Stasis has been in a tricky spot in Destiny 2 since its introduction in Beyond Light. With multiple rounds of nerfs curtailing its dominance but leaving it underused, Bungie has revealed it’s re-assessing the icy subclass’s space in the sandbox—and hitting it with a hefty round of buffs across the board next season.
The news comes courtesy of today’s This Week At Bungie blog, one that goes into extensive detail about adjustments coming to every single subclass in Destiny 2 for the next season that launches on Dec. 6. The majority of those adjustments are some hefty nerfs to Light 3.0, but Stasis is set to enjoy some much-needed boosts to kit elements such as grenades and the potency of Slow.
The news might worry players who remember the prevalence of Stasis in the Crucible at the height of its power, but Bungie made one thing clear: “We don’t have any intention of returning Stasis to its original potency.”
The buffs for Stasis, instead, aim at building a new foundation for its space and function in the Guardian’s arsenal. That foundation starts with a targeted buff for the Slow status effect. “In its initial form, Slow did too much and penalized too many facets of the player’s performance, but we aren’t happy with its current form,” the sandbox team said. “We’re making a measured change to improve Slow’s primary utility—reducing movement speed—and leaving Slow’s other effects where they are for now.”
Stasis Slow changes
- Increased movement speed penalty while Slowed by 10 percent
Coldsnap and Duskfield Grenades are also getting a series of improvements to their base functionalities. For the Coldsnap Grenade, it’s all about reliability. “Coldsnap fails to find even slow-moving targets often enough that we felt like a change was necessary,” the devs said. With how deadly Coldsnap Grenades can be thanks to their ability to instantly freeze an enemy Guardian, they were also just as aware that too large of a buff could move them from being unreliable to a must-pick, and added that they will be watching the changes closely when they launch.
Duskfield Grenades have been a shadow of their former selves for a long time now, barely serving as a disruption on the battlefield unless paired with Aspects, Fragments, and a certain pair of Exotic arms for the Hunter. Therefore, the sandbox team is hitting its crowd control ability with a buff, making the act of standing inside of an enemy Duskfield a far more dangerous choice than it currently is.
Stasis Grenade changes
- Coldsnap Grenade: Coldsnap’s seeker can now adjust its trajectory for 0.5 seconds after creation, rather than immediately finding a target and traveling toward their last known position
- Duskfield Grenade: Increased Slow stack application rate on players by 13 percent
Next on the sandbox team’s agenda are certain Aspects for the Hunter and Titan subclasses. With just how powerful Stasis was when it launched, the Aspects that players could choose from had purposefully limited Fragment slots. Now that Stasis has a much more niche place in Destiny 2’s meta and it isn’t set to retake the throne any time soon, some of those Aspects will be getting an increase to the Fragment slots they carry, allowing for much more experimentation with builds.
Stasis Aspect changes
- Winter’s Shroud Aspect (Hunter): Fragment slots increased from one to two
- Cryoclasm Aspect (Titan): Fragment slots increased from one to two
Warlocks aren’t being left out of the round of buffs either, but the changes here are direct increases to the power of certain elements of the kit rather than further freedom to buildcraft. Glacial Harvest is the Aspect in question to be getting some love. “Glacial Harvest felt like a hard choice to make over Iceflare Bolts, Bleak Watcher, and Frostpulse,” the team explained. “We believe a portion of that friction comes from Glacial Harvest’s lengthy cooldown after activation, so we’re reducing it by 33%.”
Additionally, a Fragment is also receiving a small buff targeted mostly at making it a greater boon for Shadebinder Warlocks. “A piece of feedback we’ve heard a lot since Stasis launched was Shadebinder’s inability to quickly shatter frozen targets with tools like Cryoclasm or Shatterdive,” they said of the change. “The Whisper of Rending Fragment was intended to be a tool Shadebinders could use to make that conversion easier, but in the current sandbox requiring a Kinetic Primary to be equipped felt too restrictive.”
Shadebinder Warlock changes
- Glacial Harvest Aspect: Reduced cooldown on Stasis Shard creation (per six shards) from 15 seconds to 10 seconds
- Whisper of Rending Fragment: Now provides bonus damage to Stasis Crystals and frozen targets for all Primary ammo weapons, rather than just Kinetic Primary ammo weapons
It’s already an impressive and much-needed round of improvements for Stasis as a whole, but Bungie’s plans for the subclass extend beyond the buffs coming with season 19. “These are the changes we felt we could make safely right now, but we’ll be continually evaluating as we move forward,” the devs said. It’s fair to expect that if this initial round of tweaks is a success, we can expect to see further alterations to Stasis in upcoming seasons as well.
Destiny 2’s next season and its accompanying subclass changes are launching on Tuesday, Dec. 6, with a new dungeon dropping that Friday, Dec. 9, alongside it.
