In their most recent This Week At Bungie article, the developer addressed an issue we’ve been pretty vocal on. It’s cold, dark, and reeks of evil. I am of course talking about Stasis. This new element, added with the Beyond Light expansion, has been killing PvP ever since it was introduced. It’s not fun to get frozen in place by the 1% of Guardians who understand Stasis more than the rest of us, but now Bungie is working to remedy that.
Short And Mid-Term Goals
Bungie has made it clear that they know about the unpleasantness that Stasis has caused. They’re working to fix it, but they’re also working to rebalance the way that abilities and guns are used in PvP on the whole.
In the short-term, Bungie is bringing the power of Stasis down in PvP by quite a lot. They’re actively downgrading the power of abilities like Shatter Dive and Whisper of Fissures for one thing. These are two abilities that decimate Crucible teams.
More specifically, Shatterdive’s range is being reduced from 50 to 5, and the damage reduction it causes to the Guardian wielding it is being cut in half.
The maximum/minimum damage for Whisper of Fissures is being brought down to 30-4 from 42-22. The detonation radius is also being restricted slightly to make it a little fairer on fleeing Guardians.
In the mid-term, Bungie wants to focus on the Subclass usage win-rate. Stasis is obviously the outlier right now, and Bungie wants to make each Subclass as viable as the other to create a true balance in PvP. It should be based on skill, not Subclass, as to whether you win or not.
Finally, and this is something I’m pretty excited about, Bungie is reviewing the balance between gunplay and abilities. They’re looking at how to rebalance everything here, and my hopes are for a guns-only Crucible game mode.
Something drastically needs to change in PvP. It has needed to ever since Stasis came along. If it’s left much longer, then we’ll have a smaller group of Crucible Guardians who all use Stasis and never have fun. No one wants that.
Let us know how you feel about the planned updates in the comments.
