New Warlock subclass 'Shadebinder' hit with heavy nerfs

In the first proper ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post since the release of Beyond Light, Bungie has announced some much needed nerfs to the new Stasis subclasses in order to make the Crucible just a little bit more bearable.

These changes come after an almost instantaneous backlash aimed at Bungie for the state that the Stasis subclasses were released in, especially in regards to their immense power in PvP.

Many streamers and youtubers have taken to social media over the last week to air their grievances. Gothalion, one of the game’s biggest streamers and member of the King’s Fall World’s First team, had the following to say about Stasis on Twitter: “Stasis makes pvp a nightmare. The CC is so long and you just get f**cked. It’s not even a “get good” scenario, it’s a “how was this even shipped” scenario.”

Gladd, another big Destiny streamer, uploaded a video shortly after the release of Beyond Light titled “THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RUINING THE CRUCIBLE EXPERIENCE - Destiny 2 Beyond Light”. In this video, after being killed by a Stasis ability, Gladd said the following: “What is a gun fight at this point? Like, you may as well just remove weapons from PvP entirely. Seriously. Like, I have been killed I think one time by a gun and it was a Fusion Rifle...Honestly just take Stasis out of Crucible.”

It's obvious where the community stands on Stasis and it appears Bungie somewhat agrees. In the new hotfix patch 3.0.0.3, which will be live by the time this article releases, comes with several nerfs to Stasis as well as a couple of other bug fixes.

Here are the Stasis notes:

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.

So Warlock Shadebinder has seen some heavy nerfs here. The biggest one by far is the reduction in range for the Penumbral Blast melee ability. A standard Warlock melee has a range of about 5.5m, so anything this range or lower will automatically cause the Warlock to activate a standard melee attack. This means that since the Penumbral Blast range nerf, a Warlock has a very small window of 5.5-16m in which the melee ability will function as it should.

A nice change would be that if the ability is charged and a melee attack is used within 5.5m, the Stasis ability will still be used. This would function in a similar way to Ball Lightning. Either that or allow the player to bind regular melee attack and melee ability to different keys/buttons.

It should also be noted that not all forms of freezing have had their duration reduced against Guardians. So far only the Cold Snap grenade, the Warlock Aspect Ice Flare Bolts, and the Warlock melee ability Penumbral Blast have been hit by this reduction.

I would have liked to see a nerf to the Duskfield grenade as once you are pulled into the middle of it there is almost no way of getting out without being frozen multiple times, which is an obvious death sentence.

Here are the rest of the changes that went live with this hotfix:

Weapons

Fixed an issue where the Coriolis Force Fusion Rifle was getting more ammo than intended from ammo bricks.
Fixed an issue where the Witherhoard damage debuff wasn't being removed properly.
Witherhoard has now been re-enabled.

Rewards

Fixed an issue where Pinnacle rewards were not dropping at the correct Power.
Fixed an issue where several repeatable bounties were providing more XP than intended.