Destiny 2 players will see some changes to their abilities in Season of the Wish—particularly if they’re playing Titan.
Banner of War, Throwing Hammer, and Sunspots (through the Sol Invictus Aspect) won’t be as potent when Season of the Wish launches, the developer confirmed in a colossal blog post today. The post teases buffs to Stasis, changes to armor mods, and a general trim in survivability by touching up Restoration, Devour, and Woven Mail as part of a larger effort to tune ability uptime and potency.
Banner of War, one of the most ubiquitous Titan Aspects, spearheads the list. Titans with a green flag on their backs have been as common as the late Blue Engrams, and Banner accounted for nearly 20 percent of Titan playtime for the past season, according to Bungie.
The developer is touching Banner of War by making it harder to stack it up. Guardians will have to take down “approximately double” the number of enemy kills required to get an extra stack, though the developer is “slightly increasing” how much each kill increases the timer as a way to offset the changes. As another nerf to Strand, Bungie is reducing the damage reduction from Woven Mail to 45 percent (down from 55).
Throwing Hammer—affectionately known as “bonk”—will also see a change, and Sunspots will have a shorter lifespan in tandem with the adjustments.
The most famous Solar melee ability for Titans will see some tweaks as part of Bungie’s larger push to nerf survivability at the top end. While hammer throws were the main form of survivability pre-Solar 3.0, the overhauled ability tree has let players almost hug bosses or Champions “with impunity while they chucked a hammer at its torso over and over again,” Bungie said.
A Throwing Hammer will now refill ability energy over 1.4 seconds, as opposed to a full refund immediately. The developer is maintaining the core loop by not touching the ability refund itself, though the delayed regeneration means to “add some downtime between throws to discourage the stand-next-to-the-boss-and-bonk-them behavior.”
Sol Invictus acts alongside Throwing Hammer to achieve near immortality, so Bungie is slashing the maximum duration of Sunspots to 12 seconds (down from a generous 20). The goal isn’t to nerf the core “throw a hammer and move” playstyle, but the developer wants to reduce how long players can abuse Sunspot to make for a safe haven near a powerful enemy.
Restoration, the healing-based Solar verb, is on the list for a trim across both PvE and PvP, rounding out these changes to Solar ecosystem. The new PvE values are 35 HP/s (down from 40) with one stack and 50 HP/s (down from 65). PvP efficiency is halved from those numbers.
Though the core of the changes lies in Solar and Strand, Void Titans will see a change in Ward of Dawn, with its cooldown increased by approximately 40 seconds, finishing out at just over seven-and-a-half minutes (up from 417 seconds, or close to seven minutes). Warlocks’ Well of Radiance is getting the same treatment. This is in part to mitigate their impact in PvP, but Bungie acknowledges it’s “reevaluating” these two Supers’ places in the sandbox for future releases.
None of the changes seem game-breaking, at least not at first glance—though they are definitely toning down some of the beloved elements in both Solar and Strand. This may not herald the death of any of those abilities, but they will surely feel different starting with Season of the Wish.
