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This week at Bungie, we take a look at every grain in the abilities sandbox.
Hello, and welcome to another sandbox-focused TWAB. If you’re new around these parts, you may be asking, “What’s a sandbox?” — well, it’s complicated. It's split between the weapons you use, the armor you equip, the perks and mods that you hunt for, and the enemies you face. Let's be real; the Destiny 2 sandbox is broad. Last week, we focused on the weapons sandbox and what changes are planned for December 7. This week, we’re taking a pass on the abilities your Guardian possesses. Think Supers, Melee's, Grenades, Class abilities. I highly recommend you grab a glass of water and maybe even a snack, because we've got a pretty lengthy update for you to read.
Before we dive into the details, it’s customary to have a TWAB intro discussing what’s going on in the realm of Bungie and Destiny. Let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we?
Alright, Sandbox time. Let’s get to it. There are buffs, there are nerfs, there are tuning levers that we’ve recently unlocked with back-end changes, there are clear separations between PvE and PvP... and more. There is a lot going on here, so don’t feel bad if you scratch your head wondering how these upcoming changes will feel. If you find anything a bit confusing, please sound off with questions! We’ll clarify as we can on our forums and social spaces. With all that preamble out of the way, I'll finally shut up and pass the mic over to the team.
Hey all, Kevin Yanes here to give you a quick intro before I hand off to fellow designers Eric Smith and Mike Humbolt. A few TWABs ago I gave a brief roadmap leading towards our 30th Anniversary, The Witch Queen, and beyond. A new roadmap update will likely not happen for some time after this as the team is heads down on more than a few initiatives. One of the initiatives you’re going to hear about today is an adjustment to ability regeneration as a whole, and a refocusing of Crucible gameplay on weapons. The team has touched almost every piece of abilities content with this release, and I’m fairly convinced that this will be our biggest balance patch ever.
Earlier this year, we heard overwhelming feedback that the Crucible has been largely dominated by ability usage. Players felt that abilities were firing off too frequently, with too much potency, and too little investment. At its core Destiny is a game about space magic, so any adjustments to our abilities must be made with care. We believe the changes we have made will keep the heart of what makes Destiny abilities fun intact, while shaving down some of the excessive cases we’ve seen out there. I feel it’s important to reinforce here that part of Destiny’s strength is that it’s a live game and we’re able to iterate and improve the game as time goes on. This means that we’re building new foundational systems like the one you’ll read about today with that in mind. We’re giving ourselves more balancing knobs to tune than we’ve ever had before, and we hope you’ll start to see why that’s so important as you read on.
We hope 30th anniversary shakes up the sandbox in new ways and gets you excited for even more changes coming in the The Witch Queen. The team will likely go heads down for a bit as we still have Solar and Arc to 3.0ify alongside other insanely cool initiatives. The team takes player feedback seriously and as Destiny players ourselves, we have an intrinsic fire to keep improving things for everyone. We hope what you’ve seen over the last year reinforces that this team is both about competitive balance and making incredibly dope new stuff. Ok, now I am going to fade away into the ether as Eric Smith takes us into what’s coming next!The Winds of Change
Eric: In 30th Anniversary, we’ve changed the way ability cooldowns work. Up until now, cooldowns across individual ability types (grenade, melee, class, Super) have generally been identical between all abilities of the same type. For example, all the grenades in today’s Destiny 2 share the same cooldown time (with the exception of Stasis grenades). This shared cooldown means that all grenades need to have roughly the same power output because they have the same time “cost.” For the 30th Anniversary, we’ve made a change that allows us to tune the cooldown of each ability separately. This gives us a new knob to turn when balancing abilities that are too powerful or not powerful enough. Now that we have this new system in place, we’ve done a cooldown-tuning pass of all the subclass abilities in the game, tuning each ability’s cooldown time against its power output. We’ve also tuned ability power outputs and assigned cooldown times accordingly. The best example of this might be the Flux Grenade. Take a look:
Flux Grenade
As you can see, the Flux Grenade now has a very long cooldown, but it’s a one-shot kill in PvP if you manage to land it. It also hits harder in PvE. As a reminder, the Flux Grenade is currently only available to Hunter Arcstriders.
Now here’s an example in the opposite direction. The Firebolt Grenade:
Firebolt Grenade
The Firebolt Grenade has a low cooldown time (especially at tier-10 discipline), and it also has low damage output.
These kinds of varied cooldowns and power outputs should make the game feel more dynamic and give more depth to buildcrafting. To make buildcrafting around cooldowns easier, you’ll now be able to see the base cooldown time of your abilities when selecting them on the subclass screen.
On the Character screen, you’ll see the actual cooldown time of your abilities as they’re affected by your equipped ability and armor stats.
A couple things to note about cooldown times in the UI:
We’ve been calling this the Variable Ability Cooldowns system, and we think it’s the beginning of a big change for the Destiny 2 sandbox. It’s a foundational change in preparation to move the Light subclasses over to the Subclass 3.0 system that Stasis currently uses. For the 30th Anniversary, we’re using it to change the cooldown of nearly every ability in the game.
One of our design goals this year was to reduce the amount of ability spam in the Crucible and put the focus back on gunplay. To this end, we’ve made ability cooldown times longer on average than they were before. We don’t want the PvE experience to suffer for the sake of PvP balance though, so we’ve tried to compensate where possible. For example, we’ve increased all grenade damage vs. PvE combatants by 15% or more. This should make grenades feel like bigger power moments than they do in today’s game. Melee ability cooldowns haven’t been increased quite as much as grenade cooldowns, and some of the less-aggressive melee attacks have lower cooldowns than before. Class ability cooldowns have also generally increased, but the changes vary depending on which ability is equipped.
We’re excited to see how these changes feel once they hit the live game, and we’ll be monitoring and adjusting accordingly in future releases. I’ll now pass the mic to Mike Humbolt to talk about big changes to Super cooldowns.Into the Fray
Mike: Since Destiny’s launch in 2014, Super energy gain has been almost entirely passive. Your Intellect stat dictates how quickly your Super regenerates, with a few other elements like Orbs of Power, armor and weapon perks, and defeating targets as active sources. This system worked well for a long time but has issues that have grown more obvious as the game has evolved and overall player skill—especially skill in evaluating how to play around their character build—has increased.
Example: In high-stakes game modes like Trials of Osiris or Survival where each life is precious, passive play becomes more common as players sit back and wait for their Supers to close out a tied game. In general, we want the most efficient way to gain Super energy to be actively engaging in combat. That doesn’t mean you need to win every fight, but we want you to try.
To get us closer to that goal we’re making a big change to the system. Super regeneration will still have a passive component scaled by your Intellect stat, but at a significantly reduced rate. On top of your passive regeneration, you will also gain Super energy by dealing and taking damage to or from opponents.
Here are a few key goals for this new system:
We are pretty happy with the frequency of Supers in most PvE content, and don’t want to make big changes right now on that front.
Expression of power through using your awesome space magic is a core part of what makes Destiny special, and we’re not looking to change that. We think the cadence of Supers in 6v6 modes is slightly too high, but we don’t expect a dramatic change in Super uptime for most players in playlists like Control or Iron Banner as a result of these changes.
These modes are about expression of player skill. We want that skill to be primarily about team coordination, positioning, intelligent use of your abilities, and—first and foremost—gunplay. While there is absolutely skill in outmaneuvering active Supers or playing around Super uptime, Supers in general are purposefully designed to be accessible power fantasies for all players, and that inherently creates asymmetry that we need to account for in more competitive play.
With this new system, we are scaling energy gains up and down granularly based on the source of the damage (both outgoing and incoming). Outgoing Primary weapon damage has a significantly higher return of Super-energy-per-damage-point than any other type of damage.
To reiterate what we mentioned above, we have always lived in a world where nearly every Super in the game shares the same cooldown, regardless of their efficacy in a given game mode. Now that we have made the foundational change to differentiate cooldowns per individual ability, we want to address the “Super o’ clock” issue in the Crucible, where three minutes into a match twelve Supers are simultaneously popped and chaos ensues. We also want to open up buildcrafting space where your Super’s cooldown time is an important element in your decision-making beyond how high you want your Intellect stat to be.
To that end, we’ve separated Supers into cooldown tiers that affect both the passive regeneration rate as well as the damage-based regeneration rate. This tiering was primarily influenced by each Super’s kill potential, where most one-off Supers are unlikely to wipe a team or a room of combatants, but a long-lasting roaming Super can and should have a tradeoff as a result.
We’ve also taken into account the general potency of the subclass kits where possible. For example, later on we’ll discuss Shatterdive and changes we’re making which impact how effective the Revenant Hunter is in the neutral game, causing us to shift some of that potency to the Super’s uptime as a result.
It’s also important to stress that this is the first iteration of this system – where any given Super will fall into the recharge rate tiers will change over time as we continue tuning. These are the Super regeneration rate tiers that we’re launching with on December 7:
As Kevin and Eric mentioned, this sets us up for the future as we move towards the Subclass 3.0 system. As an example, for the 30th Anniversary, things like the Deadfall and Moebius Quiver variants of Shadowshot will share the same cooldown tier, but with the Void 3.0 launch in February, they could exist in different tiers based on their potency. By that same token, Ward of Dawn—which is currently tied to Sentinel Shield’s cooldown—will be moved into the Tier 5 group as a standalone Super with Void 3.0.Taking it Down a Notch
Mike: Let’s talk about non-Super abilities for a moment. In the 5/27/2021 TWAB, Kevin shared our foundational pillars for the role we want abilities to play in the PvP combat sandbox. As a quick refresher, this is where we want to be:
We’re not there yet. In general, ability uptime in the Crucible is too high for their current potency and it’s difficult to understand when an opponent will regain an ability after using it. Some of that uptime comes from passive cooldowns, but many of our outliers also come from elements of the buildcrafting system that have previously been unified in ability energy returns between PvE and PvP.
With the 30th Anniversary, we’ve taken a pass at a significant number of these elements. Across subclass perks, armor mods, and Exotic armor pieces, we have tuned PvP energy regeneration separately from their base PVE values, which we are not changing.
Per our pillars, we want buildcrafting to be rewarding, but in its current state, the combinatorial nature of these perks and items leads to an unsustainable ability energy economy that diminishes weapon play in PvP. For this tuning pass, we’ve focused primarily on items that feed into self-perpetuating loops of ability energy gains. Here’s a brief list of the affected items:
Subclass Neutral Game Perks – These perks have had their ability energy regeneration reduced by roughly 50% in PvP. We targeted perks that can either activate out of combat, with a single button press, or those that were returning amounts of ability energy that were significantly out of band.
Subclass In-Super Perks - These perks scale down energy returns as you get kills in your Super (i.e., the first kill while in Super returns more Super energy than the third kill). These perks often result in Supers being able to roam the map for much longer than is healthy for the game and mean that a victim can frequently die to an active Super, respawn on another side of the map, and be killed by that same Super again. We’ve rescaled this energy refund decay more aggressively in PvP so that the minimum energy refund is reached roughly twice as quickly. No change has been made to the refund decay against PvE combatants.
Exotic Armor - Each Exotic below had a custom tuning pass focused on their ability energy return in PvP:
Armor Mods - In general, we’ve reduced energy returns from these mods by roughly 50% in PvP, depending on the number of copies of the mod you have slotted.
This is a big foundational shift for us and we expect to do a lot of tuning as time goes on, so as always, we’ll be on the lookout for how things are feeling across the game and will adjust accordingly.
Now, I’ll throw it back over to Eric for some spicy details on more abilities tuning changes you can expect with the 30th Anniversary.
STASIS CRYSTALS
Stasis crystals do a lot. On top of freezing players when they’re created, they also block line-of-sight, block movement, and act as explosive barrels. It’s all a bit too much for PvP. With this release, Stasis crystals will now slow players instead of freezing them, and they’ll do much less damage to players when they detonate.
As far as PvE is concerned, Stasis crystals will still freeze combatants, and we’ve increased Stasis crystal detonation damage vs PvE combatants. Looking at the numbers, it was almost always better to shoot directly at a combatant instead of at a crystal near a combatant. This change should help crystals better live out their explosive-barrel dreams.
Stasis Crystals
DODGE
In order to meet our goal of less ability spam in the Crucible, we’re reducing how often Hunters can dodge. Gambler’s Dodge is getting hit the hardest here because it can completely circumvent melee-ability cooldown times. It also completely changes the Hunter’s silhouette in PvP, making it very powerful. In addition, Hunter dodges will no longer break projectile tracking, meaning it’s less of a get-out-of-jail-free card when a tracking rocket or another slow-moving projectile is flying toward you.
REVENANT
You guessed it—the Stasis Crystal changes detailed earlier mean that the Hunter Revenant’s Shatterdive will now almost never kill a full-health Guardian. Shatterdive may still kill if the Hunter is using Whisper of Fissures, Touch of Winter, and the target is in the very center of all six crystals, but that has been incredibly rare in our playtesting.
I think we can all agree that Shatterdive was too powerful—we tried a number of fixes over the past few releases, but the truth is that as long as Stasis crystals froze players and Shatterdive shattered players, it was going to be too good. But it’s not all rainclouds and puddles for Shatterdive Hunters—the increase in Stasis crystal damage vs PvE combatants makes Shatterdive a great choice in PvE. On top of that, we’re increasing Shatterdive damage vs frozen combatants by 100%. Have fun melting frozen monsters.
TOP-TREE ARCSTRIDER
This change to the Combination Blow melee was made possible by our Variable Ability Cooldowns system. Previously, top-tree Arcstriders were basically required to use Gambler’s Dodge with this tree. We hope this change will make this ability viable even if you’re using Marksman’s Dodge.
BOTTOM-TREE NIGHTSTALKER
The Vanish in Smoke melee has low damage output but high utility. Our data shows that this subclass tree is struggling in PvP, so we’ve decided to increase how often Pathfinder Hunters can go invisible.
SHOULDER CHARGES
In our effort to put the emphasis back on gunplay in the Crucible, we’ve decided to reduce the number of abilities that can one-shot a full-health Guardian. As such, the Titan’s three shoulder charges are no longer one-shot abilities in PvP. To balance this out, we’ve made the shoulder charges quicker to activate, easier to hit with, and travel farther. We’ve also increased their damage in PvE. In our experience, they’re still powerful in PvP in combination with short-range weapons and when used as a movement tool. We wanted to curb shoulder charge’s potency now that we’ve tuned down shotguns as their current counter. We’ll be monitoring the data and feedback and adjusting accordingly.
BARRICADE
Even with the Rally Barricade changes we made in Season of the Lost, using this ability during a firefight is still a risky proposition. We’ve spaced out the cooldowns of the two barricades to make the choice slightly more interesting.
BEHEMOTH
We agree with the general community feedback that the Behemoth could use some love in PvE. We're hoping these changes to Diamond Lance make this Aspect a top-tier PvE pick. Shiver Strike is getting a big damage buff during the Glacial Quake Super. The Whisper of Chains fragment buff here is also very spicy and should help the Behemoth’s survivability in pinnacle PvE activities. Whisper of Chains can be used by all Stasis subclasses, but making crystals is kind of the Behemoth’s thing so we’re listing it here.
BOTTOM-TREE STRIKER
This class is absolutely dominating PvP this Season, so we’re turning it down a notch. The changes we made to Fist of Havoc in Season of the Lost helped top tree as intended, but they also turned bottom tree into a monster. On top of that, the Stasis nerfs and other changes we’ve made over the past few releases created a power vacuum that Striker Bot filled with extreme prejudice. We hope these changes put Striker Bot back into the pack instead of towering high above everything else.
UNCHARGED MELEE
Warlocks have been losing slap fights for too long. Yes, up until now, Warlocks haven’t been able to melee back-to-back as quickly as Titans and Hunters. NO MORE! With the 30th Anniversary, Warlocks will be able to melee just as quickly as Titans and Hunters. We’re also removing the 1m range extension Warlocks received to compensate. We still think the idea of each class having unique qualities to their melee is interesting, but we want to do it in a way that won’t cause one class to consistently lose slap fights. Maybe someday in the future.
MIDDLE-TREE VOIDWALKER
In our effort to do away with one-shot abilities that are frustrating to be hit by, Handheld Supernova is also getting the Shoulder Charge treatment. That’s right—Handheld Supernova will no longer one-shot in PvP. To compensate, it now travels farther and pushes enemies back. We also increased the damage of Handheld Supernova and Nova Warp vs Champion and Boss combatants. We had increased their damage in Season of the Lost, but it felt like they could use even more juice.
SHADEBINDER
We feel the Shadebinder is in a pretty good place with a couple of exceptions. One—Winter’s Wrath is still the best Super for shutting down other Supers, and it’s not even close. Winter’s Wrath must now freeze and shatter other Supers twice to kill them. As a general rule, roaming Supers shouldn’t be able to one-shot other Supers. Two—the Penumbral Blast melee is too difficult to land against PvE combatants. When we made the ability harder to land in PvP, it had a negative effect on the PvE experience. We’ve increased the proximity-detonation radius against PvE combatants to make it easier to land.
All three Stasis grenades now have different cooldown times, so we made a change to Bleak Watcher to avoid a situation where it was always best to use the grenade with the shortest cooldown time. This results in an overall cooldown increase for Bleak Watcher, which fits its incredibly high-power output.
Just a few more weeks before those changes come to pass. Until then, we still have a live game to support! DPS has the need-to-know information for in-game bugs, errors, and more. Let’s take a look at what they’ve been tracking this week.
This is their report.
DESTINY 2 LEAVING XBOX GAME PASS
On December 8, Destiny 2 and its expansions (Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light) will leave Xbox Game Pass on console and cloud. Destiny 2 and current expansions will remain on Xbox Game Pass for PC.
Once Destiny 2 leaves Xbox Game Pass, players who don’t own any of the expansions on the Xbox platform will lose access to:
Items, such as Exotics, already acquired will still be available for players who earned them. Previously purchased Season Passes will remain active. Players who wish to continue playing Destiny 2 on Xbox should look for Destiny 2 expansion discounts that will be available soon.
As a reminder, The Witch Queen will not be available on Console or PC Xbox GamePass when it launches on February 22, 2022.
XBOX BLOCKED PLAYERS
Since Cross Play launched earlier this Season, we’ve seen Xbox players report that they see a lot of blocked players on the Roster screen when they haven’t blocked anyone. To help us in our investigation, please follow the steps below:
Web
Console
If you’re still having issues, please post in this thread and provide a video or screenshots on YouTube, Twitter, or Imgur.com that displays your Xbox “Communication and Multiplayer” settings AND your Roster page showing the blocked account. Also, please describe how you shut down your Xbox console (i.e., do you always turn off the console without quitting D2? Do you quit D2 each time before turning off your console? Do you open an app after playing D2 where you didn’t quit the D2 app? Do you have “Instant-on mode” turned on or off?).
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:
Sometimes the revive timer can reset during a Grandmaster Nightfall when players complete an objective or enter a new area of a strike.
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.
While many Guardians are still jamming on the content that Destiny 2 has to offer, some among you have come to an end of your checklist. Triumphs have been achieved. Titles earned. Loot plundered. PvP mastered. Now, it’s time to sit back and relax until the next content drop. Sometimes, hopping in destination free roam is a great way to relax. Studying every inch of the sky or diving deeper into forgotten corners of Lost Sectors can be a sweet reminder of just how beautiful Destiny 2 can be.
Movie of the Week: A Tribute
Movie of the Week: Knifework
Make sure to tag your creations with #MOTW. Helps the content find it's way to our eyes, and potentially to be featured in the TWAB!
Halloween has come and gone, but there are still bumps in the night that keep our hair raised high. This week’s art pieces beg the question, “what if you were to meet a Taken Guardian in the wild?”
Art of the Week: Taken Guardian
Art of the Week: I Hear a Whisper
Between the Dev team, VizD team, Localization team, Editorial team, Player Support team, Bungie.net team, Bungie Foundation team, and countless other teams and individuals who have helped us ship TWABs in the past... it’s still crazy to me that we ship these nearly every single week of a given year. They’re not all mega-TWABs like today, but they still take a bit of work to get out the door as we continue to serve the community and provide transparency into our studio and daily lives.
While I know I’m a week early for Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for every single one of them.
Much love, and see you next week for a short and sweet TWAB. Until December 7, I’ll be dreaming of these sandbox changes. All I can think about is jumping on an Arc Hunter and equipping Flux grenades.
Bet you can’t stick it...
Cheers, dmg04
Hello, and welcome to another sandbox-focused TWAB. If you’re new around these parts, you may be asking, “What’s a sandbox?” — well, it’s complicated. It's split between the weapons you use, the armor you equip, the perks and mods that you hunt for, and the enemies you face. Let's be real; the Destiny 2 sandbox is broad. Last week, we focused on the weapons sandbox and what changes are planned for December 7. This week, we’re taking a pass on the abilities your Guardian possesses. Think Supers, Melee's, Grenades, Class abilities. I highly recommend you grab a glass of water and maybe even a snack, because we've got a pretty lengthy update for you to read.
Before we dive into the details, it’s customary to have a TWAB intro discussing what’s going on in the realm of Bungie and Destiny. Let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we?
- Our 30th Anniversary is out on December 7, which just so happens to be 19 days from the publication of this blog article.
- In-game, there’s still plenty to do between Seasonal Challenges, Trials of Osiris, the occasional Iron Banner, vendor reputation, god-roll hunting, and more.
- Next Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the states, and many of us will be taking some time to rest up and spend time with family.
- As such, expect a very light TWAB next Wednesday.
Alright, Sandbox time. Let’s get to it. There are buffs, there are nerfs, there are tuning levers that we’ve recently unlocked with back-end changes, there are clear separations between PvE and PvP... and more. There is a lot going on here, so don’t feel bad if you scratch your head wondering how these upcoming changes will feel. If you find anything a bit confusing, please sound off with questions! We’ll clarify as we can on our forums and social spaces. With all that preamble out of the way, I'll finally shut up and pass the mic over to the team.
New Legends Will Rise
Hey all, Kevin Yanes here to give you a quick intro before I hand off to fellow designers Eric Smith and Mike Humbolt. A few TWABs ago I gave a brief roadmap leading towards our 30th Anniversary, The Witch Queen, and beyond. A new roadmap update will likely not happen for some time after this as the team is heads down on more than a few initiatives. One of the initiatives you’re going to hear about today is an adjustment to ability regeneration as a whole, and a refocusing of Crucible gameplay on weapons. The team has touched almost every piece of abilities content with this release, and I’m fairly convinced that this will be our biggest balance patch ever.
Earlier this year, we heard overwhelming feedback that the Crucible has been largely dominated by ability usage. Players felt that abilities were firing off too frequently, with too much potency, and too little investment. At its core Destiny is a game about space magic, so any adjustments to our abilities must be made with care. We believe the changes we have made will keep the heart of what makes Destiny abilities fun intact, while shaving down some of the excessive cases we’ve seen out there. I feel it’s important to reinforce here that part of Destiny’s strength is that it’s a live game and we’re able to iterate and improve the game as time goes on. This means that we’re building new foundational systems like the one you’ll read about today with that in mind. We’re giving ourselves more balancing knobs to tune than we’ve ever had before, and we hope you’ll start to see why that’s so important as you read on.
We hope 30th anniversary shakes up the sandbox in new ways and gets you excited for even more changes coming in the The Witch Queen. The team will likely go heads down for a bit as we still have Solar and Arc to 3.0ify alongside other insanely cool initiatives. The team takes player feedback seriously and as Destiny players ourselves, we have an intrinsic fire to keep improving things for everyone. We hope what you’ve seen over the last year reinforces that this team is both about competitive balance and making incredibly dope new stuff. Ok, now I am going to fade away into the ether as Eric Smith takes us into what’s coming next!
The Winds of Change
Eric: In 30th Anniversary, we’ve changed the way ability cooldowns work. Up until now, cooldowns across individual ability types (grenade, melee, class, Super) have generally been identical between all abilities of the same type. For example, all the grenades in today’s Destiny 2 share the same cooldown time (with the exception of Stasis grenades). This shared cooldown means that all grenades need to have roughly the same power output because they have the same time “cost.” For the 30th Anniversary, we’ve made a change that allows us to tune the cooldown of each ability separately. This gives us a new knob to turn when balancing abilities that are too powerful or not powerful enough. Now that we have this new system in place, we’ve done a cooldown-tuning pass of all the subclass abilities in the game, tuning each ability’s cooldown time against its power output. We’ve also tuned ability power outputs and assigned cooldown times accordingly. The best example of this might be the Flux Grenade. Take a look:
Flux Grenade
- Increased base cooldown from 82 seconds to 182 seconds.
- Increased attached detonation damage from 150 to 250 (one-shot kill in PvP).
- Increased damage vs PvE combatants by 15% (on top of base damage increase).
- Removed projectile tracking.
- Added a small amount of aim assist.
- Increased throw speed by 117%.
- Now sticks to all surfaces.
As you can see, the Flux Grenade now has a very long cooldown, but it’s a one-shot kill in PvP if you manage to land it. It also hits harder in PvE. As a reminder, the Flux Grenade is currently only available to Hunter Arcstriders.
Now here’s an example in the opposite direction. The Firebolt Grenade:
Firebolt Grenade
- Reduced base cooldown from 82 seconds to 64 seconds.
- Reduced damage per bolt from 90 to 65.
- Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 15%.
The Firebolt Grenade has a low cooldown time (especially at tier-10 discipline), and it also has low damage output.
These kinds of varied cooldowns and power outputs should make the game feel more dynamic and give more depth to buildcrafting. To make buildcrafting around cooldowns easier, you’ll now be able to see the base cooldown time of your abilities when selecting them on the subclass screen.
On the Character screen, you’ll see the actual cooldown time of your abilities as they’re affected by your equipped ability and armor stats.
A couple things to note about cooldown times in the UI:
- The “Base Cooldown” time is actually the cooldown time at tier 3 of the relevant armor stat (Strength, Discipline, etc.) This is because the system technically penalizes you for tanking your stats below tier 3, in which case your cooldown would be longer than the base. We are looking into updating this to be more intuitive in a future release.
- Cooldown times for class abilities are not currently displayed due to a technical issue. We plan to fix this in a future release.
We’ve been calling this the Variable Ability Cooldowns system, and we think it’s the beginning of a big change for the Destiny 2 sandbox. It’s a foundational change in preparation to move the Light subclasses over to the Subclass 3.0 system that Stasis currently uses. For the 30th Anniversary, we’re using it to change the cooldown of nearly every ability in the game.
One of our design goals this year was to reduce the amount of ability spam in the Crucible and put the focus back on gunplay. To this end, we’ve made ability cooldown times longer on average than they were before. We don’t want the PvE experience to suffer for the sake of PvP balance though, so we’ve tried to compensate where possible. For example, we’ve increased all grenade damage vs. PvE combatants by 15% or more. This should make grenades feel like bigger power moments than they do in today’s game. Melee ability cooldowns haven’t been increased quite as much as grenade cooldowns, and some of the less-aggressive melee attacks have lower cooldowns than before. Class ability cooldowns have also generally increased, but the changes vary depending on which ability is equipped.
We’re excited to see how these changes feel once they hit the live game, and we’ll be monitoring and adjusting accordingly in future releases. I’ll now pass the mic to Mike Humbolt to talk about big changes to Super cooldowns.
Into the Fray
Mike: Since Destiny’s launch in 2014, Super energy gain has been almost entirely passive. Your Intellect stat dictates how quickly your Super regenerates, with a few other elements like Orbs of Power, armor and weapon perks, and defeating targets as active sources. This system worked well for a long time but has issues that have grown more obvious as the game has evolved and overall player skill—especially skill in evaluating how to play around their character build—has increased. Example: In high-stakes game modes like Trials of Osiris or Survival where each life is precious, passive play becomes more common as players sit back and wait for their Supers to close out a tied game. In general, we want the most efficient way to gain Super energy to be actively engaging in combat. That doesn’t mean you need to win every fight, but we want you to try.
To get us closer to that goal we’re making a big change to the system. Super regeneration will still have a passive component scaled by your Intellect stat, but at a significantly reduced rate. On top of your passive regeneration, you will also gain Super energy by dealing and taking damage to or from opponents.
Here are a few key goals for this new system:
- In PvE, Super uptime should be relatively unchanged from the live game, if not slightly higher.
We are pretty happy with the frequency of Supers in most PvE content, and don’t want to make big changes right now on that front.
- Everybody should get at least one Super in a 6v6 match that goes to the score or time limit as long as they engage in regular combat.
Expression of power through using your awesome space magic is a core part of what makes Destiny special, and we’re not looking to change that. We think the cadence of Supers in 6v6 modes is slightly too high, but we don’t expect a dramatic change in Super uptime for most players in playlists like Control or Iron Banner as a result of these changes.
- Supers should be less frequent in 3v3 modes than in the live game, where two Supers per match is a fairly regular occurrence.
These modes are about expression of player skill. We want that skill to be primarily about team coordination, positioning, intelligent use of your abilities, and—first and foremost—gunplay. While there is absolutely skill in outmaneuvering active Supers or playing around Super uptime, Supers in general are purposefully designed to be accessible power fantasies for all players, and that inherently creates asymmetry that we need to account for in more competitive play.
- Primary weapon play should have a noticeable benefit in Super energy regeneration.
With this new system, we are scaling energy gains up and down granularly based on the source of the damage (both outgoing and incoming). Outgoing Primary weapon damage has a significantly higher return of Super-energy-per-damage-point than any other type of damage.
- Different Supers should come online at different times in a given match, and your Super of choice should have an impact on how quickly it regenerates.
To reiterate what we mentioned above, we have always lived in a world where nearly every Super in the game shares the same cooldown, regardless of their efficacy in a given game mode. Now that we have made the foundational change to differentiate cooldowns per individual ability, we want to address the “Super o’ clock” issue in the Crucible, where three minutes into a match twelve Supers are simultaneously popped and chaos ensues. We also want to open up buildcrafting space where your Super’s cooldown time is an important element in your decision-making beyond how high you want your Intellect stat to be.
To that end, we’ve separated Supers into cooldown tiers that affect both the passive regeneration rate as well as the damage-based regeneration rate. This tiering was primarily influenced by each Super’s kill potential, where most one-off Supers are unlikely to wipe a team or a room of combatants, but a long-lasting roaming Super can and should have a tradeoff as a result.
We’ve also taken into account the general potency of the subclass kits where possible. For example, later on we’ll discuss Shatterdive and changes we’re making which impact how effective the Revenant Hunter is in the neutral game, causing us to shift some of that potency to the Super’s uptime as a result.
It’s also important to stress that this is the first iteration of this system – where any given Super will fall into the recharge rate tiers will change over time as we continue tuning. These are the Super regeneration rate tiers that we’re launching with on December 7:
- Tier 5 (Fastest Regeneration)
- Well of Radiance
- Tier 4
- Blade Barrage
- Silence and Squall
- Tier 3
- Shadowshot
- Burning Maul
- Arc Staff
- Nova Bomb
- Thundercrash
- Tier 2
- Golden Gun
- Chaos Reach
- Nova Warp
- Stormtrance
- Daybreak
- Sentinel Shield
- Tier 1 (Slowest Regeneration)
- Spectral Blades
- Fist of Havoc
- Hammer of Sol
- Glacial Quake
- Winter’s Wrath
As Kevin and Eric mentioned, this sets us up for the future as we move towards the Subclass 3.0 system. As an example, for the 30th Anniversary, things like the Deadfall and Moebius Quiver variants of Shadowshot will share the same cooldown tier, but with the Void 3.0 launch in February, they could exist in different tiers based on their potency. By that same token, Ward of Dawn—which is currently tied to Sentinel Shield’s cooldown—will be moved into the Tier 5 group as a standalone Super with Void 3.0.
Taking it Down a Notch
Mike: Let’s talk about non-Super abilities for a moment. In the 5/27/2021 TWAB, Kevin shared our foundational pillars for the role we want abilities to play in the PvP combat sandbox. As a quick refresher, this is where we want to be: - Weapons are the primary way players engage with combat.
- Non-Super abilities accentuate or augment the combat but should rarely solve an encounter by themselves.
- Abilities have clear strengths, weakness, and counterplay.
- Buildcrafting is rewarding within the moment-to-moment combat loop of Destiny.
We’re not there yet. In general, ability uptime in the Crucible is too high for their current potency and it’s difficult to understand when an opponent will regain an ability after using it. Some of that uptime comes from passive cooldowns, but many of our outliers also come from elements of the buildcrafting system that have previously been unified in ability energy returns between PvE and PvP.
With the 30th Anniversary, we’ve taken a pass at a significant number of these elements. Across subclass perks, armor mods, and Exotic armor pieces, we have tuned PvP energy regeneration separately from their base PVE values, which we are not changing.
Per our pillars, we want buildcrafting to be rewarding, but in its current state, the combinatorial nature of these perks and items leads to an unsustainable ability energy economy that diminishes weapon play in PvP. For this tuning pass, we’ve focused primarily on items that feed into self-perpetuating loops of ability energy gains. Here’s a brief list of the affected items:
Subclass Neutral Game Perks – These perks have had their ability energy regeneration reduced by roughly 50% in PvP. We targeted perks that can either activate out of combat, with a single button press, or those that were returning amounts of ability energy that were significantly out of band.
- Whisper of Shards (Stasis Fragment)
- Arc Web (Stormcaller Warlock)
- Rising Storm (Stormcaller Warlock)
- Ionic Traces (Stormcaller Warlock)
- Electrostatic Surge (Stormcaller Warlock)
- Aftershocks (Striker Titan)
- Inertia Override (Striker Titan)
- Benevolent Dawn (Dawnblade Warlock)
- Practice Makes Perfect (Gunslinger Hunter)
- Dark Matter (Voidwalker Warlock)
Subclass In-Super Perks - These perks scale down energy returns as you get kills in your Super (i.e., the first kill while in Super returns more Super energy than the third kill). These perks often result in Supers being able to roam the map for much longer than is healthy for the game and mean that a victim can frequently die to an active Super, respawn on another side of the map, and be killed by that same Super again. We’ve rescaled this energy refund decay more aggressively in PvP so that the minimum energy refund is reached roughly twice as quickly. No change has been made to the refund decay against PvE combatants.
- Everlasting Fire (Dawnblade Warlock)
- Trample (Striker Titan)
Exotic Armor - Each Exotic below had a custom tuning pass focused on their ability energy return in PvP:
- Frost-EE5 - No longer stacks multiplicatively in PvP with other regeneration buffs, is now an additive scalar.
- No change in PvE.
- Heart of Inmost Light - Ability energy regeneration scalars reduced by 50% in PvP.
- Reworked so activating multiple abilities will now reliably result in multiple Empowered stacks. The stacking behavior was previously a bug, but this seemed like a good opportunity to promote it to a feature.
- Contraverse Hold - Duration of the grenade regeneration buff is no longer random between 1 and 4 seconds and is now a fixed duration of 1.75 seconds. Reduced grenade energy regeneration scalar by 50% in PvP.
- The previous average duration due to weighting was 1.71 seconds, with a 1 second duration being most common, so this should improve the Exotic’s consistency across the game with a lower return in PvP.
- Doomfang Pauldrons - Reduced Super energy gain on activation when an opposing player is killed by a Void melee by 50%.
- No change in PvE.
- Shinobu’s Vow - Reduced grenade energy gain on hits vs players by 66%.
- No change in PvE.
- Crown of Tempests - Grenade, melee, and Super energy regeneration scalar buff duration reduced from 7s to 4s in PvP.
- No change in PvE.
- The Stag - Reduced class ability energy refund on shield break by 50% in PvP.
- No change in PvE.
Armor Mods - In general, we’ve reduced energy returns from these mods by roughly 50% in PvP, depending on the number of copies of the mod you have slotted.
- Melee Kickstart
- Grenade Kickstart
- Utility Kickstart
- Perpetuation
- Bolstering Detonation
- Focusing Strike
- Bomber
- Outreach
- Dynamo
- Distribution
- Momentum Transfer
- Impact Induction
This is a big foundational shift for us and we expect to do a lot of tuning as time goes on, so as always, we’ll be on the lookout for how things are feeling across the game and will adjust accordingly.
Now, I’ll throw it back over to Eric for some spicy details on more abilities tuning changes you can expect with the 30th Anniversary.
Dang This is Long
Eric: In case you haven’t caught on yet, the list of abilities changes we’re making in the 30th Anniversary is massive. We’ve touched nearly every ability in the game in some small way. We won’t go over the full patch notes because it’s mind-numbingly long, but let’s take a look at some of the more provocative balance changes.STASIS CRYSTALS
Stasis crystals do a lot. On top of freezing players when they’re created, they also block line-of-sight, block movement, and act as explosive barrels. It’s all a bit too much for PvP. With this release, Stasis crystals will now slow players instead of freezing them, and they’ll do much less damage to players when they detonate.
As far as PvE is concerned, Stasis crystals will still freeze combatants, and we’ve increased Stasis crystal detonation damage vs PvE combatants. Looking at the numbers, it was almost always better to shoot directly at a combatant instead of at a crystal near a combatant. This change should help crystals better live out their explosive-barrel dreams.
Stasis Crystals
- While forming, Stasis crystals now slow nearby players instead of freezing them.
- They still freeze PvE combatants while forming.
- Increased slow/freeze radius while forming from 1.75m to 2.6m.
- Reduced crystal detonation damage vs players by ~55%.
- Increased crystal detonation damage vs. PvE combatants by ~60%.
- Increased crystal detonation radius from 6m to 8m.
Hunter
DODGE
In order to meet our goal of less ability spam in the Crucible, we’re reducing how often Hunters can dodge. Gambler’s Dodge is getting hit the hardest here because it can completely circumvent melee-ability cooldown times. It also completely changes the Hunter’s silhouette in PvP, making it very powerful. In addition, Hunter dodges will no longer break projectile tracking, meaning it’s less of a get-out-of-jail-free card when a tracking rocket or another slow-moving projectile is flying toward you.
Hunter Dodge
- No longer breaks projectile tracking.
- Marksman's Dodge
- Tier 10 Mobility cooldown increased from 11s to 14s.
- Base cooldown unchanged at 29s.
- Gambler's Dodge
- Tier 10 Mobility cooldown increased from 11s to 18s.
- Base cooldown duration from 29s to 38s.
REVENANT
You guessed it—the Stasis Crystal changes detailed earlier mean that the Hunter Revenant’s Shatterdive will now almost never kill a full-health Guardian. Shatterdive may still kill if the Hunter is using Whisper of Fissures, Touch of Winter, and the target is in the very center of all six crystals, but that has been incredibly rare in our playtesting.
I think we can all agree that Shatterdive was too powerful—we tried a number of fixes over the past few releases, but the truth is that as long as Stasis crystals froze players and Shatterdive shattered players, it was going to be too good. But it’s not all rainclouds and puddles for Shatterdive Hunters—the increase in Stasis crystal damage vs PvE combatants makes Shatterdive a great choice in PvE. On top of that, we’re increasing Shatterdive damage vs frozen combatants by 100%. Have fun melting frozen monsters.
Shatterdive
- Much less lethal vs players due to Stasis crystal changes.
- Much more lethal vs combatants due to Stasis crystal changes.
- Increased shatter damage vs frozen PvE combatants by 100%.
Grim Harvest Aspect
- Increased fragment slots from 2 to 3
TOP-TREE ARCSTRIDER
This change to the Combination Blow melee was made possible by our Variable Ability Cooldowns system. Previously, top-tree Arcstriders were basically required to use Gambler’s Dodge with this tree. We hope this change will make this ability viable even if you’re using Marksman’s Dodge.
Combination Blow
- Reduced base cooldown duration from 96s to 15s.
BOTTOM-TREE NIGHTSTALKER
The Vanish in Smoke melee has low damage output but high utility. Our data shows that this subclass tree is struggling in PvP, so we’ve decided to increase how often Pathfinder Hunters can go invisible.
Vanish in Smoke melee
- Reduced base cooldown from 96s to 75s.
Titan
SHOULDER CHARGES
In our effort to put the emphasis back on gunplay in the Crucible, we’ve decided to reduce the number of abilities that can one-shot a full-health Guardian. As such, the Titan’s three shoulder charges are no longer one-shot abilities in PvP. To balance this out, we’ve made the shoulder charges quicker to activate, easier to hit with, and travel farther. We’ve also increased their damage in PvE. In our experience, they’re still powerful in PvP in combination with short-range weapons and when used as a movement tool. We wanted to curb shoulder charge’s potency now that we’ve tuned down shotguns as their current counter. We’ll be monitoring the data and feedback and adjusting accordingly.
All Shoulder Charges
- No longer one-shot players.
- Sprint activation time reduced from 1.5s to 1.25s.
- Increased range from 5.5m to 6.8m.
- Targeting-cone width increased by ~10%.
- Increased damage vs PvE combatants by 25%.
Seismic Strike (Arc Shoulder Charge)
- Reduced AoE damage from 90 to 40.
- Now blinds enemies in the area on hit.
- Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s.
Shield Bash (Void Shoulder Charge)
- Reduced AoE damage from 90 to 40.
- Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s.
Hammer Strike (Solar Shoulder Charge)
- Reduced direct impact damage from 170 to 120.
- Increased base cooldown from 82s to 90s.
BARRICADE
Even with the Rally Barricade changes we made in Season of the Lost, using this ability during a firefight is still a risky proposition. We’ve spaced out the cooldowns of the two barricades to make the choice slightly more interesting.
Towering Barricade
- Increased base cooldown duration from 37s to 40s.
Rally Barricade
- Reduced base cooldown duration from 37s to 32s.
BEHEMOTH
We agree with the general community feedback that the Behemoth could use some love in PvE. We're hoping these changes to Diamond Lance make this Aspect a top-tier PvE pick. Shiver Strike is getting a big damage buff during the Glacial Quake Super. The Whisper of Chains fragment buff here is also very spicy and should help the Behemoth’s survivability in pinnacle PvE activities. Whisper of Chains can be used by all Stasis subclasses, but making crystals is kind of the Behemoth’s thing so we’re listing it here.
Diamond Lance
- Increased fragment slots from 1 to 3.
- Now spawns a Diamond Lance upon:
- Killing a PvE combatant with a Stasis weapon.
- Killing three players with Stasis weapons in a single life.
- Killing an enemy with a Stasis ability.
- Shattering an enemy.
Shiver Strike
- Increased Shiver Strike damage while in Glacial Quake by 50%.
Whisper of Chains
- Increased damage resistance vs PvE combatants from 25% to 40%.
BOTTOM-TREE STRIKER
This class is absolutely dominating PvP this Season, so we’re turning it down a notch. The changes we made to Fist of Havoc in Season of the Lost helped top tree as intended, but they also turned bottom tree into a monster. On top of that, the Stasis nerfs and other changes we’ve made over the past few releases created a power vacuum that Striker Bot filled with extreme prejudice. We hope these changes put Striker Bot back into the pack instead of towering high above everything else.
Knockout
- Melee lunge range and melee damage bonus now deactivate after a melee kill.
Trample
- Super-energy gain from Fist of Havoc light attack now decays to minimum amount over 3 PvP kills (down from 7).
Frontal Assault melee
- Increased base cooldown from 82s to 106s.
Fist of Havoc
- Heavy-slam radius reduced from 8m to 6m (bottom-tree only).
Warlock
UNCHARGED MELEE
Warlocks have been losing slap fights for too long. Yes, up until now, Warlocks haven’t been able to melee back-to-back as quickly as Titans and Hunters. NO MORE! With the 30th Anniversary, Warlocks will be able to melee just as quickly as Titans and Hunters. We’re also removing the 1m range extension Warlocks received to compensate. We still think the idea of each class having unique qualities to their melee is interesting, but we want to do it in a way that won’t cause one class to consistently lose slap fights. Maybe someday in the future.
Uncharged Melee
- Reduced melee range from 5.5m to 4.5m (now matches Hunter and Titan).
- Reduced suppression time after melee (can now melee back-to-back at the same speed as Hunter and Titan).
MIDDLE-TREE VOIDWALKER
In our effort to do away with one-shot abilities that are frustrating to be hit by, Handheld Supernova is also getting the Shoulder Charge treatment. That’s right—Handheld Supernova will no longer one-shot in PvP. To compensate, it now travels farther and pushes enemies back. We also increased the damage of Handheld Supernova and Nova Warp vs Champion and Boss combatants. We had increased their damage in Season of the Lost, but it felt like they could use even more juice.
Handheld Supernova
- Reduced damage vs players.
- Now deals 150 damage max.
- Increased damage vs Champions and Bosses by 30%.
- Increased projectile range from 12m to 14m.
- Now pushes targets away from the Warlock on detonation.
Nova Warp
- Increased damage vs Champions and Bosses by 30%.
SHADEBINDER
We feel the Shadebinder is in a pretty good place with a couple of exceptions. One—Winter’s Wrath is still the best Super for shutting down other Supers, and it’s not even close. Winter’s Wrath must now freeze and shatter other Supers twice to kill them. As a general rule, roaming Supers shouldn’t be able to one-shot other Supers. Two—the Penumbral Blast melee is too difficult to land against PvE combatants. When we made the ability harder to land in PvP, it had a negative effect on the PvE experience. We’ve increased the proximity-detonation radius against PvE combatants to make it easier to land.
All three Stasis grenades now have different cooldown times, so we made a change to Bleak Watcher to avoid a situation where it was always best to use the grenade with the shortest cooldown time. This results in an overall cooldown increase for Bleak Watcher, which fits its incredibly high-power output.
Winter's Wrath
- Reduced shatter-pulse damage vs enemy Supers.
- Must now generally freeze and shatter all Supers twice to eliminate.
Penumbral Blast
- Increased proximity-detonation radius vs PvE combatants by 100%.
Bleak Watcher
- While Bleak Watcher is equipped, all Stasis grenades charge at Glacier Grenade rate.
That’s all for now, Folks!
Eric: Okay, I think we covered the big stuff. There are a bunch of other small changes coming in the 30th Anniversary, but we will cover everything else in the official patch notes. As you can see, the team has been hard at work adjusting the sandbox globally. We hope the picture we’re painting here reinforces the statements we’ve made in the past: “The sandbox is going to evolve alongside the game.” As we hit Year 5 and beyond, this statement will become even more true with new and exciting changes coming with the Subclass 3.0 experience. Stay tuned for the patch notes when the 30th Anniversary goes live on December 7!Back to the Now
Just a few more weeks before those changes come to pass. Until then, we still have a live game to support! DPS has the need-to-know information for in-game bugs, errors, and more. Let’s take a look at what they’ve been tracking this week.
This is their report.
DESTINY 2 LEAVING XBOX GAME PASS
On December 8, Destiny 2 and its expansions (Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light) will leave Xbox Game Pass on console and cloud. Destiny 2 and current expansions will remain on Xbox Game Pass for PC.
Once Destiny 2 leaves Xbox Game Pass, players who don’t own any of the expansions on the Xbox platform will lose access to:
- Campaign missions.
- Expansion-specific activities: Raids, Dungeons, Hunts, Exo Challenges, Nightfall Strikes, and access to Trials of Osiris
- The Stasis subclass, which is Beyond Light-specific.
- The middle-tree Supers for each subclass.
- The 10% off perk for Silver purchases and other game add-ons.
Items, such as Exotics, already acquired will still be available for players who earned them. Previously purchased Season Passes will remain active. Players who wish to continue playing Destiny 2 on Xbox should look for Destiny 2 expansion discounts that will be available soon.
As a reminder, The Witch Queen will not be available on Console or PC Xbox GamePass when it launches on February 22, 2022.
XBOX BLOCKED PLAYERS
Since Cross Play launched earlier this Season, we’ve seen Xbox players report that they see a lot of blocked players on the Roster screen when they haven’t blocked anyone. To help us in our investigation, please follow the steps below:
Web
- Go to account.xbox.com/en-us/settings and login.
- Click on your Profile.
- Under "Privacy" set "You can communicate outside of Xbox Live with voice & text" to Everyone."
- Set "Others can communicate with voice, text, or invites" to "Everyone."
- Click "Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows 10 devices Online Safety" toward the top.
- Set "You can play with people outside of Xbox Live" to "Allow."
Console
- Navigate to Settings > General,
- Online Safety & Family,
- Privacy & Online Safety,
- Xbox Privacy,
- View Details and Customize,
- Communication and Multiplayer.
- Set "You can join cross-network play" to "Allow."
- Set “You can communicate outside of Xbox with voice & text” to “Everybody.”
- Then clear your console cache.
If you’re still having issues, please post in this thread and provide a video or screenshots on YouTube, Twitter, or Imgur.com that displays your Xbox “Communication and Multiplayer” settings AND your Roster page showing the blocked account. Also, please describe how you shut down your Xbox console (i.e., do you always turn off the console without quitting D2? Do you quit D2 each time before turning off your console? Do you open an app after playing D2 where you didn’t quit the D2 app? Do you have “Instant-on mode” turned on or off?).
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:
Sometimes the revive timer can reset during a Grandmaster Nightfall when players complete an objective or enter a new area of a strike.
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.
Stop and Smell the Dreaming City Flowers
While many Guardians are still jamming on the content that Destiny 2 has to offer, some among you have come to an end of your checklist. Triumphs have been achieved. Titles earned. Loot plundered. PvP mastered. Now, it’s time to sit back and relax until the next content drop. Sometimes, hopping in destination free roam is a great way to relax. Studying every inch of the sky or diving deeper into forgotten corners of Lost Sectors can be a sweet reminder of just how beautiful Destiny 2 can be.
Movie of the Week: A Tribute
Movie of the Week: Knifework
Make sure to tag your creations with #MOTW. Helps the content find it's way to our eyes, and potentially to be featured in the TWAB!
Still Feels a Bit Spooky
Halloween has come and gone, but there are still bumps in the night that keep our hair raised high. This week’s art pieces beg the question, “what if you were to meet a Taken Guardian in the wild?”
Art of the Week: Taken Guardian
the final part of my "Taken Guardian" series, with subtle twists to the armor; last but not least, featuring my hunter, Flux-4!! 🖤 these have been so fun to paint, so there will be more to come in the future!#Destiny2Art #DestinyArt #Destiny2 pic.twitter.com/V4is1btqY5
— 💜 Borg, Exo Enthusiast™ 💙 (@VerySmallCyborg) November 13, 2021
Art of the Week: I Hear a Whisper
I hear a whisper.#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #ErisMorn pic.twitter.com/Dlbvf3dxKPAs always, we're blown away by your artistic creations. Make sure to throw #DestinyArt or #Destiny2Art on your post, as we frequently skim through these tags to share throughout the studio, and among this vibrant community.
— 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐲𝐧! ☕🌧️✨ (@haykebyr) November 15, 2021
Did you make it to the end?
Long TWAB is long, no? It takes a lot of work on the part of numerous teams to get a TWAB out the door. Our friends on the Sandbox team wrote the bulk of this update, and we can’t thank them enough for their efforts, not only in developing the game, but taking time to run through goals and keep players informed.Between the Dev team, VizD team, Localization team, Editorial team, Player Support team, Bungie.net team, Bungie Foundation team, and countless other teams and individuals who have helped us ship TWABs in the past... it’s still crazy to me that we ship these nearly every single week of a given year. They’re not all mega-TWABs like today, but they still take a bit of work to get out the door as we continue to serve the community and provide transparency into our studio and daily lives.
While I know I’m a week early for Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for every single one of them.
Much love, and see you next week for a short and sweet TWAB. Until December 7, I’ll be dreaming of these sandbox changes. All I can think about is jumping on an Arc Hunter and equipping Flux grenades.
Bet you can’t stick it...
Cheers, dmg04