All major changes to Destiny 2 with Season of the Wish

Want to know every major change coming to Destiny 2 with Season of the Witch? Then we got you covered.

Season 23, also known as Season of the Wish, has dropped alongside patch 7.3.0, which features massive changes to every aspect of Destiny 2. Of course, the most important ones are nerfs and buffs to weapons, armour, and abilities.

Knowing which weapons are best for PvE and PvP as well as keeping tabs on recent armour/ability changes will ensure you're at the top of your game when it comes to trying difficult activities like raids or Trials of Osiris.

Destiny 2 Season of the Wish changes

If you've taken a look at the full patch notes you might feel overwhelmed. With that in mind, we've highlighted all important buffs and nerfs you need to take into consideration while jumping into Season 23.

Weapon changes

Credit: Bungie

First, let's talk weapon changes. The listed changes also include perk tuning.

Weapon Archetypes

General

• Updated Drang and Zaouli's Bane to load ammo at the correct point in the animation.

Auto Rifles

General

• Increased damage against Minor (red bar) combatants by 10%.

Pulse Rifles

General

• Increased damage against Minor (red bar) and Major (orange bar) combatants by 12.5%.

Glaives

Projectiles

• Increased projectile speed by 30%.
• Increased projectile damage in PvE by 25%.
• Decreased projectile damage in PvP.
  • Aggressives: 123
  • Adaptives: 113
  • Rapid-Fires: 101

Shields

• When the Glaive is held, shield energy now recharges passively at a rate of 1% per second.
• Set up the base Glaive shield damage resistance to be tiered in PvP.
  • Base Glaive shield damage resistance remains at 50%.
  • Reduced damage resistance against Primary ammo weapons and melee attacks to 30%.

Melee

• Reduced the delay after firing before you can melee from 0.75 seconds to 0.2 seconds.

Sniper Rifles

General

• Increased Sniper Rifle PvE damage with a flat buff of 15%. (This also applies to Exotic Sniper Rifles that use Heavy ammo.)

Swords

• Updated the Sword reticle to convey more information, and now have elements that better show its current charge state and reflect its current recharge delay.
• Caster Swords and other Swords that fire projectiles now have a subtle central element on their reticles in addition to these updates to assist in aiming.
• Fixed an issue causing Sword perks that activate while guarding to not activate properly while the player has an overshield of any kind.
• Fixed an issue causing knockback to not be negated while blocking with a Sword while the player has an overshield of any kind.
• Fixed an issue where unpowered (ammo-less) Swords still received buffs from Banner of War.

Exotic weapons

Vex Mythoclast

Increased damage versus

• Minor (red bar) combatants by 10%.
• Bosses by 25%.
• Champions by 200% when in the LFR mode.

Revision Zero

• Increased damage versus Champions by 100%.

Thorn

• Picking up a Remnant can overflow the magazine, up to 40 rounds max.
• Thorn Catalyst improves stats and functionality:
  • Adds +20 to range.
  • Adds +10 stability.
  • Kills or picking up a Remnant grants additional range, as well as handling and mobility.

Class Glaives

General changes

• Grant 1 ammo when you activate the perk, so you can use it even if you are out of ammo.
• No longer passively drains shield energy when you Special ammo reload to activate the perk.
• Can no longer be deactivated by reloading or stowing the weapon.

Edge of Intent (Warlock)

• Healing turret projectiles now provide Cure and restoration and detonate in an 8m radius area of effect (AoE) to provide the benefits to nearby allies.
• Increased mag size from 4 to 5.

Edge of Action (Titan)

• Passing through the bubble now grants bonus reload speed, handling, and a small amount of stacking bonus damage in addition to the overshield.
• Reduced the health of the bubble from 8000 to 2400 to account for the increased uptime and improved effects.

Edge of Concurrence (Hunter)

• Lightning Seeker now jolts targets on impact.
• Reduced the direct hit damage of the round that generates the lightning bolt, to account for the free ammo being granted.

Osteo Striga

• Removed the Submachine Gan (SMG) damage bonus scalar that was affecting the poison damage.
• This brings Osteo Striga poison down to match standard Necrotic Grip poison, though it will still deal 40% bonus damage vs. Minors for being an Exotic.

Salvation's Grip

• Placed a speed limit on the detonation when damaging Stasis crystals. This will help prevent the detonation from being able to shatter too many crystals on a single frame, which would sometimes kick the player to orbit with an error code.
• Salvation's Grip shatter kills and Headstone Stasis crystal shatter kills no longer use a blank icon on the kill screen.

Tommy's Matchbook

• Updated the description strings to properly communicate that the Scorch functionality is tied to the catalyst being equipped.

Winterbite

• Increased the detonation damage of the large projectile by 25%.
• The self-damage blast radius has been halved, and the self-damage has been reduced.

Monte Carlo

• The bayonet stab now has controller rumble.

Wicked Implement

• Fixed an issue causing Wicked Implement's spawned Stasis shards from activating the Collective Action perk.

Two-Tailed Fox

• Fixed an issue causing Two-Tailed Fox to revert to Void damage when stowed while empty.

Quicksilver Storm

• Fixed an issue where Quicksilver Storm plays special reload animation in third-person instead of normal reload when a normal reload is executed.
• Fixed an issue where Quicksilver Storm foregrip animates when firing in Auto Rifle mode.

Tractor Cannon

• Fixed an issue where Tractor Cannon was missing a hip-fire reticle.

Perks

Danger Zone

• Made a small change to how it works on Rocket Launchers.

Heavy Grip

• Removed an unintended effect that was slightly increasing incoming flinch.

Precision Instrument

• Increased Enhanced Precision Instrument damage bonus at max stacks from 26% to 30%.

Kinetic Tremors

Made the activation requirements more consistent across archetypes.

• Pulse Rifles: Reduced from 12 to 11 (Enhanced increased from 9 to 10).
• Non-burst Sidearms: Reduced from 12 to 8 (Enhanced reduced from 9 to 7).

Armor changes

Credit: Bungie

Next up are armour changes divided by class (Hunter, Warlock, and Titan).

Exotic Armor

Aeon Swift, Aeon Safe, and Aeon Soul

Sect of Force

• Rapid precision hits provide quicker reload and weapon swap speeds, and the bonus now lasts for 10 seconds (up from 6).
• No longer grants bonus melee, grenade, or Super energy on stunning a Champion or defeating a boss or miniboss. Instead, stunning a Champion or rapid precision hits against Champions, elites, or minibosses will mark them for your allies.
• Allies deal +20% more damage to marked targets.
• When a target is first marked, nearby Aeon Cult allies who do not have the Sect of Force role equipped gain grenade and melee energy.

Sect of Insight

• Nearby Aeon Cult allies who do not have the Sect of Insight role equipped no longer gain a bonus to weapon damage for a short time. Instead, they gain a burst of Super energy.

Sect of Vigor

• Now provides damage resistance against combatants when an ally dies or is resurrected, in addition to the existing class ability energy.
• When you cast your Super, nearby allies no longer gain an instant burst of healing or an Overshield. Instead, nearby critically wounded allies gain damage resistance from combatants as long as they stay near you. Nearby Aeon Cult allies who do not have the Sect of Vigor role equipped will also recover class ability energy more quickly.

Hunter

Shards of Galanor

• Throwing Knife kills now grant Super energy ranging between +2.5% and +5%, depending on the type of combatant killed.

Ophidia Spathe

• Knife kills now grant a stacking damage bonus to throwing knives.
• Stacks up to 3 times for 5 seconds: 30%, 60%, 100%.
• Dodging refreshes the timer.

St0mp-EE5

• Removed previously added requirement to have full class ability energy to benefit from the movement bonuses.
• Reduced the airborne lateral acceleration bonus.
• Now provides damage resistance against combatants while airborne.

Mechaneer's Tricksleeves

• The Sidearm damage bonus now persists for 5 seconds after your shields begin to recharge.
• Sidearm kills extend the damage bonus' duration by 3 seconds and completely reload your Sidearm from reserves.
• The damage bonus has been reduced in PvP to compensate for it lasting longer. It is now +10% Sidearm damage (down from +35%).

The Bombardiers

• Now applies 20 slow stacks to enemy players and 40 slow stacks to PvE combatants.

Triton Vice

• Increased Glaive melee damage bonus while surrounded to +100% for both PvE and PvP (up from +30% in PvE and +10% in PvP).

Celestial Nighthawk

• Precision kills now grant Super energy ranging between +1.5% and +4.5%, depending on target type killed.
• Increased Golden Gun impact damage by 25%.

Titan

Precious Scars

• Kills with weapons matching your subclass now apply restoration Tier 1 for 1.5 seconds in PvP and 3 seconds in PvE.

Severance Enclosure

• Increased size and damage of the explosion.
• Kills with this Exotic's explosion will now trigger an additional explosion.
• Peregrine Greaves
• You now have to be airborne for a brief time before the Exotic effects will apply.
• Damaging Champions, Tormentors, or minibosses with a Shoulder Charge deals further increased damage and refunds your melee energy.

Wormgod Caress

• The Burning Fist Exotic effect has been reworked. It is now a meter that increases on melee kills and finishers and decays over time.
• The meter decays more quickly the more full it is.
• The meter is broken up into 5 sections which provide escalating melee and Glaive melee damage bonuses. The upper end of the meter also provides escalating weapon damage bonuses.

Ashen Wake

• Fusion Grenade impacts now stun Unstoppable Champions.

Synthoceps

• Removed extended melee lunge distance.
• Increased Glaive melee bonus to +100% (from +50%).
• Reduced the PvE surrounded melee damage bonus to +165% (from +200%).
• Now improves weapon handling and reload speed while surrounded.

Warlock

Ballidorse Wrathweavers

• Now when you cast a Frostpulse rift nearby allies gain a Tier 2 Stasis Surge weapon bonus for 10 seconds in PvE and 5 seconds in PvP. They also gain a 50hp overshield.
• The Stasis damage bonus provided to allies by the Winter's Wrath Shockwave is now the Tier 4 Stasis Surge weapon bonus.
• When Winter's Wrath ends, you now gain the Tier 4 Stasis Surge weapon bonus.

Apotheosis Veil

• Casting your Super now grants Cure Tier 3 for you and nearby allies.
• After your Super ends you now temporarily gain greatly increased melee and grenade regen for 8 seconds.

Felwinter's Helm

• Moved the size of the weakening burst and duration of Weaken up one tier against all targets, except for finishers against bosses, which retains the maximum size and duration.

Karnstein Armlets

• Melee kills now grant Cure Tier 3 and restoration Tier 1 for 8 seconds.
• Finishers now grant Cure Tier 3 and restoration Tier 2 for 8 seconds.

Armor Mods

Heavy Handed, Firepower, and Reaper

• Added a 10-second cooldown for generating Orbs of Power.
• Reaper now requires a kill be secured within 10 seconds of using your class ability to generate an Orb of Power.

Melee Kickstart, Grenade Kickstart, and Utility Kickstart

• Now only refund ability energy if the player has at least a single armor charge.
• They now provide between +16% and +45% ability energy (down from +17% and +50% respectively) based on how many stacks of the mod are equipped as well as how many armor charges they consume.

Momentum Transfer, Bolstering Detonation, Impact Induction, and Focusing Strike

• Now provide 12%/17%/20% ability energy for 1/2/3 stacks respectively (down from 20%/25%/25%).
• Impact Induction and Focusing Strike now require a powered melee attack to function.

Outreach and Bomber

• Now provides 12%/17%/20% ability energy for 1/2/3 stacks respectively.
• The energy gained is further reduced based on the cooldown of the class ability used, with the shortest cooldowns reducing it by 60%.

Distribution

• Now provides 4%/6%/7% ability energy to the neutral game abilities and 2%/3%/4% Super energy for 1/2/3 stacks respectively.
• The energy gained is further reduced based on the cooldown of the class ability used, with the shortest cooldowns reducing it by 60%.

Additional note: All of the above mods continue to provide only 50% of their ability energy returns in PvP.

Abilities

Credit: Bungie

Finally, let's look at all ability changes. First, those changes affecting all classes overall before going into more:

Reduced melee lunge suppression time for victims struck by certain displacing melee abilities from 1 second to 0.5 seconds.

This affects the following melee abilities:

• Grapple Melee
• Pocket Singularity
• Shield Bash
• Seismic Strike
• Hammer Strike
• Shiver Strike

Sprint and slide-activated melees can no longer be activated after the player fires their weapon during a slide, preventing effective one-shot-eliminations from combinations like slide + Shotgun + shoulder charge.

This affects the following melee abilities:

• Seismic Strike
• Shield Bash
• Hammer Strike
• Howl of the Storm
• Consecration
• Flechette Storm
• Lightning Surge
• Tempest Strike

Blink

• Fixed an issue where rapid Blinks could result in failed slide attempts.

All non-Super abilities

Neutral game abilities now receive variable amounts of ability energy from perks that grant instant percentage chunk energy, based on the ability's passive cooldown tier.

• The shortest cooldown abilities will receive the same percentage of energy as they did previously, but as passive cooldown increases, the energy granted from perks scales per tier, down to a floor of 50% for grenades and class abilities and 60% for melee abilities. This means that the number of seconds of raw cooldown reduction granted from chunk energy perks is more closely equivalent across all ability cooldown tiers.
• For example, with Firebolt Grenade (which have a 64-second base cooldown time) vs. Lightning Grenade (which have a 152-second base cooldown time):
• With the previous system, a 10% base energy chunk reduced the cooldown of Firebolt Grenade by 6.4 seconds and reduced the cooldown of Lightning Grenade by 15.2 seconds.
• With the new system, a 10% base energy chunk reduces the cooldown of Firebolt Grenade by 6.4 seconds and reduces the cooldown of Lightning Grenade by 7.6 seconds.

Note: Perks that were designed to grant full energy refunds (e.g., Knock 'Em Down) or perks that target a single, specific ability (e.g., Shinobu's Vow) are not affected and grant the same energy that they did in the previous system.

Titan

• Fixed an issue that prevented shoulder charges from breaking invisibility.

Arc Subclasses

Hunter

Tempest Strike

• Increased base damage from 110 to 125.
• Reworked tracking behavior to be more consistent at further ranges.
• Improved consistency when traveling over rough terrain.

Titan

Thundercrash

• Reduced damage resistance vs. players from 53% to 25%.
• Fixed an issue where Thundercrash was using the incorrect tier of damage-based energy recharger.

Warlock

Chaos Reach

• Fixed an issue where Chaos Reach was using the incorrect tier of damage-based energy recharger.

Arc General

Amplified

• Updated first-person amplified visual effects.

Solar Subclasses

Titan

Throwing Hammer

• When picked up, it now returns melee energy over 1.4 seconds rather than instantly.
• Increased projectile tracking strength by about 20%.

Sol Invictus

• Reduced maximum Sunspot duration from 20 seconds to 12 seconds.

Warlock

Well of Radiance

• Increased base cooldown time from 417 seconds to 455 seconds.

Solar General

Restoration

Reduced healing rate at restoration 1

• Old: 40hp/s (PvE) - 20hp/s (PvP)
• New: 35hp/s (PvE) - 17.5hp/s (PvP)

Reduced healing rate at restoration 2

• Old: 65hp/s (PvE) - 32.5hp/s (PvP)
• New: 50hp/s (PvE) - 25hp/s (PvP)

Void Subclasses

Titan

Ward of Dawn

• Increased base cooldown time from 417 seconds to 455 seconds.

Sentinel Shield

Shield Throw ability energy regeneration while Sentinel Shield is active is no longer dependent on the player's Discipline stat.

• Regeneration time previously ranged between 2.5 and 5 seconds, based on Discipline, and is now a flat 3 seconds at all times.

Note: This regeneration rate is reduced for the second Shield Throw charge when Offensive Bulwark is equipped.

Warlock

Feed the Void

• Increased grenade energy regeneration per kill while Devour is active by 100%.

Note: Actual energy gain amounts vary based on target type and grenade recharge tier.

• Now also improves the strength of Devour's heal when equipped.- See below for base Devour behavior changes.

Pocket Singularity

• Increased projectile arming shape radius from 0.75m to 2m.
• Increased projectile detonation radius from 3m to 3.75m.
• Increased vertical acceleration bias in detonation physics impulse by about 10%.
• Increased physics acceleration strength vs. players by about 15%.
• Now interrupts active slides on targets hit by Pocket Singularity.

Void General

Devour

• Healing amount on activation and when refreshed reduced from a full heal to 100hp. unless Feed the Void is equipped.
• Now heals both health and shield sections more smoothly rather than adding health to each section separately.

Stasis Subclasses

Hunter

Withering Blade

• Increased projectile speed by 10%.
• Increased maximum projectile lifetime by 10%.
• Increased maximum bounce count from 2 to 3.
• Increased tracking consistency.
• Fixed an issue where projectile tracking would shut off completely if your first bounce was off the floor.

Winter's Shroud

• Increased Slow stacks applied to PvE combatants from 40 to 60.
• Increased Slow duration applied to PvE combatants from 4 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Increased Slow detonation size vs. PvE combatants from 8m to 9m.

Titan

Shiver Strike

• Now slows players on hit, a behavior previously removed in Hotfix 3.2.0.3.
• Fixed an issue where Shiver Strike would not function with the Melee Kickstart armor mod.

Glacial Quake

• Now freezes nearby players on cast, a behavior previously removed in Hotfix 3.1.1.1.

Note: On-cast pulse size vs. players has been reduced from 8m to 6m.

Howl of the Storm

• Fixed an issue where Howl of the Storm was not consistently freezing targets in contact with the created Stasis crystals.

Warlock

Penumbral Blast

• Increased detonation size when impacting environment from 1.5m to 2m.

Frostpulse

• Increased consistency against fast-moving targets.
• Freeze detonation size vs. PvE combatants increased from 8m to 8.5m.

Stasis Grenades

Glacier Grenade

• Reduced base cooldown time from 152 seconds to 121 seconds.

Note: The cooldown penalties for Duskfield Grenade and Coldsnap Grenade when Bleak Watcher is equipped have also been updated so that their cooldown times match the new Glacier Grenade cooldown time.

Coldsnap Grenade

• Fixed an issue where the seeker was not consistently created in the direction the projectile was moving after a bounce.
• Increased arming shape size from 0.9 meters to 1.4 meters.
• Tracking strength now ramps down from full strength to 0 over the course of the grenade's lifetime, rather than immediately turning off after the seeker had reached 0.5 seconds lifetime.

Stasis General

Fragments

Whisper of Hedrons

• Removed -10 Strength penalty.

Whisper of Impetus

• Now provides +10 Resilience.

Whisper of Shards

• No longer provides +10 Resilience.

Whisper of Hunger

• Stat penalty changed from -10 Mobility/Intellect to -20 Strength.

Whisper of Bonds

• Removed -10 Discipline penalty.

Freeze

• Increased Special ammo weapon damage bonus vs. frozen targets from 5% to 10%.

Strand Subclasses

Titan

Bladefury

• Heavy attack ability energy regeneration while Bladefury is active is no longer dependent on the player's Discipline stat.
• Regeneration time previously ranged between 2.5 and 5 seconds, based on Discipline. It’s now a flat 3 seconds at all times.

Banner of War

• Increased the number of enemy defeats necessary to increment the banner level and increased the amount of time added per enemy defeat at each level to compensate.
• Fixed an issue where unpowered Swords were being granted an incorrect buff by Banner of War.

Warlock

Weavewalk

• Fixed an issue where the Weavewalk visual effects could end early in some situations.
• Fixed an issue where damage from environmental hazards was not reduced while the player was in an active Weavewalk.
• Fixed an issue where only 1perched Threadling would appear to orbit on the player for networked clients, regardless of the number of Threadlings perched on the local player.

Strand General

Woven Mail

• Reduced damage resistance vs. PvE combatants from 55% to 45%.

And that's it! For more Destiny 2 content, check out how to get the new The Craftening Emblem for free.