Well, Bungie has outdone themselves yet again with the latest This Week at Bungie blog post. We knew ahead of time that this week’s entry was going to be pretty chunky, thanks to a heads up from one of our favorite community managers, dmg04, earlier in the week, but this one was so meaty, in fact, that it took about five minutes longer to actually load onto the site than usual. While this isn’t a huge deal to many, some other games journalists (*ahem* Tassi *ahem*) have turned any TWAB delays into a meme at this point. This post was all about the ability changes coming to Destiny 2 in Season 15, which is set to start on August 24, in just a few short weeks. So, what changes can you expect to come to all of your favorite Warlock subclasses in the next season of Destiny 2? If you’d like to check out the official TWAB, you can do so right here!
Melee
Right off the bat, Bungie’s got some fantastic changes to the melee ability keybinds for players. Coming in Season 15, Bungie is finally introducing separate melee actions, which is a feature that Destiny 2 players have been asking to have for so long now. This means that you will finally be able to bind your charged melee ability to a different input than your uncharged melee. If this was the full TWAB, I think we would have all been more than satisfied. Here’s a bit to know about the new melee actions:
Melee attacks trigger as soon as the button is pressed, not when it’s released. Melee attacks don’t wait to see if you’re still holding the button before starting. This means you can’t set any of the melee actions to a long-press or double-press input.
Game controllers have a limited number of inputs, so you may need to get creative with how you map your controls.
If you assign charged melee and uncharged melee to the same input, it will always prioritize the charged melee over the uncharged melee, which is the opposite behavior of the auto-melee action.
General Abilities
Stasis Freeze
In an effort to make Stasis less frustrating in PvP, Bungie will be implementing the following changes regarding Stasis freeze:
Frozen players can now initiate breakout while airborne.
Shortened breakout animation and camera transition.
This means that once you decide to break out, you’ll be able to fight back sooner.
Differentiated long freeze and short freeze visual treatment to make each status easier to identify.
Slip ‘n’ Slide
While sliding, players now incur the following weapon penalties:
-20 stability
+15% shotgun pellet spread
1.5x flinch
Warlock Ability Changes
Shadebinder
- Reduced Shatterpulse damage vs. close-range Supers.
- Warlock must now freeze and shatter twice to defeat players in Burning Maul, Fists of Havoc, Sentinel Shield, Nova Warp, Arc Staff or Spectral Blades (Glacial Quake still only requires one shatter to defeat).
Top-Tree Dawnblade
- Celestial Fire
- Reduced tracking cone angle.
- Arming shape (proximity detonation) now shrinks over time.
- Reduced detonation size by 1m.
- Damage falloff increased at short distances.
- Icarus Dash
- Now provides one air dodge every 4 seconds.
- While under the effects of Heat Rises, increased to 2 dodges every 5 seconds.
- Heat Rises
- Increased duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.
- Increased the time extension awarded for air kills while Heat Rises is active. The extension duration differs based on the type of enemy killed.
- Your location now appears on enemy radar when using Heat Rises.
Middle-Tree Dawnblade
- Well of Radiance
- Increased damage taken from bosses from 0.25x → 1.5x (at 0 Resilience).
- Damage taken can scale down to 0.25x based on the owner’s Resilience stat.
- Note: This refers to the Well of Radiance itself and not players inside the well.
- Increased damage resistance buff vs. enemy players from 20% to 40%
- Players inside Well of Radiance are now immune to Stasis freeze and slow.
- Well Sword can now be frozen and shattered by Stasis.
- Guiding Flame
- Increased duration from 7 seconds to 10 seconds.
- Increased damage buff from 20% to 25%.
Bottom-Tree Dawnblade
- Phoenix Dive
- Reduced delay before dive starts.
- Can now input a direction to dive in that direction.
- Igniting Touch
- Ability Rework: Solar ability kills and kills on burning targets now cause targets to explode and burn other nearby enemies (who will also explode if they die while burning).
Middle-Tree Stormcaller
- Chaos Reach
- Increased beam environment-collision size to better match collision size with damage size.
- Reduced beam damage radius in PvP by 20%.
- Reduced beam end-point-sphere radius in PvP by 33%.
Bottom-Tree Stormcaller
- Arc Soul
- Increased duration from 12 seconds to 13 seconds.
- Increased fire rate by 10%.
- Electrostatic Surge
- Now increases sprint speed when allies are near.
- Landfall
- Now fires five arc ground projectiles on cast.
Middle-Tree Voidwalker
- Nova Warp
- Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 73%.
- No longer slows movement speed while charging/charged.
- Now detonates on cast.
- Handheld Supernova
- Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 100%.
- Increased hold time from 2.5 seconds to 3.2 seconds.
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