Unfortunately, Destiny 2’s Salvation Assault is worse than the old Assault

I’ve argued that Destiny 2’s much-requested “horde mode,” arriving during the game’s 10th anniversary event, Onslaught, is one of the best new things Bungie has done. A wave-based structure that can get quite challenging with higher difficulties, lots of loot, and fun things to earn with a certain level of rarity.

I actually enjoyed Onslaught being expanded for Episode Revenant, with new maps, new enemies, and turning it into a seasonal loot farm. But after a few weeks now, the issues with the mode are becoming a little more obvious.

Delicate harmonization – The attunement system in the original Onslaught, which still exists, was simple. You choose which weapon you want to focus on, and it will stay focused for as long as you have that attunement live. But now in Revenant, in order to integrate the new potion system, you need to have the crafting materials needed to make each individual potion for each weapon, and then you need to deal with the timers that expire for those every time you use one. It’s the same system with boring extra steps that just don’t need to exist and feel injected because of the seasonal concept. I understand that potions extend to other modes, but it’s boring to have a 60 minute potion for a 70 minute assault run. At worst, these things should last for hours.

Not enough loot – I have no problem with the fact that Revenant loot can’t be crafted this season and is just farmed via Onslaught and other activities (at least once they fix the insane pairs bug advantages). But the reason the original Onslaught was great without crafting was the large amount of loot you got. That’s just not the case here, because yes you will get loots over the course of a match, but there is no “token” chest at the end to spam to get lots of loots in a row . We only have higher tier seasonal engrams, which isn’t the same thing at all. So not enough loot compared to the quality of the original.

No shine – We need more sparkles! Again, even though it was a cosmetic thing, it was still nice to randomly hunt or obtain. Yes, Onslaught can sometimes drop dual-perk weapons (I once had one), but they don’t shine with a unique look. And in this case, given the new system, I think it would be cool if they ditched all the pre-upgraded perks as well. The double MW perk once every 50 drops isn’t as fun.

The assault remains too long – This is a broader issue with Onslaught that impacted the original, but Bungie doesn’t seem to have learned this lesson. The 10 wave playlist mode is boring, short and not very rewarding. The first wave of 50 effectively cannot take less than an hour 99% of the time due to how the timers work alone. It feels like the mode should instead be reduced to 30 or 40 waves, and that the super easy first 10-20 rounds are cut entirely, as they just feel like filler. A run of 50 waves of Onslaught shouldn’t take as long or more than an entire dungeon, and a lot of the time spent there feels wasted.

I like the changes they made. I like the maps, the new enemies and bosses, the loot. But it lost some of what made the original Onslaught so fun and rewarding, and failed to fix one of its main problems. I hope this can change.

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