Bring the Thunder: Inside Arc 3.0 > News

Like the inevitable lightning that follows storm clouds, Arc 3.0’s time has finally arrived. In 2022, the original trio of elemental subclasses that power Guardians in Destiny 2 have been undergoing a major overhaul. Void was the first subclass to get the “3.0” treatment with the launch of The Witch Queen expansion. Season of the Haunted welcomed Solar 3.0 and, soon, it will be time for Arc-wielders to receive their upgrades. The Destiny 2 development team has been hard at work on this subclass revamp, making sure that the new version of the Arc subclass brings the thunder.

Having lead subclass redesigns with Void and Solar, the team has spent a great deal of time zeroing in on essence of what a subclass revamp is all about: making sure that every aspect of gameplay and every ability and feature fits into the player fantasy. To get there, it all starts with inspiration. 

“Arc is really just, ‘go fast and hit stuff,’” said Destiny designer Sam Dunn, when asked about the core fantasy that powered the Arc 3.0 revamp. “We call it the ‘hold W’ subclass. Everything is built around moving forward and enabling aggression and those abilities.” 

Powering that high-speed, high-impact goal, one of the prime inspirations for Arc 3.0 was the 2009 action movie Crank 2: High Voltage. The madcap action flick stars Jason Statham as an ex-hitman who has his heart stolen and replaced with a battery. To stay alive, Statham must keep his body electrically charged in increasingly outrageous ways. It’s non-stop, it’s relentless, and it’s a great place to start for the fantasy the team wanted to achieve. Namely ridiculous closing speed and maximum impact upon arrival.

“We had a lot of ideas about, ‘Oh, you get this buff and then—much like Jason Statham’s heart —you need to keep it ticking by staying in the fight,” said Destiny designer Mike Humbolt. “[As the design evolved] we strayed a bit from that just because it’s hard to achieve that in gameplay of Destiny, where you’re deleting 75 monsters in a room and then running through a hallway. But that was the emotional fantasy that we wanted to go for: very much like ‘living on the edge.’”

Those Guardians who have spent some time with the revamped versions of Void or Solar (or with Stasis, for that matter) know the basics of where to begin with Arc 3.0. As with those other subclass options, Arc 3.0 will give players more flexibility over customizing their Guardian’s powers to suit their playstyle, through the introduction of Aspects and Fragments. In addition, new and returning class and melee abilities have been built or refactored for the modern Destiny 2 sandbox, making the subclass more powerful than ever. 

Lighting Up New Abilities

Before we dive into the class-specific Arc abilities, let’s talk about the buffs and debuffs that are key to the Arc 3.0 experience. First up is the new buff—amplified—which is key to the Arc 3.0 experience. An amplified Guardian is faster—both in terms of movement speed and in terms of their weapon handling—and more agile, able to perform long slides that can function as a devastating setup for some of the attacks that…