bungie-admits-destiny-2’s-solar-3.0-did-not-melt-anyone’s-face-off

Destiny 2 sandbox self-discipline lead Kevin Yanes made no bones about his hopes for the rework of the Solar subclasses that lately went reside alongside Season of the Haunted: “Ideally, it melts your face off,” he mentioned final week. In at present’s This Week at Bungie update, nevertheless, Yanes acknowledged that Solar 3.0, because it’s identified, has not landed with ample spice. 

“Initial reactions to Solar have not met our ‘new thing that melts your face off’ bar,” Yanes wrote, and he isn’t fallacious. The day that Solar 3.0 dropped, r/DestinyTheGame was flooded with threads about how the Dawnblade Warlock’s choices to play as assist medic had been gutted, whereas Sunbreaker Titan mains bemoaned the adjustments to the best way the Sunspot capability now labored. 

Whilst these complaints, inevitably, have been a little bit extra shrieky than the state of affairs warranted, Yanes acknowledged at present that the rework wasn’t sitting properly with the sandbox talents crew which he leads at Bungie both. 

“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 quite a few adjustments and fixes that may go reside subsequent week.

Solar Warlock: 

  • Heat Rises – Added habits: Consuming your grenade now additionally releases a burst of Cure x2 round you, therapeutic you and your close by allies. Consuming a Healing Grenade will increase the power of the burst to Cure x3 and consuming a Touch of Flame Healing Grenade offers Restoration as a further profit.
  • Icarus Dash – Added habits: While airborne, quickly defeating targets along with your Super or any weapon Cures you. 
  • Celestial Fire – Each Celestial Fire projectile now applies 10 Scorch stacks. This is elevated to fifteen stacks with Ember of Ashes outfitted. 

Solar Titan: 

  • Burning Maul – Buffed harm in PvE by 25%  
  • Roaring Flames – Added habits: While Roaring Flames is lively, your uncharged melee assault now offers Solar harm and applies 30 Scorch stacks to targets per hit. This is elevated to 40 stacks with Ember of Ashes outfitted. 
  • Consecration – Fragment slots elevated from 1 to 2, raised the peak of the secondary assault’s floor wave by 25% to extra simply catch gamers who leap 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 certainly a alternative, however one which Bungie has made beforehand: In early 2021 it delayed The Witch Queen growth 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 tradition on the studio. 

Yanes additionally famous that subsequent season’s Arc 3.0 rework is “still cooking up nicely,” however warned that the talents crew will seemingly “go dark for a little while” as soon as it is reside. 

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