Just a week before thanksgiving, the developers at Bungie have shared their plans on how ability cooldowns will work in Destiny 2 moving forward.
Ability Cooldown Changes
According to Eric Smith, the game’s Combat Gameplay Designer, cooldowns for individual ability types, such as melee, grenade, class, and Super, have been roughly the same. For example, all grenades, except for Stasis grenades, have shared cooldowns.
This sparks the need to ensure that all abilities should be balanced in terms of cooldown relative to their power output. Thus, they changed ability cooldowns individually and adjusted power outputs accordingly.
For instance, the Flux Grenade will have its base cooldown increased to 182 seconds. To make up for that, its attached detonation damage is increased to 250. When conditions are right, you can potentially one-shot kill a Guardian in PvP.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Firebolt Grenade will have its cooldown reduced to 64 seconds and its damage per bolt decreased to 65. This means you can lob these grenades more frequently than Flux, but don't expect Guardians to drop easily from the bolts. However, its damage in PvE will be increased by 15%, which can still pose a threat.
Super Changes
Mike Humbolt, Game Designer for Destiny 2, said that most people would wait for their Supers to be available, especially in high-pressure situations such as when the game is tied in Trials of Osiris. The devs want you to become more active instead of waiting things out.
So, Super regeneration will be slightly different in the future. Your Super energy would still regenerate passively, albeit at a significantly reduced rate. If you want your bar to fill up, you have to either deal or take damage from your opponents.
Furthermore, all Guardians should get at least one full bar in a 6v6 match. So, if you’re battling others in Iron Banner, you can fire up your Super at least once, provided you actively engage in combat.
In Trials, Supers would be much less frequent as this particular 3v3 mode should be a testament of player skill - not an overreliance on Supers.
These proposed changes will only affect the PvP side of things as Super uptime in PvE will be relatively unchanged. They will be implemented during the game’s 30th Anniversary, happening on December 7.
