Solar 3.0 is bound to feel different for players in Destiny 2’s season 19, especially if they were used to Restoration or the Knock ‘Em Down Aspect. Bungie is tuning all four subclasses and all three classes when the next season kicks off and Solar players can expect to see a slew of changes, as outlined in today’s This Week at Bungie blog post.
Bungie is tweaking the Restoration values to offset some of its pain points. Paired with the changes to Resilience, the 3.0 verb was overtuned for both PvE and PvP, according to Bungie. With the change, Restoration x1 is dropping to 20 health per second (down from 25) in the Crucible and to 40 (down from 50) in PvE. Likewise, Restoration x2 is seeing a drop to 32.5 HPS in PvP (down from 40) and 65 in PvE (down from 80). Restoration will also stop stacking with Healing Rifts.
Ember of Torches was basically mandatory in any Solar build since it allowed players to get free Radiant procs just by using a charged melee. While Bungie is OK with the power of Radiant, season 19 will bring -10 Discipline on users and slash the base Radiant duration to eight seconds (down from 10) as a means to add previously nonexistent downsides to using Ember of Torches.
Hunters will also feel their Blade Barrage particularly less powerful when the next season hits thanks to the changes to the Knock ‘Em Down Aspect. Bungie is reducing the extra knives from Blade Barrage to three (down from five) per group, releasing 20 knives in total (down from 24). If you’re not using Blade Barrage, however, you’ll still feel changes to the other Supers when using the Aspect.
Knock ‘Em Down will now provide 15 percent bonus damage resistance to Deadshot Golden Gun but will not award any extra duration. Marksman Golden Gun, on the other hand, will lose its bonus damage resistance. These changes aim to clearly identify the two Supers and tone down the bonus duration from Deadshot Golden Gun with Knock ‘Em Down equipped. “We want to cement Deadshot Golden Gun as a tool for a Hunter that wants to dive into the fray, whereas Marksman is for calmer sharpshooters that want to wait for the perfect shot,” Bungie said.
The last set of changes revolves around Warlocks’ Celestial Fire melee. Close-range duels in the Crucible were “failing to end in a trade because a base melee in combination with Celestial Fire only deals 190 damage,” according to Bungie, which isn’t enough to take down an opponent. Because of that, Bungie is boosting its close-range melee damage to 100 (up from 90), which should make up for players who were disadvantaged when the auto-melee control binding activated Celestial Fire by accident in a duel.
The changes will go live in Destiny 2’s season 19, which is scheduled for Dec. 6.
