Destiny 2 Is Scaling Back Organic Ability Spamming, But Buildcrafting Will Fill that Role

Almost every part of Destiny 2 is getting a tune-up once the Lightfall expansion goes live on February 28, and sublcass abilities haven't escaped Bungie's attention. With all three Light subclasses receiving a 3.0 upgrade throughout 2022, Bungie plans to scale back the amount of ability regeneration that the discipline, strength, and class ability stats provide.

"Our goal with ability uptime in both PvE and PvP is to get back to roughly where we were when the 30th Anniversary Pack launched in December 2021," Bungie explained in a blog post. While this will see organic options for abilities dialed back, the good news is that the revamped buildcrafting system being introduced in Lightfall will still reward players for properly investing in their Guardian build.

Combined with the right Aspects, Fragments, Exotic armor, armor mods, and weapon perks, a well-planned loadout will still be a force to be reckoned with according to Bungie. Some of the changes that the studio has planned for Lightfall include the following tweaks to passive cooldown gains:

• Rescaled efficacy of discipline, strength, and each class ability stat on grenade, melee, and class ability regeneration rates.
• The regeneration provided by a tier 10 stat is now roughly equivalent to a tier 8 in the previous system.
• Each stat tier now provides a more consistent gain in cooldown reduction rather than spiking heavily at lower tiers.

The overall idea here according to Bungie is not to remove the space magic abilities that makes the game's combat loop unique, but to emphasize the buildcrafting improvements coming in Lightfall. For example, Legendary armor now has three type-specific mod slots and are no longer restricted by elemental affinity, so there'll still be room to run ability energy-generating mods at the same time.

Armor mod energy costs have been reduced across the board and artifact mods no longer need to be slotted into your armor once they've been unlocked, which has the knock-on effect of giving players more options for how they fine-tune their builds.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to changes being introduced in Lightfall, as the new Strand subclass adds deadly new powers to the mix, heavy weapon revamps, and fall damage is getting a nerf.