Bungie to deliver more heavy Stasis nerfs in upcoming Season 14 patch

Since the introduction of the Stasis subclasses in Beyond Light, the PvP community has been quite divided over whether these new subclasses have a place within the Crucible. Many argue that Stasis goes against the core aspects of Destiny 2’s gameplay while others enjoy the freedom and power that Stasis gives them in 1v1 gunfights.

It seems Bungie has decided to side with the former portion of the community and in a patch slated for Thursday June 3, Stasis will be seeing some heavy nerfs across the board.

In the most recent ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post, Sandbox Lead Kevin Yanes chimed in on where the studio is out with Stasis and what their plans are for the future. “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. “ says Yanes.

One long standing argument against Stasis in PvP is that it ruins the core aspects of Destiny 2’s gunplay. What use are weapons when Guardians have several abilities available in their wheelhouse of tricks that are able to instantly decide the outcome of a gunfight?

“Since Forsaken, we’ve been slowly creeping towards a Crucible where it feels like gunplay has taken a backseat to our sweet cosmic magical powers. We believe this is the wrong place for the Crucible to be, and we want to shift the balance more toward weapons.” says Yanes.

There are several ways Bungie can go about achieving this goal and according to Yane, the team has the following pillars of design that they wish to adhere to when attempting to bring PvP back to an equilibrium:

• Weapons are the primary way players engage with combat.
• Non-Super abilities accentuate or augment the combat, but should rarely solve an encounter by themselves.
• Abilities have clear strengths, weaknesses, and counterplay.
• Build-crafting is rewarding within the moment-to-moment combat loop of Destiny.

As a disclaimer, Yanes adds that since this upcoming Stasis patch was moved forward from its original Season 15 release, it has come at a considerable cost to the team. Don't expect these large mid-season balance patches to become a regular occurrence.

With all that being said, here are the multitude of Stasis nerfs that will hit Destiny 2 on June 3:

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 Fragment

• 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 the 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.

All in all these nerfs drastically lower the freeze time of a lot of Stasis abilities, lower the penalty of being slowed so that the player is still able to retaliate without resigning to their death, and give more counterplay to these Stasis abilities. This will hopefully allow other Light-based subclasses room to breathe in the meta while not being completely dominated by the oppressive neutral game of the Stasis subclasses. It's important to note that a lot of these nerfs are aimed purely at the abilities interactions with players so don't worry, Stasis will still be extremely fun and powerful in PvE activities.

What do you think of these upcoming nerfs? Will they finally place Stasis in a balanced position in the meta? Leave a comment below or as a reply on Twitter with your thoughts.