How Armor 3.0 Works In Destiny 2: The Edge Of Fate

Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is making sweeping changes to Destiny’s core difficulty and progression systems. Loot pursuits are getting some major reworks in July, notably armor sets and how armor stats work. Nearly every aspect of Destiny’s armor system is about to change.

Stats now go to 200, set bonuses return for the first time since Season of the Drifter, and a new tiered rarity system will change how you farm for endgame armor. Calling this rework extensive would be an understatement. To help you understand it all, here is everything we know about Destiny 2’s Armor 3.0 rework.

Updated July 15, 2025, by Charles Burgar: We’ve updated this guide to include some small corrections and additional information on how Armor 3.0 works. More information on how Exotic class items, Ada’s vouchers, and stats have been added. Happy hunting.

What Is Armor 3.0?

Armor 3.0 is a rework of all armor itemization that was released with the Edge of Fate expansion. The Armor 3.0 rework can be broken down into three components:

1. Armor Stat Overhaul: Stats can now scale up to 200, offering secondary bonuses if you scale the stat past 100. Each point in a stat now has value; tiers no longer exist. Some stats have been reworked.
   1. Mobility is now Weapons,
   2. Resilience is now Health,
   3. Recovery is now Class.
   4. Ability stats are also renamed, but retain their core functionality.
      1. Discipline ⇾ Grenade
      2. Intellect ⇾ Super
      3. Strength ⇾ Melee
2. Stat Archetypes: Armor now drops with an archetype. This determines the primary and secondary stats that roll on an item.
3. Set Bonuses: Each armor set from Edge of Fate has a set bonus. Wearing two or four pieces of the same set confers additional perks exclusive to that set.

That’s a lot of change to digest in one go, so we’ll be breaking down this overhaul into each component. But before we do, it’s important to mention that all armor has been converted to the Armor 3.0 stat system, even your current armor. Older armor did not receive set bonuses or a stat archetype, but your stats have been transferred one-to-one with this new system.

Stat Conversions On Older Armor

With Armor 3.0, Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery have been replaced with new stats. Any armor you currently own will be automatically converted to use the new stats. Mobility will be converted to Weapons; Resilience will be converted to Health; Recovery will be converted to Class.

We cover what’s happening to your character’s base Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery in the FAQ section of this guide.

Overall, Armor 3.0 is a net buff to all Destiny 2 builds. The new stat system allows you to lean heavily into a preferred playstyle to buff your ability uptime, weapon DPS, or improve your character’s survivability. These changes also affect PvP, although most armor stats have different values inside the Crucible.

How Stats Are Changing In Edge Of Fate

Under the Armor 3.0 system, all armor (including class items) will drop with three of the six listed stats: Weapons, Health, Class, Super, Grenade, and Melee. Each stat governs a certain element of your character, such as ability uptime or your weapon prowess. All points buff a given stat; there are no wasted stats in this system.

Your first 100 points will scale the stat’s base effect, usually an ability’s base cooldown and scalars. When you get past 100, all points will contribute towards a secondary, enhanced property. Each stat has a unique secondary bonus, such as improved ammo quantity (Weapons) or increased grenade damage (Grenade). Stats cannot exceed 200 points.

All Armor 3.0 Stats

As of writing, ability cooldowns must be at stat 100 to match pre-Edge of Fate numbers. This differs from pre-release information stating that the equivalent cooldowns would be achieved at 70. This is either a bug or an undocumented nerf.

Until this is acknowledged by Bungie, plan your builds accordingly.

Weapons

Weapons will buff the effectiveness of your firearms, both in PvE and PvP. For the first 100 points, you will receive increased weapon handling, reload speed, and a damage bonus against PvE minor and major combatants. All weapon buffs from this stat are multiplicative with their respective categories. The damage bonus stacks with every other weapon buff: perks, character buffs like Radiant, and surges.

Past 100, the Weapons stat will scale your weapon damage against PvE bosses and enemy Guardians inside the Crucible. Additionally, all ammo bricks you pick up can grant twice as much ammo. The chance is proportional to your Weapons stat. At 200 points, the chance is guaranteed. This ammo bonus does not work inside the Crucible.

Overall, Weapons is always worth investing in. In PvE, this grants a global damage bonus against all enemies, including bosses if you get past 100. In PvP, Weapons will likely be mandatory to achieve certain time-to-kill (TTK) shifts on weapon archetypes, notably 300 RPM sidearms and 180 RPM hand cannons. Resilience might be gone, but the Weapons stat affects TTK just the same.

Health

Health is a combination of the previous Resilience and Recovery stats. This stat determines how much HP you restore from Orbs of Power, which is the same behavior as the Recuperation mod. You also gain a small amount of flinch resistance with this stat, reducing how much your reticle veers off center while taking damage.

Past 100, Health will scale your shield capacity in PvE. Your shield goes up to +20, roughly a nine percent EHP buff—for context, you have 230 combined HP and shields by default. More importantly, your shield’s recharge delay and overall recharge speed are improved with heavy investment. At 200 points, your shield recharge speed should be slightly faster than 100 Recovery in the live game.

In our view, Health is the weakest stat in Armor 3.0 and can be ignored by PvE players. The entirety of the Health stat can be replicated with a single Recuperation mod on your leg armor. With that said, faster shield regeneration is useful inside the Crucible, so PvP players might want to consider scaling this stat if their build doesn’t benefit from 200 Weapons.

Class

Class dictates how quickly your class ability recharges. This affects your ability’s base cooldown and how much energy you receive from all class ability sources—the Strategist perk, Insulation leg mod, Heart of Inmost Light, Facet of Hope on Prismatic, et cetera.

Past 100, the Class stat provides a weak overshield whenever you cast your class ability. This goes up to a 40-HP overshield in PvE at 200 Class, reduced to 20 HP inside the Crucible. For context, you have 230 combined HP and shields by default. Overshield duration is based on your ability’s base cooldown. Fast cooldowns grant a five-second overshield; everything else grants a ten-second overshield.

Most Hunter builds and Titans using the Thruster ability can make good use of the Class stat. Gaining a small overshield by casting an ability is surprisingly helpful in harder content. Heavy investment into this stat can help Heart of Inmost Light and Facet of Hope skyrocket your class ability regeneration on Prismatic, letting you deploy an overshield whenever you see fit.

Super

Super dictates how much Super energy you receive from all sources; it does not affect your Super’s base cooldown. Energy scalars affect Orbs of Power, armor mods like Ashes to Assets, and Super energy received from taking and receiving damage. You’ll need a Super stat of 100 to match the energy values before Edge of Fate.

Past 100, investment into the Super stat will increase your Super damage, up to a 45% damage buff in PvE and 15% in PvP. This stacks multiplicatively with other Super damage effects like Star-Eater Scales. Supers that only offer utility effects, such as Well of Radiance, won’t benefit from this secondary bonus.

Super is tied with Weapons for the best DPS stat in PvE. A 45% damage buff to your Super is substantial. When paired with the massive energy scalar bonus from 100+ Super, you should be able to cast your Super twice during a damage phase. This might outpace the Weapons stat depending on the encounter. Of course, if you prefer to use utility Supers like Well of Radiance or Shadowshot: Deadfall, investing past 100 Super will offer no benefit.

Grenade

Melee

Melee influences your melee ability cooldowns and all melee energy scalars. Anything that restores melee energy—Gambler’s Dodge for Hunters, Exotics like Heart of Inmost Light, the Pugilist perk, et cetera—are affected by the Melee stat.

Past 100, additional stat investment increases the damage of all melee attacks. This includes melee abilities, uncharged melee attacks, and even Glaives. Swords are not included; the Weapons stat does instead. Any other sources of melee damage stack multiplicatively with the Melee stat. At 200, Melee grants 30% increased melee damage in PvE and 20% in PvP.

Any Hunter build using Gambler’s Dodge and most melee-centric builds will want to scale the Melee stat. Since Gambler’s Dodge technically gives melee energy back, it’s affected by this stat. You’ll need to achieve 70 Melee to fully refund a melee ability.

Excluding that odd case, this is a similar deal to the Grenade stat. If you spam melee attacks or abilities in general, it’s always worth investing some points in the Melee stat. Only invest past 100 if the damage bonus is enough to one-tap enemies you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Armor Archetypes And Tiers

Whenever an armor piece drops in Edge of Fate, you’ll notice an armor archetype listed under its Power level. This is the armor’s stat bias, similar to the ‘spikey’ distributions present in Armor 2.0. Out of the six stats available, your armor will only roll with three stats. The three stats you get are weighted as primary, secondary, and tertiary stats.

• Primary Stat: The first stat listed in your armor archetype. Rolls up to +30.
• Secondary Stat: The second stat listed in your armor archetype. Rolls up to +25
• Tertiary Stat: A random stat not connected to your armor archetype. Rolls up to +20.
  • This random stat cannot be your primary or secondary stat; there’s no double-dipping.

Each stat’s value is determined by the tier of armor that dropped. In Edge of Fate, harder content will drop items of higher quality, denoted by tiered pips on the item’s inventory icon. Armor is receiving this treatment as well, not just weapons.

Weapon and armor tiers are not retroactive. Crafted items are also not tiered in any way, even if made after the Edge of Fate expansion.

Higher-tier armor pieces can roll with higher stat maximums. The most points an armor piece can roll with naturally is 75, achieved at Tier 5. This is the highest tier of armor possible in the upcoming expansion and should be awarded from the game’s most difficult content.

All Armor Archetypes

There are six armor archetypes you’ll find in The Edge of Fate.

Every armor piece that drops will come with one of these listed archetypes. The primary stat always receives more stats than the secondary stat. Your tertiary stat is then randomly selected from the remaining four stats and receives the remaining points. In general, there’s roughly a five-point difference between your primary, secondary, and tertiary stats.

Veteran Destiny players will notice that some stat combinations are missing, such as Grenade + Melee and Weapons + Super. Not every stat combination will be possible at the launch of Edge of Fate. If there is a combination of stats listed here that you don’t see, keep any Armor 2.0 rolls with those stat combinations.

Masterworking Armor

Masterworking armor is getting a slight adjustment as well. Any armor piece you fully masterwork will gain five points in the three stats not selected by your archetype. For example, if you got an armor piece with the Brawler archetype and Class as its tertiary stat, you’d get a +5 stat bonus to the three stats without any points—in this case, Grenade, Super, and Weapons. A Guardian with a full set of masterworked armor will gain 25 points towards their three lowest stats.

This change will apply to new armor drops in Edge of Fate, including Exotics. This masterwork change will not be retroactive to any armor you obtained during Armor 2.0. All stat values on your current gear will remain as-is.

Gear Tiers

Starting next expansion, every Legendary armor piece that drops will be rated on a scale of 1-5, labeled as its gear tier. The higher the tier, the better the item’s quality is. Higher tiers of armor are awarded by playing harder content, such as Grandmaster Portal content. T5 armor is the absolute best of the best. Exotics are exempt from this tiering system as of launch, but they are functionally identical to T2 armor.

For launch, gear tiers determine your armor’s stat totals. Higher tiers can achieve better stat totals, up to 75.

While the jump between T4 and T5 seems minor, all T5 armor has a bonus socket for stat tuning that unlocks once masterworked. T5 armor will have one of its six stats randomly tagged as a tuned stat, similar to a masterwork stat you’d get on a weapon. There is no way of changing an armor’s tuned stat.

All T5 armor has an extra energy point for installing mods, bringing your total budget to 11 energy, from 10. Tuning mods don’t drain any energy, similar to Artifice mods.

The tuning socket allows you to transfer five points from any stat into your tuned stat. Since masterworking an armor piece grants five points to your three dump stats, this is a good opportunity to redistribute some of those masterwork points toward something your build can better utilize. If you dislike your tuned stat, you may add a point to your three masterwork stats instead.

Armor Set Bonuses

The third and final pillar of the Armor 3.0 rework is set bonuses. Every new armor set will come with two bonus perks. To activate them, you’ll need to equip multiple armor pieces from the same set. Set bonuses trigger upon wearing two and four pieces of the same set, respectively. Since you have five armor slots, you can safely pair a four-piece set with any Exotic.

It’s best to think of armor sets as origin traits for armor. While these bonuses aren’t particularly build-defining on their own, they offer some strong utility effects that can help round out a build’s issues or add some gameplay variety. Optimal builds will use set bonuses regardless, but they aren’t required to make a build functional in Destiny.

All Armor Set Bonuses

We currently know of four set bonuses in Edge of Fate. There will presumably be another set bonus tied to the upcoming raid. Until that launches, here’s what we know. Current armor sets will not be receiving retroactive armor set bonuses.

Some of these set bonuses are fairly powerful, but nothing here is required for a build to function. For example, the four-piece bonus of Last Disciple is fantastic for double special loadouts, but there are other ways of generating special ammo if you so choose. The major standouts here are Bushido’s two-piece Iaido bonus, Last Disciple’s four-piece bonus, and Techsec’s two-piece perk.

It’s worth noting that you can still mix and match armor under Armor 3.0. You can run a couple of two-piece perks from different armor sets—you don’t have to run a four-piece bonus. For example, if you like Bushido’s Iaido bonus but don’t care for its DR four-piece effect, you can run two pieces of another set, say Aion Renewal, to gain its Force Converter bonus.

What Are The Best Stats?

Most players are going to want to spec for Weapons and Super. Weapons is arguably the best stat for general play, increasing all weapon damage in both PvE and PvP with enough investment. PvE players effectively get Vorpal Weapon for free on all their Heavy weapons, and Crucible players can use the Weapons stat to adjust the TTK values of certain weapon archetypes. Put another way, Weapons is now the new Resilience stat for PvP.

Super is a fantastic option for PvE builds looking to maximize their damage output. At 200 points, your Supers will deal a whopping 45% more damage at base. For comparison, Star-Eater Scales at maximum stacks provides a 70% damage bonus. Paired with the higher Super energy scalars, it should be possible to use multiple Supers during lengthy damage windows, further improving your total damage.

Ability-focused builds will want a mix of Grenade and Melee to increase their energy scalars, allowing you to recharge your abilities as fast as possible. You’ll want to get both stats to at least 70. From there, focus on scaling one of the stats to improve its damage output. Grenade has a higher damage bonus than Melee, but the Melee stat influences uncharged melees and Glaives as well.

Ideal Stat Archetypes

The best stat archetypes to chase are Gunner and Paragon. Gunner is ideal for weapon-centric builds; Paragon scales Super the best. You can even mix and match both sets if you wish to sacrifice your potential DPS for more ability uptime.

It’s worth noting that armor archetypes can have their drop rates influenced by Ghost Shell mods. These archetype mods replace the armorer mods that were previously on Ghost Shells and serve the same purpose. If you’re chasing Gunner or Paragon armor, be sure to equip the respective armorer mod before you start farming.

Unobtainable Stat Combinations In Edge Of Fate

Due to the limited nature of stat archetypes, some stat combos are currently inaccessible with the Edge of Fate expansion. The following stat combinations are currently unobtainable. As Bungie adds more armor archetypes in subsequent updates, this list will dwindle. If you’re cleaning out your Vault, keep any armor in this chart.

The main standout here is Weapons + Super, currently listed as Mobility + Intellect. If you have any armor with these stat combinations, keep them. Weapons and Super will become DPS standouts in the upcoming expansion.

Armor 3.0 FAQ

We covered a lot of ground in this guide, but there are still some niche cases with this upcoming rework that require more specific explanations. Any questions tied to Armor 3.0 are answered below.

How Does Armor 3.0 Apply To My Current Armor?

Armor will retain its current stat values, but Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery stats will be converted to Armor 3.0 stats. Mobility will become Weapons; Resilience will become Health; Recovery will become Class. Stat totals, stat distributions, masterwork bonuses, and Artifice sockets (if applicable) will remain the same.

Any armor you’ve obtained will not gain stat archetypes, set bonuses, or be ranked in the new gear tier system. They’ll function exactly as they do currently.

What’s Happening With Exotic Class Items? Do I Need To Regrind Them?

All Exotic class items you own will be given custom stat packages based on their roll. This is retroactive and will apply to all Exotic class items you’ve acquired; you won’t need to regrind them. With that said, we aren’t sure exactly what archetypes each perk combination will receive. Bungie has said they’ll be curating stats for them on a case-by-case basis (source).

Any Exotic class items you get after Edge of Fate launches will drop with stat archetypes as well. The left column perk dictates the stat archetype; the right column perk determines the tertiary bonus.

What About Exotic Armor In General?

Exotic armor will bias certain stat archetypes, but they will not benefit from gear tiers. For example, a pair of Synthoceps will tend to drop with the Brawler stat archetype, increasing your Melee and Health stats. Armorer mods found on your Ghost Shell can influence an Exotic’s stats, similar to how Armor 2.0 works. Armor obtained through collections will have a fixed stat archetype but low stat totals.

When the expansion launches, Ada-1 will give you 20 Exotic vouchers you can redeem on custom-rolled Exotic armor. Her shop will be updated to include a focusing menu that allows you to pick the exact stat archetype you want on your Exotic. Purchasing an Exotic this way costs one voucher. This service will be available until the Year of Prophecy ends, so be sure to spend your vouchers beforehand.

Ada-1’s shop does not include the Exotic class item. Vouchers are account bound.

Do Artifice Sockets Still Work In Armor 3.0?

Yes, Artifice sockets retain their functionality in Armor 3.0. Any Artifice items you own will still grant a +3 bonus to your chosen stat. This applies to Legendary Artifice armor and the Artifice socket present on fully-upgraded Exotic armor.

Only Exotic class items are losing an Artifice socket, as they are being converted to use every new feature of Armor 3.0.

Are Mobility, Resilience, And Recovery Still In Destiny?

Not as armor stats, no. However, all three stats will be set to fixed values once Edge of Fate releases. Here’s what Bungie is doing to each stat.

• Mobility: Set to 40 for Hunters, 30 for other classes.
• Resilience: Fixed to 100.
• Recovery: Fixed to 60.

Mobility can now be modified through a new leg armor mod. Stacking this mod three times should give Hunters 100 Mobility and other classes 90 Mobility. Miscellaneous sources of Mobility, such as Lightweight weapons and Amplified, will still increase your Mobility stat. Mobility now scales up to 130, allowing you to jump and strafe faster than what was possible before Edge of Fate.

Resilience is set to 100 for all characters and cannot be changed. This means all characters have an intrinsic 30% damage resistance buff in PvE content, regardless of build. All PvP TTK breakpoints should now be calculated assuming a Guardian is at T10 Resilience.

Recovery is set to roughly what 60 used to be. You can hasten your shield recharge speed through the new Health stat.

Can I Change An Armor’s Stat Archetype?

No, an armor’s stat archetype is fixed. If you want a different archetype, you’ll need to farm for a new armor piece. Fortunately, you can bias an archetype’s drop rate through armorer mods on your Ghost Shell.

Can You Upgrade An Armor’s Tier?

No. An armor’s tier is fixed and cannot be changed. If you want higher-tier armor, you’ll need to play harder content.

How Many Stats Can You Get On Armor Now?

The highest stat total you can get on an armor piece is 103. T5 armor can drop with a stat value of 75 by default. A masterwork bonus gives you +15 stats distributed evenly between your three empty stats. A stat mod gives you an extra +10, and the tuningn socket can give you an extra +3 if you choose not to redistribute your stats. This totals to 103. If you get perfect gear in all five slots, you can get upwards of 515 stats for your build.

You can get additional stats through subclass fragments, artifact perks, certain weapon traits, and font mods present on armor.

How Are Fragments Impacted By Armor 3.0?

Fragment stats have been translated to Armor 3.0 one-to-one. For example, Facet of Purpose has a -10 Recovery penalty in the current game. In Edge of Fate, this changed to a -10 Class penalty. If any additional balance changes are made to fragments, we’ll update this section with more information.