Destiny 2 is finally buffing Stasis in a big way during Season of the Wish

Stasis has been in a rough spot since Lightfall’s new Strand subclass overshadowed it, but Destiny 2’s original Darkness subclass is finally getting a plethora of buffs and tweaks in Season of the Wish on Nov. 28 that could allow it to compete in the sandbox once again.

This new information comes courtesy of today’s This Week in Destiny blog, which broke down numerous updates coming next week to all three Stasis subclasses, a variety of Stasis Fragments and Aspects, as well as foundational reworks to the element slated for future releases like The Final Shape. In Bungie’s eyes, the changes are supposed to be a big “shot in the arm” for Stasis, which it agrees has been “left behind” following the release of Light 3.0 and Strand since Beyond Light.

“Starting in Season of the Wish (and continuing in The Final Shape), we’re making a number of quality-of-life changes to improve Stasis’s reliability in combat, and we’re reevaluating some of our previous tuning changes for Stasis abilities with the goal of bringing them up to the current abilities power bar,” Bungie said.

This includes removing some of the nerfs Stasis previously received when it enjoyed an era of dominance post-release, as well as updates to components of the subclass like grenades and Fragments to make buildcrafting feel more valuable and make underperforming picks more attractive.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the changes players are going to see on Nov. 28.

Fragments

• Whisper of Hedrons
  • The -10 Strength penalty has been removed.
• Whisper of Impetus
  • It now provides +10 to Resilience.
• Whisper of Shards
  • The +10 Resilience bonus has been removed.
• Whisper of Hunger
  • Instead of having a -10 Intellect and -10 Mobility stat penalty, the penalty is now -20 Strength.
• Whisper of Bonds
  • The -10 Discipline penalty has been removed.

For a while now, Stasis has been a bit of a one-trick pony. For all three classes, there’s effectively been one good build that makes use of many of the same Fragments. With how universally strong some Fragments are in comparison to the others available, a reallocation of bonuses like this won’t solve all of the issues, but it will make some options more tempting for their additional benefits. Bungie also said “additional tuning changes and reworks to existing Stasis Fragments” are planned for a future release beyond Season of the Wish.

Hunters

• Withering Blade (Stasis Melee)
  • Projectile speed has been increased by 10 percent.
  • Projectile lifetime has been increased by 10 percent.
  • The maximum bounce count has been increased from two to three.
  • The tracking consistency has been improved.
• Winter’s Shroud (Stasis Aspect)
  • The slow stacks applied to PvE enemies has been increased from 40 to 60.
  • The slow duration applied to PvE enemies has been increased from four seconds to eight seconds.
  • The slow detonation size has been increased from eight meters to nine meters against PvE enemies.

The goal here was to improve the reliability of the Hunter’s melee ability across all content, while specifically enhancing one of the class’ less-popular Aspects to feel more impactful in PvE. With how strong Stasis launched in Beyond Light within PvP specifically, Bungie undoubtedly wants to avoid any buffs that could indirectly resurrect that crowd-control-heavy meta. But that doesn’t prevent the devs from giving Stasis a few positive nudges in that direction, as seen with the Titan changes.

Titans

• Shiver Strike (Stasis Melee)
  • Players are now slowed on hit.
    • This was previously removed in Hotfix 3.2.0.3.
  • Shiver Strike now functions with the Melee Kickstart armor mod.
• Howl of the Storm (Stasis Aspect)
  • An issue has been fixed that prevented this Aspect from consistently freezing targets.
• Glacial Quake (Stasis Super)
  • Nearby players are now frozen when Glacial Quake is cast.
    • This was previously removed in Hotfix 3.1.1.1.
  • The on-cast freeze impulse size against players has been reduced from eight meters to six meters.

As powerful as the Stasis Titan can be in the right hands, the return of these abilities is more about safety than overall power. Glacial Quake has a long casting animation, and without its original crowd control, it was incredibly risky to activate within the close-quarters battles it was built for. Similarly, Shiver Strike’s original identity heavily relied on the application of a slow that allowed the Titan to easily dish out follow-up damage. Now that collision damage is no longer lethal to players, the way this feature could previously kill players outright if they came into contact with a wall is no longer an issue.

Warlocks

• Frostpulse (Stasis Aspect)
  • The consistency of the freeze detonation against fast-moving targets has been “significantly increased.”
  • In PvE, the size of the freeze detonation has been increased from eight meters to 8.5 meters.
• Penumbral Blast (Stasis Melee)
  • The detonation size when it hits the environment instead of a player has been increased from 1.5 meters to two meters.

Quality-of-life is the inherent goal for the Warlock changes, in part because “Shadebinder is a strong pick already, and we don’t feel like it needs much of a push,” Bungie said. With that in mind, these buffs focus on areas “where it can sometimes fail the reliability test.” But for those who want some more significant buffs, the changes coming to the Stasis grenades will tangentially buff Warlocks as well.

Grenades

• Glacier Grenade
  • The base cooldown has been reduced from 152 seconds to 121 seconds.
    • The Warlock Stasis Aspect Bleak Watcher is directly tied to Glacier Grenade’s base cooldown, meaning this buff is also a buff to Bleak Watcher.
• Coldsnap Grenade
  • The arming shape size has been increased from 0.9 meters to 1.4 meters.
  • The seeker’s tracking strength now ramps down gradually over the course of the grenade’s lifetime, instead of turning off completely after the seeker has been active for 0.5 seconds.

With all of this dropping alongside a suite of Stasis-specific mods in the Season of the Wish Artifact, next season is shaping up to be one of the best for Stasis mains in a long time. Yet the real upgrades to the subclass are still to come if Bungie is to be believed, with an entirely new keyword called Frost Armor teased for a later update, as well as the aforementioned Fragment reworks and “additional behavior” for Harvest Aspects.

The Stasis buffs are set to drop in Destiny 2 when Season of the Wish launches next week on Nov. 28.