Bungie has some major shifts in the sandbox planned for season 22 of Destiny 2, examining some of the game’s most underused Exotic armor pieces and giving them some significant adjustments to allow them to shine alongside more popular picks for each class.
The details of these planned changes come thanks to a season 22 abilities preview blog released today by Bungie, which broke down a few of the updates that players can expect when the new season goes live on Aug. 22. As part of these updates, 14 Exotic Armor pieces are set to receive reworks or buffs, including Foetracer, Renewal Grasps, Hallowfire Heart, and Geomag Stabilizers—all notoriously weak options in the current meta.
“We settled on one primary goal for this balance pass: bolster underused exotics,” Bungie wrote in the blog. “We took a look at several Exotics that weren’t seeing a lot of usage in any game mode and targeted those for buffs this time around. In the process of doing so, we identified a few previously changed Exotics that needed further tweaks. Across the board, these changes are largely positive and should make the Exotics more useful and more powerful.”
That’s resulted in four Exotic armor pieces each getting tweaked for both Hunters and Warlocks, while Titans get six Exotics looked at in the next season.
Hunters
For Hunters, one of the more notable smaller adjustments is coming to Renewal Grasps. The Exotic arms have been languishing ever since they were heavily nerfed many seasons ago, but Bungie is now removing the increased cooldown applied to Duskfield Grenades while using Renewal Grasps to try and bump them up again.
Knucklehead Radar, Foetracer, and Lucky Raspberry are getting more sizeable reworks. Foetracer’s current suite of benefits is getting entirely removed and transitioned into being a part of Knucklehead Radar’s functionality, on top of its current benefits. As for Foetracer itself, Bungie “took some cues” from the Monochromatic Maestro Artifact perk when designing its new effects. Now, after damaging an enemy with any subclass ability, Foetracer will grant a damage bonus to weapons with a matching energy type. If that enemy is then defeated, a collectible object associated with that subclass—such as Ionic Traces—will spawn.
For Lucky Raspberry, Bungie has “taken a crack” at streamlining its energy gains while keeping its benefits intact. The Exotic will still improve the chaining of Arc Bolt grenades in season 22, but now, the additional grenade energy you earn is based on damage dealt by the lightning strikes from Jolt as well as the Ionic Traces you pick up. On top of that, the grenade is being given the intrinsic ability to stun Overload champions, turning Lucky Raspberry into a reliable Exotic to wield in content that features them.
Titans
Titans are the class getting the most Exotic adjustments in season 22. Four of the Exotics—Icefall Mantle, Doom Fang Pauldrons, Path of the Burning Steps, and Eternal Warrior—are getting similar updates centered around escalating damage bonuses.
For Icefall Mantle, that means rapid Stasis kills will grant an escalating damage bonus to Stasis weapons. Activating your class ability will also immediately give you the highest bonus possible. Doom Fang Pauldrons are getting the same effect but for Void kills and Void weapons, and the highest tier bonus can be immediately gained instead by getting a Void melee kill. Path of the Burning Steps already has this effect for Solar subclass users, but getting a Solar Grenade kill will now grant the maximum damage bonus to Solar weapons as well.
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ACD/0 Feedback Fence is getting a new perk that replaces the old, which makes its melee damage effects require Armor Charges to proc. Melee hits will give you an Armor Charge, and while you have the Armor Charge, you will take reduced melee damage. When you take that melee damage, the Arc explosion you release can now Jolt targets, and it will consume the Armor Charges you had stacked up.
When it came to Hallowfire Heart, Bungie admitted that it “often stands in the shadow of the more ubiquitous Heart of Inmost Light.” Despite leaving the part of the armor’s effect that gives you greatly increased Solar ability regeneration rate when your Super is fully charged, the rest is getting reworked in a way focused on letting players “build more into Sunspots,” with Bungie teasing you’ll “be seeing many more Sunspots on the battlefield as a result.”
Warlocks
The adjustments that Bungie plans to make to Warlock Exotics in season 22 are focused, for the most part, around better synergy with the keywords and reworks that came with Light 3.0 during the year of The Witch Queen.
One of the two new pieces of functionality for Astrocyte Verse is a good example of this as nearby enemies will now become Volatile when you use your Blink ability. On top of that, the Exotic now buffs the Nova Warp Super slightly, with the Dark Blink ability available during Nova Warp now no longer consuming Super energy.
On the other hand, the change to Geomag Stabilizers isn’t quite what players might have expected—and Bungie knows it. “While we’ve often heard calls to restore the perk that let you top off your Super energy by sprinting, the legacy of that incentive still creates some pretty silly play patterns,” Bungie said. “Instead, we wanted to give players a way to get more Super energy, no matter how charged their Super is.” To that extent, picking up Ionic Traces will now grant additional Super energy while using Geomag Stabilizers.
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Wings of Sacred Dawn is another Exotic getting buffed, something that is sorely needed for an armor piece that hasn’t seen much use outside of its fashion potential since its introduction. “We wanted to help players have a way to stay aloft longer,” the team said as it discussed the changes. “Typically, reloading was the main cause for a float to end.”
Because of that, Wings of Sacred Dawn will now automatically reload your Solar weapons each time you get a kill while aiming down sights. Not only will this make the rest of its effects easier to keep active but also has some incredible potential with some of the game’s Solar weaponry with slow reloads, such as Xenophage.
Winter’s Guile is the last Exotic on the list, and while it isn’t getting any significant changes that will impact all subclasses, it is getting a change to its functionality for Stasis users specifically. “Due to the nature of the Stasis warlock’s melee ability, this Exotic was previously a disappointing choice for that subclass,” Bungie said. “We’ve added a new perk to this one, specifically for when you are playing your Stasis subclass. Now combatants encased by your Penumbral Blast melee will automatically shatter after a short delay.”
All of these Exotic changes will be going live in Destiny 2 when season 22 launches on Tuesday, Aug. 22. Earlier on that same day, Destiny 2 will be hosting its annual showcase event, where more details on the upcoming season and The Final Shape expansion will be revealed.
