Destiny 2’s latest patch might finally fix Stasis abilities

Bungie released Destiny 2’s Stasis abilities last year with the Beyond Light expansion, but since then they’ve been in need of a bit of fine tuning. While the developer had originally planned to address the Stasis abilities a few months from now, it decided to move them up to a hotfix that was released on Thursday.

The patch’s adjustments bring a wide range of changes to the powers. Stasis Freeze now has a slightly shorter duration and causes significantly less bonus damage from weapons moving from +50% to just plus +5%. Stasis Slow got a similar nerf causing it to no longer reduce weapon accuracy or suppress class abilities and air moves.

The hotfix also addresses a few more specific issues, changing the Stasis-specific subclasses for Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks. Titan’s Shiver Strike, Cryoclasm, Howl of the Storm, and Glacial Quake are all getting nerfed. For Hunter’s, the nerfs will hit Withering Blade, Winter’s Shroud, and Touch of Winter. And for Warlocks, Penumbral Blast, Iceflare Bolts, and Winter’s Wrath are getting nerfed.

These changes are mostly angled toward Destiny 2’s PvP mode, the Crucible. But the nerfs will also affect some of Stasis’ effectiveness against enemies in the game’s PvE modes.

Aside from the litany of Stasis nerfs, the patch also fixes a few Vault of Glass bugs, including some exploits that let players kill Atheon too quickly, and some that caused loot to drop incorrectly.

For a closer look at everything that arrived in Thursday’s Destiny 2 hotfix 3.2.0.3, you can check out the official patch notes.

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Activities

Free Roam

• Added an energy barrier to the Scavenger’s Den Lost Sector on EDZ, while on Legend or Master difficulty, to prevent skipping most of the encounters.
• The Empty Tank Lost Sector on Tangled Shore now rewards the correct Exotic gear, in line with the other Lost Sectors’ reward rotation.

Raids

• Vault of Glass armor mods now appear in the Collections tab.
• Fixed an issue where players could kill Atheon by tethering Supplicants as they self-destruct.
• Fixed an issue where players could kill Atheon in the Future Venus portal before starting the encounter.
• Fixed an issue where players could break Minotaur shields in the Gatekeeper encounter by using Prometheus Lens.
• Fixed an issue where Aegis Relic blocking ability was not continuously blocking damage.

Gameplay and Investment

Armor

• Path of the Burning Steps no longer grants a stack of its buff on becoming slowed by Stasis, only when becoming encased.
• Star-Eater Scales
  Now correctly grants its damage bonus while the player is standing in a Well of Radiance.
  The status icon for Feast of Light now correctly scales up to x8, gaining one stack per Orb picked up.
  Fixed an issue when calculating Super bonus damage. Having 4 stacks of Feast of Light will grant a 55% bonus to Super damage, and having a full 8 stacks will grant a 70% bonus to Super damage. For context, the original formula at the start of the Season was a 60% bonus to damage at 4 stacks.

Weapons

• Fixed an issue where the Roar of the Wyrm ornament for Whisper of the Worm Exotic’s geometry would disappear when walking against walls.

Bounties and Pursuits

• Fixed an issue where projectile melee ability kills weren’t counting toward progress for Step 4 of the Iron-Handed Diplomacy quest.
• Fixed an issue where the Capture Completionist Triumph would not properly unlock for some players.

Abilities

General Stasis

• Stasis Freeze
  Reduced duration of all non-Super freezes vs. players to 1.35s.
  Note: This freeze is too short to break out of, so breaking out is now only possible when frozen by a Super.
  Reduced Special-weapon, Heavy-weapon, and Light-ability bonus damage vs. frozen players from +50% to +5%.
• Stasis Slow
  No longer reduces weapon accuracy.
  Now increases weapon flinch when under fire.
  No longer suppresses class ability and air moves (e.g., Icarus Dash).
  Known issue: The Stormcaller’s Ionic Blink is still suppressed when slowed. We plan to address this in a future release.
  Reduced movement speed penalty while slowed by ~20%.
• Whisper of Hedrons Fragment

No longer increases weapon damage after freezing.
Now increases weapon stability, weapon aim assist, Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery after freezing.

• Whisper of Rime Fragmen
  No longer provides overshield while in Super.
• Coldsnap Grenade
  Seeker no longer tracks targets after initial target acquisition.
  Increased arming duration before seeker spawns from 0.3s to 0.8s.
  Reduced detonation radius vs. players from 3m to 1.5m.
  Now bounces off walls and detonates on the ground.

Titan Behemoth

• Shiver Strike
  Reduced flight speed and distance.
  Reduced knockback vs. players.
  Removed slow detonation on player impact.
• Cryoclasm
  Now requires the Titan to sprint for 1.25s before activation when not in Super.
  Removed cooldown.
• Howl of the Storm
  Reduced angle of initial freezing/damage cone.
  Reduced crystal-creation freezing radius.
  Slowed down sequence of crystal formation to allow victims more opportunity to escape.
  Now spawns a small crystal on walls if performed into walls.
• Glacial Quake
  Reduced heavy slam vertical freeze range vs. players.
  Reduced damage resistance from 50% to 47%.

Hunter Revenant

• Withering Blade
  Reduced slow duration vs. players from 2.5s to 1.5s.
  Reduced Whisper of Durance slow-duration extension vs. players from 2s to 0.5s.
  Reduced damage vs. players from 65 to 45 (after one bounce reduced further to 30).
  Reduced projectile speed by 10%.
  Reduced tracking after bouncing off a wall.
• Winter’s Shroud
  Reduced slow duration vs. players from 2.5s to 1.5s.
  Reduced Whisper of Durance slow-duration extension vs. players from 2s to 0.5s.
• Touch of Winter
  Coldsnap seeker no longer has increased movement speed or travel distance.
  Coldsnap seeker now spawns a small Stasis crystal on detonation.

Warlock Shadebinder

• Penumbral Blast
  Reduced tracking and proximity detonation size and tracking vs. players.
  Reduced freeze radius vs. players when impacting the environment from 2.7m to 1.5m.
• Iceflare Bolts
  Seeker now only chains once when spawned from a player shatter.
• Winter’s Wrath
  Freezing-projectile tracking strength now ramps down to 0 after 2s of flight.

Rewards

• Seasonal reward sources (including locked Override chests and the weekly vendor challenge) now correctly contain Seasonal class armor items and have been updated to reduce the frequency of getting duplicate items in succession.
• The Iron Banner Machine Gun and Shotgun now drop from the Iron Banner engram.
• Vault of Glass director tooltip will retain its Pinnacle drop notification for classes that have not yet cleared it each week, as drops will still be available.
• Vault of Glass secret chests are now properly dropping Titan and Warlock armor.
• Vault of Glass vendor purchase of the Templar package no longer occasionally grants incorrect weapons or armor.
• Vault of Glass vendor purchase of the Templar package is no longer locking itself out due to incorrectly detecting if the player has obtained all of its possible results for the current character class.
• Vault of Glass vendor purchases of Conflux, Gatekeeper, and Atheon packages now correctly grant armor when such a result is rolled, instead of nothing.