Titans have been a recurring sight at the top of the PvP meta in Destiny 2 for many seasons now. While there are a plethora of factors that contribute to their strength in the Crucible environment, certain Exotic armor pieces—such as Antaeus Wards—have stood out as fundamental components to the dominance on display. But a big nerf is on the way.
That dominance is set to take a hit in the mid-season update for season 22, as Bungie announced in today’s This Week in Destiny blog post. As part of the Exotic armor balance changes, Antaeus Wards is being stripped of its passive boost to sliding, and Reflective Vents now require full class ability charge to deploy. It’s a significant increase to the cost of using the Exotic from encounter to encounter, heavily limiting a player’s ability to exploit its powerful shielding tool.
“Antaeus Wards was granting too large a benefit for too little a cost. It also suffered from a lack of meaningful counterplay options,” the developer explained. “By tying the damage reflection to class ability, we hope to reduce the uptime of the effect and to prevent it from easily stacking with the Juggernaut Arc aspect.”
This won’t prevent Titans from being able to make full use of the Exotic at the start of matches, but it should mean players don’t have to deal with shielded Titans sprinting at them with a shotgun at the frequency they currently do. The removal of the improved slide also plays a key factor here, as it had a lot of synergy with the close-quarters rush playstyle that Antaeus Wards is best known for.
Antaeus Wards wasn’t the only Exotic to get hit with a PvP-specific nerf, though. Young Ahamkara’s Spine, a Hunter Exotic, has also been seen as an outlier that needs to be reigned in by Bungie. Not only is its grenade energy generation being moved to proc on ability kills instead of ability damage, but the Tripmine Grenade’s bonus health is also being reduced.
“These changes to Young Ahamkara’s Spine targeted two aspects of the Exotic that we felt were causing issues. First, we want to bring its total bonus grenade energy more in line with other Solar ability-focused Exotics, like Athrys’s Embrace and Caliban’s Hand,” they said. “Second, we wanted to make it easier to counter the enhanced Tripmine Grenades in PvP by reducing the amount of bonus durability that the Exotic provides.”
The nerf to the enhanced Tripmine Grenades isn’t a surprise. Due to the hefty damage resistance and increased total health that the Exotic currently gives the grenade, even a poorly placed one can become a major obstacle for enemy players. They want a well-placed Tripmine to “still offer the Hunter an advantage,” but not act as a near-invincible tool for cutting off a lane.
Both of these balance changes will go live in Destiny 2 with the mid-season update. While Bungie hasn’t given a specific release date for the patch, it’s expected to drop sometime later this month. The Exotic focusing system at Rahool is already scheduled to get an update on Oct. 17, which could also end up being the date for the larger mid-season rollout.
