Bungie just switched up the exotic meta for Season 22 in Destiny 2

Bungie recently put out a blog post letting us know about changes coming to under-used exotics. There’s some big changes coming, and it may be time to dust off these old exotic armor pieces form your vault. Today I’m going to go through all the updates for all classes, so you know what to use for Season 22 in Destiny 2.

Without further delay let’s dive into the changes. I’m going to go through all the changes, then pick out one to watch for each class. Let’s start with Hunters.

Hunters

Knucklehead Radar: The functionality of the Foetracer Exotic helmet has been completely removed from that Exotic and added to Knucklehead Radar, on top of its existing benefits.

As a quick reminder, Knucklehead Radar has Relentless Tracker on it, which visually marks targets. Deals more damage to low-health marked targets. Provides a small benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of all weapons. This makes a lot of sense for Knucklehead Radar in terms of the visual design for the Exotic.

Foetracer: We took some cues from the popular Monochromatic Maestro artifact perk for this one. When you deal damage with one of your abilities, you gain a damage bonus with weapons that have damage types matching your subclass damage type. Additionally, when you defeat an enemy you’ve damaged with one of your abilities (either with another ability or with a weapon with a damage type matching your subclass type), you will spawn one of the collectible objects associated with your subclass, such as Ionic Traces or Firesprites.

Foetracer could be one to watch given the damage increase, although we’re going to have to wait and see exactly how much damage. Mark this down as one to try when Season 22 rolls around.

Lucky Raspberry: This Exotic was a little too unreliable in its current form, so we’ve taken a crack at streamlining its energy gains, while leaving some of its benefits intact. The Exotic still expands the chaining capabilities of Arc Bolt grenades. But now instead of basing the grenade energy gains on those chains, each time you damage an enemy with the lightning strikes from the jolted condition—as well as each time you pick up an ionic trace—you gain additional grenade energy. We’ve also given this grenade the intrinsic ability to stun Overload Champions. Now you don’t have to jolt them and then trigger the jolt lightning strikes just to stun them, making these grenades a more reliable tool against Overload Champions.

This is a great change, especially with the Overload Champions stunning mechanic, more ways to stun champions is going to be very useful indeed.

Renewal Grasps: We’ve undone the previous nerf to Duskfield grenade cooldowns when using this Exotic.

This is another good change. Renewal Grasps were must-have for Hunters when they first came out, and Bungie took them out of action with the nerf, so it’ll be good to use these again with Stasis Hunters.

Overall, I think Foetracer is going to be the one to watch for Hunters, and if that damage increase is substantial, then we could see a sharp rise of this exotic in end-game content.

Titans

Icefall Mantle: Grants an escalating bonus to Stasis weapon damage when getting rapid Stasis kills. When you activate your class ability, you immediately gain the highest tier bonus.

Doom Fang Pauldrons: Grants an escalating bonus to Void weapon damage when getting rapid Void kills. When you get a Void melee kill, you immediately gain the highest tier bonus.

Path of the Burning Steps: Getting a Solar Grenade kill now grants the highest tier Solar weapon damage bonus.

Eternal Warrior: Since the exotic only grants its highest tier damage bonus automatically when your Super ends (which is a rarer occurrence), the duration of the Arc weapon damage bonus when your Fist of Havoc Super ends has been extended to 30 seconds (up from 10 seconds in Season 21).

All of these exotics do similar things for Titans, across a number of subclasses. Doom Fang have always been good, so I imagine this is going to super charge a void Titan.

ACD/0 Feedback Fence: This Exotic got a complete mechanical rework and now ties into the Armor Charge system, increasing its versatility and making it more useful in scenarios where you might not be taking a lot of melee damage. With the new perk, when melee hits give you an Armor Charge, you take reduced melee damage while you have that Armor Charge. Taking melee damage causes you to emit a burst of damaging Arc energy that jolts targets, consuming your Armor Charge and dealing more damage based on the number of stacks consumed.

I like the way this exotic works with armor charges and it’ll be good to see more exotic armor work into this feature in the future.

Hallowfire Heart: This Exotic often stands in the shadow of the more ubiquitous Heart of Inmost Light. To remedy that, we’ve removed its base energy to Solar abilities and replaced it with a perk that will let you build more into Sunspots. We think you’ll be seeing many more Sunspots on the battlefield as a result. As for the perk that greatly increases your ability regen rate when your Super is fully charged, we left that as-is.

Sunspots are super powerful for Solar Titans, and it’ll be interesting exactly how more sunspots get onto the battlefield, as Bungie allude to more being created. How and where are going to be key.

The one to watch for Titans for me has to be Hallowfire Heart.

Warlocks

Astrocyte Verse: We’ve added two more pieces of functionality to this Exotic. Enemies near you when you Blink become volatile. Additionally, when you’re using the Nova Warp Super, the Dark Blink ability no longer consumes Super energy.

Making enemies Volatile while blinking is great, plus not using super energy for the Dark Blink is going to help.

Geomag Stabilizers: 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. Instead, we wanted to give players a way to get more Super energy, no matter how charged their Super is. Now picking up an ionic trace while wearing this Exotic will grant Guardians additional Super energy.

While this isn’t going to restore Geomags back to their previous best, this is a nice change.

Wings of Sacred Dawn: Leaning into the “orbital weapons platform” fantasy, we wanted to help players have a way to stay aloft longer. Typically, reloading was the main cause for a float to end. This Exotic now automatically reloads Solar weapons from reserves each time you get a kill while aiming down sights.

This sounds like a fantastic change, and for weapons like Xenophage and Gjallarhorn, I imagine Solar Warlocks are going to be providing plenty death from above with this exotic.

Winter’s Guile: Due to the nature of the Stasis warlock’s melee ability, this Exotic was previously a disappointing choice for that subclass. 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.

This sounds like a decent change for Winter’s Guile. While the change is welcome, it’s going to have to be spectacular to make me take off my Osmiomancy Gloves for my Stasis Warlock.

My one to watch for Warlocks is Wings of Scared Dawn, that sounds like a lot of fun, especially when paired with Solar Exotic weapons.

Let me know what you think.