Destiny 2 Tweaking Stasis Abilities, Adding Grandmaster Nightfalls With Next Update

Update: Bungie has done even more rebalancing of Stasis abilities with a new update to Destiny 2, which is now live in the game. Read the full patch notes for Update 3.1.1.1.

Original Story:

Bungie is making a number of adjustments to Stasis abilities in Destiny 2 with its March 16 update to the game, which should make players in the PvP-focused Crucible very happy (or very angry). A number of Stasis powers are getting nerfed, including the ubiquitous Shatterdive ability and the strength of the Duskfield grenade.

A preview of the changes are outlined in Destiny 2's This Week at Bungie blog post, which outlines how Bungie is adjusting each of the three Stasis subclasses. The Hunter Shatterdive ability is losing its damage resistance, which should help players combat the extremely lethal move. The Warlock Stasis Super's projectiles will now have better tracking, but the explosive power used to shatter Stasis crystals won't deal as much damage. And Titans will no longer freeze nearby PvP opponents when they activate their Super abilities. There are a number of other changes in the blog post--they're all listed below--but they're generally only taking effect in PvP play; Stasis abilities are remaining mostly the same in PvE activities.

Stasis abilities have been dominant in the Crucible since the release of the Beyond Light expansion, much to the chagrin of many Destiny 2 players. There have been a lot of complaints about the new abilities, particularly Shatterdive, which allows Hunters to leap into the air and slam down, shattering nearby Stasis crystals. Those crystals are extremely deadly when they explode, and Shatterdive provided Hunters with a bunch of damage resistance when executing the move, making them nearly unkillable--and pushing players to center all their play around the ability.

Other complaints are being addressed as well, like the Duskfield grenade, which has a magnetic property that pulls players toward it. The magnetism is so powerful that Duskfield grenades are often used to yank players out of cover, leaving them defenseless, so Bungie is reducing the distance at which that magnetism is effective.

The March 16 update will also see a bunch of other tweaks and fixes as well as the release of Grandmaster-level Nightfall: The Ordeal activities. These top-level Nightfall Strikes are some of the toughest players can take on, and this season, they're carrying new loot rewards. Grandmaster Nightfalls, will now have the chance of dropping Adept versions of the three Nightfall-only guns introduced in the Season of the Chosen. These guns have extra-high stats--Adept guns have so far only been available to players who go Flawless in the Trials of Osiris.

Grandmaster Nightfalls will require players to be a minimum Power level of 1325--which is 15 over the Power cap for gear, requiring some grinding for players to increase the Power of their Seasonal Artifact. But players will also be locked at 1325 for the activity; getting any higher than that won't help in Grandmaster Nightfalls, which will have enemies clocking in at 1350 Power.

Finally, Bungie said in the blog post that the Trials of Osiris will return with the daily reset at 9 a.m. on Friday, March 12. The top-tier PvP mode has been disabled the last two weekends, thanks to an issue that allowed players to earn Flawless runs without actually fighting each other.

Check out the full patch notes preview below:

Destiny 2 Update Preview For March 16 Patch

Strikes

• Fallen S.A.B.E.R.:
  • Fixed an issue where the strike Boss would not spawn until all players were alive and present.
  • Improved objective waypoint behavior.
  • Fixed some grammatical errors in player-directive text.
  • Fixed a bug where a fireteam member entering the area late could cause the Warsat falling visual effects again.
  • Fixed an issue where Zavala's dialog in the first area could play multiple times.
  • Fixed a bug where a fallen energy shield could be seen sticking out of a wall.
• Devil's Lair:
  • Sepiks Prime now has a Boss health bar.
  • Fixed some floating environment objects.
  • Fixed an issue where some monster spawn points looked like accessible doorways to players.
  • Fixed an issue where an Overload Captain could spawn with the wrong name.
  • Fixed an issue where the Fallen Walker and Fallen Brigs could respawn after they were defeated.
  • Fixed an issue where physics was missing from a wall early in the strike, allowing players to get lost out of environment.

Armor

• Fixed an issue with the Linear Actuators Exotic perk for the Titan Exotic Dunemarchers, which was not triggering properly. The perk now behaves as expected, triggering on each/subsequent melee strike after an appropriate amount of sprint time.
• Font of Might no longer displays a generic "Damage Boost" string when its benefit is active.
• Fixed a bug where the Mantle of Battle Harmony and Omnioculus Exotics were not displaying their flavor text.
• Omioculus also no longer grants melee energy when making only yourself invisible under some circumstances.
• Cuirass of the Falling Star no longer grants an Overshield when used with Supers other than Thundercrash.

Weapons

• Fixed an issue where flavor text wasn't appearing for several seasonal weapons.
• Added rumble to the end of Dead Man's Tale's reload.
• Adjusted Riskrunner perk VFX that were causing epileptic issues.
• Reduced Arbalest's aim assist, making it harder to hit headshots in Crucible.
• Set the Frenzy and Cranial Spike perks to use the correct buff icons.
• Fixed Ticuu's Divination's missing kill feed icon.
• After a few weeks of development and playtests, we also have a round of Stasis balancing slated for March 23.

Stasis Tuning Preview For March 16 Patch

Hunter

• Shatterdive
  • Removed damage resistance from Shatterdive.
  • Added a 4s cooldown between activations of Shatterdive.
• Withering Blade
  • Decreased Withering Blade damage against players from 90 to 65 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.
  • Decreased Withering Blade slow stacks applied to players from 60 to 40 stacks. PvE slow stacks are unchanged.
  • Decreased the target acquisition range of Withering Blade after it impacts a player from 12m to 8m. Range after impacting PvE enemies is unchanged.

Titan

• Glacial Quake
  • Removed AoE freeze against players on super cast. Will still freeze PvE enemies on cast.
  • Reduced damage resistance while in super from 60% to 50%.
  • Increased the energy cost of using Shiver Strike while in Glacial Quake from 3% to 7% Super energy.
  • Using the combo of a Shiver Strike into a Heavy slam attack will now cost the full Super energy of both the Shiver Strike and the slam (previously only costed energy for the slam).
• Shiver Strike
  • Increased downwards velocity applied to Shiver Striking players when they are slowed to pull them out of the air more strongly.

Warlock

• Winter’s Wrath
  • Improved tracking of Winter’s Wrath projectiles, now tracking strength decays from its max value over 10s instead of 2.2s.
  • Increased the size of the warlock super projectile's proximity detonation radius 1.5m – 1.65m
  • The proximity detonation now starts at its largest and scales down to 40% over time.
• Penumbral Blast
  • Decreased Penumbral Blast damage against players from 80 to 30 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.
• Iceflare Bolts
  • Fixed a bug where Iceflare Bolts would continuously try to switch targets.
  • Increased target acquisition range of Iceflare Bolts by 33%.
  • Increased turning speed of Iceflare Bolts so they can more effectively hit nearby targets.
• Chaos Reach
  • Decreased the amount of Super energy refunded when cancelling Chaos Reach early.

GENERAL

• Duskfield Grenade
  • Reduced how strongly Duskfield Grenade pulls players inwards, effectively reducing the pull range from 9.5m to ~6m. PvE pull impulse is unchanged.
  • Reduced the slow stacks applied to players by the grenade detonation from 20 to 10 stacks. Detonation slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
  • Reduced the slow stacks applied to players on each tick of the grenade from 10 to 5 stacks. Per-tick slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
  • Adjusted the UI presentation of the “Slowed” status to display Slow stacks as X/100 instead of X/10, to increase readability when adding Slow stack amounts that are fewer than 10.
• Stasis Crystals
  • Reduced crystal shatter damage against players from (85 max, 55min) to (55 max, 25 min). PvE damage is unchanged.
• Whisper of Chains
  • Reduced Whisper of Chains damage resistance bonus while in Super from 25% to 5%. Damage resistance when not in Super is unchanged. This only affects damage from other Guardians.
• Whisper of Torment
  • Fixed a bug where players could continuously proc Whisper of Torment while standing inside an opponent’s Barricade.
• Stasis Fragment Quests
  • Significantly reduced objective completion values for all Crucible fragment quests.