1. Armor Mods In Destiny 2

Welcome to the Destiny 2 homepage. New Legends will rise on September 6. Humanity’s last safe city has fallen to an overwhelming invasion force, led by Ghaul, the imposing commander of the brutal Red Legion. He has stripped the city’s Guardians of their power, and forced the survivors to flee. You will venture to mysterious, unexplored worlds of our solar system to discover an arsenal of. Destiny 2 is a sequel to the huge shared-world shooter from Bungie, but it’s also the first entry to actually release on PC. With the new platform, many prospective guardians are wondering if there is mod support of any type. Unfortunately, when it comes to outside modding or anything.

Mods on armor and weapons are undergoing a big change in Destiny 2with the Forsaken expansion and the game’s Year 2. Developer Bungie has previously discussed how mods will have a larger impact on weapons and armor by, in essence, letting players attach an additional perk to their weapons and armor. But since the developer’s stream where it touched on these changes, players have had a lot of questions about the specifics of the new mod system. In the developer’s weekly blog, Bungie answered many of them.

Where to find mods

Bungie says that all exotic armor drops, including Year 1 exotics, will have a chance to drop with a mod attached. Legendary armor also has a chance to come with a mod, but at a much smaller chance. Weapons and armor that are bought at vendors will not come with mods equipped.

The other main place to get mods is from the Gunsmith. Players will be able to purchase armor and weapon mods (which will update on a daily basis) directly from Banshee-44 using mod components, which come from dismantling mods. Year 1 Legendary mods and Year 2 mods are guaranteed to drop one mod component when dismantled, while Year 1 Rare mods have a small chance to drop a mod component when dismantled.

How to remove mods

Bungie mentioned previously that players would be able to remove and reuse mods, but did not detail exactly how. Removing a mod from a piece of armor or weapon will require the dismantling of that item. The armor or weapon will be gone, but the mod will come off of it and be added to the player’s inventory, and able to be slotted into other armor or weapons. If players want to keep the armor or weapon that dropped but want a different mod in it, they can slot in a new mod, which will delete and replace the starting mod.

What happens to Year 1 mods

Year 1 mods will be retired as of Update 2.0 on August 28, but players who have a lot of Year 1 mods will be able to dismantle them for mod components, thus giving them a head start when it comes to buying new Year 2 mods. In fact, the official word from Bungie is that it is safe to go ahead now and dismantle any Year 1 mods. The mod components that drop from them is what will be used later to buy Year 2 mods.

Also, except for a small list of weapons, whichever elemental mods that are slotted into players’ current Year 1 weapons will be locked into that weapon for good as of August 28. Year 1 armor mods will stay slotted into players’ armor but they will be deactivated and stop granting any extra bonus, with Year 2 armor mods being able to be put on both Year 1 and Year 2 armor.

There are a lot of changes coming to Destiny 2 with Update 2.0 and the Forsaken expansion, and players will want to prepare before they launch.

Destiny 2: Forsaken releases on September 4, 2018 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Bungie

These are all of the Armor, Weapon, and Ship mods in Destiny 2. If we get other types of mods, I'll add them in. I'm also posting a copy of this at the www.destinymassivebreakdowns.com website if you would prefer to view it there.

A special thank you to Datto, FalloutPlays and Mercules for laying some of the groundwork that went into this.

• Ctrl-F is your friend. Want to find all of the Helmet Mods, or all of the Reload Mods, or all of the [insert word here] Mods? Ctrl-F, Guardian.

• I have done my best to ensure accuracy with all numbers, referencing the work of others where possible and confirming their work with my own testing, which is ongoing. Where possible, I measure mods that affect the speed of things by counting frames. Ultimately, I had to make some estimations due to rounding and it's always possible I miscounted frames. Please feel free to double check me and tell me if I screwed up.

• I also had to make some educated guesses as to the 'real' effect of certain mods. I'll refine those over time, but for now the evidence supports these numbers. I'll upload videos showing some of my testing when I can, but right now I can't connect my PS4 to YouTube for some reason, so all I have here are some of the screenshots I used.

• I am rounding to the nearest second, rather than providing you fractional times. I don't see much point in being more precise than that, and most people understand seconds better than frames.

I'm not the first person to list out all of the armor mods, but I'm hoping that some solid numbers and the presentation in a searchable list instead of a spreadsheet will add some utility I haven't seen elsewhere. See below for some notes and explanations.

Notes on Cooldowns:

Important: Class Ability refers to Dodge, Rift, and Barrier. Those mods do NOT affect Grenade or Melee cooldowns. I did test for that.

One interesting thing I found is that all cooldown mods have the same effect. The 'diminishing returns' people have been talking about are in fact a function of these mods reducing cooldowns by 9% rather than a fixed number of seconds. These mods stack multiplicatively, so having two Paragon Mods reduces your Class Ability cooldown by ~17%, and 3 Mods by ~24%. This holds true across all classes and abilities. I timed these directly, and referenced Datto's numbers to error-check. We came out almost exactly the same.

Thanks to /u/tortoisemeyer for some math notes. :-)

FYI on Cooldowns
Grenade Cooldowns are ~83 seconds except for Firebolt and Arcbolt, which are ~60 seconds. Titan and Warlock Melee Cooldowns are ~83 seconds, except for the Stormcaller Melee which has a ~96 second Cooldown. Hunter Melee Cooldowns are also ~96 seconds. As for Class Abilities, Hunter Dodge Cooldown is ~25 seconds, Titan Wall Cooldown is ~38 seconds, and Warlock Rift Cooldown is ~83 seconds.

Actual Cooldown Time Math
With 1 Mod = Seconds x .91
With 2 Mods = Seconds x .83
With 3 Mods = Seconds x .76

Notes on Handling/Reload Speed:

To check the effects of the Reload Speed and Handling mods, I recorded myself reloading and, erm, handling (that is, equipping, stowing, and aiming down sights/zooming back out) weapons with and without those perks. I used weapons with both high and low stats to see if the effects were a set number of frames or a percentage.

They were clearly either a percentage or a set stat bonus as the number of frames varied widely. I need to do some more testing on Kinetic Munition Loader as I have to rely on third parties (it hasn't dropped for me somehow), but I thought it was interesting it gave a different bonus than the Power Munition Loader.

Handling was tough to work out, because ADS, Equip, and Stow are so fast that the real percentages were all over the place, but they average out to ~15%. Allowing for rounding, multiplying by .85 with a mod on gave me all of the right numbers, so I'm going with that until I find evidence otherwise. It's possible that it's actually a set stat bonus as well, but that's going to take a lot of testing to determine concretely, and this works in the meantime.

There does seem to be a cap on the effects of Handling and Reload Speed, and there is likely a cap on other stats. I will try to test more when I can, but I noticed guns with very high stats (looking at you, Hard Light and Wardcliff Coil) did not get the full benefit that guns with lower stats did. Bear this in mind.

Notes on Counterbalance/Recoil Direction:

Armor Mods In Destiny 2

To calculate the effects of Stability mods, I shot at walls without attempting to control the recoil, and measured the horizontal and vertical height of the impacts using image editing software.

Counterbalance Mods definitely have an effect on Recoil Direction and seem to increase that stat directly, as you can see in this gallery of shots from MIDA Multi/Mini and Origin Story. Mercules got similar results with Lincoln Green, and I've had a number of other similar test results.

In these shots, you can see clearly that the recoil does change, but there is always some randomness to it. For now, I'm not comfortable putting an exact number on this effect, but it is definitely converting horizontal recoil to vertical recoil, and will therefore be helpful when you are having trouble staying on target with a gun.

The effect is more obvious and pronounced on weapons with less vertical Recoil Direction, and less so on weapons that already have a highly vertical Recoil Direction. The type of weapon and your in-game rate of fire will also affect whether or not you feel the benefits of these perks. Obviously, the faster you shoot, the more likely you are to notice the difference.

If you don't know, a RD stat at 90-100 indicates generally vertical recoil, RD of 70-80 is generally vertical but favors bouncing either left or right, and RD below 60 is fairly horizontal, either favoring one side or bouncing back and forth a lot. The exact pattern is somewhat random and varies by gun.

Suggested Adjustments:

• Play 1 Subclass Only: If you play the subclass 90% of the time on a given character, I would add +1 Tier to the Paragon, Ordnance, and Impact Mods. Having your abilities up several seconds sooner is definitely better than a few frames off your ADS or Reload.

• Hunter: +1 Tier to Self-Repairing Mod because you need the Recovery. Or I do, at least.

• Warlock: +1 Tier to Acceleration Mod and -1 Tier to Self-Repairing Mod because you have the heals and need the speed.

• Crappy Recoil: Do you favor a weapon with crappy recoil? +1 Tier to a Counterbalance Mod.

• PVE: +1 Tier to the Paragon, Ordnance, Impact, Self-Repairing, and Impact Absorption Mods, and +2 Tiers to the Power mods. PVE is all about what you think is fun, though, so don't overthink it (unless that's fun for you).

These are my initial opinions, and I would love to get some feedback and discussion going on these. Obviously, the situations and reasons for choosing a specific set of mods can vary widely, and I don't think there's a wrong answer (unless you have rainbow elemental mods equipped, that's just silly).

I think figuring out the optimal setups for our mods is going to be really interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading arguments for different mods (or to finding out that everyone agrees, as the case may be). Please feel free to share your thoughts and reasoning!

Additional Links

• A Visual Aid for Mod Placement by /u/fe3dbak

• Datto's Spreadsheet for what mods can be placed where, with his cooldown numbers

• Massive Breakdown Weapon Stats Spreadsheet, showing Reload, Handling, and Recoil stats as well as estimated Resiliency numbers by /u/mercules904

These are included for completeness' sake, and in case we get more in the future I can come back and add them in. Hopefully they eventually do something more interesting. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Obviously these are all cosmetic, but I was on a roll and there are probably some collectors needing a list, right?

Mod Name
Default Effect
Arc Effects
Solar Effects
Void Effects
Veteran's Flair
Cabal Arrival
Fallen Arrival
Hive Arrival
Taken Arrival
Vex Arrival
Crucible White
Crucible Gold
Crucible Green
Crucible Pink
Crucible Blue
Amethyst Rabbit
Coral Rabbit
Ghost White
Ghost Gold
Ghost Green
Ghost Pink
Ghost Blue
Guardian White
Guardian Gold
Guardian Green
Guardian Pink
Guardian Blue

Okay, that's all I've got. This is Version 1 of this guide, and I'm sure there is a lot of refining to be done, but I wanted to get it out there so people can start making decisions and comparing numbers. I'll check in a few times today to reply to comments and make any corrections/edits needed. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Corrected some numbers in the cooldown explanation. I had originally estimated 8%, but recounting frames found it was actually closer to 9%. Then edited again to fix a formatting issue that the first edit somehow triggered. :-/
EDIT: Corrected notes and math regarding how Cooldown Mods stack. Also added notes to clarify that Stat Mods stack as well.