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The recent Destiny 2: The Final Shape gameplay reveal felt like fan fiction. Bungie's gone and unleashed two off-the-walls ideas that players have been half-jokingly pitching for years: an Avatar-like subclass called Prismatic that can access all five elements at once and new class items that give you two Exotic armor perks from any class in one slot.
To top it off, the expansion is finally adding an all-new race of enemies that come across as Tormentor-like mutations carved in the image of the Witness, which is a welcome and long-requested shot in the arm for the sci-fi MMO's now well-worn combat sandbox. It is wild stuff – which is apparently the whole point – and the implications for buildcrafting and game balance are staggering.
Something truly Exotic
The specifics on the new duo Exotics are still a little fuzzy. What we do know is that Warlocks can roll a bond with the main perk of the Hunter Exotic Star-Eater Scales, Hunters could get a cloak mimicking Warlock's Apotheosis Veil, and Titans may roll something like the Warlock's Ophidian Aspects on a mark. It's all down to the roll of the dice since these drop with random perks. And yes, gameplay footage showed that you can absolutely have two perks from other classes on your Exotic; these are just the examples Bungie offered, but there's no quota for 'one from your class plus one from another.' We still need to see the full list, but the pool of possible Exotic combinations already looks massive, and the very idea of combining multiple, class-agnostic perks is tantalizing.
Exotics, especially some older ones pre-dating Bungie's Final Shape planning, doubtlessly weren't designed with other classes in mind. This inevitably means that some of the niche options won't work well with all classes and may not be available in the perk pool at all, but it also means that certain interactions are absolutely going to warp the game. A Titan that gets Assassin's Cowl invisibility after a Consecration slam? A Hunter with the melee damage boost of Synthoceps? Bungie said "we want it to feel a little broken," and yeah, that tracks.
It's hugely exciting to consider how this will affect the loot grind and how that will cascade across buildcrafting. I hope it plays out like Monster Hunter's charm system, where you get a powerful piece of RNG gear out of nowhere and suddenly have to rethink all your builds to make full use of it. Maybe I'm not really feeling a certain ability at the moment, but the right duo Exotic totally changes my opinion of it. We also need to know how we acquire these things – can they drop from any activity or will we be grinding something specific to build out our collection? "Both" feels like the ideal answer. I'd like for them to drop everywhere simply because it would be a great surprise for all activities, but we'll also surely want a dedicated, actionable way to chase them.
One key detail is that these duo Exotics are explicitly tied to the new Prismatic subclass. In a blog post recapping the reveal, Bungie writes: "Guardians can push their Prismatic builds even further with the new Exotic class items coming in The Final Shape. Exotic class items work specifically with the Prismatic subclass and will each roll with two random Exotic perks inspired by a selection of other Exotic armor pieces, even from different classes."
I'm a bit bummed to hear that these twofer Exotics are only available for one subclass, but that being said, I'm also having a hard time coming up with a reason to run anything other than Prismatic going forward, barring a few exceptions where you absolutely need specific abilities (hello, Well of Radiance, my old friend).
Fire with a side of ice
Prismatic does have some significant limitations, but the power of accessing and combining all five Light and Dark subclasses is hard to overstate. Per Bungie's latest blog post, several abilities have also been updated to make them easier to activate or combo, setting Prismatic up for even greater success.
The biggest winner in my mind is Stasis, a subclass with incredible crowd control potential, but little burst damage and notoriously terrible Supers. There are some great Stasis abilities, but in a post-3.0 subclass world, to me the whole element feels a bit underwhelming altogether. I'd love to spend more time with Stasis Warlock Bleakwatcher turrets that can shut down entire rooms, for example, but I'd also rather not be stuck with that terrible Super all the time. But what if I could keep Bleakwatcher, run a Strand Super or the new Solar Super, combine it with the excellent Strand melee ability, and get Void's Devour into the mix for a four-element build with incredible crowd control, healing, and versatility? Oh, and run Solar's Phoenix Dive class ability, which remains criminally slept-on as an instant heal?
That's the first thing that came to mind after looking at the official list of Prismatic abilities for each class, and as strong as it sounds, it's not even scratching the surface of what's possible here. There are Exotics, mods, and weapon perks to consider, for one, not to mention the unpredictable new duo Exotics. Destiny 2 is also getting a class balance patch for The Final Shape which will only shake things up further. I'm probably going to start with that rainbow Warlock build which emulates the old Hearthstone strategy that "good cards are good," but I have no idea what I'll be running two days or two weeks after The Final Shape drops.
One question weighing on my mind is: why would I not run Prismatic? Is this just what Destiny 2 is now? A multi-class jamboree? I don't think it will be, at least not once the new subclass high wears off. The kicker here is that not all abilities are available to Prismatic classes, plus you have to run a mix of Light and Darkness to pull off the special Transcendence mode that unlocks special grenades tuned like mini Supers.
You can't just run the three strongest Light abilities and call it a day. In fact, Bungie says "some of the abilities we’ve chosen are ones that we think have been underused since their initial release and have exciting interactions with the rest of the roster." Prismatic was explicitly designed to bring up some overlooked abilities, so it's not just going to be the greatest hits of the greatest classes. (This ought to help keep Prismatic from truly breaking the game, too.)
To the surprise of no one, Well of Radiance is out of the Prismatic pool, so Solar Warlock is still going to be a staple going forward. Prismatic Titans and Hunters don't have access to Solar's healing grenades, which gives pureblooded Solar an edge in survivability, though I think Strand will also remain incredibly popular for both. It's going to be interesting to see the original mono subclasses eke out wins and use cases as Guardians run wild with rainbow builds, and the wealth of choices involved in that sounds like a hell of a sandbox to tinker with.
The Final Shape needed to bring the heat to get Destiny 2 out of its latest rut, and it certainly seems to be. This stuff sounds so incredibly overpowered that I've got to wonder what Bungie has planned for the three episodes meant to follow The Final Shape, not to mention what comes after that. Beyond just the cherry on top of the 10-year Light and Darkness narrative saga, The Final Shape is looking more and more like the ultimate showing of everything Destiny 2 is capable of, a climactic performance meant to leave nothing on stage. As Bungie repeatedly reassures players of a long future for Destiny and Destiny 2 – with executive creative director Luke Smith's latest comments reigniting chatter around a theoretical Destiny 3 – the question then becomes, what's the encore?
