Destiny 2 update 1.2.3 to include additional Exotic armor tuning

Bungie continues to tune Exotic armor in Destiny 2, and changes are coming to nine pieces in the next update.

The first round of Exotic armor changes went live with Destiny 2 update 1.2.1. in May, and the next set of changes will occur in July with update 1.2.3.

Like the changes made in the previous update, those noted below stack with existing benefits unless noted.

Destiny 2 update 1.2.3 Exotic armor changes

Hunter

Lucky Raspberry

• Increased chance to fully recharge your Arcbolt Grenade on Arcbolt Grenade hits.
• Guarantees a recharge on getting a full chain that hits four targets.
  • While just about everybody could appreciate the theoretically infinite grenades Lucky Raspberry could generate, its purely random nature made many people shy away from it. With this change, your input will now affect the outcome, so plan your throws accordingly.

St0mp-EE5

• Increased benefits when using Strafe Jump and Triple Jump.
• The usage rate of St0mp-EE5 in the Crucible was fairly good, but since it mostly affected High Jump, people were somewhat pigeonholed if they wanted to change up their air game, so the other double jump variants were tweaked to have more impact.

Young Ahamkara’s Spine

• Removed marking functionality.
• Improved the Tripmine Grenade’s blast radius and throw speed, and made it so your Tripmine Grenades are harder to destroy.
• Solar ability hits now grant some Tripmine Grenade energy.
• The marking functionality, while useful in some circumstances such as in the Crucible, did not have much merit in PvE, so we removed it to head in a better direction. Now, your Tripmine Grenades are punchier, and you can get access to them faster.

Titan

ACD/0 Feedback Fence

• Now grants Fury Conductor stacks on melee hits instead of kills.
• Fury Conductors now grants stacking melee damage resistance.
• These changes were mostly aimed at making Fury Conductors better in PvE encounters. While the Feedback Fence could protect you from hordes of Thrall by keeping them staggered, it just wasn’t that much use against something like a Hive Knight wielding a sword. The changes also make this Exotic better in the Crucible, but the solution of just shooting opponents still works.

Doom Fang Pauldron

• Void melee kills now grant more Super energy.
• Shield Throw hits will now extend the duration of your Super.
• Titans have a lot of Exotics that help with punching things. To differentiate this one from the rest of the herd, we’ve increased the impact this Exotic has on your Super and on how you use it.

Dunemarchers

• Reduced the time to activate Linear Actuators while you are sprinting to 1.5 seconds (down from 5 seconds).
• Increased the damage of the chain lightning effect (+70% in PvP, 440% in PvE).
• While the lightning effect of Dunemarchers was novel, the time needed to start it up and its fairly low impact led to many players simply seeing these as “the sprint pants.” So, we’ve made the lightning much more deadly and frequent.

 

Warlock

Crown of Tempests

• Collapsed the total number of stacks of Conduction Tines to 3 (with the same total effect), and each stack of Conduction Tines lowers the upkeep cost of Stormtrance.
• Nezarec’s Sin and this Exotic were quite similar, so we pushed harder on this Exotic for Stormcallers who want to invest heavily in ability use. Warlocks also don’t have many Exotics that modify their Supers, and not receiving the full benefit of Conduction Tines during Stormtrance was a little disheartening, so we added a benefit during the Super’s duration to alleviate that.

Karnstein Armlets

• Removed melee hit effects (resilience/mobility/target highlighting).
• Melee kills now instantly heal you, then grant continuous healing for 8 seconds.
• In this iteration of Karnstein Armlets, we’ve simplified the Exotic to be about death and healing. Previously, the effect was split between hits and kills, providing inconsistent experiences. While the effect is much more basic now, it should be more reliable and more effective in most situations.

Starfire Protocol

• Empowering Rift weapon damage hits now grant Fusion Grenade energy (20%).
• Much as with the Lunafaction Boots, we felt like giving a bonus to players who decide to go on the offense with Empowering Rift, rather than playing it safe with Healing Rift.

An exact release date for Destiny 2 update 1.2.3 hasn't been provided, but it's slated for July as previously noted.