While I tend to main Striker titan in Destiny 2, there was a period in which I played as a Sentinel because in D1 I always identified with the Defender, and Ward of Dawn was by far my favourite super in the game with how support-focused it was. In D2 as we all know, Weapons of Light and Blessings of Light got removed from the Ward of Dawn for various reasons and while I was sad to see them go, I see that Titans were becoming way too essential in high-level PvE activities and the love needed spreading around. But now, the Ward of Dawn is something you NEVER see, I spot maybe one or two a week compared to countless Sentinel Shields.
Often when you use the Ward of Dawn it's to lock down a capture point, lock down heavy ammo, or in PvE just stay alive for a few seconds to rez a teammate or make a beachhead to take down a powerful foe; more often than not you end up leaving the Ward behind after a few seconds anyway. So I have an idea to make Ward of Dawn more relevant without making it overpowered: give it the shut-off ability of the new Stormcaller super.
Essentially I propose that when you use Ward of Dawn, the yellow super bar doesn't disappear but drains, counting down to when your Ward will expire. At any time during the Ward of Dawn's uptime, you can tap both bumpers (or whatever the super button is on PC) and retract your Ward of Dawn. You could possibly add in the caveat here that doing this will 'eat' a small portion of your super energy, say 10-20%, to prevent the ability being abused and instead used more carefully.
I believe this alone would help Ward of Dawn be more relevant, you could plant it while rezzing a teammate in a strike, take out a nearby Yellow Bar enemy that's threatening your group and then pull your Ward, saving it for the next emergency. You could use it to lock down heavy ammo until it spawns, you collect it, then move on to plant your ward on the B plate in control and mount an effective defence. These are things that you can already do in Destiny 2, but I believe the ability to relocate your Ward would make it as valuable as instead opting for the offensive Sentinel Shield.
One question is how to handle the damage the Ward of Dawn takes. You could go for an option where damaging the Ward of Dawn directly reduces the amount of super energy the wielder has, and the appearance of the Ward is tied to damage AND remaining duration; or option two, where the Ward can be re-deployed but retains the same amount of 'health' as it had when you lifted it and isn't returned to 'full health' until you fully charge your super-meter once again.
The other question is, how to handle the fact that someone could pull their Ward of Dawn and then activate Sentinel Shield. Possibly make it so that Sentinel Shield can only be cast with a full meter, or maybe remove Sentinel Shield from the top Sentinel path altogether to double-down on the Ward of Dawn.
Does anyone think this is a good idea? I'm not expecting Bungie themselves to take notice of this at all but I certainly think it's fun to think about.
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I was hoping that the new sentinel super in Forsaken would be ward of dawn with weapons and blessings of light. Instead we get a bigger shield that nobody will use over hammers of dps.