There are many reasons to play Bungie’s space magic looter-shooter Destiny 2. As a looter-shooter, Destiny 2 features plenty of weapons and armor pieces with different stats and perks that make each one unique, while also making those god-rolled items extremely rare - and thus exciting to find. This is part of what made the first installment of the series go viral, with players sharing reaction videos of obtaining items like the sought-after Gjallarhorn; the strongest weapon in the game.
Destiny 2 players often experience that feeling of joy when they finally get the Raid Exotic to drop after many runs, especially those without bad luck protection like Vex Mythoclast and Eyes of Tomorrow. This is not tied exclusively to Exotic items, but to any piece of gear that can be valuable to players, and that is what makes for a great looter-shooter. However, the same thing does not apply to Destiny 2’s class items - meaning Hunter Cloaks, Titan Marks, and Warlock Bonds - and that makes these drops frustrating to receive from Engrams or regularly playing the game.
Why Destiny 2’s Class Items Need to Change
The main issue with class items in Destiny 2 is that they provide no attributes without being Masterworked, and they only increase the value of each stat by 2 after they are. This means each drop is not unique when compared to any other class item, thus making this piece of gear unwanted in any sort of content past a certain point. With the way Destiny 2 allows players to become stronger, increasing their Power Level through Pinnacle drops, class items are only really valuable in that phase so players can use stronger ones, or simply infuse them into their current gear.
Aside from that, players could simply choose to Masterwork a single class item for their characters and be done with it considering they will not be missing anything major. There is a counterpoint to this in the form of Raid class items, which come with an extra slot where players can put Raid mods that only affect the activity itself. Even then, that leaves Destiny 2 players with four-to-five Masterworked class items if they really wanted to have the most optimal builds, but the issue with regular class item drops persists.
Getting a class item to drop from any other activity can be detrimental to the experience, because these items are often automatically dismantled without much thought. Another counterargument could be made based on the fact that it’s useful to have a Masterworked class item with different elemental affinities, but that’s not entirely true. Due to the way seasonal mods work, most of them are already tied to specific gear slots, and class items are where the big mods go - things like Breach and Clear or Particle Deconstruction, for example.
These mods often cost a very high amount of energy, ranging from five to seven, and don’t inherently come associated with a specific element, making the energy on class items trivial for the most part. Ultimately, Destiny 2’s class items should be reworked in a way that makes them worthy drops rather than something that only serves the purpose of increasing the players’ Power Level. Maybe they could come with class-specific perks, or random rolls that either affect the overall stats of a build, eventually making each drop meaningful.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
