Destiny 2 players will have a much easier time ranking up with Lord Saladin once the Iron Lord returns from his vacation with Caiatl. Bungie is toning down the grind required to reset the rank with the vendor, as a response to player feedback from the past three seasons.
Bungie is “planning on increasing the amount of Iron Banner Rank you earn at the end of matches, doubling the multipliers you get from wearing Iron Banner gear, halving the multipliers you get for completing challenges, and significantly increasing the multiplier you get for wearing an Iron Banner emblem,” it said in today’s This Week at Bungie blog post. The developer expects this to bring a 40-percent reduction in the number of games required to reset rank with Lord Saladin.
Iron Banner reputation has been a somewhat contentious topic since the rework in Season of the Haunted. The system requires players to complete challenges (which entail playing matches with specific subclasses) to earn bonus XP, though these challenges are time-gated. This means a player won’t make the most out of Iron Banner until three days after the event begins at best, and players have been passing on their feedback since.
The latest installment of Iron Banner brought the new Fortress game mode, which focuses on objective control and doesn’t award points for kills. As a response to the game mode and the longstanding grind, however, numerous players decided to farm losses in the new mode by letting a team capture all objectives without resistance. This would trigger the Mercy Rule, which puts an early end to games that are too lopsided to prevent players from suffering through unfair matches.
This method would take two or three minutes—far less than a normal Iron Banner match. The losing team would get the same reputation as a regular loss (around 220 points with the maximum multiplier, or roughly two percent of the progress needed for a reset). That reputation gain, however, came quickly and with minimum effort. Players could play a short, Team Deathmatch-esque game or just emote in a corner, and the reputation would still come their way.
Places for players to gather and play—including the Destiny 2 LFG Discord server, with over 180,000 users in total—had several posts looking for teams to farm wins or losses in Iron Banner, taking advantage of the momentum to earn some quick reputation and prizes.
As part of the changes, however, Bungie aims to make the structure simpler and less grindy. The increased match XP and gear/emblem multipliers, paired with the halved challenge bonus, means players have more incentive to play Iron Banner modes without waiting for the Friday that week, and make the Iron Banner chase less grindy in general.
Alongside the changes slated for Jan. 31, Bungie is also slashing the price of focusing items with Legendary Shards. Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, Crucible, and Gambit focusing will all cost half of what they do, with Adept weapons costing just 50 Legendary Shards instead of 250. Players can also expect Iron Banner to run three times a season starting on Season 20.
