The Destiny franchise always had a dedicated PvP playerbase. From grinding Competitive to Trials of Osiris, the PvP side of the game is its own world. If you’re a PvP player considering trying out Destiny: Rising, you might not have as much to do as in the main series.
Destiny: Rising does have PvP, but it’s more of a side activity rather than a core playlist. This is still primarily a PvE game, where you play Strikes, raids, Singularity, and other adventures to farm materials for your characters.
Here are all PvP modes in Destiny: Rising, how they work, and corresponding rewards.
All PvP modes in Destiny Rising
Iron Bar
Iron Bar is a regular 6v6 Control playlist on classic Destiny maps, like Meltdown and Vostok. Iron Bar is available on Friday through Sunday, and you can earn weapons, Weapon Parameters, and Casual Activeness by playing this mode.
To maintain balance, Iron Bar has a Fair Play modifier active that affects players’ abilities and weapons:
- All character abilities are level one.
- Damage bonus from weapon enhancement is disabled.
- Talents are disabled.
- Artifact Attributes and perks are disabled.
The time-to-kill in Destiny: Rising is much slower than in Destiny 2, and abilities don’t deal nearly as much damage. This is also why you start the match with some Heavy ammo in your Power weapon, on top of picking up more ammo during the match.
Shifting Gates
Shifting Gates is a PvPvE mode similar to Gambit from Destiny 2. Complete objectives and kill enemies to get data and then deposit it at the terminal. There are six teams of three in each match that all have the same objective, and you can fight them to steal the data they’re carrying, which is the PvP side of this mode.
It’s a much larger mode that is always available. There are dedicated rank rewards, seasonal reward tracks, and you can even get Exotic weapons only available via Shifting Gates. There are also weekly challenges to complete and ways to spend Pinnacle Energy.
Shifting Gates also features the Fair Play modifier, but its settings are a bit different:
- Gear is locked.
- Health, shield, defense, and ability strength are at Team Level one values.
- Signature abilities and Supers are at level one.
- Weapon Mastery is at level five.
- Abilities and Talents have adjusted effects against players.
- Weapons are at Gear Level one.
- Weapon Enhancement level, mods, Exotic catalysts, and Catalyst boosts are disabled.
- Weapon damage adjusted against players.
- On Artifacts, only perks are active.
The main difference from the Iron Bar is that Talents are enabled, and while it shouldn’t result in a pay-to-win situation, it’s something to be aware of when engaging the opposing team in a gunfight.
