Destiny 2's Season of the Haunted is approaching its final weeks, with Season 18 on the horizon alongside the showcase Bungie has planned for August 23 to discuss the Lightfall expansion coming next year. Season of the Haunted had a great storyline that reached high peaks of character development for Crow, Zavala, and Caiatl, especially, but there were some gameplay-related issues that diminished the enjoyment for some players. Among them, there were a few PvP issues with the way Season 17's meta impacted Crucible matches, as well as early issues with the reprised Rift mode that ended up being the dedicated Iron Banner mode for the Season.
One of the complaints regarding Destiny 2's PvP is that there have been no new modes for a while now, but Bungie's latest TWAB has interesting news for fans who are looking forward to playing in Season 18. In fact, Bungie announced a brand-new mode for Iron Banner matches that's called Eruption. When playing Eruption matches, Destiny 2 Guardians will get more Super energy and better ability regeneration based on their performance, making it a unique alternative to existing fan-favorite modes like Mayhem.
Why Eruption is a Good Fit For Destiny 2
Today's TWAB covers the newly announced Eruption mode for Iron Banner, which will take over Rift in Season 18. Notably, Rift won't be gone, as it will simply be added to Destiny 2's rotation of existing Crucible modes, meaning that it will only be removed from the Iron Banner playlist. On the other hand, Eruption is the first completely new Crucible mode in a while, and it's good because it works in a way that makes it more rewarding and more fun to score kills and assists in PvP matches.
This is achieved by providing bonus Super, melee, grenade, and class ability regeneration to Destiny 2 players who score a kill or assist someone that does, eventually escalating based on the players' streaks. When players get two kills without dying, they will start glowing and become "Surging," meaning that their Super and abilities will be available more frequently the more kills they score. Upon reaching a streak of five, they become "Primed," which means that they get even more match points, ability energy, and Super regeneration per kill, but they also get a timer of 15 seconds that kills the character when it expires.
When a player becomes Primed, the team goes on the classic Iron Banner Hunt, and if a Primed player is killed they provide 3 points to the enemy team. If Primed players live enough to see their timer expire, they erupt in a fiery explosion, hence the name of the mode. This is good for Destiny 2's PvP sandbox because it allows players to pick the various subclasses and builds they want to try with constant boosts to ability and Super energy to cast everything more often, while also building a slightly more team-oriented loop.
Eruption is quite similar to the existing Mayhem mode, which is already very popular due to speedy matches and how fun it is to spam Supers, but the new mode comes with the kick of having to chain kills or assists to get the same effect. For Destiny 2 players that aren't as proficient in PvP, they will still get boosts when allies become Primed, enhancing the team as a whole for one's efforts. Multiple players becoming Primed can stack the effect, making for quite intense Hunt sessions. Overall, Bungie's direction with Eruption is a good one, and the new mode seems like a nice change of pace from last Season's Rift.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.