Stasis is Finally Getting Shattered in Destiny 2

Stasis in Destiny 2 is no more! Bungie is no stranger to feedback from the community about how things are going in Destiny 2 and with a seemingly endless amount of feedback regarding the newest Subclass and damage type “Stasis,” it seemed more and more like Bungie wasn’t listening to the players. However, we now know that Bungie was just biding their time to reveal a heaping pile of changes coming to the Stasis Subclass across all three Guardian Classes. While some of these changes will also affect PvE content like raids, most of these changes are for the benefit of the PvP content like Trials, Iron Banner, and just Crucible in general. Hopefully this means that we can lean towards a completely separate sandbox for both PvE and PvP content in the future, but I suppose we’ll have to take what we can get for now. So, how bad is Stasis getting shattered next season?

Weapons up, Guardians

So, in the latest This Week at Bungie post, Sandbox Lead Kevin Yanes told us all a bit about Stasis and Bungie’s own vision for Guardian vs. Guardian combat. What Bungie really wants is for weapons to be the primary way players engage with combat, they want non-Super abilities to accentuate and/or augment combat, but not to be able to solve an encounter by themselves, they want abilities to have clear strengths, weaknesses, and counterplay, and to have build-crafting be rewarding within the moment-to-moment combat loop of Destiny. So, good news for those who want Crucible to have a renewed focus on weapons over abilities, but for players who rely solely on throwing grenades for Lord Shaxx and Saint-14, well, there’s always Mayhem.

Cold Fix

There is a hot fix that will be releasing on Thursday, June 3 that will make a ton of changes to Stasis and will hopefully balance it out in the Destiny 2  ecosystem, so let’s take a look at some of the changes that Bungie is making to equalize Stasis in the PvP sandbox:

General Stasis

• Stasis Freeze
  • Reduced duration of all non-Super freezes vs. players to 1.35s.
    • Note: This freeze is too short to break out of, so breaking out is now only possible when frozen by a Super.
  • Reduced Special-weapon, Heavy-weapon, and Light-ability bonus damage vs. frozen players from +50% to +5%.
• Stasis Slow
  • No longer reduces weapon accuracy.
    • Now increases weapon flinch when under fire.
  • No longer suppresses class ability and air moves (e.g., Icarus Dash).
    • Known issue: The Stormcaller’s Ionic Blink is still suppressed when slowed. We plan to address this in a future release.
  • Reduced movement speed penalty while slowed by ~20%.
• Whisper of Hedrons Fragment
  • No longer increases weapon damage after freezing.
  • Now increases weapon stability, weapon aim assist, Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery after freezing.
• Whisper of Rime Fragment
  • No longer provides overshield while in Super.
• Coldsnap Grenade
  • Seeker no longer tracks targets after initial target acquisition.
  • Increased arming duration before seeker spawns from 0.3s to 0.8s.
  • Reduced detonation radius vs. players from 3m to 1.5m.
  • Now bounces off walls and detonates on the ground.

Titan Behemoth

• Shiver Strike
  • Reduced flight speed and distance.
  • Reduced knockback vs. players.
  • Removed slow detonation on player impact.
• Cryoclasm
  • Now requires the Titan to sprint for 1.25s before activation when not in Super.
  • Removed cooldown.
• Howl of the Storm
  • Reduced angle of initial freezing/damage cone.
  • Reduced crystal-creation freezing radius.
  • Slowed down sequence of crystal formation to allow victims more opportunity to escape.
  • Now spawns a small crystal on walls if performed into walls.
• Glacial Quake
  • Reduced heavy slam vertical freeze range vs. players.
  • Reduced damage resistance from 50% to 47%.

Hunter Revenant

• Withering Blade
  • Reduced slow duration vs. players from 2.5s to 1.5s.
  • Reduced Whisper of Durance slow-duration extension vs. players from 2s to 0.5s.
  • Reduced damage vs. players from 65 to 45 (after one bounce reduced further to 30).
  • Reduced projectile speed by 10%.
  • Reduced tracking after bouncing off a wall.
• Winter’s Shroud
  • Reduced slow duration vs. players from 2.5s to 1.5s.
  • Reduced Whisper of Durance slow-duration extension vs. players from 2s to 0.5s.
• Touch of Winter
  • Coldsnap seeker no longer has increased movement speed or travel distance.
  • Coldsnap seeker now spawns a small Stasis crystal on detonation.

Warlock Shadebinder

• Penumbral Blast
  • Reduced tracking and proximity detonation size and tracking vs. players.
  • Reduced freeze radius vs. players when impacting the environment from 2.7m to 1.5m.
• Iceflare Bolts
  • Seeker now only chains once when spawned from a player shatter.
• Winter’s Wrath
  • Freezing-projectile tracking strength now ramps down to 0 after 2s of flight.

These are some great changes that Bungie is making to Stasis in Destiny 2 and will hopefully see Crucible in a much healthier state than it’s in right now, although there’s still a lot of work to be done. I’m just glad that Penumbral Blast didn’t get another range nerf…