Destiny

Major Destiny 2 ability changes coming in Season 15

Andrew Highton
destiny 2 art

On the newest This Week At Bungie, Combat Gameplay Designer Eric Smith has confirmed that Destiny 2 Season 15 will feature big ability changes as we head towards The Witch Queen.

After many weeks it’s nearly time to say goodbye to Season of the Splicer. The latest Destiny 2 season gave players a chance to revisit the Vault of Glass again, transmog, amongst other things.

Season 15 is now on the horizon, and the countdown to The Witch Queen is shortening by the week. Ahead of the next expansion, it’s clear that Bungie wants to make some significant changes to Destiny 2. One of them is to the game’s abilities, and one of the devs has given a full rundown as to what to expect.

destiny 2 ability in action

The information was revealed during the newest entry of the weekly Destiny 2 blog. Combat Gameplay Designer Eric Smith said: “Hey, Guardians.  We’ve been hard at work on an abilities balance patch for Season 15, but before we get into the balance changes, here’s some info about a quality-of-life change debuting in Season 15.”

Here’s a deep look at upcoming changes to Destiny 2.

SEPARATE MELEE ACTIONS 

Starting next season, you’ll be able to bind your charged melee attack and your uncharged melee attack to separate inputs, giving you greater control of when you use your abilities. This is an opt-in feature, and these new actions will be unbound by default.

When you go to customize your controls, you’ll see the following new entries in the action list:

  • Auto-melee is the new name for the melee action that you’re used to. Your melee is context-sensitive and its behavior will change based on your equipped ability and your proximity to enemies. It usually does its job well but will occasionally betray player intent. 
  • Charged melee is a new action that will always activate your charged melee ability upon button press, regardless of whether an enemy is in lunge range. Pressing the input when your melee ability is not fully charged will perform no action and cause the melee-ability icon to flash red, similar to how the grenade ability works. 
  • Uncharged melee is a new action that will always activate your uncharged melee, even when your charged melee ability is fully charged. 

It’s fairly straightforward, but here are some things to note: 

  • Melee attacks trigger as soon as the button is pressed, not when it’s released. Melee attacks don’t wait to see if you’re still holding the button before starting. This means you can’t set any of the melee actions to a long-press or double-press input. 
  • Game controllers have a limited number of inputs, so you may need to get creative with how you map your controls. Personally, I like to put charged melee on RB/R2 and uncharged melee on right-stick click/R3. This doubles up the Finisher and Uncharged-Melee actions on right-stick click/R3, which will prioritize finishing enemies over melee-ing them if the enemy is in a finish-able state. 
  • If you assign charged melee and uncharged melee to the same input, it will always prioritize the charged melee over the uncharged melee, which is the opposite behavior of the auto-melee action. 

To use these new actions on keyboard/mouse:

  1. Open the Settings menu
  2. Click on Keyboard/Mouse
  3. Scroll down to “Charged Melee” and “Uncharged Melee”
  4. Assign them to an input

To use these new actions on controller:

  1. Open the Settings menu
  2. Go to Controller
  3. Then Button Layout
  4. Now go to Custom
  5. Then scroll down to “Charged Melee” and “Uncharged Melee”
  6. Finally, assign them to an input

SEASON 15 ABILITY BALANCE PASS 

For Season 15, we’ve prepared a slew of balance changes to raise up underperforming subclasses and tone down overperforming subclasses.  Without further ado, here are the ability changes we’ll be making in Season 15.

GENERAL ABILITIES 

STASIS FREEZE 

  • Frozen players can now initiate breakout while airborne.  
  • Shortened breakout animation and camera transition. 
    • This means that once you decide to break out, you’ll be able to fight back sooner. 
  • Differentiated long freeze and short freeze visual treatment to make each status easier to identify. 

SLIDE 

  • While sliding, players now incur the following weapon penalties: 
    •  -20 stability 
    • +15% shotgun pellet spread 
    • 1.5x flinch 

TITAN

RALLY BARRICADE 

This Barricade variant doesn’t see much use, so we’ve made changes to make it a more viable option. It retains the same reload-speed benefits as before while adding other weapon buffs. 

  • Standing behind the Rally Barricade now also provides the following weapon buffs: 
    • +30 stability 
    • +10% range 
    • -50% flinch 

ALL BARRICADES 

  • Players moving at high velocity now take more damage when moving through hostile Titan Barricades. 
  • Barricades now slightly protrude into the ground to better protect the Titan’s feet on uneven ground. 
    • This should reduce instances where explosions and projectiles are able to sneak through the bottom of the Barricade and hit the Titan. 

BEHEMOTH 

With this patch, we are also fixing a bug where the Whisper of Rime overshield wasn’t properly scaling precision damage, causing it to be significantly beefier than intended, which primarily impacted Tectonic Harvest Behemoths. 

  • Cryoclasm 
    • While equipped, base slide now shatters crystals and frozen enemies. 
    • Increased duration of screen FX notifying players that Cryoclasm long slide is ready from 1 second to ~4.5 seconds. 
  • Shiver Strike 
    • Increased movement speed by 25%. 
  • Whisper of Rime 
    • Fixed a bug where the overshield provided by Whisper of Rime was not scaling precision damage correctly. 

MIDDLE-TREE SUNBREAKER 

  • Throwing Hammer 
    • Increased time before hammer explodes after hitting the ground from 6.5s to 10s. 
    • Increased damage vs. powerful PvE combatants by ~50%. 

TOP-AND-BOTTOM-TREE STRIKER 

  • Fists of Havoc 
    • Increased slam detonation radius by 14%. 
    • Reduced slam damage falloff. 
    • Reduced slam attack activation cost from 21% to 18%. 

MIDDLE-TREE STRIKER 

This change will be balanced out by something we haven’t mentioned yet. We’ll say more about this in a future TWAB. 

  • Inertia Override 
    • Increased duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. 
    • Sliding over an ammo brick now grants 20% melee energy. 

TOP-TREE SENTINEL 

The following change refers to the Ward of Dawn bubble itself and not players inside the bubble. Currently, dropping a Ward of Dawn on top of a boss is a no-brainer because it’s so effective. The goal of this change is to reduce the breadth of encounters solved by Ward of Dawn and make burly bubbles a conscious choice by the Titan. 

  • Ward of Dawn 
    • Increased damage taken from bosses from 0.25x -> 7x (at 0 Resilience). 
    • Damage taken can scale down to 0.25x based on the owner’s Resilience stat. 

HUNTER 

REVENANT 

We feel we hit Withering Blade slightly too hard in last Season’s Stasis balancing. The following change should make it slightly easier to land while keeping the damage and slow duration at a reasonable spot. 

  • Silence and Squall 
    • Increased Squall movement speed by 20%. 
    • Squall storm now stops when it touches a boss. 
  • Withering Blade 
    • Increased projectile speed and tracking by 10%. 

MIDDLE-TREE GUNSLINGER 

We’d like to give Hunters a larger window to defeat burning enemies and trigger the Playing with Fire perk. As such, we’re giving the Knife Trick timer a 25% buff. 

  • Knife Trick 
    • Increased burning duration from 3s to 4s. 

TOP-TREE GUNSLINGER 

  • Six-Shooter 
    • Damage falloff now starts at 25m instead of 20m 

ARCSTRIDER 

  • Arc Staff 
    • Extended passive Super duration from 16 seconds to 20 seconds. 
    • Increased heavy-slam detonation radius from 5m to 6m. 
    • Increased damage vs PvE combatants by 33%. 
  • Top-Tree Arcstrider 
    • Deadly Reach 
      • Increased duration from 8 seconds to 10 seconds. 
  • Middle-Tree Arcstrider 
    • Lightning Weave 
      • Dealing damage with Tempest Strike now triggers Lightning Weave. 
      • Timer can now be extended by dealing damage with any weapon. 

MIDDLE-TREE NIGHTSTALKER 

  • Spectral Blades 
    • Reduced damage reduction during Super from 52% to 47%. 
    • Reduced additional DR when invisible from +5% to +3%. 

WARLOCK 

SHADEBINDER 

  • Winter’s Wrath 
    • Reduced Shatterpulse damage vs. close-range Supers. 
      • Warlock must now freeze and shatter twice to defeat players in Burning Maul, Fists of Havoc, Sentinel Shield, Nova Warp, Arc Staff or Spectral Blades (Glacial Quake still only requires one shatter to defeat). 

TOP-TREE DAWNBLADE 

We want the identity of TTD to be found in aerial combat, so we’re doubling down on Heat Rises. We hope this change makes Heat Rises more accessible to players of all skill levels.   

  • Celestial Fire 
    • Reduced tracking cone angle. 
    • Arming shape (proximity detonation) now shrinks over time. 
    • Reduced detonation size by 1m. 
    • Damage falloff increased at short distances. 
  • Icarus Dash 
    • Now provides one air dodge every 4 seconds. 
      • While under the effects of Heat Rises, increased to 2 dodges every 5 seconds. 
  • Heat Rises 
    • Increased duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. 
    • Increased the time extension awarded for air kills while Heat Rises is active. The extension duration differs based on the type of enemy killed. 
    • Your location now appears on enemy radar when using Heat Rises. 

MIDDLE-TREE DAWNBLADE 

  • Well of Radiance 
    • Increased damage taken from bosses from 0.25x → 1.5x (at 0 Resilience). 
      • Damage taken can scale down to 0.25x based on the owner’s Resilience stat. 
      • Note: This refers to the Well of Radiance itself and not players inside the well. 
    • Increased damage resistance buff vs. enemy players from 20% to 40% 
      • Players inside Well of Radiance are now immune to Stasis freeze and slow. 
      • Well Sword can now be frozen and shattered by Stasis. 
  • Guiding Flame 
    • Increased duration from 7 seconds to 10 seconds. 
    • Increased damage buff from 20% to 25%. 

BOTTOM-TREE DAWNBLADE 

  • Phoenix Dive 
    • Reduced delay before dive starts. 
    • Can now input a direction to dive in that direction. 
  • Igniting Touch 
    • Ability Rework: Solar ability kills and kills on burning targets now cause targets to explode and burn other nearby enemies (who will also explode if they die while burning). 

MIDDLE-TREE STORMCALLER

  • Chaos Reach 
    • Increased beam environment-collision size to better match collision size with damage size. 
    • Reduced beam damage radius in PvP by 20%. 
    • Reduced beam end-point-sphere radius in PvP by 33%. 

BOTTOM-TREE STORMCALLER 

  • Arc Soul 
    • Increased duration from 12 seconds to 13 seconds. 
    • Increased fire rate by 10%. 
  • Electrostatic Surge 
    • Now increases sprint speed when allies are near. 
  • Landfall 
    • Now fires five arc ground projectiles on cast. 

MIDDLE-TREE VOIDWALKER 

  • Nova Warp 
    • Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 73%. 
    • No longer slows movement speed while charging/charged. 
    • Now detonates on cast. 
  • Handheld Supernova 
    • Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 100%. 
    • Increased hold time from 2.5 seconds to 3.2 seconds.”

For more Destiny 2, check out the Riiswalker god roll perks for PVE and PVP.

Image Credit: Bungie

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