Warlocks, Titans and Hunters will ban together to face the darkness once again in Destiny 2. While Bungie will not add more classes to the game, the subclasses for the three archetypes are all getting overhauled from their original Destiny versions.

Currently, we have only gotten to look at three of the new subclasses in detail: the Warlock’s Dawnblade, the Titan’s Striker and the Hunter’s Gunslinger. However, in the gameplay reveal, Bungie did show off two other subclasses briefly: the Titan’s Sentinel and the Hunter’s Arcstrider.

To Destiny fans, some of these abilities will look familiar, but almost all of them have a new twist built in somewhere.

The basics

Guardians are able to customize three basic abilities that stem off of their Super. Like the first game, players will be able to choose between several different grenade and jump styles. More often than not, these decisions will come down to player preference and play style over actual in-game impact.

According to a YouTube video from Datto, Destiny 2 will provide each class with a unique ability that has multiple different functions. For example, the Striker Titan has access to a wall that they can place anywhere in the environment. This piece of portable cover comes in two variations. The first causes the wall to extend the full length of a Guardian’s body, blocking all incoming fire and allowing for extreme mobility. The other variation leaves the wall at waist height, but ducking behind it to fire will reload your weapons.

The super

Depending on the subclass in question, the supers have either changed a great deal or not at all. The solar Warlock, now named the Dawnblade in Destiny 2, has a completely different super ability than the Sunsinger’s Radiance in Destiny. The Gunslinger’s Golden Gun is very similar to Destiny’s and the Titan’s Fists of Havoc is an evolution of their old super ability.

On every front, Destiny 2 has changed supers to be more engaging to use. The Striker Titan’s Fists of Havoc has evolved from single use into a super period (allowing for multiple smashes), as can be seen in Datto’s video above. Rather than slamming your lightning fists into the ground once, you are able to run around the battlefield, shoulder charging and smashing enemies to your heart’s content for a short period of time.

While they may have changed in form, they have not changed in function. Players will still gather super energy over time and spend it to activate their most powerful ability.

Datto

The talents

The changes to the talents in Destiny 2 could be the best changes to the subclasses or the most reviled. Destiny gave players a massive table of talents. These could be passive stat bonuses like more armor and speed in exchange for health regeneration, or they could be activatable abilities like a rad shoulder charge.

Being able to switch between these talents at any time offers players choice in how they wanted to build their class. Though very few of these talents were particularly relevant. Usually, there was a clear choice to be made in each situation.

Destiny 2 changes this system completely. According to Datto, each subclass possesses two separate trees. Only one of these talent groupings can be activated at a time and they will provide the player with four unique talents. These often work together to create a class identity. One tree may give you benefits for fighting in the air while another entices you to hit more headshots.

Not only does this allow for a far simpler experience for new players, but it makes communication with teammates much easier. A Hunter teammate can now say that they are a Gunslinger using the Way of the Outlaw talent setup, and their abilities are instantly known to the entire fireteam.