Ahead of its weekly blog post, Bungie previewed the numerous changes and tweaks its planning for every Destiny 2 subclass including the newest Darkness abilities known as Strand. As a live service title, Destiny 2 is constantly changing and evolving, sometimes with bigger pieces of content including expansions and stories. As such, Bungie is constantly evaluating method of progression and seeing patterns from the player base, sometimes even having to intervene to help or maybe even nerf some Destiny 2 things that may be working a little too well.
Recently, the studio hinted that additional subclass changes were coming to Destiny 2 alongside Season 21. While the admission remained light on actual details, the focus was seemingly placed on Stand, the newest Destiny 2 subclass and one that seems to be fairly popular with the community thanks to the new movement techniques it has added to the game. While Season 21 is still a few weeks away, Bungie previewed the upcoming subclass and ability tuning that's coming alongside the next season.
In a new blog post, Bungie's combat gameplay team spoke about its upcoming plans for tuning to abilities, subclasses, and aspects. A big portion of this update centered on a number of changes coming to every subclass, including Strand, which just launched alongside Lightfall. Roaming supers, including the new Bladefury and Silkstrike, have been the focus of plenty of tweaks over the years and with how well the previously mentioned ones have been received, Bungie is focusing on other variants while also increasing damage resistance for all in PvE activities by 20%. Destiny 2 Season 21 will also finally enable subclass keywords where it makes sense, so players can expect to see things like Jolt and Scorch finally added to some base supers.
In terms of the Hunter players, Bungie admitted they're happy with how each super is overall. Golden Gun and Arc Staff are getting a PvE damage buff by 20% overall while Spectral Blades and Gathering Storm are getting more significant bumps. For example, The Nightstalker Spectral Blades super is getting a 35% PvE damage boost, heavy attacks now weaken targets, and a long-standing bug where some attacks miss finally got fixed. Gathering Storm received targeted adjustments with damage increases to direct hits and delayed damage strikes as well as tick damage.
On the other side of the coin, Bungie isn't as satisfied with Titan supers, feeling that the majority of them are falling short on high end PvE content. Glacial Quake, Sentinel Shield, Hammer of Sol, and Burning Maul are all getting PvE damage boosts across the board, though for Burning Maul, players are alls generating a Sunspot on cast and the heavy attack applies scorch. Fist of Havoc is getting the most changes including a cost reduction for light and heavy strikes, a 33% PvE damage boost, and the heavy attack will blind targets near the center of the slam spot.
Finally, Warlocks are squarely in the middle, though a few subclasses are getting a big boost. Voidwalker Warlocks are seeing a boost to both Nova Warp and Nova Bomb, with the former getting a 15% PvE damage boost while making enemies volatile with a fully charged attack, while the latter is getting a straight 20% PvE damage boost. Stormcallers are also viewed as being weaker than intended, so Stormtrance and Chaos Reach get a 25% PvE damage bump, as well as new status effects like Jolt, and damage resistance when using Chaos Reach. Winter's Wrath is also getting a slight 10% PvE damage buff as well.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Bungie