Bungie nerfs Stasis Warlock and promises to add more guns to Destiny 2: Beyond Light

The Destiny 2: Beyond Light expansion went live earlier this week with the big addition of a new elemental power, Stasis, that enables players to slow, freeze, and shatter enemies. It very quickly became clear that it was working a little too well for the new for the new Shadebinder Warlock, though, and by "a little" I mean a lot, and by "a lot" I mean, as Bungie put it in its latest weekly update, "we mean insanely huge."

The subclass felt particularly over-tuned in PvP with players able to freeze their opponents in place from up to (am I reading this right?!) 28m way using icy shards fired from the Warlock's ranged melee attack. It's fair to say that was not a fun experience to be on the wrong end of. Also suffering were raid bosses, who've been getting deleted by fireteams of Stasis Warlocks due to a bug with the super ability.

Bungie went to work on the problem at a "lightning pace" and today rolled out a big nerf to Stasis Warlocks. Here's the list of what's changed:

Stasis

• Fixed exploits with the Warlock Shadebinder Super. 
• Stasis breakout damage reduced (110->90hp).   
• - Adjusted the curve that reduces breakout damage using Resilience.  
• - Increased the damage reduction effect Resilience has so that higher tiers of Resilience are more valuable.   
• - Caps out at 90 Resilience.  
• Penumbral Blast (Stasis Warlock melee) projectile speed reduced by 20%.  
• Penumbral Blast (Stasis Warlock melee) range reduced (was 28m now 16m).  
• Winter’s Wrath (Stasis Warlock Super) duration reduced (was 30s now 24s).  
• Winter’s Wrath light attack (Stasis Warlock Super) cost reduced (was 5% per burst, now 4.5% per burst).  
• Cold Snap seeker speed reduced by 23%. 

Against Guardians

• Cold Snap freeze duration lowered (was 4.75s now 1.35s).  
• Ice Flare Bolts freeze duration lowered (was 4.75s now 1.35s).  
• Penumbral Blast (Stasis Warlock melee) freeze duration lowered (was 4.75s now 1.35s).  
• Winter’s Wrath heavy attack (Stasis Warlock Super) no longer affects players who are not encased. 

It's a lot, no doubt, but community manger dmg04 reassured Warlock mains that they'll still clean house—they'll just have to put a little more thought into it.

Warlocks: The values for these changes look high, but our hope is that they bring balance to the subclass. You should still be wrecking shop with these abilities, just takes a bit more planning.Hop in the game, try out the changes, sound off with your feedback. We're listening.November 19, 2020

It's tempting to roll eyes at Bungie's perennial launch-and-rebalance routine, but streamer Frosty was among those expressing appreciation for the studio's quick reaction time.

It usually felt like we'd have to wait for the start of a new season to get changes like this. I'm impressed. Happy they listened to feedback. Now we have to try it out and see how it plays! pic.twitter.com/fXvliyRaqCNovember 19, 2020

Predictably, some Warlock mains felt a little differently about the whole thing. 

Its not that they were nerfed its that they were nerfed for the sake of pvp pic.twitter.com/ApbkifQLbTNovember 19, 2020

The TWAB update also touches on the race to world first in the new Deep Stone Crypt raid, which will go live at 10 am PT/1 pm ET on November 21, how Bungie is continuing to battle against cheaters, and some upcoming changes to loot. To address player complaints about the lack of variety in world loot weapons this season, the loot pool will be adjusted via a hotfix set to come out on November 24.

"We will also be watching to see how the landscape changes with the addition of weapons from Season 12 and this week’s Raid launch. We also agree that getting near-cap weapons from random world drops is frustrating. Thus, we are removing those from the pool, and are weighting drops more heavily towards newer weapons," Bungie wrote.

"While we are not yet ready to dive into the long-term strategy yet, we are listening to feedback and watching how the player build landscape evolves over these first few weeks of Beyond Light, and incorporating that feedback as we plan out future Seasons."

If the Shadebinder Warlock nerf has you down, this might bring you back up: A nutty Titan build for Beyond light that can spam grenades forever, courtesy of multiple world-first title holder Ehroar. His Warlock build, if that's still your jam, can also be found here.