A few months ago, Destiny 2 developer Bungie provided some substantial buffs to certain Super abilities. One of the abilities that was improved was the Hunter’s Spectral Blades, a new Super added in the Forsaken expansion. However, players soon noticed that the buff made Spectral Blades just a bit *too* powerful in Crucible PvP. In response to player feedback, Bungie has now formally announced plans to nerf Spectral Blades in an upcoming update.
Destiny 2 Spectral Blade Nerfs Incoming
Bungie outlined the changes it will be making to Spectral Blades in its latest This Week at Bungie blog post. The studio acknowledged that there are two main areas where the Super feels overpowered: duration and survivability. More specifically, Spectral Blades grants a lot of boons with virtually no downsides:
- It’s a sustained roaming Super which means a skilled user is guaranteed to get multiple kills with it.
- The Super’s long duration means that a single user can oftentimes wipe an entire enemy team in close-quarters PvP.
- While Spectral Blades is active, the user is harder to see and has high damage resistance. This means it’s virtually impossible to kill a Spectral Blades user unless you spot them from very far away.
To address the above concerns, Bungie is tweaking the total amount of damage resistance Spectral Blades grants. Currently, Spectral Blades actually has the highest amount of damage resistance out of all the roaming Supers. When the changes go live, however, both the in-stealth and out-of-stealth damage resistance amounts will take a hit. In-stealth damage resistance for Spectral Blades will decrease from 62 percent to 54.4 percent. Out-of-stealth damage resistance will decrease from the current 60 percent to 52 percent.
Duration and Energy Cost Tweaks
The following changes are also being made to Spectral Blades’ duration and Super energy cost for attacks:
- Out-of-stealth duration decreased from17.5 seconds to 14.5 seconds when not attacking.
- In-stealth duration decreased from 26.6 seconds to 23.5 seconds when not attacking.
- Light melee attacks cost 50 percent more Super energy to use.
Lastly, Bungie is looking into making changes to the Spectral Blades-enhancing Gwisin Vest Exotic armor. The studio hasn’t finalized any changes now, but if any do come they’ll arrive in season 7.
For more on Destiny 2, be sure to check out this new Drifter lore video Bungie recently shared. We’ve also got a guide on how to earn the game’s new Arbalest Exotic weapon.