Bungie Details What Destiny 2 Players Can Expect In Patch 2.6.1

Hot on the heels of a recent hotfix, Bungie has shared a first look at what content and changes are coming to Destiny 2 in the next update.

The end of October is shaping up to be a busy time for the developer, with the Halloween-flavored Festival of the Lost, a new dungeon, the new Momentum Control PvP mode, and the Xenophage Exotic quest all going live in a little over a week. Patch 2.6.1 will support these exciting content drops with some balance changes to the Titan and Warlock Super abilities.

Through the upcoming update, the dev team aims to reduce the amount of Super energy regained when you kill enemies using Titan's Striker (the Code of the Juggernaut path) and Warlock's Dawnblade (the Attunement of Flame path).

"For a while now, Trample and Everlasting Flames have been an outlier, especially in PvP," wrote Bungie. "We've previously done a pass to add diminishing returns to this but it's proven to not be enough. In this update, we've tightened the curve a bit and split it out over PvE and PvP. This should allow Guardians to keep dunking on combatants for longer while being less oppressive against one another."

The cost of the Striker light attack while in Super has also gone up, making it less viable as a form of long-distance travel. Super kills will also no longer activate the Regeneration effect.

"We still want this to be used as a way to run people down or dodge and be shifty, but this change should make it costly enough as to be prohibitive as a form of long distance travel," Bungie explained. "Finally, regeneration will no longer proc on melee kills while in super. The combination was just too strong and overly forgiving of strategic or positional mistakes."

Beyond the super alterations, you can expect some other quality of life adjustments and bug fixes that affect Sentinel – Code of the Protector (Top Path), Nightstalker – Way of the Wraith (Middle Path), and shoulder charge. The developer also promised changes to the One Eyed Mask in a future update.

Destiny 2 Update 2.6.1 Patch Note Preview

Striker – Code of the Juggernaut (Bottom Path)
Trample:

• Tuned the amount of Super energy returned per kill
• Reduced amount returned possible per kill from 15% to 13% (before diminishing returns)
• Reduced the low end of the diminishing returns from 5% to 3.25%
• Changed the kills for the diminishing returns by splitting them out between players and combatants. Previously it was 15 kills. Now it is 14 combatant kills or 7 player kills (players count for 2X towards diminishing returns)
• Cost of light attack in super increased by 50% from 2% to 3%
• Regeneration on kill no longer procs on super kills

Dawnblade – Attunement of Flame (Bottom Path)
Everlasting Flames: 

• Tuned the amount of Super energy returned per kill (handled differently than Striker as this attack in an AoE)
• Increased the low end of the diminishing returns from 0.75% to 0.95%
• Changed the kills for the diminishing returns by splitting them out between players and combatants. Previously it was 30 kills. Now it is 21 combatant kills or 7 player kills (players count for 3X towards diminishing returns)

QUALITY OF LIFE AND BUG FIXES:

Sentinel – Code of the Protector (Top Path)
Ward of Dawn:

• Armor of Light timer now correlates with the life of the Ward of Dawn
• Particle FX move more rapidly towards the end of the Ward of Dawn's life

Nightstalker – Way of the Wraith (Middle Path)
Shattering Strike: 

• Fixed a bug in which Shattering Strike activation window was reduced to 3 seconds along with Truesight
• Shattering strike last the proper 9 seconds once again

Shoulder Charge

We've removed a bug that allowed players to shoot immediately before activating shoulder charge, which allowed players to apply the 1-2 Punch damage buff to shoulder charge. This bug was caused by a quality of life change made for Tempest Strike. Before Shadowkeep, if player's had the sprint button configured as "hold to sprint", then they would need to be holding the sprint button while sliding in order to activate Tempest Strike. With the release of Shadowkeep, we added a small window of time where players could activate Tempest Strike after letting go of the sprint button. This change had unexpected effects on other melee abilities, so we have reverted this change until we can find a better fix for Tempest Strike. 

OTHER CHANGES

• Forsaken subclasses will display the correct super icon in the PvP HUD for the following Subclasses:
  • Chaos Reach
  • Well of Radiance
  • Nova Warp
  • Spectral Blades
  • Blade Barrage
  • Burning Maul
  • Thundercrash
• Fixed a bug where Warlocks who wagered Weak Motes in Reckoning were incorrectly being rewarded Titan gear
• Fixed a bug that increased loading times for gear preview while in space flight. 
• Players should notice their character models update more quickly while changing gear, previewing ornaments, or previewing shaders during space flight
• Phantasmal Core stack cap raised from 3 to 999

Steam

• Blocking Communication with Players in Steam will now block/mute Players in Destiny 2
• Added Functionality for /addfriend and /removefriend commands
  • /removefriend [ PlayerName ]
  • /addfriend [ PlayerName ]
  • Note – Players must be in one of your Rosters (Fireteam, Friends, or Clan) in order to Add/Remove them as a Friend

• Added Functionality for /invite command
  • /invite [ SteamID ]
    • Note – Players must be in one of your Rosters (Fireteam, Friends, or Clan) in order to Invite them by PlayerName
  • /invite [ PlayerName ]
    • Note – You can Invite Players by SteamID, regardless of if they're in your Roster or not
• Players can now /invite and /join another Player regardless of their Steam Online Status ('Online', 'Invisible' or 'Offline')
• /help description updated to reflect new changes to commands