Bungie admits Destiny 2's Solar 3.0 did not melt anyone's face off

Destiny 2
(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 sandbox discipline lead Kevin Yanes made no bones about his hopes for the rework of the Solar subclasses that recently went live alongside Season of the Haunted: "Ideally, it melts your face off," he said last week. In today's This Week at Bungie update, however, Yanes acknowledged that Solar 3.0, as it's known, has not landed with sufficient spice. 

"Initial reactions to Solar have not met our 'new thing that melts your face off' bar," Yanes wrote, and he's not wrong. The day that Solar 3.0 dropped, r/DestinyTheGame was flooded with threads about how the Dawnblade Warlock's options to play as support medic had been gutted, while Sunbreaker Titan mains bemoaned the changes to the way the Sunspot ability now worked. 

Whilst those complaints, inevitably, were a little more shrieky than the situation warranted, Yanes acknowledged today that the rework wasn't sitting well with the sandbox abilities team which he leads at Bungie either. 

"As we’ve said in the past through TWABs, socials, and other dev updates, we’d much rather ship something a little too spicy than something bland that makes a bad first impression," he continued. "I think with Solar 3.0, we landed somewhere in the middle, and the team feels very passionately that this is the wrong place to be."

In response, Bungie is making a number of changes and fixes that will go live next week.

Solar Warlock: 

  • Heat Rises - Added behavior: Consuming your grenade now also releases a burst of Cure x2 around you, healing you and your nearby allies. Consuming a Healing Grenade increases the strength of the burst to Cure x3 and consuming a Touch of Flame Healing Grenade provides Restoration as an additional benefit.
  • Icarus Dash - Added behavior: While airborne, rapidly defeating targets with your Super or any weapon Cures you. 
  • Celestial Fire - Each Celestial Fire projectile now applies 10 Scorch stacks. This is increased to 15 stacks with Ember of Ashes equipped. 

Solar Titan: 

  • Burning Maul - Buffed damage in PvE by 25%  
  • Roaring Flames - Added behavior: While Roaring Flames is active, your uncharged melee attack now deals Solar damage and applies 30 Scorch stacks to targets per hit. This is increased to 40 stacks with Ember of Ashes equipped. 
  • Consecration - Fragment slots increased from 1 to 2, raised the height of the secondary attack’s ground wave by 25% to more easily catch players who jump too late.  

"That’s no small list of changes," Yanes wrote. "The team takes feedback seriously—we’re players ourselves, so when things don’t land, we also feel that internally. To say it out loud, a hotfix of this magnitude comes at the cost of other changes, so to set expectations here, the team is unlikely to take another balance pass until much later this Season. It’s important to our team that on top of doing amazing new things, we maintain a healthy work-life balance and this patch necessitates some breathing room."

"Short-term gain for long-term pain" is definitely a choice, but one that Bungie has made previously: In early 2021 it delayed The Witch Queen expansion into 2022, "primarily for the health of the team." In December 2021, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons formally apologized to "anyone who has ever experienced anything less than a safe, fair, and professional working environment at Bungie," following a report into sexism, toxicity, and a crunch-heavy culture at the studio. 

Yanes also noted that next season's Arc 3.0 rework is "still cooking up nicely," but warned that the abilities team will likely "go dark for a little while" once it's live. 

TOPICS
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Read more
Destiny 2: Season of Plunder promo image.
'We made one big mistake': Destiny 2 developer reveals how a small team dedicated to player retention led to a 20 hour server outage and character rollback
A Guardian with a grenade launcher and a very fancy hat.
Destiny 2's new episode hits next week, sending players back into the giant, haunted spaceship where the first game had its finest moments
Marvel Rivals Human Torch
Marvel Rivals is carrying on the tradition of chaotic patches after buffing two of the most annoying heroes, but I main one of them, so I'm not complaining
Overwatch 2's Sombra looks toward camera with arms crossed
'We should be a little scared of what we're putting out there': Overwatch 2 lead designer says hero perks are about 'letting go' of perfect balance
Star Wars cosmetics in Destiny 2
Destiny 2 is getting Star Wars cosmetics and I'm kind of tired of these multimedia crossovers but yeah, that armor does look cool
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
Latest in FPS
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Ogryn
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide adds a psychic horde murderzone mode and makes Ogryns even smashier
Starfield's companion robot giving a thumbs-up
Former Bethesda dev who quit Starfield to go solo says it's 'much less stressful as an indie' without daily meetings or 'office politics': it's 'very refreshing to just care about the game'
A crew of prospectors in Wildgate, featuring a robot, a rabbit man, and a small aquatic creature in a combination mech/aquarium.
Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime's new company is putting Sea of Thieves-style shenanigans in space with a new crew-based shooter
Team Fortress Spy being shocked
An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy
Neighbors Suburban Warfare screenshot a child aims a slingshot at a man from across a cul-de-sac.
A beta of backyard FPS Neighbors: Suburban Warfare is out now, and the balance discussion is hysterical: nerf trash can lids and children
Fragpunk
Somebody finally figured out casual Counter-Strike
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway