Bungie is revamping Destiny 2‘s armor system in Codename: Frontiers, cutting the number of stats armor includes from six to three and allowing players to pump their character stats to as much as double their previous values.
The developer ran down the upcoming changes, launching in Summer 2025 with Destiny 2’s Codename: Apollo expansion, on its Episode: Revenant developer livestream and in a dedicated blog post. The main takeaway is that armor will be more specialized starting in Apollo; instead of each piece of armor featuring points in all six character stat categories, armor will be more specialized to focus on elements like your melee or grenade ability. Bungie writes in its blog post that it’s trying to create more situations where armor is a desirable reward and enhancing build-crafting so that players don’t get just one set of armor they’re happy with and ignore any other armor they receive.
Stats and their distributions are a big part of what Bungie’s changing in the new system. Currently, each piece of armor gets points in all six stat categories, and the totals of all pieces of armor in each category determine different benefits to players. For example, the Discipline category determines how fast your grenade recharges after you use it–the more points your armor has in Discipline, the faster the recharge, up to a total of 100.
If you’re creating a particular character build that focuses on grenades, you want armor with high Discipline. But the current situation is that armor stat points get distributed over all six categories, which means you often will get stuck with wasted points in categories you don’t care about. Because of this distribution system, players often wind up throwing out armor that might be somewhat useful, but has too many points in a stat they’re ignoring at the expense of something else.
With the new armor system, each piece of armor will now have a “stat archetype,” which determines its primary and secondary stat focuses–so essentially, you’ll see armor that amps your melee stat as its primary focus, with a secondary focus on your grenade stat. The third stat for the armor, Bungie writes, is a “free roll,” which sounds like it’ll be random. That should create more situations with “spiky” armor, or armor with a lot of points in particular categories, which can be very useful for build-crafting if you’re focused on a specific ability or synergy between abilities and weapons.
Stats themselves are also changing in two key ways. First, Bungie is doing away with the tier system that’s currently in place. Currently, while stats use a 100-point scale, the benefits you gain only accrue at every 10 points. In other words, having 84 points in the Strength stat gets you the Tier 8 benefit, which kicks in at 80 points; unless you get to 90 points, the next tier, those other four points confer no additional benefit, and are often wasted. With the new system, every point in a stat category counts, Bungie says, so you won’t be wasting points if you’re short of the next tier.
A mockup of the possible new Destiny 2 armor system launching with the Codename: Apollo expansion.
Instead of capping out at 100 points, stat categories will now also go up to 200 points. Bungie says that the first 100 points will confer the existing benefit–speeding up an ability’s cooldown. But from 100 to 200 points, you’ll get new abilities. For instance, every point above 100 in your grenade-focused stat could increase your chance of getting a second grenade charge every time your grenade becomes available, giving you a second grenade to throw with no waiting.
Bungie is still in the process of determining how the stat system will work, so these ideas are subject to change, but it sounds like a chance for a second charge to your abilities is very likely what you’ll gain for pushing your stats up to 200. Bungie also mentioned changing the names of the stats to be clearer–instead of Strength, the stat will be called Melee, and instead of Discipline, it’ll be Grenade. The blog post also suggests a new stat you could build into that increases the chances for special ammo drops, which would also introduce significant new changes to how players approach build-crafting.
Stats aren’t the only thing that will change with Codename: Frontiers’ new armor system. Bungie also intends to lean into the idea of set bonuses, where wearing multiple pieces of armor from the same set confer special benefits. Bungie said you can expect a smaller set bonus to be applied when having two pieces of a set equipped and a larger bonus at four pieces equipped–leaving room to also equip a piece of Exotic armor without missing out. Getting set bonuses for two armor pieces also means that players can mix and match the benefits from two different sets of armor at the same time.
Bungie provided a few examples of possible set bonuses, although the system is still a work in progress and subject to change. A Tex Machina set would play into weapons that sport the Tex Machina in-game brand, which are essentially cowboy weapons, focusing on shooting from the hip. A two-piece bonus could see your movement speed and weapon handling increased when hip-firing, while a four-piece bonus might get you better accuracy and range when hip-firing Tex Machina guns in particular.
The current armor system breaks stats into tiers, so you gain benefits only at each grouping of 10 points.
Other examples Bungie mentioned included an explosives-focused set providing faster reloading for explosive weapons at two pieces and a boost to grenade damage after landing hits with explosive weapons at four pieces, or an aggression-focused set healing you when you get kills with freshly reloaded weapons at two pieces, and making enemies weaker to short-range guns like shotguns at four pieces.
While the armor changes sound like they should benefit build-crafting pretty significantly, they’re also likely to have a major effect on current armor that won’t be part of the new system.
“Old Legendary armor will be changed as little as possible, but because the change to stat mechanics and types are global changes, old armor pieces will have their stat types (but not their values) changed around,” Bungie writes. “When possible, these changes will be to the most similar stat, but with some stats being fundamentally reworked this won’t always be possible.”
That makes it sound like a lot of old armor will probably be rendered obsolete by the new system–something that happened last time Bungie adjusted the armor system when it launched the streamlined Armor 2.0 with the Shadowkeep expansion in 2019. If Armor 2.0 was any indication, all the armor you already have won’t immediately become worthless, but it’ll quickly be replaced by pieces from the new system.
Bungie is still working out how the new armor system will affect Exotic armor.
Exotic armor is also going to be affected by the change, which Bungie addressed in an FAQ section at the end of the blog post.
“Updating the Exotic armor pursuit is on our roadmap but won’t be part of the initial update that is focusing on Legendary armor,” Bungie writes. “So, to make sure that Exotics and their build-defining perks remain a compelling option, we are working out a design that will allow players to update their Exotic armor to bring their stat bonuses in line with the changes to Legendary armor.
“The Exotic class items introduced in The Final Shape are a special case–even though Legendary class items will be gaining full random stats with this update, we don’t wish to add additional randomness to the Exotic class item chase. Instead, we will be providing a method for players to update their existing Exotic class items with additional stats of their choosing to bring them in line with the stat contribution of the new Legendary class items.”
Bungie said that more details on the system will become available as they’re nailed down through development. In the meantime, though, it sounds like players might want to start learning to part with some of their favorite gear as we approach the launch of Codename: Apollo in Summer 2025.
