from 47% to 58%.
• Titan
  • Glacial Quake
    • Howl of the Storm can be used while Glacial Quake is active.
  • Twilight Arsenal
    • Thrown axe projectiles now more consistently track towards targets closer to the reticle.
    • Increased Twilight Arsenal’s axe relic weapon damage vs combatants by 23%.
  • Thundercrash
    • Increased base detonation damage by 33%.
  • Fist of Havok
    • Increased damage resistance from 51% to 58%.
    • Changed how the light attack works under the hood to improve consistency in hitting targets.
    • Slightly increased light attack lunge range and ability to target enemies vertically.

For Act 2 of Revenant, we’re investigating increasing roaming Super uptime so they’re more often available when you need them. Stay tuned for that!

Space Lightning and Sharp Knives

For both Stormcallers and Prismatic Warlocks, we want to increase the usability of Lightning Surge. To support this, we are making two changes to it:

• Lightning Surge
  • The Warlock casting Lightning Surge now has 50% damage resistance vs. Titan Barricades during the lunge.
  • Casting Lightning Surge now also makes you Amplified.

Since the launch of The Final Shape, Prismatic Hunter has been both a highly used and a highly effective subclass, according to our data. We’ve made some PvP-focused changes to Prismatic Hunter abilities during the past Season, and we’ll continue to monitor its PvP performance and make changes as necessary. In Revenant, we’re making the following changes to Prismatic Hunter and other Hunter subclasses that feature these abilities:

• Hailfire Spike Prismatic Grenade
  • Added projectile tracking and aim assist to increase consistency in hitting targets.
• Threaded Specter
  • Increased detonation damage against PvE combatants by 33%.
• Swarm Grenade
  • Swarm grenade submunitions are now easier for players to shoot down.
  • Swarm grenade submunitions can now chain detonate other submunitions when destroyed.

On the PvE side, the Hunter’s Combination Blow melee in particular has been a little too hot, so we’re making some changes to make it more about damage than survivability.

• Combination Blow
  • Rescaled healing from a flat 80 HP per kill to 100/80/60/40 per kill based on stack count.
  • No longer clears health and shield stun on kill.
  • Removed the 1.5 second internal cooldown on healing.

Wrapping Up

That’s all the Combat Gameplay team has to share today. We’re hard at work on future releases and we’re more optimistic than ever about the future of Destiny and its sandbox. We’re excited to take big swings, make dramatic  changes, and deliver new innovations. In the short term, we hope you’re looking forward to Revenant as much as we are!

NERF Ace of Spaces Early Access

One of the most iconic weapons in Destiny is joining the NERF arsenal. The NERF LMTD Destiny 2 Ace of Spades Blaster replica is now available for early access pre-order. Players who earn the Legend Title will have access to the pre-order the Ace of Spades Blaster through September 24 at 10:00 AM PT. Head over to the Bungie Store to get the full details on this offer.

We would like to also acknowledge and credit Tofu Rabbit for their art, which was used in the creation of the Blaster replica’s design.

Destiny’s First Art Show

Thank you to everyone that dropped by to our first Destiny 10 Year Art Show in Los Angeles. We had an amazing time during the first night and we hope the pieces in the exhibition have blown your minds. You still have a few more days, until September 22, to see them in person. More information about it, and about the next dates, in our official website.

Bungie Foundation at TwitchCon and Bounty for Good

Hey Guardians, a couple of quick reminders from your friends at the Bungie Foundation.

We will be in San Diego this weekend (September 20-22) at TwitchCon and we're bringing a properly themed surf and sun emblem with us for those in attendance. We’ll be sharing some clues to our location throughout the weekend, so track us down, make an in-person donation and get the Magnetosonic Waves emblem!

Make sure you are following the Bungie Foundation on social for updates throughout the weekend. We can’t wait to connect with you and meet more Light Keepers IRL!

We’ve also got another Bungie Bounty for Good coming up soon! Join us on our Twitch Channel Wednesday, September 25 at 10AM PT when we once again will be hopping into The Crucible, taking on all challengers, and raising money for a good cause.

This month, we’ll be supporting our amazing partners at Child’s Play, who work tirelessly to improve pediatric patients’ lives through the power of play. Squad up, take down the Bungie Foundation team and get your hands on the Bounty of Good emblem.

Ten Years of Orbit Music 

Sometimes, when you log into Destiny 2, something else requires your attention immediately and by the time you come back to the game, the music in orbit has changed to this amazing tune you fondly remember. And then you sit there, listening for a while. A long while. If this sounds familiar, we have something for you.

The video below covers a decade of Destiny orbit music, just for your enjoyment. Wise Guardians know that they can right click on the video and select “loop”, so they don't have to worry about the video ever ending.

Player Support Report

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

Skywatch Increased Enemy Density 

To alleviate the time needed to complete the Accidental Generosity Triumph required for the Legend Title, enemy density in the Skywatch area in the Cosmodrome will be increased when Destiny 2 Update 8.0.5.5 arrives on Tuesday, September 24.

Solstice Forge

Due to an issue, the Solstice Forge has remained in some players’ inventories despite Solstice being over. This will be fixed on September 24, when Destiny 2 Update 8.0.5.5 launches.

Retro Fallen Exo

Br1 here, the CM that's not Cozmo or dmg_04. I'm a huge retro gaming nerd, to the point I own an old CRT monitor to hook my vintage consoles using the superior SCART RGB signal. This art of Atraks-1, or one of her replicas (who knows at this point), is inspired by how games looked on those old and glorious radiation-emitting screens and I just love it. Thank you for this!

Art by Yiroska, via Reddit

Poor Old Nezarec

Congratulations to aimxri for beating Nezarec all by himself in Master difficulty! First Guardian to ever do that. Your prowess has no match, Titan, but please give your hands a rest and don't break your next controller.

All of you that want to be featured in our weekly art and movie section, remember you can use the #Destiny2AOTW and #Destiny2MOTW hashtags to help us find your creations. Keep them coming.

Another week, another TWID that goes by. We hope you enjoyed this first peek into our plans and updates coming with the launch of Revenant. We have a ton more to reveal before October 8 arrives. Next week we'll share a bit more about the new dungeon, and about the new Artifact Perks, what changes we have planned for PvP, new rewards and more in the coming weeks. Be patient while we gather all the info.

To help with that, please check this Moo Deng-inspired Ghost. So cute!!!

Destiny 2 Community Team