Destiny 2 Iron Banner returns this week

Destiny 2 Iron Banner returns this week alongside a change to competitive Crucible matchmaking, Bungie has confirmed.

Iron Banner kicks off later this week, and Guardians can enjoy a Valor bonus that runs at the same time (until 23 January). Moreover, competitive matchmaking will be more closely tied to a player’s Glory rank, Bungie said.

With that change, Bungie advised that Guardians be patient; matchmaking will take longer to queue up a game in order to “ensure a good Glory rank match before opening up the search criteria.”

Patch notes for the game’s January Sandbox Update are below.

Destiny 2 January 2019 Sandbox Update

Hunter

• Gunslinger
  • Golden Gun
    • Six-Shooter kills return a bullet
    • Practice Makes Perfect Super regen increased
  • Blade Barrage
    • The damage is now heavily weighted on the delayed explosion instead of the knife impact
    • Now deals self-damage if the knives explode too close
    • Fixed a bug where the knives would track allies
    • Notes: This Golden Gun change brings increased uptime with your Super. For the Way of the Outlaw, this means a skill-based mechanic to extend it. For Way of the Sharpshooter, it’s the ability to earn your Super more quickly.
• Nightstalker
  • Moebius Quiver
    • Entire damage bonus is applied on the first hit instead of stacking and multiplying
    • Increased tether radius and lifetime
    • Made it easier to fire successive tethers
  • Spectral Blades
    • Damage resistance in stealth decreased
    • Duration of Super while invisible slightly decreased
    • Notes: This is step one for Shadowshot, and we intend to keep improving the way it works. For this pass, we focused on Moebius Quiver quality of life.
• Arcstrider
  • Super damage is now more heavily weighted toward the heavy palm strike attack
  • No attack damage was reduced, but much of the added damage for this Super went into the heavy attack
  • Lethal Current bonus damage increased

Titan

• Sunbreaker
  • Sunspots
    • Doubled the damage of the burn on enemies
  • Sun Warrior
    • Buff length increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds
    • Now increases ALL outgoing damage
  • Burning Maul
    • Slam radius increased
    • Slam fire tornado improved homing
• Sentinel
  • Super damage is more heavily weighted on the heavy shield charge attack.
  • No attack damage was reduced, but much of the added damage for this Super went into the heavy attack
• Striker
  • Terminal Velocity
    • There are now three tiers of hang time
    • The amount of hang time for each tier has been reworked
    • Each tier of hang time now causes four damaging shocks instead of three
    • The damage for the hang time bonuses has been increased significantly
  • Trample
    • The light shoulder attack Super cost has been reduced by ~85%
    • Trample can now trigger every 0.5 seconds, up from every 1 second

Warlock

• Dawnblade
  • Super duration increased
• Voidwalker
  • Cataclysm
    • Increased detonation radius
    • Cluster damage increased
    • Improved cluster bomb homing to make it more consistent against single targets
    • Cluster bombs no longer detonate one another
  • Vortex
    • Linger damage increased significantly
  • Nova Warp
    • Slower movement while charging
    • Charging costs more energy and overall duration is reduced
    • Damage resistance reduced very slightly
    • PvP damage reduction
      • Charged detonation will no longer be able to one shot another player in their Super, provided it has damage resistance
      • Notes: The Nova Warp changes above are all small, but we think together they will help bring it down into a good place—a place similar to the Supers that we’re raising up.
• Stormcaller
  • Stormtrance
    • Increased number of targets for chain lightning by 1

Destiny 2 is available now on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4.