Dev Insights: The Final Shape Armor Tuning Preview

Hello! This is the Armor Team, with an overview of some of the tuning changes we’re making for The Final Shape.

We’ve been primarily focused on updates to bring our existing armor and mods up to date for the release of the Prismatic subclass. This includes a fairly wide range of changes across our roster of Exotic armor as well as some updates to specific weapon mods. In addition to that, we still managed to find the time to branch out a little—including putting together a little update for those of you just a few points short of that triple 100 stat loadout.

Subclass Matching, Prismatic, and You

Our existing armor and mods were originally released in a world where each subclass was only ever a single element. Since that will no longer be true with the release of The Final Shape, we’ve taken a pass through our existing gear.

For the most part, this meant updating Exotic armor and armor mods to reference a player’s equipped Super element instead of a specific subclass. This allows their effects to function on Prismatic without changing their behavior on the original subclass. For example, the Titan Exotic Hoarfrost-Z will require just a Stasis Super to be equipped, rather than the full Stasis subclass. We’ve also taken the opportunity to update the description of Harmonic mods to better explain their behavior and to fully support Strand on Resistance mods.

However, in a few places we wanted to make more meaningful changes. We’ve detailed them below, along with our reasoning.

Hunter

Triton Vice no longer requires a Glaive that matches your subclass to trigger its extra detonations. Given the limited pool of Glaive options, we wanted to open this up to support a wider variety of builds. We also wanted to let the Glaive melee bonus linger for a bit after you stop being surrounded, to add some ease of use (and to bring it further into parity with Synthoceps).

• Glaive projectile final blows now always trigger a detonation that matches the Glaive's damage type, even when the Glaive does not match the equipped subclass.
• The surrounded effect provided by Triton Vice while wielding a Glaive now lingers on the player for five seconds after no longer being surrounded.

Dragon’s Shadow has been updated to trigger its effects when you use Ensnaring Slam or the new Ascension Arc aspect, opening up more buildcrafting combinations.

Foetracer now grants the bonus damage it inflicts on a target to weapons. The damage type also matches that of the ability used to damage that target, instead of always matching your equipped subclass. With Prismatic you can apply a variety of different damage elements with your abilities, and this change allows Foetracer to buff multiple different weapon damage types, instead of just the one that matches your subclass or Super element.

We wanted to add an additional benefit to The Sixth Coyote (along with Armamentarium for Titans), since otherwise the Spirit of Coyote perk on the new Exotic class items would have granted the same benefits as the original Exotic. We took inspiration from Claws of Ahamkara and added the ability for The Sixth Coyote to create Orbs of Power from final blows after using your class ability.

• This is implemented as the Exotic granting a free copy of the Reaper armor mod's effects.

Renewal Grasps has been updated to grant the new Frost Armor Stasis keyword, instead of a bespoke damage reduction effect.

• On entering your Duskfield Grenade volume, you or allies gain a stack of Frost Armor.
• About every 0.9 seconds, an additional stack of Frost Armor is granted, resetting your timer.

Star-Eater Scales has always been a strong Exotic, but, after the Lightfall changes to armor mods, Orbs of Power are much easier to come by. We want to adjust Star-Eater Scales to balance the effort required to gain its powerful effects. On top of this, we are making a change regarding its efficiency when paired with multiple players running Golden Gun, to reduce its potential for fireteams to loop Supers indefinitely.

• Increased the Orbs of Power required to grant maximum benefits from 4 to 6.
• Reduced the increased Super energy gained per Orb of Power when the Golden Gun is equipped from 2% down to 0.5%.

Titan

We updated Ursa Furiosa to improve the new Void Aspect Unbreakable, in addition to its previous effects.

• Now provides increased movement speed while guarding with Unbreakable.
• Also grants Super energy for guarding with Unbreakable. This energy scales based on the amount of incoming damage the shield absorbs.

Eternal Warrior no longer requires an Arc subclass for Arc final blows to grant its escalating Arc weapon damage bonus. This allows it to synergize with Prismatic builds more easily. Its behavior related to Fists of Havoc is unchanged.

Like The Sixth Coyote above, Armamentarium was updated with an additional benefit beyond granting a second grenade charge. It now creates Orbs of Power from grenade final blows.

• This is implemented as the Exotic granting a free copy of the Firepower armor mod's effects.

Khepri’s Horn was feeling lackluster in many situations, so we increased the potency of its Solar blast.

• Increase the damage from the Solar blast by 100% in PvE.
• The Solar blast now scorches each time it hits a target, instead of scorching only once.
• Khepri's Horn now benefits from Ember of Eruption and Ember of Ashes (+30 scorch in PvE and +15 scorch in PvP).

Heart of Inmost Light’s buffs in the HUD could easily crowd out other important information. We felt that it could be less verbose in its HUD feedback, so now it displays a single, consolidated status effect icon in the HUD to communicate its state, instead of the two to three it used before.

• The functionality of the Exotic is unchanged.

Synthoceps is an Exotic all about being in the thick of a group of enemies, and its effects are potent to offset the inherent danger of being surrounded. However, we felt that it was too easy to carry those powerful effects, once triggered, into far less dangerous 1v1 encounters.

• Reduced the amount of time that Bionic Enhancements lingers after no longer being surrounded, from 8 seconds to 5 seconds. This duration is now visible as a timer on the buff.

Severance Enclosure is a particularly noisy Exotic when it comes to its effects blasting enemies around the battlefield. We wanted to alleviate some of the noise and awkwardness around the explosions, to better bring them in line with our other area effects on Exotics.

• Its explosions now require line of sight to damage enemies. We also reduced the knockback intensity of these explosions, which will now launch enemies more consistently vertically.

Warlock

Mantle of Battle Harmony has been adjusted to grant more Super energy for defeating powerful enemies, and the cooldown on granting Super energy has been removed. This is intended to make it more potent in a wider variety of activities.

• Now grants Super energy ranging between +1.5% and +4.5%, depending on the target type killed.
• Removed the 2-second cooldown for the perk's activation.

Ballidorse Wrathweavers has been updated to grant the new Frost Armor Stasis keyword instead of the old Stasis Shard Overshield.

• Activating your Rift grants you and nearby allies the maximum Frost Armor stacks when Frostpulse is equipped.
• Activating your Winter's Wrath shatter attack grants nearby allies the maximum amount of stacks of Frost Armor. When your Winter's Wrath ends, you gain maximum stacks of Frost Armor.

A Secant Filaments' Empowering Rift will now reset a player's existing Devour buff duration back to 11 seconds when they enter it, in addition to its previous behavior.

Verity’s Brow now requires final blows with a weapon matching your grenade's damage type, instead of one matching your equipped subclass. This better supports using it on the Prismatic subclass.

Sunbracers has seen quite a bit of time in the sun this season. We wanted to bring down some of its extreme potency in crowd control, while also tackling the visual noise it produces on the battlefield. However, we didn't want to remove its core identity of blanketing the battlefield in Solar light.

• Reduced the increased Solar Grenade duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Reduced its increased grenade recharge rate to allow a max of 4 grenades while the effect is active, down from 5.

When multiple Warlocks used Cenotaph Mask on a single target, it resulted in far more Heavy ammo than was healthy for the sandbox. It also pushed fireteams into all using the same build, which is more reductive than we would like.

• Multiple players using Cenotaph Mask can no longer trigger its effect using a single enemy target.
• Cenotaph's target lock visual marker is now hidden for the Exotic's wearer and only appears to the wearer’s allies.

Powered Melee and Armor Effects

The term “Powered Melee” was always intended to mean spending a melee charge. However, subclass elements like Combination Blow or Knockout would allow players to circumvent this cost. This makes it difficult to balance the potency of effects that require a Powered Melee, especially across all classes and subclasses.

We want to standardize this better across the sandbox. We are starting by updating Severance Enclosure and Assassins Cowl to only trigger their effects when a player spends a melee charge (or uses a finisher) to get a final blow. We plan on rolling this type of change out to more content that triggers Powered Melee in future updates.

Exotic Artifice Upgrades

Even if you’ve spent the time to get that “triple 100” Artifice armor set for your build, one piece was always a bit left out. Whether you’re looking to make everything match or get that last +3 to Resilience or just want to get your hands on Artifice gear for the first time, we figured it was about time for us to tie up that loose end. With the release of The Final Shape, Exotic armor will now be able to access the unique mod slot and free stat mods of Artifice armor.

• Exotic armor can now be upgraded after it has been fully masterworked, granting an Artifice mod slot.
  • This comes at the cost of an Exotic Cipher and 10,000 Glimmer.

Ammo Finder Update

In the live game now, Heavy and Special ammo finder armor mods reset their progress towards an ammo brick whenever you die. This leads to players receiving less ammo in harder difficulty activities, especially if they are playing right on the edge of their skill level. In fact, if you were unlucky enough with the timing of your character dying, it was possible to never get any finder ammo bricks at all!

In The Final Shape, we wanted to make ammo finders more predictable for all players across all activities, so Heavy and Special ammo finder armor mods will persist their progress towards an ammo brick through death. This means you will always get a finder brick if you defeat enough enemies, regardless of how many times you die along the way.

Because of this change, we have disabled ammo finder mods in Crucible, and player kills will no longer grant ammo finder progress in Gambit. We also found this change dramatically increased the amount of ammo players would receive on average, so we have increased the kill requirements for both Special and Heavy ammo finders by 20% for Guardians in a fireteam. Solo Guardians, however, have no one to resurrect them when they are defeated, so we have left their kill requirements unchanged.

Raid Armor Mods

The narrow application of raid mods allows us to give them potent benefits unique to the raids in which they are used. However, while these benefits are strong, they don’t currently feel impactful enough in practice, especially since they may not fit into your existing build. As a result, with the release of The Final Shape we are making it much easier to layer these extra elements into your loadouts as you go for that perfect weapon roll. Removed all mod energy costs from raid-specific armor mods.

Conclusion

That’s everything we have for this update. We’re excited to see these changes in The Final Shape, and we'll be listening to your feedback as you get some time with these new changes.