Sour sentiment surrounding Destiny 2's subclass, Stasis, has caused Bungie to bring forward its planned changes to the crowd control element.
Writing in the latest This Week At Bungie blog post, the developer explained that it's heard feedback about Stasis absolutely dominating the game's PvP playlists. Rather than wait until next season to bring in these changes, Bungie is bringing its planned Stasis fixes forwards into a hotfix going live next Thursday.
"We love how Stasis plays in PvE and we want to preserve that experience, but we agree with many in the PvP community who say that Stasis is too dominant in the Crucible for too little effort or skill required," sandbox lead Kevin Yanes explained.
"Stasis and crowd control are key components of the Destiny combat sandbox—they're not going anywhere, meaning it’s up to us to ensure Stasis plays well across all activities, regardless of skill level."
Some of the proposed fixes include reducing the duration of all non-super freezes down to just 1.35 seconds, while greatly reducing how much damage frozen players take from special and heavy weapons. Stasis slow now increases weapon flinch rather than reducing accuracy, and Coldsnap Grenades are now a little less frosty. The full list of changes is included in patch notes within the TWAB post.
Each Stasis subclass is also being tuned down, most drastically the Titan Behemoth, which Bungie notes currently has the highest win rate of any subclass in the game. The solution is to reduce some of the subclass's high mobility, making it easier for opposing players to target. Revenants and Shadebinders will also see some nerfs—Bungie aiming at the incredibly high usage of the former, and the "emotional toll on the victim" of the latter.
These changes aren't just to nail down Stasis, though. Bungie expresses that, since Forsaken, PvP gunplay has been side-lined in favour of the game's "sweet cosmic magical powers". The developer is planning a series of patches to skew things back towards a place where what weapon you bring into the Crucible is just as important as your ability set.
The quick turnaround will likely come as a welcome surprise to Destiny players. But don't expect this to be an ongoing thing. Yanes expresses that shifting focus in this way comes at a "considerable cost to the team", and that mid-season balance overhauls are unlikely to become a regular occurrence.
