Destiny 2 is a really fun game with a lot of grind to reach the top. Due to the various combinations of weapons and armor, Bungie is changing the way swords work in Destiny 2, and it’s going to have a huge impact on the speedrunning community.
As stated by Bungie in a recent post, the developer wants to make swords, introduced into the world of Destiny five years ago with The Taken King expansion, "a bit more enticing." To do that, swords are receiving a nerf with the start of season 10.
"While you'll still rip and tear through opponents, as you would expect from a sword, most of what you know needs to be unlearned," Bungie stated.
Swords will be balanced and now receive an energy meter so that you can’t spam through every level. "Swords now have their own reserve of energy that recharges naturally on its own and is not to be confused with ammo capacity," the post says. "This energy will overtake your melee slot while you're wielding a sword and is spent on various actions."
The nerf on swords will mainly affect the raids and not PvP/PvP players. Crazy builds have been made using the sword as the energy weapon and maxing out agility stats would make it more devastating.
D2 had already stripped a lot of the core mechanics that established a skill gap from D1 speeds (titan skating, sparrow flying, etc) but now that worldline is being put into the ground this almost seems like a final straw for speedrunners (1/?)
— Eli (@Sweatcicle) February 6, 2020
Even some of the most famous speedrunners like Sweat had a say in this conversation. "It discourages speedrunners to continue unless some crazy new tech is found," Sweat said. "I know D2 cannot and should not be patch oriented around speedrunning, but a little bit of a heads up would've been nice. I just feel like movement is going to feel super slow after this patch idk."
Here are the change notes:
Sword Energy
Swords now have their own reserve of energy that recharges naturally on its own. This is not to be confused with ammo capacity. This energy will overtake your melee slot while you’re wielding a sword and is spent on various actions.
Guarding
Guarding now uses sword energy instead of consuming ammo. Different guards have different consumption rates, damage resistance, and behaviors, so be sure to experiment and find a guard type you like. You’ll still need at least one ammo to begin guarding, though.
Back during Season of the Drifter, the Stronghold exotic for Titans was introduced, allowing them to guard with relative impunity and opening up more interesting opportunities for swords to shine in a variety of content which caused us to take another look at the guard function itself. Although the guard function has always existed, it was never really considered worth the cost. With this change, we hope that players will use their guard intelligently to protect themselves instead of it being an almost unused button. Rest easy, Stronghold has also been modified to still allow Titans a unique guarding experience.
Light Attacks
Grounded light attacks for all Swords will now loop for an infinite combo, and all Swords can cleave.
While the basic three-hit combo is quite a staple of melee weapons in many games – In a shooter this leaves the player extremely open to enemies. By letting the light attacks loop, we also push them and the heavy attacks apart further. Cleaving on light attacks was previously only on the Aggressive Swords, but we opted to add it to the rest of them for more hack ‘n slash.
Heavy Attacks
Heavy attacks now consume Sword energy. While you are always able to perform a heavy attack, the attack is stronger when you have full energy, and weaker when you don’t.
A lot of swordplay in many situations simply boiled down to endlessly mashing the heavy attack button instead of mixing up attacks which weren’t quite the most interesting experience. Do note that aerial heavy attacks as a general rule do not consume Sword energy, but that can vary based on the Sword.
Shield Bypass
A portion of most Sword attacks can partially bypass elemental shields.
We added this to give Swords a little bit of a personality difference from shotguns who share a very similar role in combat as powerful CQC weapons.
So, what are your thoughts on this new patch coming next season? Do you think that it’s a great choice to remove abusing the speedruns? Personally, I think the game needs a lot of balancing and they are going in the right direction. Whatever your thoughts may be, let us know in the comments below.
