Bungie explained this decision to rework the subclass abilities in its weekly blog post just before Season 19, detailing its intent to normalize the power of the subclasses to provide a more standard baseline that can be used for future tuning. They further explained that this would affect the outliers on the high and low end of the subclasses, including Stasis. Season 19 has already seen reworks to the game, especially in Destiny 2’s Crucible’s PvP, which seems to fuel some subclass changes.

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Solar Hunters Before Season of the Seraph

Before Season of the Seraph, Gunslinger Hunters saw powerful Supers through Golden Gun Deadshot, Golden Gun Marksman, and Blade Barrage, which enhanced different play styles for Hunters through offensive or defensive strategies. While these Supers allowed for powerful attacks, the new Aspect and Fragment system, particularly the Aspect Knock ‘Em Down, allowed for further enhancements to the Supers.

Golden Gun - Deadshot: Summon a rapid-fire flaming pistol that disintegrates targets with Solar Light. Causing Solar Ignitions while your super is active refunds Golden Gun Round. Benefits from Radiant. Golden Gun - Marksman: Summon a precision flaming pistol that disintegrates targets with Solar Light. Golden Gun significantly increases precision damage, over-penetrates marks, and creates Orbs of Power on precision hits. Benefits from Radiant. Blade Barrage: Vault into the air and unleash a volley of Solar-charged explosive knives.

Hunters also had the Knock ‘Em Down Aspect in their arsenal, which saw Solar Supers enhanced. For example, with Knock ‘Em Down equipped, Hunter Gunslingers saw Golden Gun Deadshot with damage resistance. Knock ‘Em Down also increased the duration of Golden Gun Marksman while adding more projectiles to Blade Barrage. Finally, the Aspect fully refunded melee energy from final blows with equipped Throwing Knife.

Solar Hunter Debuffs in Season 19

Changes come to Knock ‘Em Down, where its benefits to Gunslingers were overloaded. Bungie explains that with Knock ‘Em Down, the overlap between Deadshot and Marksman Golden Gun muddles the identities of the abilities. To achieve this separation of identities, Bungie wants Golden Gun Deadshot to apply to Hunters ready to enter the fray. In contrast, Marksman is aimed at calmer sharpshooters waiting for the perfect shot.

Blade Barrage, especially coupled with Knock ‘Em Down, has also been evaluated as pushing too far above the power threshold and will receive a bonus knife reduction from 5 to 3 per wave. While these changes have affected players and their builds, the trade-off is that Solar Hunters feel a bit less potent to Guardians, especially in end-game content for PvE. While PvP seems to have motivated some of these changes, the lasting effects could cause many players to feel that Solar Hunters have been reduced to their 2.0 state.

Golden Gun  Now provides 15% bonus damage resistance to Deadshot Golden Gun and no longer provides bonus duration. No longer provides 15% bonus damage resistance to Marksman Golden Gun. Blade Barrage Blade Barrage bonus projectiles were reduced from 5 to 3 per group, and it now releases a total of 20 knives, down from 24.

Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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