Destiny 2 – Stasis Nerfs, Trials Cancelled And Grandmaster Nightfalls Start Next Week

It’s been a busy few days of news in the world of Destiny with Stasis nerf plans coming out, Trials coming back (and then swiftly getting cancelled again) and we also have GM nightfalls coming back next week. Today I am going to dig into all the news, so let’s get into it.

Stasis Nerfs

Bungie released a bunch of info this past Thursday related to Stasis Nerfs in the Crucible. Plus it looks like finally Bungie are balancing the PVE and PVP sandboxes differently, which is great news for those of us who like fun in PVE and not the constant seesaw of balance we have to maintain for the PVP community.

Stasis Tuning Preview for 23rd March Patch

Bungie say:

We made some targeted changes to Stasis in Season 12 and wanted to see how they landed before making any more adjustments. Now that we’ve have several weeks of data to analyze, we’re ready to make some further changes to address additional pain points of Stasis in PVP. Our goal with these changes is to reduce some of the frustrations when fighting against Stasis subclasses in the Crucible, while maintaining their power in PvE content wherever possible. With that said, some changes required us to adjust the global behavior of some abilities. In the patch notes below, we’ve explicitly mentioned which changes will affect Crucible functionality only. We’ll be closely monitoring ability performance and feedback as Season 13 continues. Thanks for playing, and we’re excited to see how the future of Stasis unfolds.

HUNTER

Shatterdive

• Removed damage resistance from Shatterdive.
• Added a 4s cooldown between activations of Shatterdive.

Withering Blade

• Decreased Withering Blade damage against players from 90 to 65 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.
• Decreased Withering Blade slow stacks applied to players from 60 to 40 stacks. PvE slow stacks are unchanged.
• Decreased the target acquisition range of Withering Blade after it impacts a player from 12m to 8m. Range after impacting PvE enemies is unchanged.

TITAN

Glacial Quake

• Removed AoE freeze against players on super cast. Will still freeze PvE enemies on cast.
• Reduced damage resistance while in super from 60% to 50%.
• Increased the energy cost of using Shiver Strike while in Glacial Quake from 3% to 7% Super energy.
• Using the combo of a Shiver Strike into a Heavy slam attack will now cost the full Super energy of both the Shiver Strike and the slam (previously only costed energy for the slam).

Shiver Strike

• Increased downwards velocity applied to Shiver Striking players when they are slowed to pull them out of the air more strongly.

WARLOCK

Winter’s Wrath

• Improved tracking of Winter’s Wrath projectiles, now tracking strength decays from its max value over 10s instead of 2.2s.
• Increased the size of the warlock super projectile’s proximity detonation radius 1.5m – 1.65m
• The proximity detonation now starts at it’s largest and scales down to 40% over time.

Penumbral Blast

• Decreased Penumbral Blast damage against players from 80 to 30 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.

Iceflare Bolts

• Fixed a bug where Iceflare Bolts would continuously try to switch targets.
• Increased target acquisition range of Iceflare Bolts by 33%.
• Increased turning speed of Iceflare Bolts so they can more effectively hit nearby targets.

Chaos Reach

• Decreased the amount of Super energy refunded when cancelling Chaos Reach early.

GENERAL

Duskfield Grenade

• Reduced how strongly Duskfield Grenade pulls players inwards, effectively reducing the pull range from 9.5m to ~6m. PvE pull impulse is unchanged.
• Reduced the slow stacks applied to players by the grenade detonation from 20 to 10 stacks. Detonation slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
• Reduced the slow stacks applied to players on each tick of the grenade from 10 to 5 stacks. Per-tick slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
• Adjusted the UI presentation of the “Slowed” status to display Slow stacks as X/100 instead of X/10, to increase readability when adding Slow stack amounts that are fewer than 10.

Stasis Crystals

• Reduced crystal shatter damage against players from (85 max, 55min) to (55 max, 25 min). PvE damage is unchanged.
  Whisper of Chains
• Reduced Whisper of Chains damage resistance bonus while in Super from 25% to 5%. Damage resistance when not in Super is unchanged. This only affects damage from other Guardians.

Whisper of Torment

• Fixed a bug where players could continuously proc Whisper of Torment while standing inside an opponent’s Barricade.

Stasis Fragment Quests

• Significantly reduced objective completion values for all Crucible fragment quests.

Pretty good news all around and Stasis is going to be brought down a notch or two in Crucible, and hopefully we’ll see some players return as there has been somewhat of an exodus over the past few months.

Let me know what you think of the Stasis Nerfs? Did you think Stasis was too strong in crucible and what do you make of these changes?

Talking of PVP…

Trials Cancelled Again

Yesterday at approx 6pm GMT Trials was cancelled again

“Due to an issue with Fireteam Rejoin functionality, Trials of Osiris has been disabled for the remainder of the weekend. We will provide updates when available.

That was followed up with

“The Lighthouse will be re-enabled soon for those who have access with a Flawless card. Players may also redeem any earned Trials tokens to Saint-14 through the weekly reset.”

Trials report gave a gilmpse into why this might be:

Since Trials is cancelled we don’t see any harm in releasing this anymore. So far this weekend:

• PC: 32,500 Lighthouse visitors – 10,465 without a kill (32%)
• Xbox: 4,923 – 1,471 without a kill (30%)
• PS: 7,926 – 2,741 without a kill (35%)
• Stadia: 601 – 323 without a kill (54%)

There was an update in the TWAB that said

“We have resolved an issue that prevented the Trials of Osiris from being active the past two weekends. Trials of Osiris will be re-enabled and active at the daily reset on Friday, March 12.”

It’s particularly bad this weekend as we had the Igenous Hammer for 5 wins and the Adept version of the Messenger for the Flawless Lighthouse Loot.

I think this is all down to win trading. It’s tough to see how Bungie are going to fix this, unless they remove the rejoin feature in Trials, which is entirely possible.

Let me know what you think? Did you play Trials this weekend, did you manage to get your hands on an Adept Messenger? How do you think Bungie can fix Trials?

Grandmaster Nightfalls

Bungie also informed us that Grandmaster Nightfalls would be making a return on the 16th March, which is Tuesday at reset time, so something to look forward to if you’re 1325 power.

Bungie said in the update:

Are you ready for a challenge? Starting on March 16, Grandmaster Nightfalls become available.

Never heard of a Grandmaster Nightfall before? No problem. Let’s get you up to speed.

• Strike difficulty is set to 1350 Power.
• Minimum Power required is 1325.
• Contest Mode is enabled, so even if you go higher than 1325, you will be capped.
• Each strike will have a specific set of modifiers to ramp up the difficulty, so make sure to inspect each one to know which Champions you’ll face, and what other challenges await you.
• One Grandmaster Nightfall will be available each week until April 20
• Starting April 20, you’ll have the opportunity to blaze through all available Grandmaster Nightfalls through a direct launch playlist.
• If you miss a week, the final three weeks of the Season are your opportunity to catch up!

This Season will also be your first opportunity to earn Adept weapons through a PvE activity. While Shadow Price, Palindrome, and The SWARM have each been available when completing lower difficulties of Nightfalls, Adept versions will only be available through Grandmaster difficulty.

These weapons grant additional stat bonuses when Masterworked, and can be socketed with Adept weapon mods. You can earn these mods in Trials of Osiris and you’ll be able to earn them through Grandmaster Nightfalls as well.

Additionally, this will be your first opportunity to earn a Gilded version of the Conqueror title. If you see someone sporting this in a few weeks, know they went through an ordeal to earn it. Well, not just one… but many.

Now’s the time to form a fireteam and start strategizing how you’ll work together to overcome the challenge. Smoke bombs might come in handy when things are looking dire, or a well-placed Nova Bomb to eliminate some Champions that have been stunned near each other. Word on the street is that the Cult of Aeon is rising up through the ranks, helping Guardians to keep their ammunition stocked during the fight.

We’re excited to see what strategies you create in the face of challenge, and to see what sweet loot you claim from the hands of your enemies.

That’s it for the Destiny 2 news for now, let me know what you think down in the comments related to the Stasis nerfs, Trials being cancelled and are you going to jump into GM Nightfalls?