This Week in Destiny - 12/12/2024

This Week in Destiny, we’re getting cozy for the holidays with some baking. Not only for the Dawning, but also for ourselves. After all, we can only deliver so many Classic Butter Cookies before wanting some for ourselves. With the holidays upon us, this is our final TWID for the year, so let’s get into it!

Topics for the week

• Closing out 2024
• Looking ahead to 2025
• Act III Balance Updates
• Bungie Store for the Holidays
• Let's see your #DawningFashion
• Dawning Bake-Off Favorites
• Bungie Foundation Year In Review
• This week’s #D2FashionFeedback update

Closing Out the Year Strong

The year is winding down, but it’s not done yet! Let’s finish off strong and take a look at a few things to put on your calendar so you don’t miss a beat in the following weeks.

Adept Uzume RR4: Grandmaster Nightfall

Next week will be your final opportunity to find the Adept Uzume RR4 Sniper Rifle  in the Nightfall loot pool rotation. While still available for focusing, this is your last chance for now to earn the Adept version. So, jump in and add it to your arsenal. By the way, in case you are still trying to get a god roll Rake Angle, the following week (December 24) our first ever Stasis Glaive will be back in rotation. Chill Clip is really strong on it!

Adept Summoner: Trials of Osiris

This week, Trials of Osiris will see the return of class-based matchmaking. One Hunter, one Warlock, and one Titan on each team will test their mettle, aim for greatness, and maybe reach the Lighthouse. This will also be the final week of The Summoner will be in the loot pool rotation, so push hard if you’re still chasing its Adept version or one more roll.

Two Crucible Labs Modes

For Crucible Labs this week, we’ve got Hardware Supremacy, which means you shall fight for crests focusing on your gunplay as ability regeneration is disabled. Finally,  to close out the year, we’ve got the return of doubles with 2v2 Clash! Grab a buddy and hop into the playlist for some small-team fun. Give us your feedback on maps and flow while earning Crucible reputation and rewards.

Looking Ahead

Coming back with a bang in 2025, we’ve got some big things happening right out of the gate. Let’s take a look at what you can look forward to at the start of the new year.

Act III Starts January 7

Revenant Act III launches on January 7! With it comes the conclusion of the Revenant storyline as well as a new Exotic mission, new weapons, and one last row of Artifact perks. We’ll have more details as we get closer to release, so keep an eye out and make sure you’re following @DestinyTheGame for updates.

New Dungeon on February 7

We’ve got a new dungeon coming to you on February 7, starting at 9:00 AM PT. We’ll have more details to share in the new year concerning Dungeon Race rules, but for now, start gathering your Fireteam and save the date.

Iron Banner Final Two Weeks

Iron Banner will return on January 14. Those of you still looking for more rolls of the fantastic Tinasha's Mastery Rocket Sidearm have another chance. Don't sleep on the reprised Archon Thunder, either.

Adept Prophet: Trials of Osiris

Starting January 31, Trials will return for one final time right before Episode: Heresy starts. It will also be the last week The Prophet will be available as a post-match reward, so if you are looking for more Adept rolls, you know what needs to be done. Its regular version will still be available for focusing on Saint, though.

Revenant Act III Weapon and Armor Balance Updates

With the launch of Revenant Act III, we'll have a slew of additional armor and weapons balance updates planned for the following week, on January 14. The bulk of this update is aimed at addressing a couple of overperforming weapon types in Crucible and then buffing a number of underperforming options as well.

We focused on some measured changes to bring up a handful of Primary ammo CQB options in Heavy Burst Sidearms, Rapid-Fire Auto Rifles, and SMGs. Then we wanted to increase the viability of a couple medium-range options with Lightweight Pulse Rifles and Precision Hand Cannons, while shuffling the medium-long-range window with targeted nerfs to High-Impact Pulse Rifles and Graviton Lance, a reversion to Lightweight Scout Rifles that moves them back to a level of forgiveness they lost with Into the Light, and a small buff to the flinch taken by Snipers.

We’re also going to nerf a problematic part of the Titan’s Exotic Class item in the Spirit of Alpha Lupi’s functionality when combined with Thruster.

Weapon Archetypes

• Sidearms
  • Heavy Burst – We preemptively nerfed Heavy Burst Sidearms before we made the Destiny 2: Into the Light sandbox changes because they had one of the most forgiving body shot Times to Kill in the game. We have not walked back those changes entirely, as that goes against the spirit of the current PvP sandbox, but we do feel that increasing the strength of some close-range Primary weapons is a worthwhile endeavor given the relative power of other close-range engagement options.
    • Increased body shot damage from 30 to 33.
    • Increased critical hit damage from 48 to 52.8.
• Submachine Guns
  • General – SMGs are currently struggling in both high-end PvE and PvP, where combating more resilient enemies is making their small magazines feel overly punishing. We are bringing their magazine sizes up a small amount globally and will also be slightly increasing their damage versus Minor combatants in Heresy.
    • Increased magazine size by approximately 10%.
• Auto Rifles
  • Rapid Fires – Increased damage slightly to remove a resilience gate from their optimal Time to Kill.
    • Increased body shot damage from 13.5 to 13.6.
    • Increased critical hit damage from 23 to 23.1.
• Pulse Rifles
  • High-Impacts – We have heard your feedback that, in the hands of highly skilled players, High-Impact Pulses can feel oppressive. We are removing their last bit of baked-in forgiveness, requiring them to hit six crits to achieve their optimal Time to Kill against all resilience levels over one. At the same time, to reduce their top-end effectiveness, we are decreasing their range via the aim down sights damage (ADS) falloff scalar, which will bring them more in line with Adaptive Hand Cannons and reduce their range below all other Pulse Rifles.
    • Reduced body shot damage from 22 to 21.5.
    • Reduced critical hit damage from 39.6 to 38.7.
    • Reduced ADS damage falloff scalar from 1.7 to 1.6.
  • Lightweights – Lightweight Pulses can feel too difficult to use for their Time to Kill and Time on Target requirements, so we are bringing their optimal TtK forgiveness up through all resilience levels.
    • Increased body shot damage from 17 to 20.4.
    • Increased critical hit damage from 31.45 to 31.6.
• Hand Cannons
  • Precisions – Precision Hand Cannons have seen a small bump in usage and effectiveness with the recent buff to body shot damage, but we wanted to lean harder into the fantasy of the intrinsic perk. This change will affect Luna’s Howl, Not Forgotten, and Malfeasance.
    • The intrinsic Hand Cannon Precision Frame now reduces your ADS movement speed penalty by 10%.
• Scout Rifles
  • Lightweights – For a brief period we buffed Lightweight Scouts to bring down their body shot Time to Kill (which is among the slowest in the game) and to make them more forgiving in terms of their optimal Time to Kill, but these changes were quickly undone when we moved to the Into the Light Crucible sandbox. We have re-implemented these changes, tuned for the new health values in PvP.
    • Increased body shot damage from 32 to 38.
    • Increased critical hit damage from 64 to 64.6.
• Sniper Rifles
  • General - We are continuing with our work to reduce the visual flinch experienced by Sniper Rifles in Crucible to a more reasonable level. The intent is to maintain the difficulty of shooting through flinch to allow for counterplay, without it feeling too jarring to be damaged while scoped in.
    • Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 20%.
  • Whisper of the Worm - We have further reduced the flinch experienced by Whisper of the Worm to compensate for it being a Heavy weapon.
    • Reduced the camera roll component of flinch against players by 50%.

Weapon Perks

• Skulking Wolf (Iron Banner Origin) - We felt like the Iron Banner origin perk could use an effect to make it worthwhile in PvE, and we think this addition is in line with the fantasy of the perk itself. The perk description string will be updated in a future release to reflect the new functionality.
  • Now activates in PvE, and makes enemies slightly less accurate in targeting you when active (this is like the effect Manticore has when airborne).
• Target Lock – With the increased magazine sizes on SMGs, keeping this perk in its nerfed state rendered it effectively useless. We will keep an eye on how this perk changes the strength of SMGs in Crucible, and we are interested to see how it performs alongside the multitude of other very strong CQB options that currently exist.
  • Removed the custom tuning to make the perk less effective on SMGs.

Exotic Weapons

• Graviton Lance – Graviton Lance is arguably the strongest Primary weapon in the game when viewed across both the PvE and PvP sandboxes. While it is not proving to be too problematic in high-skill Crucible lobbies, it is dominating lower- and middle-skill lobbies to an unhealthy degree, as well as seeing extremely high uptime and potency in all levels of PvE content. As such, it needs to be brought more in line for both sandboxes. One option we considered was bringing down the stats to be closer to other Heavy Burst Pulse Rifles, but that felt like too much of departure from the spirit of the weapon. Instead, we settled on reverting the RPM back to its previous value of 300. In PvE, the RPM reduction will effectively be a small DPS nerf, while in Crucible it will move the weapon back to how it was performing pre-Episode 2.
  • Reverted its RPM to 300.
• Malfeasance – This gun feels noticeably different to shoot compared to other 180 Hand Cannons because it was missing some of the intrinsic benefits provided by the Precision perk.
  • Added the remaining intrinsic effects from the Precision Hand Cannon perk, including accuracy bonuses and the new ADS movement speed penalty reduction (the airborne effectiveness was already baked into the stats).

Exotic Armor

• Stoicism
  • Spirit of Alpha Lupi – The healing impulse was tuned around barricade, which has significantly less uptime than Thruster. Now that Alpha Lupi can work on Thruster, we needed to branch the effect’s strength accordingly.
    • Reduced heal impulse when using Thruster to 30 HP that can roll over into shields.

Bungie Store for the Holidays

‘Tis the season for The Dawning! Bake and deliver one Dawning cookie to each Destiny vendor by 8:59 AM PST 12/31 to claim this new Bungie Rewards: The Dawning Ornament for purchase, the perfect decoration to celebrate Destiny all year long.

Give The Perfect Gift

Don’t miss your chance to gift some amazing loot to your favorite Guardian this Dawning. The Bungie Store has something for everyone whether they’re a pin collector, a Dresstiny expert, or eager to skim their way through life with a Bear Walker Deluxe Allstar Vector Skateboard.

The Last City Lumino

If you’re looking for a special way to light your room during the dark days of winter, look no further than the Displate Lumino. The Last City Lumino shines under the Traveler’s gaze, featuring OLED-illuminated neons, a holographic background, glossy details, and intricate 3D-printed elements. Shop it here: https://displate.com/l/thelastcity

Let's Check Your #DawningFashion

Now that The Dawning has begun, it's time to start picking your #DawningFashion submissions. This is just the first week, so keep those coming. Remember the rules: Winter, Stasis or desserts themed, three people per submission max and have a nice and fitting background. As this is our last TWID of the year, the next winners will be picked and shown on our social media channels, but they will win the same as the great fashionistas below: the Felis Galaxias and The Levante Prize fashion emblems.

Guardians Inc.

Snowboarding Santa

Determination or stubbornness?

Vanilla Flavored Traveler

This Titan Won't Be Cold

Solar nose leading the way

A Very Sweet Hunter

You Guys Cooked. Errr... Baked

Now it’s time for our favorite #DawningBaking entries! They look amazing and we wish we could eat them all. Thank you for your submissions, you never cease to impress us with your baking capabilities.

Captain Jacobson, nooooo!!!!

Nice Emblems

Blue frosting, the best frosting

That's some... disturbing treat

Sweet looking tonics

Glimmer you can eat

By the book

Bungie Foundation: A Look Back at 2024

As 2024 comes to a close, we’re humbled and inspired by everything we’ve achieved together. Because of you, we’ve brought joy to kids in hospitals, supported critical humanitarian efforts, and made meaningful progress toward building a more inclusive and equitable future for everyone.

Here’s a look at what we achieved together this year:

Little Lights Program Expansion

In 2024, we added six new partners, bringing the total to 20 hospitals and childcare facilities! We now have more than 7,300 iPads available to pediatric patients, helping kids just be kids during life’s toughest challenges.

Scholarships for a Brighter Future

With your support, seven new students from underserved communities received scholarships through our partnership with the College Success Foundation. Students like Nurasikine Aly, who shared: “It is because of your support that I can attend the college of my dreams and study computer science in the hopes of one day becoming a software developer and creating my own game!”

Granting Wishes That Spark Joy

You helped make dreams come true for 50+ Make-A-Wish kids!

Supporting Humanitarian Causes

We rallied as a community to raise more than $375,000 in support of our humanitarian partners responding to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Thank you for believing in us and being a vital part of this journey. As we close the chapter on 2024, we’re ready to kick off 2025 in a BIG way with Game2Give from January 23 – February 9! We’ve got an amazing new slate of incentives to earn, plus some returning favorites 👀. We can’t wait to celebrate the communities, both big and small, that make Destiny more than just a game—but a place where friendships are forged, fireteams unite for a greater purpose, and Guardians come together to create real-world impact. Stay tuned for more details!

With love and gratitude,

💙 The Bungie Foundation

#D2FashionFeedback

We're back with another #D2FashionFeedback update. We've got an eclectic selection to share this week with Skaters, Necromancers, and Mechs; a little something for everyone.

As with past updates, the themes shared below will be part of our upcoming Bungie Research email survey this week. We'll use the results from the survey and the feedback you share using the hashtag #D2FashionFeedback to help prioritize future armor and cosmetic themes.

We also want to mention that developing new armor and accessories takes a lot of time. Even themes we are excited to create may take a while to make it in-game. So, your patience is appreciated as we work to bring more great designs to Destiny 2, and we'll continue to share details on upcoming releases when they are on the horizon!

This Weeks Themes

Each theme has a brief description to help get a feel for how the look may play out in a design.

Make sure to use the hashtag #D2FashionFeedback to let us know what you think about these themes or any other ideas you have about Destiny fashion and cosmetics.

Player Support Report

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter

Dawning Event Card Cost

Earlier this week, we identified an issue where the Dawning Event Card Upgrade could be acquired for less Silver than intended.

This issue has now been resolved and players who obtained the Dawning Event Card Upgrade while it was incorrectly listed at no cost will keep it.

Dawning Event Card Triumphs

Due to an issue preventing Triumph progress, we have auto-completed the Amateur, Adept, and Expert Baker Triumphs within the Dawning Event Card.

Dawning Weapon Double Perks

Earlier this week, we fixed an issue with Dawning Weapon Focusing. Dawning weapons now correctly have a chance to drop with extra perks in the left and right columns after obtaining the Perky Presents and Perkier Presents upgrades on Eva Levante in the Tower.

Happy hunting, Guardians.

Tonic Bug Fixes and Tuning

We are developing the following changes to Tonics, planned to release on December 17, 2024. Our main goals are to give you far more opportunities to earn the weapons you're chasing with Tonics and decrease instances of Tonics running out mid activity.

Planned changes are as follows:

1. Legendary Tonics will guarantee the associated weapon drops when triggered directly to your loot feed, rather than being shared across multiple Episode: Revenant weapon drops. You will see these drops as you defeat enemies or complete general activities throughout Destiny 2.
2. Base Tonic Durations have been increased across the board, which can be further increased by Lab Equipment (Up to +50% in Act 3) accrued through Episodic Quest Progress. - Uncommon Tonic duration increased to 40 minutes (was 20). - Rare Tonic duration increased to 60 minutes (was 40). - Legendary Tonic duration increased to 80 minutes (was 60).
3. General Bug Fixes to help address a small number of Tonics that are currently focusing wrong weapons or armor.
4. Legendary Tonics now affect the chances of obtaining the specified item from the relevant activity. - For instance, consuming a Tonic of Vantage Point (Onslaught) will increase the chances of that weapon dropping from Revenant Onslaught chests.

If any issues are found between now and release, some of the above plans may change. We'll be sure to communicate any changes prior to the hotfix release date if necessary.

Known Issues

• Some players' intro quest can reset after giving Zavala a cookie.
• A player's recipes on their main character can sometimes reset if an alternate character obtains the Dawning intro. quest.
• Two triumphs in the Star Bakes title are unlocked if a player has gilded the title previously. This issue will not be fixed.
• The Solstice quest can be viewed on Eva for those who didn't complete it.
• The Dark Frosting ingredient uses a placeholder icon.
• Some players are unable to purchase the Lucent Night Warlock Bundle.
• Checkpoints for some Master raids aren't being saved.
• Modifiers in Vanguard Ops occasionally change after loading into an area.
• During Contest of the Elders, players who have no revive tokens left and then die might get stuck on the "Finding Spawn Location" screen, instead of restarting the activity or going to orbit.
• During Contest of the Elders, only five out of six explosive tanks may spawn during the Spider Tank encounter, resulting in a soft lock until players wipe and restart.
• In Vesper's Host, players cannot dunk the nuclear core in the bunker if the Corrupted Puppeteer's wipe mechanic starts when the core drops.
• Players who are unable to complete Step 6 of the Rogue Network quest may need to claim the collectible in the Heart room without doing the puzzle.

Lord of the Seas

Winterbite, aka BFG or Big Freaking Glaive (T for Teen, remember), is one of those Exotics that will look cool on any character, but you have to admit that in the hands of a Warlock it looks like they are about to command the seas on your poor sorry soul and make you regret ever saying “Glaives are not worth it.”

Praxic via X

Certainly, a Movie of the Week

It's not every week that someone in the community puts together a video so long, so well executed, and with such amazing acting that it really makes our Movie of the Week category feel very literal. But here we are! Incredible work.

That's everything we have for this week. This is our final TWID of the year as we take a short break for the next few weeks to celebrate the holiday season. We'll be back next year with our first TWID on January 9. In the meantime, we'll be keeping an eye on everything, and you can still expect some posts from the team during that time. Make sure you’re following @Destiny2Team and @BungieHelp accounts for updates.

It's been an eventful year, including the release of The Final Shape and the 10^th anniversary of Destiny. Through it all, we want to thank you for being part of this wonderful community. Next year will be a big year, starting with Episode: Heresy and later with the launch of Codename: Frontiers.

No matter if you let yourself be swept up with the festive spirit or prefer a lower profile during this time of the year, we wish you the best and we hope you can spend tons of quality time with your family and your loved ones, and that you have the greatest meals ever.

Destiny 2 Community Team