Bungie is adding more ways for Destiny 2 players to reach max power

A new Destiny 2 season begins next week, which means this week's This Week at Bungie post is more informative than other weeks. It's not weak, is what I'm trying to say. There are a lot of shifts and tweaks revealed throughout, but perhaps the most  wide-ranging change over previous seasons is a planned increase in the number of Pinnacle reward sources.

You'll be able to hit the new soft cap of 1,000 power through Powerful Engram rewards, as usual. And, as usual, the hard cap (which will be 1,010) is achieved through Pinnacle sources. Previously, those sources have been limited to just a handful of activities: the Garden of Salvation raid, the Pit of Heresy dungeon, Nightfall: The Ordeal high scores, Master Nightmare Hunts, Iron Banner and the soon-to-be-deleted Legendary Sundial.

But at some point during Season of the Worthy, in a planned mid-season update, weekly Crucible, Strike, and Gambit challenge completion will also award Pinnacle drops. This is significant mostly because, previously, solo players could only realistically achieve Pinnacles from the matchmade Iron Banner playlist, which only appears once per month. When the sources increase, max level will be significantly easier to achieve. Arguably solo players don't need to achieve max level, but that rarely matters—offer players a big number and they're going to want to achieve the big number.

While you'll still be able to supplement your base power with a new Seasonal Artifact, that bonus is going to be disabled for Iron Banner and the returning Trials of Osiris in response to community backlash. Here, though, Bungie has an important caveat: "Season of the Worthy has already been released for certification, so we won't be able to disable the Artifact's Power for the first Trials weekend." What that effectively means is that, for one weekend only, those able to poopsock Season of the Worthy's first week are going to be at a significant power advantage. Enjoy that, I guess, streamers.

Other updates planned for Season of the Worthy's launch are disparate and wide-ranging. There's the removal of Bright Engram loot boxes from the Eververse microtransaction store, to be replaced by a rotating stock of specific items. There's old Faction Rally armour being added to the world drop loot pool. There's an increased chance of high stat rolls from Prime Engrams and Exotic armour. There's a suite of Exotic armour changes, including a slight nerf to Controverse Hold that reduces its damage reduction to 20 percent, down from 40 percent—enjoy that, I guess, shotgun apes (no, I'm not salty). There's also a new categorisation system for the Quests screen and comma separators are being added to the Glimmer count in the loot stream.

You can find the full Exotic preview below. Season of the Worthy arrives on March 10, at 10:01am PDT.

Hunter

• Assassin's Cowl: The invisibility and healing effect now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.
• Assassin's Cowl: The duration of the invisibility granted by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.
• Assassin's Cown: Arc Staff kills no longer activate this perk.
• FROST-EE5: Changed the ability regeneration so that it no longer stacks multiplicatively with other class ability energy-generating perks.
• Khepri's Sting: All smoke bombs deal 150% damage while wearing this Exotic.
• Orpheus Rig: The maximum amount of Super you can regain from this Exotic with a single use of Shadowshot is 50%.
• Young Ahamkara's Spine: Increases the explosion radius for Tripmines by 14%.

Titan

• Ashen Wake: Killing an enemy with a Fusion Grenade while wearing this Exotic now refunds grenade energy. The amount of grenade energy refunded scales based on the tier of enemy killed.
• Anteus Wards: The shield created during a slide no longer allows chip damage through.
• Doomfang Pauldrons: Fixed a bug where Doomfang Pauldrons would sometimes grant Super energy from melee kills while in your Super.
• Dunemarchers: Increase the radius of the static charge to 20 meters, up from 12.
• Mk. 44 Stand Asides: Reduced the delay from the start of sprinting until the overshield comes in to 0.5 seconds, down from 1.25.
• One-Eyed Mask: The target marking from this Exotic has been replaced with target highlighting, eliminating the ability to detect targets through walls.
• One-Eyed Mask: No longer provides a damage bonus when defeating your marked target.
• One-Eyed Mask: Restored the previous overshield granted by defeating your marked target, which now has a duration of 6 seconds, down from 8.
• Severance Enclosure: The explosion now triggers on powered melee (both against combatants and Guardians) and finishers.
• Severance Enclosure: The radius and damage of the explosion created by this Exotic increases based on the tier of the enemy defeated.

Warlock

• Apotheosis Veil: This Exotic is now guaranteed to drop with a minimum +16 to Intellect.
• Contraverse Hold: Reduced the damage reduction granted by this Exotic to 20%, down from 40%.
• Sanguine Alchemy: Sanguine Alchemy has received a complete redesign. Its new perk, Blood Magic, allows the wearer to pause the countdown timer of any Rift they are standing in by getting weapon kills, extending the Rift's duration.
• Ophidian Aspects: Now increases the lunge range of all Warlock melee attacks, even if the ability is on cooldown.
• Verity's Brow: The buff provided by this Exotic now increases your grenade damage by 10% per stack.
• Verity's Brow: The buff to allies' grenade recharge rates now kicks in when you cast your grenade.
• Verity's Brow: This Exotic now provides a buff text notification indicating how many allies are currently benefiting from your increased grenade recharge.