Bungie said before that its upcoming Destiny 2 expansion The Witch Queen is slated for a late 2021 release. However, the company is pushing the expansion back to early 2022.

The reasons are plentiful, but it all boils down to quality control. Bungie said that the Witch Queen expansion will be unlike anything they’ve done before in regards to characters, arcs, heroes, and villains. It’s essentially their biggest and most ambitious DLC yet, and they want to launch it right. Also, COVID-19; that pandemic has certainly put a damper on every developer’s plans still in 2021.

“As we’ve been developing The Witch Queen, we realized that we needed this release to be the first of many moments crucial to the story of Destiny. With so much leading to and dependent on what happens in The Witch Queen, we wanted to make sure that we gave ourselves enough time to build out this journey in the right way, starting with an exceptional first chapter in The Witch Queen.

[This also means] upgrading our approach to keeping Destiny’s weapon and armor game fresh, refining our vision for PVP, implementing transmog, and adding crossplay.”

The plus side? Bungie is dropping weapon sunsetting, a process that involves capping power levels for seasonal weapons since Season 11. The company is trying out a new approach to exotics and unique which hopefully pans out for them in the long run.

“We’ve made the decision that any weapon or armor that can currently be infused to max Power will continue to be able to reach max Power permanently. Starting in Season 14 we won’t be capping the infusion on any weapons or armor that have not already reached the cap as of the start of Season 13.

This means you’ll be able to take your Trustee, your Falling Guillotine, and all the high-stat armor you’ve earned this year to take on the raid in The Witch Queen.

While we still strongly believe that Destiny needs a method to shift our meta in the game’s most challenging activities, we don’t believe that infusion caps are the right answer. We’re taking time this year to research and validate a plan that creates a fresh and balanceable ecosystem for our most aspirational content, one that doesn’t make our rewards feel like they have an expiration date.

We’ve learned a lot this year and don’t want to rush finding the best plan, so don’t expect to hear anything more about this until after The Witch Queen.”

That’s Not All…

Bungie has also put up notes regarding oncoming Stasis ability nerfs, which we have talked about before on our Destiny 2: Beyond Light review.

Behemoth Titan: 

• Decrease Super damage reduction.
• Increase Super energy cost when performing light attacks.
• Remove freeze AOE on Super cast.
• Reduce travelling efficacy of Shiver Strike when slowed.

Revenant Hunter: 

• Decrease Withering Blade damage and tracking.
• Decrease slow stacks applied to targets.
• Remove Shatterdive damage reduction.

Shadebinder Warlock: 

• Fix bug where Iceflare Bolts wouldn’t track towards targets immediately on creation.
• Fix bug where Shadebinder Super projectiles were not tracking until a certain distance travelled.

General: 

• Decrease crystal shatter damage.