• Foetracer: When you deal damage with one of your abilities, you gain a damage bonus with weapons that have damage types matching your subclass damage type. Additionally, when defeating an enemy you've damaged with an ability (with another ability or with a subclass matching weapon), you spawn an elemental collectable (e.g. Ionic Trace, Firesprite)
• Knucklehead Radar: The old functionality of Foetracer (visually marks targets, deals more damage to low health targets, buffs AE of all weapons) is added on to the current Knucklehead Radar functionality (radar while aiming, enhanced radar resolution while crouching)
• Lucky Raspberry: Will still expand the chaining of Arc Bolt grenades, but now instead of the number of chains granting grenade energy, you get grenade energy from the lightning strikes on jolt or picking up an ionic trace. Also, it will let Arc Bolt grenades stun Overload champions immediately (instead of needing to apply then proc jolt).
• Renewal Grasps: Removed the increased Duskfield grenade cooldown when using the exotic. Still increases duskfield size and buffs ally damage reduction, and nerfs enemy damage dealt, while in the field.

• Icefall Mantle: Grants an escalating bonus to Stasis weapon damage when getting rapid Stasis kills, activating your class ability immediately grants the highest tier bonus.
• Doom Fang Pauldrons: Grants an escalating bonus to Void weapon damage when getting rapid Void kills, getting a Void melee kill immediately grants the highest tier bonus
• Path of the Burning Steps: Getting a Solar Grenade kill now grants the highest tier of damage bonus (already has an escalating damage bonus on rapid solar kills)
• Eternal Warrior: Already grants the highest tier of damage bonus when super ends, but because your super ending is a rarer occurrence, the duration of this max tier buff is extended to 30 seconds.
• ACD/0 Feedback Fence: Completely reworked to now tie into the armor charge system. When melee hits give you an Armor Charge, you take reduced melee damage while having that Armor Charge. Taking melee damage causes you to emit a burst of damaging Arc energy that jolts, consuming your Armor Charge and increasing damage based on the number of stacks consumed.
• Hallowfire Heart: They're replacing the function that gives base energy to solar abilities, and replacing it with a perk that will let you build more into sunspots. You will be "seeing many more sunspots on the battlefield as a result" (they don't specify more than this). The ability regen rate buff when super is charged is left as is.

• Astrocyte Verse: Added two new effects: When you blink, enemies near the end location of the warp will receive volatile. Additionally, when using the Nova Warp Super, the Dark Blink warp ability no longer consumes super energy
• Geomag Stabilizers: They've heard calls to give this exotic back its top off effect, but they feel that that specific effect had silly play patterns. Instead, Ionic Traces will now grant Super energy.
• Wings of Sacred Dawn: Reloading is typically the action that causes floating to end while using this exotic, so they're letting the exotic reload solar weapons (including the one you're holding) from reserves every time you get a kill while ADS. Should pair well with Xenophage.
• Winter's Guile: This exotic was a disappointing combo with Stasis due to the nature of Warlock's Stasis melee, so now when using it with Stasis, enemies frozen by the melee will automatically shatter after a short duration.

• They've been trying to experiment with ways to opt in to being more effective against barricades (antibarrier rounds, various perks, increasing special weapon damage against them), but in the heat of the moment these just aren't coming into play.
• They're making some base level changes across different Barricade abilities to reduce their effectiveness, particularly against Towering Barricade:
• Towering Barricade base cooldown up 48 -> 70.
• Maximum health of all barricades reduced from 600 to 500
  • Bastion already took increased damage from players, so its effective health in PvP went from 500 -> 417.
• Damage resistance for all barricades increased against PvE combatants.

• Striker Titan has been significantly overperforming in high-level PvP activities. This is partially likely due to the Arc seasonal artifact perks, but they also believe the base kit is too strong.
• Thundercrash is theoretically a one-off super, but in practice its kill potential is closer to a roaming super, so its base cooldown is being updated to reflect that. They think this change will mostly be felt in PvP, as PvE can rely on kill/damage super generation to build super charge quickly.
• Thundercrash base cooldown time up 500 -> 556, matching the majority of the roaming super roster.
• Knockout is currently too forgiving in letting players clean up engagements with melee attacks early in a duel, especially when combined with other melee-enhancing effects.
• For Season 22, they're reducing its damage bonus against players, but they'll be keeping a close eye on whether that should remain for future adjustments.
  • NOTE: this has kinda weird implications, maybe they're already planning further nerfs in the future?
• Knockout damage bonus vs players reduced from 50 -> 30

• They're happy with how Strand has shaken up the sandbox, but there are outliers they need to address.

• In development, they tried many versions of Suspend's duration, and settled on a long duration versus Stasis to compensate for the lack of a shatter type mechanic. Having seen how it's played out in the live game, they don't think this is the right place for it to be.

• They're shifting its uptime and potency for a few reasons:

  • Suspend is currently a skeleton key that solves combat problems against all combat types
  • Its current duration heavily steps on the toes of Stasis Freeze, which they want to keep as the highest potency disable in the sandbox
  • The uptime of Suspending effects doesn't allow for meaningful player decision-making when choosing when and where to place a hard disable.

• To address these problems, they're making a suite of changes for Suspend and the effects that apply it, to carve out a healthier role in the sandbox:

• Suspend

  • Reduced Suspend duration against non-Champion PvE combatants from 8 -> 5 seconds (12 -> 7 seconds with Thread of Continuity)
  • Reduced Suspend duration even further against Champions, from 8 -> 3 seconds (12 -> 4 seconds with Thread of Continuity)
  • Increased immediate damage dealt by Suspend to boss combatants by 67%

• They're also nerfing two fragments because the ability uptime they granted led to increased uptime of Suspending effects:

• Thread of Mind

  • Reduced class energy gain, based on tier of defeated target:
  • Minor combatants 15% -> 10%
  • Major combatants and players 25% -> 15%
  • Bosses, Champions, and minibosses 50% -> 25%

• Thread of Generation

  • Reduced the overall energy gain per hit against PvE enemies by about 20%
  • Rebalanced the energy gain multipliers across primary weapon archetypes, bringing precision weapons and automatic weapons closer together.
  • Overall, reduced the efficiency of fully automatic primary weapons and increased the efficiency of precision primary weapons.

• In combination with these changes, they want to shift some power over to other Strand effects, to allow for more diverse options for Strand users.

  • Increased Threadling damage in PvE by 30%
  • Reduced Tangle creation cooldown time from 15 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • PvE combatants affected by Sever now deal even less damage, 30% -> 40% reduction

• They're also making changes to various Strand abilities and aspects:

• The Hunter Silkstrike super is a bit unforgiving, particularly in PvP, so they're improving its usability:

  • Increased damage resistance 40% -> 45%
  • Reduced suppression time between air attacks
  • Reduced vertical lift provided by the heavy attack to reduce instances of missing the primary target

• Threaded Specter is performing well in PvP, but not in PvE:

  • Increased Threaded Specter lifetime 10 -> 12 seconds
  • Increased Threaded Specter health vs PvE combatants
  • Threaded Specter now takes longer to detect nearby PvE combatants at the beginning of its lifetime
  • PvE combatants now more consistently focus on the Threaded Specter instead of the Hunter
  • Allied players no longer have reticle magnetism toward Threaded Specter

• The Wanderer aspect is strong when thrown, but is somewhat hard to use in more difficult situations, making it more dangerous to leave the safety of cover to grab a Tangle:

  • Destroying a Tangle now creates a delayed Suspending detonation
  • Increased Suspend detonation radius 6 -> 7 meters against PvE combatants
  • Increased thrown Wanderer Tangle detonation damage to match standard Tangle detonations

• They heard feedback that grapple melee wasn't consistently working, particularly for hunters and warlocks with ranged melee abilities, so now grapple melee will always take priority when its active regardless of whether the target is in range or not.

• They are also making several small buffs to fragments:

  • Thread of Propagation: Now grants +10 strength
  • Thread of Continuity: Now grants +10 strength
  • Thread of Wisdom: No longer requires a precision kill to activate
  • Thread of Isolation: Reduced the number of precision hits required to activate by an average of about 30% (varies by weapon archetype)
  • Thread of Rebirth: The number of created Threadlings now increases based on the tier of the defeated target, 1 for minor combatants, 2 for elite combatants and players, 3 for bosses, champions, and minibosses.

• Season 22 will have a couple more changes and bug fixes so far unannounced (like a fix to Celestial Fire's scorch not activating melee perks like Sunbracers)

• They're working on a suite of changes for Season 23 as well

Did we miss anything? Let us known on Twitter or in the #tips channel on our Discord.

Sources:

• Dev Insights: Season 22 Abilities and Armor Changes Preview