Destiny 2 update 6.2.0 ushers in Season 18 with a colossal amount of patch notes. There are all manner of changes coming to the game with this update, including a massive rework of each class’ Arc subclass, improvements and buffs to Exotic and Legendary weapons, new perk pools and origin traits for Dares of Eternity weapons and so much more. Take a look at the patch notes below.
Bungie released the full patch notes for Destiny 2 update 6.2.0 on August 23, 2022. As with major updates, these notes are quite extensive, so let’s just jump straight in.
UI/UX
ROSTER
Fixed an issue where exploring the Director screen would impact FPS.
The team will continue to monitor FPS while using this tab.
Added a new option to allow players to invite their friends to their fireteam without redirecting them to the Roster tab.
Updated the visuals to make it easier to understand when a player has been blocked.
Fixed an issue where viewing one's own details in the Roster might not consistently respect the Share Platform Names.
CRUCIBLE
Fixed an issue where pre-match cinematics would end before the countdown timer reached zero.
Fixed an issue where an opponent’s nameplate would not pulse when their Super is active.
MISCELLANEOUS
Fixed an issue where Derelict Leviathan did not have a Director label
Fixed an issue where some items would show extra spaces near the bottom.
Updated the UI on the Clan tab to match other locations in the game where multiple pages are present.
Fixed an issue where some perk information was not displayed when inspecting another player's equipped Stasis Aspects and Fragments.
Triumphs or Seasonal Challenges that are claimed and tracked may now be untracked.
The team is investigating situations where players may get into these states.
Starting with Season 18, Seasonal Challenges and your currently tracked Triumph, weapon catalyst, pattern, medal, etc. will be untracked at each Seasonal reset to help avoid similar issues.
Updated the parallax boundaries on armor inspection screens to keep the armor stats from moving off screen on consoles
GAMEPLAY AND INVESTMENT
CRUCIBLE
Fixed an issue in Survival where tied rounds still granted a point to one of the teams.
CRUCIBLE
Loose skill-based matchmaking enabled on Control playlist. Please see the TWAB for more information.
In 3v3 Crucible modes, special ammo will no longer refresh upon being resurrected, bringing them inline with Trials of Osiris.
Self-reviving still restocks with special ammo
Fixed an issue where Crucible streak protection message was unnecessarily displaying when joining a match in progress
Fixed an issue where the Three Birds, Three Stones triumph did not progress in all Crucible playlists
Fixed an issue where pre-match cinematics would end before the countdown timer reached zero.
Fixed an issue where an opponent’s nameplate would not pulse when their Super is active.
IRON BANNER
Fixed an issue where the Fourth Daily Challenge would not contribute to Iron Banner reputation multiplier
Fixed an issue where seasonal metrics did not display during the intro scene when loading into a match
Fixed an issue where there was a missing progress display string in the Iron Banner introduction quest
Fixed an issue where an outdated loading screen hint about power level being enabled in Iron Banner was showing up
RITUALS
Fixed an issue where Crucible, Gambit, and Vanguard dropped and focused weapons could not drop with more then 3 combinations of multiple perks
They can now drop with a more combinations of multiple perks for each seasonal reputation resets, up to 4.
Added new Arc 3.0 bounties for Crucible, Gambit, and Vanguard
Tuned bounties with Void 3.0 status effects
LOST SECTORS
Fixed an issue where all Skydock IV Lost Sector champions were not counting properly for scoring
WELLSPRING
Wellspring now uses the proper scoring during Master difficulty; players can now earn Platinum rewards based on score rather than killing Champions
RAIDS
Vow of the Disciple: Fixed an issue where The Bombardiers Hunter Exotic could break the payload route during the entrance encounter.
No more payload escaping.
GLOBAL CHANGES
Fixed an issue introduced in the 30th Anniversary update that caused too much Heavy ammo to drop when running double Special weapons
Several weapon stats were previously hidden, which made fully evaluating weapons difficult.
Airborne effectiveness, recoil direction, zoom, and aim assist are now visible on the weapon inspection screen.
ARMOR
Increased the vibrancy of the glow colors in the "Candescent Prism" Solstice ornament sets in order to bring them back to parity with Update 4.1.5.
This also fixed shaders not correctly applying to these sets.
Fixed an issue where The Path of Burning Steps would not admit to killing a Guardian with its Solar burst and blamed The Architects instead.
Fixed an issue where the Antaeus Wards was not changing its glow color based on the Guardian's current subclass.
WEAPONS
Stasis Rocket Launchers and Stasis Grenade Launchers with the perks Chain Reaction, Dragonfly, and Cluster Bombs will now have cool Stasis-themed VFX and audio.
Updated the Polaris Lance catalyst requirements to be more achievable.
Removed Perfect Fifth kill objective entirely. It now only relies on kills by the weapon.
Fixed various issues where the Wish-Ender Exotic Bow would lose its Truesight in certain circumstances.
The shaping alloy "Drowned Alloy" has been renamed to "Harmonic Alloy."
Dismantled weapons with Deepsight will provide pattern progress if a pattern is available.
Dismantled weapons with Deepsight will provide 100 Neutral Element.
If the objective is completed and the item is dismantled or the Deepsight mod extracted, 300 Neutral Element will be acquired.
When a Deepsight weapon with a pattern is dismantled or extracted, players will be notified via loot stream that pattern progress has been made.
Starting in Season 18, Deepsight weapons that are acquired prior to their pattern becoming available will no longer output pattern progress. The Deepsight weapon's tooltip will indicate whether a pattern is available or not.
Fixed an issue where One for All would grant more bonus damage than intended on Grenade Launchers.
Fixed an issue where using Shoot to Loot with Enhanced Overflow would overflow the weapon much more than intended.
Explosive Payload detonations will no longer pick up ammo via Shoot to Loot to prevent an ammo exploit.
This interaction will be re-enabled once the underlying issue has been fixed in a future patch.
WEAPON ARCHETYPES
Scout Rifles
Increased damage of all Scout Rifles vs minor enemies (red bars) in PvE by 10%
This change is in addition to the baseline damage buff given in the Solstice balance patch.
High-Impact (360 RPM) Auto Rifles
Increased base stability stat of all non-sunset High-Impact Auto Rifles by 6-12, depending on the weapon.
Herod-C: 27-33
False Promises: 17-29
Age-Old Bond: 18-30
Chrysura Melo: 13-25
Come to Pass: 14-26
Lightweight Bows
Reduced base draw time by 5% (from 612ms to 580ms).
Increased the “perfect draw window” (how long you can hold the drawn bow before you begin to lose accuracy and damage, stability modifies this window).
From .30s to .50s on the low end.
From .55s to .80s on the high end.
Hand Cannons
Fixed Dire Promise's zoom stat (got changed to 13 inadvertently, it's now 14 again).
Glaives
Glaive melee attacks can now activate the Exotic armor perks on ACD/0 Feedback Fence, Karnstein Armlets, and Necrotic Grip.
Breech Grenade Launchers
Concussion grenades can no longer roll in the magazine slot.
Heavy Grenade Launchers
Increased damage vs. majors and above by ~10%, excluding Parasite.
WEAPON POOLS
Updated the Dares of Eternity weapon set's perk pools and added an origin trait.
Addressed an issue where Playlist (Crucible, Gambit and strike) weapons weren't randomizing perk count correctly based on number of resets.
PERKS
Ambitious Assassin
Increased magazine overflow from 10% to 20% per kill on Primary weapons only (Special and Heavy weapons are still 10%).
Increased overflow cap from 50% to 150%.
Invader Tracker (Gambit origin trait)
Renamed Gun and Run.
Redesigned functionality to give a sprint speed increase on multi-kills.
Skulking Wolf (Iron Banner origin trait)
Redesigned to activate on kills while at low health.
Wellspring
Cooldown has been removed, allowing for Rocket Launchers and Grenade Launchers to return more ability energy when defeating groups with a single shot.
Perpetual Motion
Disabled audio/visual feedback on perk activation, since it was triggering frequently enough to be annoying.
Lead from Gold
Now gives the correct amount of ammo when two Special weapons are equipped.
Concussion Grenades
Can no longer roll on Breech Grenade Launchers.
Veist Stinger
Fixed an issue where it was applying a charge time reduction to Linear Fusion Rifles. It will correctly only refill the magazine from reserves when it triggers on these weapons.
Zen Moment, Particle Repeater
Updated descriptions to say what they actually do.
EXOTIC WEAPONS
Buffs
Le Monarque
Added intrinsic Overload to Poison Arrows.
Thunderlord
Added intrinsic Overload.
Malfeasance
Added intrinsic Unstoppable to explosions.
Added +25 to the base airborne effectiveness stat (28 to 53) to match other Precision Hand Cannon’s intrinsic bonus.
Wish-Ender
Added intrinsic Anti-Barrier.
Increased number of hits vs. most targets from 2 to 3 (more hits against vehicles, still 2 against players).
Increased damage vs Champions, majors, and minibosses by 10%.
Draw time decreased from 828ms to 820ms.
Ticuu's Divination
Draw time decreased from 612ms to 580ms.
Legend of Acrius
Catalyst now grants the Trench Barrel perk in addition to its other effects.
Exotic Paired Legendary Weapons
CALUS Mini-Tool
Increased airborne effectiveness from 23 to 28 to match MIDA Mini-Tool.
MIDA Mini-Tool
Increased zoom from 13 to 14 to match CALUS Mini-Tool.
Drang (Baroque)
Increased airborne effectiveness from 21 to 23 to match standard Drang.
Sweet Business
Increased airborne effectiveness from 27 to 32.
Fighting Lion
Season 17 damage increase has been reimplemented and slightly increased from 5% to 8%.
Increased the grace time for the instant reload effect of Thin the Herd from 5 to 6s.
Reworks
Lord of Wolves
Decreased starting ammo in PvP from 15 to 10 (PvE unchanged).
Reduced the burst size (shots fired per trigger pull) from 10 to 5 shots when Release the Wolves is active.
Reduced the burst delay (the time between bursts) by ~60% when Release the Wolves is active.
Decreased Lord of Wolves base damage by ~20% in (now deals 35 per shot to the body in PvP, 44 with Release the Wolves active).
Increased damage in PvE by 20% to compensate.
Dead Man's Tale
Changed Cranial Spike's effects:
Cranial Spike no longer buffs damage vs players; instead, it grants increased reload, aim assist, and range per stack.
It still grants additional damage vs. PvE combatants.
Upon reaching max stacks of Cranial Spike, the Catalyst will now increase hip-fire RPM by 50 (i.e., it will fire at 180 RPM), but will deal reduced damage per bullet (20% decrease).
Collective Obligation
Increased Void Leech timer to 15 seconds in PvE activities.
PvP remains at 10 seconds.
Removed the Void Leech cooldown.
Add a 20% damage bonus against PvE combatants only while Void Leech is active.
Takes less hits to fully charge Void Leech.
Kills against debuffed targets instantly charge Void Leech.
Void Leech is also instantly charged when your character is affected by Void debuffs.
Does not work if hitting yourself with your own Suppressor grenade.
Fixed an issue where Umbral Sustenance was activating with non-Void overshields.
ABILITIES
Arc Subclasses
Reworked to fit the Subclass 3.0 system. There are too many individual systemic changes to list here, but the Arc subclasses now use the Aspect and Fragment system used by Stasis, Void, and Solar.
Standardized a set of buffs and debuffs aligned to the Arc damage type:
Amplified - Your movement speed and weapon handling are greatly increased. After sprinting for a short time, you enter Speed Booster, further increasing your sprint speed and granting damage resistance against PvE combatants.
By default, rapidly defeating multiple targets with Arc damage will amplify Your equipped Aspects and Fragments provide additional methods to become and benefit from being amplified.
Ionic Trace - A bolt of pure Arc energy that travels along the ground, seeking its creator. When picked up, Ionic Traces grant grenade, melee, and class ability energy.
Blind - Combatants are disoriented and cannot fire their weapons. Enemy players' HUD is removed and their vision is obscured.
Jolted - The target is energized with destructive Arc Light. As they take additional damage while jolted, they chain lightning to nearby enemies. This chain lightning can occur multiple times while a target is jolted.
Hovering over Aspects, Fragments, or abilities on the Arc subclass screen now displays a tooltip flyout detailing any relevant status effects.
Some old subclass perks have been deprecated, while others have been rolled into base ability behavior, Fragments, or Aspects with some changes to behavior as a result.
All classes now have access to all Arc grenades.
Grenades
Storm grenade
Total damage across the two detonations reduced from 170 (80/90) to 120 (70/50)
Improved damage area consistency under certain network conditions to fix an issue where it was dealing delayed damage.
Base cooldown increased from 91s to 105s.
Lightning grenade
Damage per strike reduced from 160 to 120.
Arcbolt grenade
Damage reduced from 105 to 85.
Base cooldown reduced from 121s to 105s.
Skip grenade
Base cooldown increased from 105s to 121s.
Flashbang grenade
Blind duration decreased from 5 seconds to 3 seconds vs. Players.
Pulse grenade
Base cooldown increased from 105s to 121s.
Vortex grenade
Fixed an issue causing this to deal less damage than intended against PvE targets.
Hunter
Arcstrider
Arc Staff
Now has both Whirlwind Guard block capability and Lightning Reflexes armored dodge as default behavior.
Arc Staff damage vs. minor and elite combatants increased by 12.5%.
New Super added: Gathering Storm
Hurl your Arc Staff forward, embedding it into surfaces or large targets, dealing damage to and jolting nearby targets. After a short time, a devastating lightning bolt strikes the staff, overcharging it with Arc energy. While overcharged, your staff discharges lightning at nearby foes.
New jump added: Blink
Arc Hunters have recovered from a not-so-brief case of amnesia causing them to forget how to Blink.
Disorienting Blow
Now applies a short blind to nearby targets rather than a generic disorient, and also amplifies you on hit.
Combination Blow
Now also recharges your class ability when you successfully defeat a target with this charged melee, in addition to increasing your charged melee damage.
Base cooldown increased from 15s to 40s.
Tempest Strike
Increased travel distance from 18m to 22m.
Added a small amount of initial tracking to help Tempest Strike land on close targets.
Now jolts targets on hit.
Base damage decreased from 130 to 110.
Lethal Current – Reworked
After dodging, your next melee attack has increased range, jolts the struck target, and leaves behind a damaging aftershock.
Damaging a jolted target with melee attacks also blinds them.
While using Arc Staff, your next attack strikes twice after dodging.
Deprecated the Ebb and Flow subclass node perk.
Nightstalker
Spectral Blades
Spectral Blades damage vs. minor and elite combatants increased by 33%.
Titan
Striker
Fists of Havoc
Now has Terminal Velocity's slam bonus as default behavior.
The slam's bonus damage when activated from the air is now constant rather than variable based on your height when you activate the slam.
Light attack energy cost normalized between previous top and bottom tree cost at 8% (previously 12%/5.6%).
Heavy slam radius normalized between the previous top and bottom tree cost at 7 meters (previously 8m/6m).
Fists of Havoc damage vs. Champion, miniboss, and boss combatants increased by 25%. Damage vs. minor and elite combatants increased by ~40%.
Note: Previously, Fists of Havoc relied on knockout bonus damage and trample energy refunds to consistently deal with standard combatants in PvE. We'd like this to be better able to stand on its own now to partially compensate for the increased attack energy costs.
New class ability added: Thruster
Activate while grounded to perform a quick, first-person lateral evade.
New melee ability added: Thunderclap
Hold melee while grounded to plant your feet and begin charging your fist with Arc energy. Release melee to punch forward, unleashing a large blast of force that deals additional damage the longer the melee button was held.
Seismic Strike
Blind duration decreased from 5 seconds to 1.6 seconds vs. players.
Now while amplified, the blinding radius is increased from 7m to 10m, and the blind duration is increased to 3 seconds vs. players.
Ballistic Slam
Fixed an issue where the Ballistic Slam camera could sometimes cause you to dive straight down rather than at your aimed location.
No longer applies Inertia Override on hit.
Knockout
Defeating targets with melee attacks now also amplifies you in addition to starting your health regeneration.
Knockout is no longer consumed on your next melee kill. Instead, knockout lasts for a set 6 seconds, after which it needs to be reactivated by breaking a combatant shield or critically wounding a target.
Deprecated the Frontal Assault melee ability, and the aftershocks and trample subclass node perks.
Sentinel
Sentinel Shield
Sentinel Shield damage vs. minor and elite combatants increased by 12.5%.
Warlock
Stormcaller
Stormtrance
Now has Ionic Blink and Landfall as default behaviors.
Landfall seeker damage reduced from 250 to 150.
Note: While the seekers added to bottom tree Stormcaller in Season of the Lost were a lot of fun, they made Stormtrance more of a shutdown Super than we're comfortable with. Given that it is also a solid roaming option and now has increased base mobility with Ionic Blink, we felt we could reduce the seekers damage.
Stormtrance no longer increases its attack upkeep cost when targeting multiple enemies at once.
Note: We believe that Stormtrance's greatest strength should be clearing hordes of enemies, and the increased cost based on target count was running counter to that intended role.
Stormtrance damage vs. minor and elite combatants increased by 20%.
Chain Lightning
While amplified, Chain Lightning now creates two sets of chains, up from one, jumping between more targets.
Now also jolts your primary target.
Lunge range increased from 4.5m to 5.25m.
Ball Lightning
While amplified, Ball Lightning now detonates two additional times, for a total of three vertical damaging strikes.
Increased arming shape length below the projectile by 2 meters to resolve some edge cases where targets that the detonation area could potentially damage were not triggering the projectile to detonate.
Arc Souls
Being or becoming amplified now also amplifies your Arc Souls, granting them a greatly increased fire rate.
Damage per projectile increased from 25 to 35 vs. PvE combatants.
Amplified Arc Souls projectiles per burst decreased from 6 to 5, fire rate decreased by ~10%.
Note: We expect to see significantly increased uptime on supercharged Arc Souls, so we wanted to provide a bit more time between bursts where players could safely engage an enemy that has an Arc Soul in PvP activities. We hope the increased PVE damage offsets this change sufficiently, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it going forward.
Deprecated the Rising Storm melee ability, along with the Transcendence, Pulsewave, and Arc Web subclass node perks.
Arc Aspects
Hunter:
Flow State
Tempest Strike
Lethal Current
Titan:
Touch of Thunder
Juggernaut
Knockout
Warlock:
Arc Soul
Lightning Surge
Electrostatic Mind
Arc Fragments
Spark of Beacons
Spark of Resistance
Spark of Momentum
Spark of Shock
Spark of Discharge
Spark of Frequency
Spark of Focus
Spark of Recharge
Spark of Voltage
Spark of Magnitude
????
????
????
????
General
Blink
Maximum displacement distance increased from 4.5m to 5.25m.
Maximum vertical offset (how high up or down you are displaced based on your aim angle from the horizon) increased from 2m to 2.5m.
Increased forgiveness of mantling to ledges after exiting Blink.
Energy model reworked:
Previously, Blink charges recharged slowly one-by-one, and could be activated at a cadence that felt inconsistent and often left players confused as to how many charges they had available.
Now, Blink has a consistent activation cost. You can carry two charges at once, and 2.2 seconds after activating your last Blink, both are immediately recharged. We've also added a screen wipe and sound effect when this occurs, similar to Icarus Dash, to help communicate when you're ready to Blink again. The overall availability of Blink is similar to the previous version, but we hope it is more understandable and results in fewer instances of frustration from the energy recharge model.
Note: These changes apply to Blink on all subclasses that have access to it.
Blind
Screen shader brightness has been significantly decreased to address photosensitivity issues from the previous fully whited-out version.
Ionic Traces
No longer provide Super energy on pickup.
Reduced melee, grenade, and class ability energy return to compensate for expected increased uptime:
Base melee energy return reduced from 20% to 12.5%.
Base grenade energy return reduced from 15% to 12.5%.
Base class ability energy return reduced from 25% to 15%.
Restoration
Fixed an issue where Restoration x2 could be removed by some PvE combatants' attacks and certain debuffs like Overload rounds.
Arc-focused Exotic armor updates
Crown of Tempests
Conduction Tines now also activate from defeating targets with jolt damage.
Getaway Artist
Now amplifies you in addition to granting an Arc Soul when consuming your grenade.
PLATFORM AND SYSTEMS
Fixed an issue on PlayStation platforms where the text in many areas of the game would display an extra line break.
GENERAL
Fixed an issue where text chat messages persist after being kicked out to the login screen without exiting the game.
Glimmer pickups will now play dematerialization VFX when picked up.
Added key binding options for vehicles which support lateral dodging functionality.
There is a known issue on Stadia where the title texts for these settings are not appearing as expected. The team is aware of the root cause, and a fix is expected in an upcoming hotfix.
Updated tooltips for various vehicle key binding options with more relevant information.
Multiple key bindings for vehicles have missing or incorrect definitions.
Destiny 2 now available in the Epic Games Store.
With the launch of Destiny 2 Season 18, a whole lot of changes have arrived to the sandbox. For those looking to engage with end-game content, understanding the nuances of Destiny’s update 6.2.0 will be important, especially for those chasing a day one raid clear. For more information on every facet of the game, stop by our Destiny 2 Strategy Guide.