Titans in Destiny 2 will soon see a bunch of buffs to their abilities, bringing the experience of playing the beefy subclass a little more in line with the fantasy and making it more viable in endgame activities.
Bungie announced the balancing changes it’s making to Titans in its weekly This Week in Destiny blog, outlining a series of tweaks coming in October with the release of the game’s next content episode, Revenant. The big takeaway is that Bungie is hoping to make playing as a Titan–the tank-ish, slightly meatheaded of Destiny 2’s three character subclasses–feel a little more like the fantasy of playing a frontline fighter that tends to punch their way through the opposition.
That doesn’t necessarily mean making Titans stronger in a martial sense, however; instead, Bungie is making tweaks to different elements of the Titan build in other ways. The one that’ll affect players more clearly is making the Titan barricade ability now taunt enemies, drawing their fire away from teammates and toward the barrier itself.
The Titan barricade is an energy wall that Titans can lay down on the battlefield, either in full-sized versions that function as a big shield or as a smaller piece of cover players can shoot over. Right now, it basically just functions as a wall you can hide behind for a few seconds before getting back to the fight, but enemies still target players behind the wall or when they’re away from it. The idea here is that, in most cases, enemies will prioritize shooting at the barricade until it’s destroyed, increasing its defensive functionality by allowing Titans to use it to take some of the heat off teammates, even if those teammates aren’t actually standing behind it.
Barricades will also be stronger going forward, taking 50% less damage from rank-and-file enemies, so they’ll last longer generally in PvE activities. They’ll also provide better protection from explosive splash damage: Bungie is increasing that protection from 20% to 60% for anyone standing behind a barricade. The buffs are also being applied to the Sentinel Shield Super ability in which players generate a shield in front of themselves that they wield while walking around, and when using the Unbreakable aspect, in which players generate a personal shield that absorbs damage–both will now have additional defensive uses than just making yourself harder to kill.
Bungie is running out a few other tweaks as well, making it easier for different Titan abilities to destroy Stasis crystals they create to deal freezing damage to nearby enemies–another means by which Titans should get a boost to their viability without Bungie specifically amping up their damage output. One place Titans are getting a boost in damage, though, is in their punches. Titans are supposed to be the class that opt for brawn more often than other characters, so their unpowered melees are getting boosted 5% against players and 20% against PvE enemies.
The blog also detailed a number of other tweaks Bungie is rolling out with the Revenant update, including adjustments to various “roaming” Super abilities–the ones players use that allow them to move around, like the Hunter’s Golden Gun and Spectral Blades, or the Warlock’s Chaos Reach and Stormtrance. Those Supers are getting increases to damage reduction when they’re used in PvE, and several are also getting slight buffs to make them a little more useful against enemies.
Check out Bungie’s This Week in Destiny post for a full rundown of the changes.