The way that damage buff stacking currently works in Destiny 2 can lead to some pretty crazy results, such as the Liar’s Handshake Arstrider melee build that players have recently shown can take down raid bosses incredibly fast. As the game has grown, there have been more ways for players to apply buffs to themselves and debuffs to enemies to increase their damage exponentially. And leave it to players to figure out how to stack as many as possible to cause maximum damage.

All that is about to change with the release of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep this fall. Destiny franchise director Luke Smith detailed how Bungie is overhauling the buff/debuff system in the game, a system that in its current form Smith called “busted.” Before getting into the nitty-gritty of how the system will work, the overall function is that with the release of Shadowkeep players can only have one buff to their damage at a time while enemies can only have one debuff that weakens them to damage at a time.

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The caveat to that is that buffs specific to a single weapon, such as Rampage, Kill Clip, and exotic perks, will stack on top of a general damage buff. For example, a player could have Rampage and Well of Radiance stack on top of each other. However, general buffs like Well of Radiance and Melting Point will no longer stack.

destiny 2 well of radiance

If players activate multiple buffs, the game will now apply the most powerful buff and negate the others instead of stacking them. Smith explained that there’s a further nuance to the system when multiple buffs are applied, saying that, for example, a player standing in Well of Radiance would still get the healing effect from the Well but the damage buff could be overruled by a stronger damage buff in play such as Weapons of Light (which just so happens to be coming back in Forsaken as an effect on Titan’s bubble shields).

The hopes for this change is to bring Destiny 2 more in balance, which will, in turn, allow Bungie to develop challenging and engaging activities without making them overly hard and designed specifically just to counter some of the insane damage builds currently out there.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep releases October 1, 2019, for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Stadia version also in development.

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Source: Bungie