What is Coming to Destiny in Season 17?

With the Season of the Risen coming to a close, guardians are preparing for the future, and the as of yet unnamed Season 17, releasing May 24th. Part of that preparation is in-game, as in the days leading up to Season 17, all guardians can earn bonus ranks for all playlists they participate in. But part of that preparation is trying to figure out what to expect from the upcoming season, so you can react accordingly. Bungie has been playing this season a little closer to the chest than they have previous seasons, but there’s still plenty of information out there about what we can look forward to in Season 17.

The Iron Banner is seeing a large rework in the upcoming season. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first, Iron Banner is being reduced down from 3 weeks a season to 2. But in return, there’s a new reputation system, a new map, and Rift, a game mode last seen in the original Destiny. The reputation system is meant to bring the Iron banner more into line with other vendors, doing away with Iron Tokens, and instead giving you bonuses based on daily challenges completed and Iron Banner gear equipped.

The returning game mode, Rift, comes along with a new map called Disjunction, located on Savathun’s throne world. The basic premise of rift is to obtain a ‘Spark’ located in the middle of the map, and run it to the enemy’s Rift to activate it and earn a point, at which point the spark will respawn back where it was originally. It takes 5 points to lead your team to victory. But be careful, if you hold onto the spark too long, it’ll explode. For any guardians already excited for the returning Rift mode, there’s more good news, as it will be transitioning into Crucible rotation in season 18.

Also arriving in season 17 is the next installation of the 3.0 subclass rework: Solar 3.0. The leak was broken by @DestinyTwoLeaks on twitter, settling the timeline for the last of the light subclasses. Using the Void 3.0 rework as a template, Guardians can expect Solar to get a greater variety of supers and grenades, along with a system of fragments and aspects not unlike the Void subclasses. Guardians can also look forward to a similar rework in Season 18 for the Arc subclasses.

In addition to the large headlining changes, the season also comes with several quality of life improvements to PVP, sandbox play, and weapon adjustments. The two main goals of the changes seem to be to allow greater specialization, while also trying to even the playing field, with the designers mentioning a desire to reduce one hit kills, as well as detailing how specialization should be a trade off, using aerial combat as an example where they are trying to balance constraining options to not make the combat overpowered to guardians on the ground, while also providing a leg up on the competition for specializing your loadout to work well in the air.

With so much on the way for the season, and so much yet to be revealed, it’s impossible to be overprepared for Season 17. Make sure to take advantage of the last week of the Season of the Risen guardians, as much of the future is still a mystery. But when the time comes to face that mystery, you know who you want at your side. Good luck Guardians.