What Does the Combat Acceleration Modifier Do in Destiny 2?

The Nightfall Strikes in Destiny 2 are missions that task players with working around mechanics, killing enemies, and bringing down a boss. They are a popular form of PvE content for players to tackle and rotate weekly to add some freshness to said content. One key component of the Strikes are modifiers that change aspects of the Strike, be it through abilities, gunplay, enemies, etc. Typically, these modifiers cause players to think outside the box or add a new layer of fun or challenge to encounters. However, the Combat Acceleration modifier has been quite controversial since its induction.

What the Combat Acceleration Modifier Does

Modifiers Explained

As stated previously, Destiny 2 Nightfall Strike modifiers are meant to add some spice to content through changing how the Strike flows. For example, Time Warp: Killing Time sets the mission timer to 10 minutes, but that time can be extended through enemy kills. This forces the fireteam to take down as many enemies as possible so that they will have enough time to finish the Strike. Another example is the Attrition modifier, which greatly reduces shield and health regen but causes enemies to drop health and shield globes.

Combat Acceleration

The Combat Acceleration modifier was meant to offer a unique experience like other modifiers, but instead created a hindrance on fireteams that forced them into certain builds to have any chance of completing a Strike. The modifier creates a stacking buff on a character every time the character deals damage, offering shorter cooldowns for their abilities for each stack they currently have. On the surface, this sounds like a fun way to incentivize fast-firing weapons and ability-based builds.

However, the modifier also massively increases the base cooldown of abilities as well, crippling the same builds it claims to incentivize. Furthermore, even at high stacks of Combat Acceleration, abilities still take much longer than normal to come off cooldown. Therefore, rather than being a fun way to get players to build around abilities and rapid damage, the modifier instead serves a different, much more negative purpose: completely crippling ability-based builds.

This realization by players led to plenty of posts, threads, and forums bashing the modifier and requesting it be changed or removed altogether, as the modifier pretty much-locked ability builds out of Nightfall Strikes any time it was active.

Looking for more information on Destiny 2? Check out Destiny 2: How to get Precious Scars Titan Exotic Helmet and the Best Fusion Rifles for PVP in Destiny 2 from Pro Game Guides!