Bungie is making some big changes to Exotic armor pieces in Destiny 2 Season 21 across all three character classes. The upcoming Season of the Deep in Destiny 2 completely overhauls the way players can acquire Exotic armor, but now that also comes with some intrinsic perk changes, aimed towards improving the usage of usually ignored armor pieces as well.
Along with the Destiny 2 Season of the Deep, Bungie plans to bring back Sloane, a character that hasn’t been a part of the game since Titan was sunset with the launch of Beyond Light. This also leads fans to believe that Titan could come back as a destination, which explains the name “Season of the Deep” considering Saturn’s moon is full of large bodies of water However, Destiny 2’s Exotic armor pieces for Warlocks, Hunters, and Titans are also getting an extreme makeover, which is detailed in the latest Bungie blog post.
The post begins by explaining the rationale behind these changes, where Bungie’s intention was to nerf armor pieces that are “too powerful," and rework underutilized armor pieces to improve their appeal. Another reason Bungie did this was “to curb a few instances of damage stacking that circumvented the expectations introduced in Lightfall; partially to bring damage into an expected range, but also to alleviate the pressure to use certain combinations of Exotics and mods to reach optimal damage output. Many players believe this was most likely because of how quickly the Root of Nightmares raid in Destiny 2 was completed on Day 1, where six Warlocks with Starfire Protocol could breeze past encounters without breaking a sweat.
A total of 24 armor pieces have been tweaked: 7 for Hunters, 8 for Titans, and 9 for Warlocks. While not all of them are significant reworks, some of them are quite substantial, which the community feels will shift the meta in Destiny 2 drastically. For instance, several players feel the Starfire Protocol Warlock Exotic in Destiny 2 will be non-desirable now considering damage dealt from Well of Radiance or empowering rift will return only 2.5% grenade energy as opposed to the previous 20%. However, there are other exotics that have been buffed in a way, where the Point-Contact Canon Brace Titan Exotic now deals increased damage in PvE and the Lightning strikes also Jolts enemies. For Hunters, the St0mp-EE5 Exotic has been tweaked to remove airborne effectiveness penalties, but now only gives additional movement speed and slide distance when the dodge is full.
Along with these changes, Bungie is also introducing Exotic armor focusing in Season of the Deep, which is something fans have applauded, and a recent leak also revealed a possible rework to Destiny 2's power level system arriving sometime this year.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.