Destiny to Change Nightfall, Add Vanguard Heroic Playlist

Destiny fans will be stroking their Traveler plushes and ticking off the boxes in the calendar waiting for the 15th, where the latest (and possibly greatest) expansion, The Taken King, hits stores. After the wild success of House of Wolves, it’s looking as if Destiny can finally live up to the promise Bungie made for the IP a long time ago, and the Taken King will be the expansion that hammers that final nail into the coffin.

Now, the Taken King is going to add a lot and change even more, but one of the more curious changes was announced just the other day, over at the Bungie Blog. It seems that Nightfalls, the super-difficult missions that can waste a lot of time if you aren’t prepared for it, will be easing up a little… and by ‘easing up,’ I mean turning into weekly heroic strikes. I’ll let Luke Smith take it from here.

Our desired Nightfall experience is the weekly ritual where you get together with your friends for a test of thumbskill and allow players to optimize for gear.

Burn skulls motivate weapon rotation and now the Burn resist talents found on chest pieces will rotate armor.

The death penalty of being kicked to orbit often leads to players feeling forced to play too safe, rather than running through the world as a monster killing machine.

Another thing we didn’t like about the Year 1 Nightfall was how players could feel forced to play Nightfall as early as possible in the week to maximize the benefit from the Nightfall buff. So, we’ve shelved that buff until we can reform it into something closer to its original intent - a mark of prestige for having achieved something challenging. We’ve adjusted sources of XP and Reputation up to account for its absence.

Now requires Level 40

Wiping no longer returns Fireteams to Orbit

Now uses 30 second time-out penalty for Death (same as Raid Normal)

So, yes. It sounds just like a weekly heroic strike. But don’t worry, Guardians, it’s not more of the same: because they’ve now removed weekly heroic strikes and replaced them with something even better!
 

We've removed a dedicated Weekly Heroic Strike from the game this Fall. In its place we've added a new playlist: the Vanguard Heroic Playlist.

Each week players receive bonus Legendary Marks from the Weekly Heroic Playlist. These awards are received at the account level rather than the character level - as was the case with Year One Weekly Heroic Rewards.

We made this change to enable players to focus on a single character more, or feel less pressure to gear three characters at once for Legendary Marks.

Requires Level 40
Removed the Weekly Heroic Strikes
Instead, accounts receive Legendary Marks for completing the first three Weekly Strikes
Removed the Weekly Cap on how many Legendary Marks can be earned.
Guarantee a Legendary Engram drop from a character's first clear of a Weekly Heroic Strike

The update included other bits of info as well: it reveals Strike the Dreadnaught, the upcoming Edge magazine covers, and some weekly PvP Changes. Absolutely worth the look if you’re interested. Regardless, these are looking like some pretty cool changes—looking forward to them!