Destiny Major Sandbox Update Murders Warlock Well, But Resurrects The Best Hunter Build Ever (2024)

Well, they finally did it. After years of being the center of team compositions for pretty much every endgame activity in Destiny 2, Bungie has decided to significantly nerf the healing and damage reduction provided by the Warlock’s Well of Radiance Super. Bungie outlined this change and dozens of others in a Dev Insights blog post this week, but the Well changes are by far the most significant and impactful. More than any nerf or buff we’ve ever seen before, this change is going to have a major impact on the way Destiny 2 is played moving forward.

Well has long been the most important Super in Destiny 2, particularly when it comes to extended damage phases against stationary raid bosses - which describes most of them. Every Fireteam has had to have a designated Dawnblade player that can cast Well of Radiance for the team, dropping a giant AoE on the ground that gives everyone a massive damage boost, incredibly fast healing, and huge amounts of damage resistance. Essentially, standing in a Well makes you invincible while you deal 25 percent more damage. It’s no wonder this has been the meta pick for Warlock players for so many years.

The rework will reduce the healing effect by 50 percent and reduce damage resistance from 40 percent to 20 percent for non-boss enemies, and from 40 percent to 10 percent for bosses. In exchange, players that step in the Well will keep their damage buff for eight seconds after leaving it. Bungie says it wanted to push the offensive benefit of Well while reducing its defenses significantly. With these changes, Well may no longer represent a central point where the entire team will stand together and unleash on a single target the way we always have.

Reactions to the upcoming change have been mixed, but mostly lean in the direction of “Oh God, how could they do this to us?? WHY, GOD, WHY!!!?” Personally, I see both sides. Well of Radiance is a stale mechanic that forces a Warlock in every Fireteam to spec into a specific class and use a boring Super. While everyone else gets to turn their gun into a flaming revolver that shoots god bullets, or turn themselves into a torpedo and launch themselves at the boss, Dawnblades can only throw down a Well, and go back to shooting their guns.

Note: In a similar vein, the debuffing trace rifle Divinity is getting another nerf next season. While it isn’t as ubiquitous as it once was, Divinity is still the meta pick in some fights, which can lead to a poor raiding experience for the player who’s designated to wield it.

On the other hand, Well is the perfect Super for new players and people with less skill than their teammates. It gives inexperienced players a simple way to contribute massively. You can’t really mess up a Well. Even when you cast it at the wrong time, you’re still ensuring your team stays alive to continue the fight.

Regardless of how anyone feels, these adjustments are going to change things a lot. Well will probably still be used in some circ*mstances, but hopefully, Warlocks don’t feel beholden to only play Solar the way they used to. New strategies and build opportunities will naturally emerge as teams look for the next-best option. The new Prismatic subclass was bound to shake things up, but this is a change designed to make us think about boss encounters in a fresh way, and that can’t be a bad thing.

The Well of Radiance nerf is such a huge change for Destiny that it got its own dedicated section in the blog post, but there are dozens of class balance changes coming in The Final Shape. Ward of Dawn is is losing some of its damage-boosting potential to focus more on its defensive benefits, all the Arc subclasses are getting better damage resistance for improved survivability, and Stasis is getting a brand new Frost Armor mechanic in order to help bring it up to par with the other subclasses.

Those are exciting changes, but what really caught my eye is a subtle change to Void Hunters that’s going to make a big difference, especially for solo players. Buried deep in the blog, easy to overlook, is a single line that’s got me more excited for the next expansion than almost anything else: “Stylish Executioner’s weaken effect can now be applied by Glaive melee attacks.”

If those words don’t mean anything to you, maybe these will: infinite invisibility. Stylish Executioner is a Nightstalker aspect that turns you invisible and gives you True Sight (seeing through walls) anytime you kill a void-debuffed enemy. While invisible, your next melee attack weakens the target. So, if you can somehow get a melee kill every time you turn invisible, you’ll apply weaken and turn invisible again immediately. That’s where the glaive comes in.

When Void 2.0 was introduced at the start of The Witch Queen expansion, Glaive melee kills would trigger Stylish Executioner, allowing you to effectively stay permanently invisible. This build was incredible for running solo lost sectors and had a lot of use in dungeons too. Bungie quickly caught on to this, and within a few weeks, glaive kills no longer triggered Stylish Executioner.

Since then, glaives have completely fallen out of fashion. There wasn’t a single craftable glaive to unlock in any of Lightfall’s seasonal activities, and there’s no use for them in the meta right now. It makes sense that Bungie is willing to bring back this completely broken build if it means getting players to use glaives more frequently. It’s still a fairly useless weapon for the game’s hardest content, so if people want to run around as invisible assassins while doing their daily chores, why not let them?

I have some of the most fun I’ve ever had in Destiny 2 abusing Stylish Executioner with my favorite glaive, Enigma, and I can’t wait to do it again. If we do have to say goodbye to Wellocks, at least Bungie is softening the blow by bringing back the best Hunter build ever.