Bungie Reveals Some Balance Changes Coming with Destiny 2: The Witch Queen

Following an extended absence, Bungie revealed some exciting changes players can expect with Destiny 2: The Witch Queen and the following season.

One of the biggest upcoming changes deals with masterworks and their benefits. Starting at the launch of Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, fully-Masterworked armor will cost 10,000 Glimmer and an upgrade module to change a legendary armors element. Exotic gear will cost you the same upgrade module, though the Glimmer cost increases to 20,000. This is something fans have requested for a while and it’s great to see it implemented.

While this is a huge improvement, it comes with a change to how Orbs of Power are generated. Currently, Masterwork and Exotics with catalysts can generate Orbs of Power, which many Charged with Light builds are based on. With the release of Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, there will be a new mod dedicated to this function.

Closing out, we are also making a change to the way Guardians create Orbs of Power with weapons. Elements of the new weapon crafting system will encourage you to use many different weapons and ask you to burn hard-earned Masterwork materials on a weapon that you may only be using for a few hours, just to generate Orbs. That … seemed like a tall order. This, combined with our desire to act on consistent feedback that players want to be able to generate Orbs of Power with Exotic weapons that do not yet have catalysts, led us to the implementation we’ll be using in The Witch Queen and beyond. Orb generation on weapon multikills will no longer be a function of a weapon’s Masterwork status but will instead be provided by a suite of armor mods, which are unlocked automatically for all players and which plug into the Helmet Armor Mod socket. Each such mod will apply the Orb-generation effect to all weapons you have equipped of a particular damage type, so a single mod will cover multiple weapons in your arsenal if they share a damage type (this also applies to a weapon that changes damage types, like Hard Light, or a Kinetic weapon with Osmosis). We will continue to create exciting Exotic catalysts over the next few Seasons, but in the meantime, you will be able to generate orbs with Cloudstrike, Thorn, Thunderlord, Tarrabah, and any other weapon in the game. 

This week at Bungie

Players have already expressed their feelings about the change, which is mostly negative, though various Bungie employees teased better things on the horizon. Dylan Gafner, better known as senior community manager dmg04, tweeted players should look forward to a future This Week at Bungie that will be focused on weapon tuning. Kevin Yanes, sandbox discipline lead at Bungie, replied with a smirking gif. Finally, Liana Ruppert, community manager and accessibility at Bungie, offered a little more insight into what is happening.

While information about the positives associated with this change will come at a later date, the update also touched on changes to the artifact and seasonal mods.

One of the consistent pieces of feedback that we have been wanting to act on for a while involves the unlocking of Artifact mods. Starting in Season 16, players will no longer be limited to the number of Artifact mods they can unlock. This means that players could feasibly unlock all 25 Artifact mods by the end of the Season! While we have made some small adjustments to the amount of XP required to unlock Artifact mods 1-12, in general, the pace of unlocking these first twelve Artifact mods should be close to what we’ve seen in Season 15’s Artifact. For each unlock after the 12th, increased XP will be required for the next Artifact mod unlock, so the choice of which order to unlock mods still requires some decision-making. And if you change your mind? You can still reset your Artifact and make your picks again.  

When it comes to the Artifact mods themselves, we are bringing back a few perennial favorite anti-Champion mods, including Anti-Barrier Scout Rifles and Bows, and have done some work to make disrupting an Overload champion (which can be done this Season with Auto-Rifles and SMGs) more reliable than in previous Seasons. We’ll also be highlighting the new Glaive weapon archetype coming in The Witch Queen through a variety of Artifact mods (including an option to make your Glaive the solution to Unstoppable Champions) and have a few new Artifact mods that will enhance some of the new weapon perks. 

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This update also touched on concerns with Bungie 30th Anniversary content possibly being vaulted in the near future.

“Will they or won’t they?” has been a major question surrounding the 30th Anniversary event. We have game shows, we have a weird sarcastic horse made of stardust and puns, and we have a dungeon that will make you laugh and scream at the same time. Because so many have been loving the new activities, a common concern is that Dares of Eternity and other eventful goodies will be disappearing as we say goodbye to Season 15. 
Fret not, young horse whisperer, because 30th Anniversary content (both free and paid) will not be placed in the Destiny Content Vault with the launch of The Witch Queen. We’ll have another update about this later this year but expect to enjoy The Xur-led adventures through 2022. 

This week at Bungie

Finally, this update revealed the previously teased Dares of Eternity community event. Starting today, players can earn the Circumflex Diacritic emblem by simply logging in and play a round. This will run until Jan. 18, with distribution taking place on a later date.