Iron Banner's Rift is Making Waves

Here’s the full breakdown that we previously shared:  

• A Spark appears in the center of the map a few seconds after a match starts or a point is scored and can be picked up by interacting with it for a couple seconds. The Spark itself is a buff that allows full weapon and ability usage aside from Super.  
• For the first five seconds after picking up the Spark, or for a few seconds after taking damage, both teams receive a waypoint for the Spark holder. After that, the waypoint only remains for the Spark holder’s own team—marking the Spark holder for your teammates is important!  
• If you die while carrying the Spark, it drops to the ground where you died (or nearby if the spot is not navigable).  
• If you hold onto the Spark too long, it detonates.  
• Team resurrections are enabled in Rift, so make sure and help your teammates in the middle of a push, or if you are playing defense.  
• There are no points for kills, just for Spark dunks, so playing the objective is key.  
• When Rift is in Iron Banner, the Hunt is on when your team has the Spark. When the music intensifies, it's time to score!  
• There are several ways to extend matches past the time limit:  
• Continuation: At end of regulation time, If the current Spark holder could change the outcome of the match—either the game is tied, or if the current Spark holder is down one point—the match continues until the current Spark holder drops the Spark or scores.  
• Sudden Death Multispark: If there is a tie after time is up, the game enters a 90-second overtime where three sparks spawn in midfield. Who will be the first to score? Chaos reigns.   
• After the sudden-death timer is up, Sparks stop dropping on death, and any Sparks on the ground are removed. As soon as the last Spark is eliminated without a score, the match ends in a tie. 

Regarding reputation changes:   

• Play matches with each match earning more towards Iron Banner reputation.   
• Win matches to earn a small bonus based on your current Iron Banner rank.   
• Wear Iron Banner armor (or just as ornaments on your own non-Iron Banner gear) and equip Iron Banner weapons to max out your gear multiplier at 200%.   
• Five total pieces must be equipped, though please remember this includes Iron Banner armor and Iron Banner ornaments.   
• Complete the Iron Banner challenges to tack on 100% to your challenge multiplier for the rest of the week.   
• Use an Iron Banner emblem for an additional 10% emblem multiplier. 
• There is a reported issue with certain emblems, the team is actively investigating.    

Daily Challenges:  

We’ve seen some confusion over the daily challenges that can be found when hovering over the Iron Banner node, so we wanted to resurface what was previously shared about this mechanic for anyone that may have missed it. As noted in the previous TWAB, “For the first four days of each Iron Banner week, Guardians will unlock a new daily challenge, one for each day. These challenges unlock each day whether you complete them or not, so if you log in on Friday, you can do them all in succession if you want to. Rewards will also stack reputation bonuses for the remainder of the week alongside a Pinnacle Iron Engram. The weekly bounties that typically award Pinnacles have been deprecated appropriately to balance out this change to Iron Banner.” These work similarly to weekly challenges and can be found in the node for Iron Banner Rift.  

At the end of the day, we’re going to be keeping an eye on feedback. It’s an odd spot to be in, where you can see the community in its polarity and its entirety. There are so many opposing viewpoints and wants and sometimes those can contradict each other in a way that can be a confounding puzzle. A fun puzzle, absolutely, but tricky. One small move can make or break an experience, but we will never stop listening and expanding the Destiny 2 experience.  

Before diving into what’s next for Solar, we just wanted to say thank you to everyone that shared their feedback, their joy, and their desires with us as we constantly evolve this space-faring experience. Right now, the team is hard at work on investigating known issues such as the Spark sometimes disappearing, progress trackers for the new title, and that pesky loop trap that some are encountering when taking on an enemy team. While we continue digging into every facet of these reported instances, we wanted to give a heads up on what’s happening behind the scenes and drop the Bungie Help resource for those looking for updates going forward. Stay tuned! 

Operation Muy Caliente

Kevin Yanes: Hey folks. As you’re all aware, we recently launched Solar 3.0, the latest of our Subclass 3.0 updates. As with any launch, we’ve been watching and reading reactions to the feature, and it has become clear that we needed to circle around the campfire to share a bit about our plans. So, I’d like to get together and talk about our intentions, our next steps, and some expectation-setting for the rest of the Seasons this year.  

First, I want to reiterate some of the goals we laid out for the 3.0s, starting with the Void 3.0 update that went live when we announced The Witch Queen: “…we are taking the subclasses you know and love and remixing them. That means adding new abilities and mechanics, ditching some old ones where it makes sense to do so, and spreading out existing ones to create enticing new combinations.”  

A common feedback thread is some frustration around losing elements like Heart of the Pack or nerfs to things like Sunspots or Benevolent Dawn. We know that losing things can feel unsatisfying or painful at first blush, but part of our 3.0-ification of these classes is also a rebalancing of some of these atoms. Those passive or self-looping ability-regen benefits silently power-crept over the years to levels that made them too dominant in many activities. With our focus on buildcrafting, we don't want to have one singular perk complete large parts of your kit by itself. As we continue the process of moving the Light subclasses into the 3.0 system, you’ll see us continue to rebalance gameplay atoms in this manner, with the goal that the new combinations and possibility space they open up will offset the loss of any one perk. 

Initial reactions to Solar have not met our “new thing that melts your face off” bar and we believe that’s due, in part, to a few things:  

• Ember of Benevolence shipped in an inconsistent state that left healers feeling underwhelmed with their kit when it didn’t behave as expected. 
• Warlocks who wanted to specialize in healing had limited ways to interface with that fantasy, with two of their three Aspects focusing on aerial mobility or Scorching, and losing the flexibility of choosing to use their grenade to heal allies or damage enemies on the fly. 
• Titans, while bombastic and potent, lacked ways to keep their engine running without needing to run Throwing Hammer or burning multiple cooldowns.  

As we’ve said in the past through TWABs, socials, and other dev updates, we’d much rather ship something a little too spicy than something bland that makes a bad first impression. I think with Solar 3.0, we landed somewhere in the middle, and the team feels very passionately that this is the wrong place to be. To that end, the team has pulled some heroics and shifted resources to make some buffs to Heat Rises, Icarus Dash, Celestial Fire, Burning Maul, Roaring Flames and Consecration, as well as bug fixes for Ember of Benevolence and a few of our damage-over-time linger grenades. These changes will go live next week with Hotfix 4.1.0.2.  

Solar Warlock: 

• Heat Rises: 
• Added behavior: Consuming your grenade now also releases a burst of Cure x2 around you, healing you and your nearby allies. Consuming a Healing Grenade increases the strength of the burst to Cure x3 and consuming a Touch of Flame Healing Grenade provides Restoration as an additional benefit.

• Icarus Dash: 
• Added behavior: While airborne, rapidly defeating targets with your Super or any weapon Cures you. 

• Celestial Fire: 
• Each Celestial Fire projectile now applies 10 Scorch stacks. This is increased to 15 stacks with Ember of Ashes equipped. 

Solar Titan: 

• Burning Maul: 
• Buffed damage in PvE by 25%  

• Roaring Flames: 
• Added behavior: While Roaring Flames is active, your uncharged melee attack now deals Solar damage and applies 30 Scorch stacks to targets per hit. This is increased to 40 stacks with Ember of Ashes equipped. 

• Consecration: 
• Fragment slots increased from 1 to 2. 
• Raised the height of the secondary attack’s ground wave by 25% to more easily catch players who jump too late.  

That’s no small list of changes. The team takes feedback seriously—we’re players ourselves, so when things don’t land, we also feel that internally. To say it out loud, a hotfix of this magnitude comes at the cost of other changes, so to set expectations here, the team is unlikely to take another balance pass until much later this Season. It’s important to our team that on top of doing amazing new things, we maintain a healthy work-life balance and this patch necessitates some breathing room.  

On that note, what’s next for abilities? Well, Arc 3.0 is still cooking up nicely, and we’ll have more to talk about there in a future update. But just to reiterate points the team has made in the past about the next subclass update, after Arc 3.0 you should expect the abilities team to go dark for a little while. Since shipping Stasis with Beyond Light, the team has made huge abilities changes Season over Season. Over the last year, we’ve been back-to-back shipping new aspects for Stasis, adding the Variable Ability Cooldown system, and creating the three Subclass 3.0 experiences—it's been busy. We hope the changes you’ve read today reinforce our commitment to being responsive to feedback and candid in our communication. We’ll be there right alongside you on the Derelict Leviathan snapping, slamming, and flipping our way to victory. 

Prime Gaming is Primed and Ready to Go

Heroes Welcome, Always

Player Support Report: Telesto Status: Calamitous

 

Season of the Haunted launched last week and the feedback about the story of what it means to turn around and face your Nightmares has been nothing short of incredible. That being said, Telesto has become sentient and has taken over the Tower now that it is in the hands of Banshee. Turns out that this was widely regarded as a “bad move” by the universe, but the team has been hard at work at tackling each issue with a dedicated fervor that is honestly impressive. Between that and some hiccups with the launch of Iron Banner and Rift, there are a few updates from our meticulous Player Support Team that players should be aware of. As always, we thank you for your patience as we work hard to make the Destiny 2 experience an enjoyable one for all. But first, let’s talk about some known issues and what’s in the immediate future from our heroes in Player Support.  

This is their report. 

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter  

Hot Fix 4.1.0.2

Iron Banner Challenges

Dungeon Key Ownership Clarification

Known Issues

A Little Bit of Light at the End of the Rift

 

Happy TWABSday, Guardians! We have been having so much fun watching you all explore all of the new things; goodness gracious is it a fun time to be a Guardian right now! And to wrap up our week, today’s movies are bringing the dancing, light (have you been in the dungeon yet, it’s so dark in there!), and a little spark back into your world. 

Movie of the Week: Light Forever 

The Crow Commands, the Captive Must Obey

 

Week two of Season of the Haunted’s story is live now and—not to be dramatic or anything—it has thoroughly and completely destroyed my soul. Proud of our little Crow and his progress, even though healing through trauma is anything but easy and simple. As we continue to face our Nightmares each week, we wanted to share a few lighter pieces of art from you all to bring back some of those feel-good vibes. Plus, Eris looking so proud of him was just too good to pass up.  

Ready? Let’s get into it.  

Get in, Guardian, We're Going Shopping