Destiny 2 players call on Bungie to fix Champions: “Entire system needs reworking”

Julian Young

Season of the Lost is off to a hot start, but the Destiny 2 community isn’t fully enamored by all of the content on offer, and many players are now imploring Bungie to revamp one specific PVE gameplay mechanic: Champions.

Destiny 2’s fourth expansion, Shadowkeep, introduced a ton of new content for players to explore. One of the most impactful changes added in the 2019 content drop was the addition of new enemy types across all factions called Champions.

Found only in specific (and typically high-level) content such as Nightfalls, Master Lost Sectors, or seasonal activities, the three Champion varieties — Barrier, Overload, and Unstoppable — brought new dynamics to PVE with their own unique mechanics.

Despite adding more nuance (and more difficultly) to many activities, Champions have often been a topic of hot debate — which has now escalated during Season of the Lost as thousands of Destiny 2 players are demanding drastic changes to the current Champion system.

Destiny 2 Guardian Vex Minotaur Champion
Facing off against Champions has become a staple of endgame PVE content.

One Guardian shared their feedback in a detailed Reddit thread which began with some harsh criticism of the current Champion system: “I’m just going to come out and say it, Champions are the s**ttiest game design answer to difficulty and challenge that I have ever seen.”

Despite the harsh intro, they immediately offered up a two-part solution to the current Champion problem. “If [Bungie is] going to keep this system, artifacts shouldn’t contain Champion mods,” they suggested.

The poster then explained their own alternative to the current system: “Every weapon should have have an additional mod slot [for] Champion Mods, and in that slot I can use whatever Champion mod I want, and not take away from mod slots on armor.”

Destiny 2 Reddit Champions Bungie Rework Screenshot
Destiny 2 players are fed up with the current Champion system.

In addition, the player offered up a balance check that Bungie could implement: “Restrict certain mods to certain [weapon] archetypes, but still allow the use of all the archetypes at once. They could even vary that by season, but this system needs to be more flexible.”

The post has garnered nearly 7k upvotes at the time of writing, showing that a significant portion of the Destiny 2 community feels the same way about the current implementation of Champions and Champion mods, and want to see a change.

Despite the strong show of support, there were also plenty of responses that argued in favor of the current Champion mod system, pointing out how rotating mods help to shake up the game’s meta each season.

It certainly seems that Destiny 2 players are quite torn over the state of Champions and their associated mods, but it remains to be seen whether Bungie will tweak the mods, or the Champions themselves, in the Witch Queen or beyond.

About The Author

Julian is a former writer at Dexerto, located in the United States (East Coast based). He covered general gaming, esports and entertainment news, but has a soft spot for Destiny in particular.