Destiny 2 Season 19 and Subclass Changes Details Revealed in Latest TWAB

This Week at Bungie is hefty!

By Christian Pepitoon

Bungie has recently shared new details of the upcoming Destiny 2 Season 19 and especially subclass changes.

Destiny 2 Season 19 Changes to Bring

The first thing that Bungie discussed was the upcoming changes that Destiny 2 Season 19 will bring. First, they reflected on what changed when update 3.4.0 was released, which was the reduction ability rates across the game with a goal of reducing focus on abilities in high-level Crucible modes like Trials and Survival. The low-cost abilities that could defeat a Guardian with one hit were also reduced.

Destiny 2 Season 19’s primary goal right now is to normalize the power of the existing subsclasses, giving a more standard baseline that can be Bungie could use for future tuning. This will be done in the form of targeted updates to outliers on the high and low ends of the Light subclasses and Stasis.

Solar

One of Solar 3.0’s goals was to get persistent healing in a place where it felt valuable in high-level PvE. The updates to Resilience that was launched together with Solar 3.0 called Restoration was too powerful for the current suite of activities. This is unfortunately a particular pain point in high-level PvP. There will be a small adjustment for Restoration x1 and Restoration x2 will have a larger adjustment in the next update. This is to make sure that a careless player can still be punished by an opposing Guardian.

  • Restoration  
    • Restoration x1 base healing rate reduced from 25 to 20 health per second (40 health per second in PvE activities, down from 50).  
    • Restoration x2 base healing rate reduced from 40 to 32.5 health per second (65 health per second in PvE activities, down from 80). 
    • No longer stacks with Healing Rift’s healing. The stronger heal-over-time value is prioritized and will stop the weaker heal-over-time from taking effect.  

The Solar Fragment suite will have a few changes in order to reduce uptime.

  • Ember of Torches  
    • Radiant base duration reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds. 
    • Now applies a -10 Discipline penalty while equipped.  
  • Ember of Solace
    • Now provides a bonus 50% to Radiant duration, rather than a flat 5 seconds.
      • Note: this is consistent with its behavior with Restoration. 

Knock ‘Em Down benefits will now be cleanly split between the two Golden Gun variants. Deadshot will gain 15 percent damage resistance but loses its bonus duration. Marksman will no longer provide bonus damage resistance while Knock ‘Em Down is equipped.

Blade Barrage knife count will also be brought down from 5 to 3 per wave.

  • Knock ‘Em Down 
    • Golden Gun   
      • Now provides 15% bonus damage resistance to Deadshot Golden Gun and no longer provides bonus duration. 
      • No longer provides 15% bonus damage resistance to Marksman Golden Gun. 
    • Blade Barrage
      • Blade Barrage bonus projectiles reduced from 5 to 3 per group. It now releases a total of 20 knives , down from 24.

Celestial Fire will have an increased close-range melee damage. Using both Celestial Fire and auto-melee option are no longer disadvantaged in close-range melee bouts.

  • Celestial Fire
    • Increased close-range melee damage from 90 to 100. Players using Celestial Fire and the auto-melee option are no longer disadvantaged in close-range melee fights.  

Void

Void had a bug with its survivability benefit of Void overshields, but this will be fixed with the next season. The update will increase its viability as a protection tool in high-level PvE.

  • Void Overshield
    • Fixed an issue where the overshield was only providing 25% PvE-only damage resistance to the overshield, rather than the intended 50%.  

Nova Bomb Vortex will have a lot increased with the next update. There will be an increase on initial projectile speed, radius of the inward pull on impact, and strength of the inward pull on impact.

  • Nova Bomb: Vortex  
    • Increased initial projectile speed by 21%.  
    • Increased radius of the inward pull on impact by ~17%.  
    • Increased strength of the inward pull on impact by ~20%. 

Shield Bash will get a change in the form of improved reliability. This will make it better in PvP.

  • Shield Bash
    • Improved reliability of applying suppression. 

Both Shadowshot variants (Deadfall and Moebius Quiver) will have changes for an increase and a reduction.

  • Shadowshot: Deadfall
    • Increased Tether anchor lifetime when triggered from 8 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Shadowshot: Moebius Quiver
    • Reduced Tether anchor lifetime when triggered from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. 

Invisibility is currently a severe pain point in high-level PvP but there will be no plans to announce today. Bungie is currently looking at longer-term solutions in order to addressing in countering a full team of invisible Nightstalkers. More solutions are being investigated right now to make invisible players less problematic.

Arc

Since Arc 3.0 is still new and Bungie is currently monitoring the feedback and data coming in. They have found some obvious outliers in the Arc ability suite that they are going to fix and the biggest one is the Touch of Thunder Storm Grenades. There will be a decrease in the next update for that. Spark of Magnitude’s bonus lifetime is decreased too. The friend or foe visual language has been updated too.

  • Touch of Thunder Storm Grenade
    • Decreased Touch of Thunder’s Storm Grenade base roaming duration from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.  
  • Decreased the bonus lifetime granted by Spark of Magnitude to the enhanced Storm Grenade from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds. 
  • Updated friend-or-foe visual language.
    • Previously, the friend-or-foe ring surrounding a Touch of Thunder Storm Grenade’s lightning strikes blinked on and off between strikes, and there was no indication within the cloud itself of whether it was friend or foe. Now, the ring persists through the life of the storm, and enemy storms have an additional VFX layer in the cloud itself to help differentiate them from those created by allies.   

Ballistic Slam will be getting an increase in damage against PvE combatants since it is a bit short on the mark.

  • Ballistic Slam
    • Increased Ballistic Slam damage against PvE combatants by 16%.  

Tempest Strike damage is being increased too.

  • Tempest Strike
    • Increased Tempest Strike damage against PvE combatants by 30%. 

Stormcaller feedback was a lot recently. There will be making a lot of targeted changes to the abilities to increase their potency, which will increase Stormcaller’s viability in PvP modes. Arc Soul base damage will be increased too.

  • Arc Soul
    • Increased base damage vs. PvE combatants from 35 to 60.  

Stormcaller’s melee abilities will be getting updates as well. Ball Lighting will get increased travel range while Chain Lightning gets increased damage against PvE combatants.

  • Ball Lightning
    • Increased travel range from 27.5 meters to 35 meters.  
  • Chain Lightning
    • Increased damage against PvE combatants by 50%.   

Chaos Reach is getting a reduction base cooldown time too since it felt underwhelming across PvE and PvP.

  • Chaos Reach
    • Reduced base cooldown time from 9:16 to 7:35. 

Stasis

The developers will not be returning Stasis to the original potency at Beyond Light’s launch, but there will be some elements of Stasis that were change with updates 3.2.0.3 and 3.4.0 that have fallen behind the current sandbox power bar. By Season 19 and beyond, the role of Stasis will be reassessed.

Stasis Slow will have an increased movement speed penalty while Slowed.

  • Stasis Slow
    • Increased movement speed penalty while Slowed by 10%.  

Coldsnap Grenade’s seeker can now adjust its trajectory for a few seconds after creation.

  • 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 will now have an increased Slow attack application rate on players.

  • Duskfield Grenade
    • Increased Slow stack application rate on players by 13%. 

Revenant Hunter’s Winter Shroud and Behemoth Titan’s Cryoclasm will have its Fragment slots increased.

  • Revenant Hunter
    • Winter’s Shroud
      • Fragment slots increased from 1 to 2.  
  • Behemoth Titan
    • Cryoclasm
      • Fragment slots increased from 1 to 2. 

Shadebinder’s Glacial Harvest will get reduced cooldown.

  • Shadebinder
    • Glacial Harvest
      • Reduced cooldown on Stasis Shard creation (per six shards) from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Whisper of Rending will now provide a bonus damage to Stasis Crystals and frozen targets. This was due to a piece of feedback that the developers found out since Stasis launched. This is the change it will be getting.

  • Whisper of Rending
    • Now provides bonus damage to Stasis Crystals and frozen targets for all Primary ammo weapons, rather than just Kinetic Primary ammo weapons.   

There will be a new dungeon that Bungie is developing right now. No specific details were shared yet, but it will drop on December 9, 2022 at 9 AM PDT.

And that’s it for This Week at Bungie for Destiny 2 Season 19.

Destiny 2 is now available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5.