Destiny 2 is changing up how its difficulty balance works from soup to nuts, and the changes will have a large impact on many of the game’s most popular activities. As the blog post announcing the changes notes, they are intended to bring the difficulty level of Legend to that of the Legendary Campaign activity, and the Master experience to that of day-one raids.
The specifics are too numerous to list exhaustively here, but the removal of the Adept difficulty level is perhaps the most notable. Hero difficulty will now be available at 1750 Power, and Legendary and Master difficulties at 1800, which is the current power cap of the game. Hero, Legend, Master levels will receive a -5, -15, and -20 power level adjustment, while Grandmaster Nightfalls will receive a -25 debuff.
Additionally, burns in these high-level activities will now be split into two new categories, “surges” and “threats.” Surges will increase your outgoing elemental damage by 25%, and there will be a “featured surge” every season, as well as one that rotates every week. Threats will increase elemental damage coming from enemies by 25%. Bungie will also introduce “overcharged” weapons, which increase damage by 25% and can further increase kinetic damage by 25% if your subclass is surging. However, surges and overcharges do not stack, meaning that you only need and can get one for each damage source.
Overall, this patch seems to represent an attempt to rebalance the difficulty in all of Destiny 2’s seasonal activities, starting with Vanguard Ops and Nightfall. Bungie recently won a $4.3 million judgment against a Destiny 2 cheat seller in arbitration.
