All Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 changes in Edge of Fate

The new Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 system is going to take some getting used to, and alongside new Gear Tiers, will be one of Edge of Fate’s biggest shakeups for the long-running loot-shooter.

The system should allow for much more build diversity for Destiny 2 players to bend the game to their whims, and it’s expected to be as large in scope as Armor 2.0 was at Shadowkeep’s launch. There’s a lot to go over, so here’s everything you need to know about how Armor 3.0 will work in Destiny 2, come the launch of The Edge of Fate.

What is Armor 3.0 in Destiny 2?

Destiny 2’s new Armor 3.0 system is a total makeover for armor, bringing sweeping changes to stats and adding new upgrade features for your armor. Just as the previous major armor overhaul back in 2019 did, this applies to all players and to new armor pieces only, meaning your pre-Edge of Fate gear - Legendary and Exotic - won’t benefit but will still be usable.

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Fittingly, there are three pillars to the new Armor 3.0 system, so this is what you can expect to be different when you get new armor pieces:

• New Stats: Each of the six base stats have new names and some totally new benefits. Stat tiers are also gone, so every point counts, and the new overall cap for each stat is 200! Stats are also influenced by the Destiny 2 Gear Tiers system, so the higher the tier of your armor, the higher the stats.
• Armor Archetypes: These dictate the way stats are distributed per armor piece and allow you to push for specific gear that fits your build (at least in theory) - more on these below!
• Set Bonuses: The more pieces of a particular armor set you wear at once, the greater the benefits it will provide, again leading into additional buildcrafting options.

As a longtime fan, it feels Bungie wants to get away from having just a handful of really great builds and push for more experimentation. For example, I love my melee Hunter build, but I know a good half a dozen other friends that have used the same one for a fair while now.

Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 stats

Destiny 2 armor has long used six ‘buckets’ for its stats - Discipline, Intellect, Mobility, Resilience, Recovery, and Strength - but these are being completely changed with Armor 3.0 in Edge of Fate:

• Discipline, Intellect, and Strength will be renamed Grenade, Super, and Melee, respectively, and they still work as they have before, reducing the downtime of your various abilities.
• Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery are being replaced with Weapons, Health, and Class respectively, although these mostly have entirely new effects.

Each piece of armor will now feature points in only three of these stats, rather than all six. However, as before, these stats across all five of your armor pieces combine into an overall score for each stat - for example, if you’ve got three armour pieces with a Weapons stat of 30, your overall score will be 90.

That overall score will contribute to diminished cooldowns and other basic boosts depending on the stat (more on those in a moment) up to a total score of 100, but now you can push towards 200 points for even more bonuses.

As an example, boosting your Health stat between 1 and 100 will provide a bonus to healing and flinch resistance, depending on how close to 100 you are. After 100, you can keep putting more points in via gear and see improvements like additional shield capacity and faster shield recharges – ideal for solo Dungeon runners.

Here’s the full rundown of each stat, courtesy of Bungie:

So what’s happening to Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery stats? These are now fixed for all Guardians, though armor mods will allow for a bit of customization. Mobility will be set to 30 for Titans and Warlocks, with Hunters getting 40. Resilience and Recovery will both be fixed to 100 (or what 100 would be in the pre-Edge of Fate rubric).Recovery can be improved with the new Health stat (covered above), while Mobility can be augmented with a new leg armor mod called ‘Enhanced Athletics’, so you can still build into a particularly nimble Guardian if you’d like.

All in all, this system lets you much more easily min-max your stats to build into your preferred playstyle without wasting points on your armor.

Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 Armor Archetypes

There are six armor archetypes players can find on a given Legendary armor piece in The Edge of Fate, and each one tells you the sorts of stats you’ll find on that piece at a glance. Each archetype has a primary stat that can roll up to +30, a secondary stat that goes up to +25, and a random tertiary stat that can drop at up to +20:

• Paragon: Super primary, Melee secondary
• Grenadier: Grenade primary, Super secondary
• Specialist: Class primary, Weapons secondary
• Brawler: Melee primary, Health secondary
• Bulwark: Health primary, Class secondary
• Gunner: Weapons primary, Grenade secondary

These armor archetypes are an important part of Armor 3.0 because they should make it much easier to identify armor you need versus armor you don’t without having to do lots of number-crunching. For example, if you’re a Titan who likes to charge in and punch things, you’ll probably want armor with the Brawler and Bulwark archetypes.

Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 Set Bonuses

Finally, new armor sets that drop in The Edge of Fate will come with two bespoke perks, but these won’t activate until you have two or four pieces of the same set equipped.

As an example, wearing two pieces of a set might provide a perk that causes final blows with primary weapons to give you increased reload speed. Wearing four pieces of that set will give you the two-piece bonus and an extra four-piece bonus that might cause you to let out a concussive shockwave when you break an opponent’s shield with kinetic damage. Alternatively, you could wear two pieces each of two different sets to mix set bonuses.

Again, this all plays into the expanded buildcrafting opportunities available to players with Armor 3.0.

Destiny 2 Armor 3.0 FAQs

What about Masterworking?

Masterworking is getting a shift with the new Armor 3.0 system, but the big positive is that once you collect an armor piece, you won’t need to invest materials to be able to unlock mod slots. Now, all 10 mod slots will be available right from the start.

Instead, masterworking will add points to the stats not affected by your armor archetype. This means that while you won’t be able to turn your Gunner armor piece into more of a Brawler one, you can buff some of the stats. Masterworking a full set of armor will mean you’ll have an additional 25 stat points in total, but the process isn’t retroactive and will only apply to new armor in Edge of Fate.

What will happen to my current armor?

That brings us to the big question: Will your current armor be useless post-Edge of Fate? The good news is that no, it won’t be, because Bungie is converting existing armor to use the new stats.

Still, the incentive will be to gain new armor in order to earn set bonuses, and additional stats through Gear Tiers.

What about Exotic armor?

Destiny 2 Exotic Class Items, which debuted in The Final Shape, will get custom stats retroactively. That’s a huge result for anyone that got their ideal roll and doesn’t want to try and re-earn them.

However, other Exotic armor pieces you already have won’t get an instant swap to the Armor 3.0 system, sadly, but Bungie is rolling out refreshed versions of 28 Exotic weapons and 15 Exotic armor pieces per class that fit into the new system - this includes all the new Destiny 2 Edge of Fate Exotics and you can read the full list in this TWID article.

Bungie said these will be ‘Featured’ and will drop with Armor 3.0 benefits, but the list will change with each expansion and Major Update (the smaller, free updates that arrive halfway between each expansion).

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