The latest This Week In Destiny blog discusses changes for Exotic armor and weapons that will go live in the upcoming mid-season patch. Bungie plans to tune two Exotic armor pieces, Antaeus Wards and Young Ahamkara’s Spine, because it claims that these armor pieces were "becoming hard to counter in PVP."
The Reflective Vents Exotic trait for Antaeus Wards "now requires full class ability to deploy," the blog post says. Adding that, "Following deactivation of Reflective Vents, your class ability energy is drained proportional to the amount of damage reflected." Also, this Exotic will no longer improve sliding.
Bungie states that the Antaeus Wards had too much benefit for too little of a cost, and admits that there weren’t many meaningful ways to counter it. It hopes that these changes will make Titans think carefully before choosing to engage in PVP, and give their opponents an opportunity to exploit the loss of Reflective Vents.
The Antaeus Wards nerf is no surprise to players. It became a no-brainer choice for Titans across all skill levels in PVP, and a very oppressive one at that. Titans could run and slide to cover the distance between them and an opponent without taking any damage for a short period of time, allowing them to slide, shotgun and win engagements without penalty. Arc Titans have their Knockout and Juggernaut Aspects, and Void Titans can get constant overshields, but adding Antaeus Wards to the mix made the PVP experience worse.
Players have been calling for a nerf to Antaeus Wards for a long time, with some posts on Reddit going as far back as four years ago. Although players know that these Exotic legs are a problem, other options like One Eyed Mask and Loreley Splendor Helm remain the face of the PVP meta.
Bungie previously stated that it tracks how much an Exotic is being used before it considers giving it a balance pass. With the launch of Destiny 2: Lightfall, Antaeus Wards began to see a resurgence and its usage went up significantly in PVP, so it makes sense that it finally got on Bungie’s radar.
The next Titan meta remains to be seen, but when the midseason patch drops, Titans will have to consider punching out of engagements once again.
