Earlier today, Bungie tugged back the curtain on Act II of the Revenant episode, which starts on Tuesday 19 November. As had been widely expected, the update will include a reprised version of the Prison Of Elders activity, which has now been made more roguelike—think The Coil and Riven's Lair, if you've played either of those. Interestingly, a new mechanic will enable dialled in fireteams to skip certain sections with the tradeoff being that they'll face more difficult enemies. Conversely, teams which are struggling will face a longer slog but less punishing opponents. I'm sure that won't lead to any toxicity in LFG teams.
The mode is now called Tomb of the Elders to reflect that the prison has become derelict, and it does look promising. The enemy races from the old version have been swapped out with fresh ones: Shadow Legion Cabal, Revenant Scorn, Lucent Hive and The Dread. The encounters are a mix of enemy-dense combat and short traversal sections. Each arena also features some manner of challenge to complete. In one example shown on stream, the room was filling with poison gas which needed to be switched off. You'll also face some of the new negative modifiers that have been popping in Strikes (including 'Counterfeit', where ammo bricks will sometimes explode, and everyone hates).
My one worry about Tomb of the Elders is the loot. Bungie promised a rewarding treasure room at the end of the activity, but didn't show it on stream. In fact, the only new weapons mentioned are an SMG and shotgun from the current seasonal set, plus a reprised version of the Gridskipper pulse rifle. If all Tomb of the Elders has is those plus more copies of the seasonal gear we've already been grinding weeks for, it will likely struggle however fun it is. Certainly that's been my problem with the current iteration of Onslaught, which is great to play but doesn't feel worth the time investment given that you can earn the same guns from popping a tonic and doing literally anything else.
The livestream also detailed other changes coming as part of Act II. On the cosmetic front, a Street Fighter VI tie-in will include emotes, finishers (including Spinning Bird Kick and Hadouken), and a Blanka helmet ornament that any class of guardian can wear, much like the Tiger one we got with the 30th Anniversary event. For the more kawaii-inclined guardian, Bungie has also lined up a 'doki-doki' themed set of armor for each class. Personally, the recent Halloween wizard's outfit is about as wacky as I'm willing to go, but I support your fashion choices. You can see some of the gear below, via a data mine which JpDeathBlade shared on X.
The other piece of news which stood out was that the mid-season balance patch, which is also launching at next week's reset, will include a major buff to 'roaming' supers. Roaming supers are ones like Stormcaller and Fists of Havoc where you run around doing multiple instances of damage, as opposed to ones where you drop a single nuke like Nova Bomb or Thundercrash which are nicknamed 'one and done'. The buff that Bungie has landed on is to radically increase the uptime of roaming supers, rather than their damage. Post-patch, you can expect roaming supers to charge three times faster, which ought to make players feel more comfortable popping their super whenever it's off cool-down, rather than waiting for a boss fight.
Honestly, that's an elegant solution which I hadn't seen suggested much before. (One of many reasons why neither I nor most Redditors are game developers.) Trying to buff roaming supers to compete with their one-and-done siblings in raw damage would have only led to a new arms race. What will be interesting to see is whether changes are also made to their damage resistance. Currently, Song of Flame—which is arguably the best roaming super—gets a whopping 90% DR. Unless older options get similar survivability, they may still struggle.
