Buffs slated for one of Destiny 2’s weakest classes in season 21

Despite its launch being notoriously brutal on the Light wielders who came across it in the Crucible, Destiny 2’s Stasis subclass has fallen out of favor after a variety of nerfs over the years and the addition of Strand outclassing Stasis in its own backyard. But things might be looking up for the frosty flavor of Darkness in Season of the Deep.

Bungie dropped an extensive blog today detailing the ability tuning that will be launching alongside season 21 on May 23. As part of a suite of buffs and tweaks coming to all the classes and subclasses, Stasis got a particularly pleasant dose of love, with the hope that it will start to feel better balanced alongside the newly forged Light 3.0 and Strand subclasses.

“Across Seasons 14 and 15, we made a series of tuning changes to our Stasis subclasses to bring them closer to our expected power bar, primarily in the Crucible,” Destiny 2’s combat gameplay team said in the blog. “With Subclass 3.0 and Strand out the door, we’re revisiting some of those changes and making updates where we feel specific Stasis abilities or Aspects are lacking in the current landscape, in particular where previous changes had a negative impact on the feel of an ability.”

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Not only does that mean buffs are coming to the subclasses themselves but to a few of their Aspects too. Bungie wants to open up buildcrafting more and many of the one-Fragment-slot Aspects that the Darkness subclasses launched with are getting upgraded to make that buildcrafting an easier reality for players to achieve.

Stasis subclass buffs

Titans

• Glacial Quake (Super)
  • Shiver Strike thrust speed has been increased while in Super by 10 percent.
  • Light attack damage has been increased by 20 percent.
• Shiver Strike (Melee ability)
  • Maximum thrust while in flight increased by 16 percent.
  • Decreased maximum downward influence of gravity while in flight by 18 percent.
• Howl of the Storm (Aspect)
  • Increased width of freezing cone vs. players by 31 percent.

Warlocks

• Winter’s Wrath (Super)
  • PvE damage increased by 10 percent.
• Frostpulse (Aspect)
  • Now provides two meters of additional melee lunge range after activation for 1.2 seconds.

Hunters

• Withering Blade (Melee ability)
  • Increased projectile tracking search range on bounce vs. players by 20 percent.
  • Increased maximum tracking strength by 12.5 percent.
• Shatterdive (Aspect)
  • Increased the amount of Fragment slots allotted from one to two.

For Titans, the buffs were all about buffing both a notably weak roaming Super and the neutral game of their Stasis subclass. “While Glacial Quake’s heavy slam is in a solid place with strong damage output, the light attack doesn’t offer enough of a reward to feel worthwhile in its current state,” Bungie said. “This attack will also benefit from some improvements we’re making to the neutral game Shiver Strike.”

Hunters and Warlocks had less specific issues to be addressed via the suite of buffs hitting their Stasis subclasses, instead just enjoying some vertical upgrades to their pre-existing abilities that should make Stasis feel more equivalently impactful to the Light 3.0 and Strand subclass experiences that have become much more popular for both classes to wield.

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But Stasis isn’t the only Darkness subclass receiving adjustments in season 21. Despite its popularity and inherent strengths, there are still areas of improvement that Bungie wants to address with the newly released Strand subclass, as well as some outlier elements already slated for a nerf.

“We’re still in the process of evaluating Strand’s performance in the live game, and we expect that performance to continue to shift over the course of this year as new Aspects are added for each class,” Bungie said. “For now, we’re making some adjustments to base cooldown times and targeted improvements to pain points that we’ve observed since Lightfall’s launch.”

Strand subclass buffs

All classes

• Grapple
  • Reduced base cooldown from 105 seconds to 82 seconds.
  • Reduced the minimum time between grapple activations from 2.5 seconds to 0.2 seconds.
• Thread of Generation
  • Reduced energy generation provided by some damage-over-time mechanics.
  • Reduced energy generation provided by Trace Rifles by 36 percent.

Titans

• Frenzied Blade
  • Decreased cooldown based on how many melee charges the player has stored.
  • At zero charges, cooldown reduced by 15 percent. At two charges, cooldown is reduced by 30 percent.

Warlocks

• Arcane Needle
  • Decreased cooldown based on how many melee charges the player has stored.
  • Increased projectile speed based on the projectile’s flight time.
  • Increased projectile tracking strength by 10 percent.

Hunters

• Threaded Spike
  • Increased projectile travel range before beginning to return to the player by 30 percent.
  • Increased damage vs. PvE combatants by 55 percent.
  • The dart has been slightly reduced in speed as it returns to the player to make catching it easier.
  • Increased energy gain for catching the dart based on the number of enemies hit.
  • It can now pierce Cabal Phalanx shields.

This is an impressive suite of changes and only a small part of a bigger power shift coming to all of the subclasses within Destiny 2 when Season of the Deep launches. As to whether or not it will shift the place of Stasis on the bottom rung of the ladder when it comes to the subclass meta remains uncertain, but those still wielding the icy Darkness powers will be more than relieved to see it finally get some love from Bungie.

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The buffs to the Stasis subclass—as well as the adjustments to Strand—will be available in Destiny 2 on May 23 with the release of season 21.