Quote:Dev team: We’re raising the ‘cap’ for gear drops 40 points—powerful gear will now drop up to 1000, with pinnacle drops going up to 1010. The soft cap has also been effectively raised 50 points. Gear drops from nearly all sources will continue to be upgrades until 950 Power, and powerful reward sources will not be required to progress to 950. We’re looking to present an element of gear progression available each Season, as well as prepare underlying systems for future updates like the forthcoming one for Legendary weapons mentioned by Luke Smith in the Director’s Cut ‘Weapons Forever’ section.

We’re also looking to make some quality of life updates in the pinnacle band. Starting in 2.8.1. (coming mid-Season), we’ll be upgrading some existing powerful rewards to pinnacle rewards. These are the weekly Crucible, Strike, and Gambit challenges, as well as the weekly clan engram. With this change, we want to increase the total number of pinnacle power sources in the game, broaden pinnacle drop access, as well as increase the pools of items that can drop in the pinnacle band.

Slot imbalances can also affect pinnacle progression. When we say slot imbalance, this could be explained as those times you have a chest piece drop from pinnacle sources a few times in a row. We’ve been looking at player feedback for some time, and are investigating a few approaches to the problem space. We’re looking to have an update on that at a later date. Until then, we hope the additional sources will help you on your climb.

Quote:Dev team: With Trials just around the corner, we wanted to address the “Artifact Power problem” as quickly as we could. As Luke said last week, our short-term fix is to disable the Artifact’s Power bonus while in Trials and Iron Banner. Unfortunately, Season of the Worthy has already been released for certification, so we won’t be able to disable the Artifact’s Power for the first Trials weekend. We have the fix in-house to disable it and are testing it this week, and hope to deploy it on Tuesday, March 17. We really wish we could have gotten it in for the launch weekend, but we also expect the first Trials weekend to be the one impacted by the Artifact the least. Players will have much less time to increase their Artifact Power, so the majority will be close to each other outside of Pinnacle drops.

Our long-term plan is to enable a Power cap for Trials and Iron Banner and we’re investigating the work required for this. This will roll out no earlier than midway through Season of the Worthy, but we don’t have a firm date yet—we’ll make sure to communicate it when we do! We also plan to look at the damage curves for Power-enabled PvP modes to determine what, if any, adjustments should be made. Assuming we discover it’s necessary, the timeline for a change is still TBD. With both changes, we plan to provide more detailed write-ups before they go live, explaining the details of the change and the design philosophy behind why we are making those decisions.

Just for clarity, I’ll echo Luke’s statement from last week: we’re going to disable the Artifact Power bonus in Trials and Iron Banner until we can implement a new Power cap system for those playlists. I hope you all enjoy Season of the Worthy, and may your run to the Lighthouse be swift and merciless.

• Hunter
  
  • • Assassin’s Cowl
      
      • • The invisibility and healing effect now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.
          
          
        • The duration of the invisibility granted by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.
          
          
        • Arc Staff kills no longer activate this perk.
          
      
      
    • FROST-EE5
      
      • • Changed the ability regeneration so that it no longer stacks multiplicatively with other class ability energy-generating perks.
          
      
      
    • Khepri’s Sting
      
      • • All smoke bombs deal 150% damage while wearing this Exotic.
          
      
      
    • Orpheus Rig
      
      • • The maximum amount of Super you can regain from this Exotic with a single use of Shadowshot is 50%.
          
      
      
    • Young Ahamkara’s Spine
      
      • • Increases the explosion radius for Tripmines by 14%.
          

• Titan
  
  • • Ashen Wake
      
      • • Killing an enemy with a Fusion Grenade while wearing this Exotic now refunds grenade energy. The amount of grenade energy refunded scales based on the tier of enemy killed.
          
      
      
    • Anteus Wards
      
      • • The shield created during a slide no longer allows chip damage through.
          
      
      
    • Doomfang Pauldrons
      
      • • Fixed a bug where Doomfang Pauldrons would sometimes grant Super energy from melee kills while in your Super.
          
      
      
    • Dunemarchers
      
      • • Increase the radius of the static charge to 20 meters, up from 12.
          
      
      
    • Mk. 44 Stand Asides
      
      • • Reduced the delay from the start of sprinting until the overshield comes in to 0.5 seconds, down from 1.25.
          
      
      
    • One-Eyed Mask
      
      • • The target marking from this Exotic has been replaced with target highlighting, eliminating the ability to detect targets through walls.
          
          
        • No longer provides a damage bonus when defeating your marked target.
          
          
        • Restored the previous overshield granted by defeating your marked target, which now has a duration of 6 seconds, down from 8.
          
      
      
    • Severance Enclosure
      
      • • The explosion now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.
          
          
        • The radius and damage of the explosion created by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.
          
  
  
• Warlock
  
  • • Apotheosis Veil
      
      • • This Exotic is now guaranteed to drop with a minimum +16 to Intellect.
          
      
      
    • Contraverse Hold
      
      • • Reduced the damage reduction granted by this Exotic to 20%, down from 40%.
          
      
      
    • Sanguine Alchemy
      
      • • Sanguine Alchemy has received a complete redesign. Its new perk, Blood Magic, allows the wearer to pause the countdown timer of any Rift they are standing in by getting weapon kills, extending the Rift’s duration.
          
      
      
    • Ophidian Aspects
      
      • • Now increases the lunge range of all Warlock melee attacks, even if the ability is on cooldown.
          
      
      
    • Verity’s Brow
      
      • • The buff provided by this Exotic now increases your grenade damage by 10% per stack.
          
          
        • The buff to allies’ grenade recharge rates now kicks in when you cast your grenade.
          
          
        • This Exotic now provides a buff text notification indicating how many allies are currently benefiting from your increased grenade recharge.
          

• Legendary Engrams
  
  • • Increased the number of armor sets available from world drops to 11 sets, up from 3.
      
      
    • This will include Faction Rally armor. Players who own previous Faction Rally Ornaments may apply them to these sets.
      
      
    • Several sets that were previously unavailable or extremely difficult to acquire are now available as world drops.
      
  
  
• Armor Stats
  
  • • Prime Engrams will now more reliably drop armor with higher overall stat rolls and spikier distributions.
      
      
    • Exotic armor will now more reliably drop with higher overall stat rolls.
      
      
    • Legendary armor now has an improved chance of receiving higher overall stat rolls, though low rolls will still be present.
      

• The Settings screen UI layout on consoles has changed to match the experience on PC, allowing for future updates.
  
  
• Added the ability to change the color of the reticle on consoles.
  
  • • Players can choose from seven different colors, matching PC.
      
  
  
• Added hint text during loading screens.
  
  
• Added comma separators to the Glimmer count in the loot stream.
  
  • • No longer keeps me awake at night.
      
  
  
• Added categories to the Quests screen.
  
  • • Quest items will now be automatically filtered to any of the seven categories:
      
      • • New Light
          
          • • Note: This category will hide if there are no active New Light quests in the character’s inventory.
              
          
          
        • All Quests
          
          
        • Shadowkeep
          
          
        • Seasonal
          
          
        • Playlists
          
          
        • Exotics
          
          
        • The Past
          

• Fixed UI stuttering and framerate drops when loading or applying mods.
  
  
• Improved framerate in Gambit and Gambit Prime.
  
  
• Fixed framerate issues during the Sanctified Mind encounter of the Garden of Salvation raid.
  
  
• Fixed framerate issues in the Pit of Heresy dungeon, specifically in tunnel encounters.
  
  
• Fixed stutter at high framerate on PC.
  
  
• General improvements to performance on PC when a lot of debris is on the ground.
  

Quote:A NEW SEASON

Next week, Season of Dawn ends and Season of the Worthy kicks off with the release of Destiny 2 Update 2.8.0. Please see below for the rollout timeline.

• • • 8 AM PDT (1500 UTC): Destiny service maintenance begins.
      
      
    • 8:45 AM PDT (1545 UTC): Destiny 2 is taken offline on all platforms.
      
      
    • 9 AM PDT (1600 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 2.8.0 begins rolling out across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2 at 10:01 AM PDT.
      
      
    • 10:01 AM PDT (1701 UTC): Destiny 2 is back online on all platforms; Season of The Worthy begins.
      
      
    • 12 PM PDT (1900 UTC): Destiny service maintenance concludes.
      

UPCOMING RESOLVED ISSUES, PT. 2

Below is a continuation of a list of issues that will be resolved when Season of the Worthy and Update 2.8.0 become available on March 10:

• • • Hunter’s Tempest Strike melee ability can now be performed when using PC controls where Sprint is set to “Hold.”
      
      
    • Character subclasses with ranged melee abilities will now count towards Melee Kill bounties and Triumphs. These include Titan Hammer Throw, Hunter Throwing Knives and Corrosive Smoke Bomb, and Warlock Celestial Fire and Ball Lightning.
      
      
    • The Fastidious Miser Triumph will now correctly progress and complete for players who’ve found all 30 Ascendant Chests across the three Curse Weeks in the Dreaming City, and have claimed those corresponding Triumphs.
      
      
    • Weekly Strike bounties for Hive and Vex boss kills will now award progress to players for killing Savathûn’s Song, Xol, and Dendron the Root Mind.
      

While Update 2.8.0 is released to the world, Destiny Player Support will be on standby in the #Help forum, ready to assist anyone who is experiencing issues.