Bungie Begins Righting the Ship For Destiny 2, Adding Masterwork Armor and Fixing Raid Rewards

Destiny 2 update

January 30 is going to be a big day for Destiny 2. Alongside bringing back Iron Banner with some much needed changes, the January 30 update will add Masterwork armor and rework how Raid rewards are handled. These updates begin the process of making good on many of the promises Bungie made earlier this month about changes that will be made to Destiny 2 over the course of the next few months.

Masterwork Armor

Masterwork armor is an additional chase for players, and will allow for a deeper customization of stats. All Legendary armor has a chance to drop as a Masterwork. Chances of a drop are higher from endgame activities like Trials of the Nine or the Raid, but any source that drops legendary engrams has the potential to drop Masterworks.

Each Masterwork armor piece will grant a 3% reduction to damage while your Super is active, and that will stack with all five pieces of armor for up to 15% reduction. In addition, Masterwork armor can have their stat package re-rolled, so if you don’t want that hunter gear to focus primarily on mobility, you can re-roll it to try for resilience or recovery.

Masterwork armor solves a problem that Destiny 2 has had from the beginning where various armor pieces that may look cool aren’t viable because of their default stat packages. Now any piece of legendary armor can potentially be the exact stat rolls that you want them to be, so Guardians can look cool and be effective at the same time.

The Masterwork system is set to expand too. “This is just the first version of Armor Masterworks. We are planning to continue updating this system and adding additional benefits,” Bungie said in a blog post. It seems like once this system is out in the wild, Bungie will continue to expand and iterate on it based on ongoing player feedback.

Reworking Raid Rewards

Another change that Bungie has been hinting at since last year is updates to Raid rewards to make that particular endgame activity more viable for repeated play. The biggest change is that Raid armor will now include Raid specific perks. These perks will retroactively apply to any armor you may already have obtained, and will include things like “While on the Leviathan, your Solar abilities do 25% more damage.” The idea behind these general perks is to not get stuck in a situation where armor is only useful for specific encounters.

In addition to each Raid perk mod being a guaranteed legendary (+5 bonus on every piece of Raid armor), Raid perk mods will not be consumable. You can select them and swap them out at will on each Raid armor piece. Playing the Raid or Raid Lair will now give you things that will increase your power within those specific activities.

Each and every encounter in the Raid is now guaranteed to drop a Raid piece. Previously it was possible to only receive tokens for completion of an encounter, which left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Every encounter has the possibility of dropping any item from the full Raid table, with the exception of the new Raid Ghost shell (more on that below). The Raid vendor will now also sell a rotating selection of Raid gear.

Destiny 2 Update leviathan raid ghost shell

Raid Ghost Shell

The “Contender’s Shell” is a new Raid exclusive Ghost shell that has a chance to drop from the final encounter of either the Leviathan Raid or Raid Lair. It’s perks are easily some of the best that Destiny 2 has seen so far. Seeker of Brilliance adds a chance for Raid encounters to drop Bright Engrams. Each time an encounter doesn’t, that chance is increased until one drops. Seeker of Opulence makes exotic drops from Raid encounters more likely to be from a selection of exotics that you don’t yet have. And finally, it provides a tracker for number of encounters you’ve cleared on the Leviathan.

Bungie also took a moment to outline some other changes headed to the January 30 patch:

Armor Masterworks and changes to Raid rewards aren’t the only changes coming in the upcoming 1.1.2 update on January 30. Here is a look at a few of the other fixes you can expect to see in the full notes next week.

  • Prometheus Lens – Flame Refraction perk now generates ammo instead of pulling from reserves; Increased base damage
  • Fixed an issue where new characters created after the release of Curse of Osiris were not receiving the Flashpoint milestone
  • Players in social spaces, like the Tower, receive a notification when their Lost and Found at the Postmaster is full
  • Heroic strike completions now have a greater chance of granting Exotic rewards
  • Mercury challenges are now available during adventures
  • Fixed an issue where Curse of Osiris strikes were not properly granting Clan Engrams when featured as a Nightfall activity
  • Fixed an issue where Challenges were not appearing within Quickplay
  • Increased the dismantle timer for Masterwork Cores

Bungie makes it clear that this is just the start. “I know we still aren’t going to address every concern here, but hopefully this is a start in good faith.” The January 30 Destiny 2 update is intended to begin to make good on promises, with every intention of continuing action and dialogue with the players. There’s another major update coming in February, which Bungie indicates they are already working on.

Will the January 30 Destiny 2 update get you back into the game? If you’ve stopped playing, what will get you to start playing again?

[Source: Bungie]

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