On August 12, Bungie’s weekly blog, this week at Bungie (TWAB), revealed Destiny 2’s Armor and Expressions team’s plans for the future in terms of mods and exotic armor changes.
Chief among these changes were nerfs to exotic armors that focus on regenerating super abilities. Their reasoning for these changes was that the exotics in this category often overshadow others in high-end content and are seen as must-haves.
- Shards of Galanor: Increased the amount of Super granted for hits, but total Super regain is now capped at 50%.
- Ursa Furiosa: Capped the amount of Super energy you can regain once your Super ends at 50%.
- Skull of Dire Ahamkara: Increased the amount of Super refunded per kill, but total Super gain is capped at 50%.
- Phoenix Protocol: Capped the amount of Super energy you can regain once your Super ends at 50%.
- Stormdancer’s Brace: Now also refunds up to 50% of your Super energy after your Super ends, based on the number of kills.
- Geomag Stabilizers: Removed “sprint to top off your Super.”
- This part of the perk led to a higher uptime in PvP than was healthy and gave Attunement of Control Warlocks an immediately renewable supply of Super energy for paying for mod costs like Special Finisher in PvE.
Secondly, the team has brought up a number of other exotic pieces of armor through reworks and tune-ups that should make them more fun to use and a bit more powerful in different situations.
Hunter
- The Bombardiers
- The bomb now has a secondary effect based on your subclass type:
- Blind for Arc.
- Burn for Solar.
- Slow for Stasis.
- Suppress for Void.
- Note: The suppression will not affect a Guardian in Super.
- Graviton Forfeit
- Increased the bonus invisibility duration.
- The melee regeneration speed now increases based on the number of enemies near you.
- While you are invisible, your Recovery is greatly increased, and your weapons reload more quickly.
- Lucky Pants
- Added intrinsic Hand Cannon Holster mod, replaced previous functionality with the following:
- “When you ready a fully-loaded Hand Cannon that deals Kinetic damage or damage matching your subclass energy type, for a short time each hit against a combatant from that Hand Cannon increases the damage of the next shot.”
- Note: No, Hawkmoon won’t be able to one-shot a raid boss using these legs. Other Hand Cannons will get a fun edge in combat, though!
- What is a Hand Cannon Holster mod? A new kind of mod that reloads stowed weapons. More on that below…
Titan
- Precious Scars
- Will now also create a burst of healing and bonus Recovery around you whenever you kill an enemy with a weapon whose damage type matches your subclass type.
- Icefall Mantle
- Removed the slower class ability recharge scalar.
Warlock
- Verity’s Brow
- Changed to trigger when you get a weapon kill that matches your subclass energy type.
- Increased grenade damage bonus to 20% per stack (up from 10%).
- The Stag
- Grants damage reduction to allied Guardians standing in your Rifts.
- 25% against combatants, 15% against players.
- Promethium Spur
- Has additional functionality:
- While standing in a Rift, Solar weapon kills give you class ability energy.
- When your class ability energy is full, Solar weapon kills consume that energy and spawn a combination healing/empowering Rift at the target’s location.
Some of these changes are promising, and it is nice to see Bungie is committed to tuning exotics that have been in the game for years now. This is the level of commitment the studio needs to show to keep old exotics feeling fresh and to avoid new armor pieces edging old ones out of the meta.
The team also announced changes to mods starting with the removal of the traction mod and the addition of settings that allow for controller players to change sprint turn speeds, ADS sensitivity modifiers and increase general sensitivity more than before.
- Added a sprint turn speed scalar option (allowed values 0.3 to 0.8).
- Removed the Traction mod.
- Added additional controller sensitivity options (1-10 sensitivity is the same as before, 11-20 increases over that).
- Added an ADS sensitivity modifier (allowed values 0.5 to 1.5).
The other mod changes are listed below, including the introduction of the new Holster mods:
- Ammo Finder
- Now have an increased chance to spawn ammo on kills with primary weapons, and a further increased chance with Exotic Primaries.
- Scavenger
- Multiple copies of Scavenger mods of the same type no longer stack.
- Holster
- This is a new type of leg armor mod that will gradually reload stowed weapons of the matching type over time.
- Multiple copies of Holster mods of the same type will increase the rate ammo is reloaded.
- The following weapon types will have Holster mods: Auto Rifle, Fusion Rifle, Grenade Launcher (Power), Hand Cannon, Linear Fusion Rifle, Machine Gun, Pulse Rifle, Scout Rifle, Shotgun, Sidearm, Submachine Gun, Sniper Rifle, and Trace Rifle.
- Hand Cannon excludes Eriana’s Vow.
- Rocket Launchers, Breech-loaded Grenade Launchers, and Bows will not have Holster mods, as we didn’t want to affect any weapon that has a magazine size of 1.
Lastly, the team laid out their nerfs to Warmind Cells, which have been dominant in PvE activities since their release about a year ago, and buffs to Elemental Wells. These changes will probably make Warmind builds less important, but they will not be made obsolete.
- Base Warmind Cells
- Reduced radius of the explosion/effect range of Warmind Cells (10 → 6 meters).
- Reduced damage of the explosion of Warmind Cells (previously 200-400 → now 50-250).
- Global Reach
- Increase the mod cost of Global Reach to 3.
- Reduce the amount of radius increase (20 → 10 meters).
- Cellular Suppression
- Reduce the duration of the suppressing effect when using Cellular Suppression (3 seconds → 2 seconds).
- Wrath of Rasputin
- Reduce bonus Solar damage (previously 100-200 → now 25-100).
- Elemental Armaments now has an increased chance to spawn an elemental well based on the tier of the enemy defeated.
- Font of Might’s base duration has been increased to 10 seconds and increased the damage bonus provided from 10% to 25%.
Aside from these changes, the TWAB also revealed two new weapons, a sidearm and a pulse rifle, coming to Destiny 2’s limited time PvP mode, Iron Banner. They also showed off the new Iron Banner armor set.
This set will have an intrinsic perk, Iron Lord’s Pride, that will allow players a small chance of an Enhancement Prism dropping at the end of an Iron Banner match. Each additional piece worn increases the chance, and the chance caps out at four pieces worn.
This TWAB was full of information, and you can expect next week’s to be as well. It will be covered here, so make sure you stay tuned to Gaming Trend for more about Destiny 2 and all your gaming news.
Noah Anzaldua is a game journalist, Twitch streamer, and a passionate fan of Apex Legends and Destiny 2. Writing and streaming are his passions, and he is carving a career path out for himself. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama where he is majored in News Media, History, and Political Science.
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