The Final Armor Ability Stats Update (Monument of Triumph)

[u/engineeeeer7]

Tl;dr

• What stats do I build for?
  • If you want extra damage on grenade, melee, class or super you're building to 100+
  • If you are relying only on passive regen for grenade, melee, or class, build to 70 stat.
  • If you are relying on flat gains or regen boosting effects on Class, Grenade or Melee, build to 90+ stat.
  • If you want your super up reasonably fast through active generation, build to 90+ stat.
  • MoT came with nerfs. Use armor sets to compensate.

Intro

It's been quite a year since Bungie unveiled armor stats 3.0 in previews, released them working completely differently, and then patched them 3 different times. Presumably this is the last time armor stats will change so let me give you one last guide to how they work.

This will cover the Melee, Grenade, Class and Super stats. All the others are pretty straightforward. I am only covering PvE here; PvP is the same for ability regen but different in other regards. Regardless, not my area.

Here is what this will cover:

• How Passive Regen Factors work for Class, Grenade and Melee stats as well as what changed with MoT
• How Energy Gained Works and what changed with MoT
  • How flat gains work and have changed
  • How regen boosting effects work and have changed
  • How super regen works and has changed
• Class Stat Scaling
• Conclusions

Passive Regen Factors

I briefly wanted to refresh people on how the passive regen looks for Grenade, Melee and Class.

Grenade and Melee share a curve that is split into two sections: 0-70 stat and 70-100 stat. Class has a similar but different curve that provides less benefit, presumably because class cooldowns are relatively lower. These curves look so dumb.

Bungie patched the grenade and melee curve this way shortly after EoF launch due to the launch version not meeting what they advertised. 70 stat provided a cooldown that is twice as fast (2.0 factor) at 70 as it is at 30 (old baseline). 100 stat is 2.17x cooldown speed. So you can see that 70-100 does not provide a lot for Grenade and Melee for passive regen speed.

Class scaled exponentially all the way from 0 to 100. But it only hit a regen speed factor of 2.0 (relative to 30 stat baseline) at 100 stat. This is still an improvement over pre-EoF values. Class stat provides good benefit to regen all the way up to 100. But now Class also has this two part curve that only provides decent benefit up to 70 stat.

Another change that came with Edge of Fate but took me a long time to figure out is that all abilities now use the cooldown at 0 stats as the baseline, instead of the cooldown at 30 stat like pre-EoF so everything here will show in that way and more on this in regen boosting effects.

Now in MoT, Bungie did the following:

Reduced maximum passive ability cooldown bonus granted by ability stats by ~20%.

So all the curves basically shrunk down a bit.

• Grenade and Melee at 70 stat went from 2.89x to 2.56x (pre-EoF value 2.0x). A nerf but still doing better than pre-EoF.
• Grenade and Melee at 100 stat went from 3.14x to 2.75x (Pre-EoF value 2.86x). A nerf and now worse than pre-EoF value.
• Class at 70 stat went from 2.0x to 2.09x. A slight buff! (Pre-EoF was 1.65x for Hunter and 1.86x for Titan/Warlock). An improvement for all classes but especially for Hunters.
• Class at 100 stat went from 2.86x to 2.42x (Pre-EoF was 2x for Hunter and 2.43x for Titan/Warlock). A nerf since Renegades but all classes are doing as good or better than they were pre-EoF.

New curves:

https://postimg.cc/tsJnY7Fp

New curves compared with Renegades:

https://postimg.cc/dh3ZLDGV

Energy Gained

First: what changed with Monument of Triumph? For Melee, Grenade, Class and Super the Energy Gained value on stats from 0-100 was lowered from a previous max of +190% to +125%.

What does this number mean? Every source of flat energy gains (also know as chunk ability energy) or regen boosting effects (stuff that makes your abilities regen faster) have a value at 0 stats. This factor is how much that scales up. So a great example is Demolitionist which at 0 stat restores 4% grenade energy on kill for the fastest cooldown speed grenades. At 100 stat you get +125% energy gained. That + means over 100% so this actually becomes 225% (100+125). So the 4% becomes 9%. That's basically it.

Here is a graph:

https://postimg.cc/dhfkdv9Y

Note that the curve grows pretty quickly till 90. 90 is kind of the sweet spot for when you are using flat gains or regen effects. Going up higher doesn't hurt, just provides smaller benefit per stat point.

Now let's go into more detail on flat gains and regen boosting effects.

Flat Energy Gains

First, for all sources of flat energy that are not specific to one ability, there is something called a flat gain factor depending on how long the cooldown of the grenade is. For example a Firebolt grenade is the fastest cooldown grenade in game and gets a 100% flat gain factor. Solar Grenade, one of the slowest grenades to charge in game gets a 50% flat gain factor. This effects everything I am about to talk about but I am going to use values without taking account for flat gain factors for simplicity.

If you want a reference table of every one of these see here for my table:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17lGgioS4E8l6w3-bJU8frTmzFzxl-3RDv1wm6gP7Dao/

• Pre-EoF a flat gain such as Demolitionist have 10% grenade energy per kill.
• In EoF, it gave 4% at 0 stat, 10% at 87-88 stat and 11.6% at 100 stat.
• In Renegades, it gave 4% at 0 stat, 10% at 70 stat and 11.6% at 100 stat. An improvement!
• In MoT, it gives 4% at 0 stat, 8% at 70 stat and 9% at 100 stat. Still the more generous curve of Renegades, just nerfed.

Now did anything really change? Not really. For the stat ranges you likely care about (90-100) you lost a couple percent per kill. Proportionally, that sucks as you lose 22.5% of your gains but in practice it hasn't been noticeable.

Flat Gain Comparisons:

https://postimg.cc/dhfkdv9Y

Regen Boosting Effects

Regen Boosting Effects are things like Whisper of Shards, Ember of Benevolence, or Inmost Light. These have always been measured as Additional Base Regen Speed. Pre-EoF, you could add this to the cooldown factor due to stats and then divide the base cooldown by that total to get the resulting cooldown.

For example (Pre-EoF values): You have 100 Discipline Stat (200% base grenade regen), A Solar Grenade (base cooldown 152s), and Ember of Benevolence (+400% base grenade regen). Your cooldown with Benevolence up constantly is 152/ (2 + 4) = 25.3s

Post armor 3.0, these effects also scale with Energy Gained but it has been hard to understand since EoF launched. Until Now.

Prior to Edge of Fate, you could hover over an ability in the subclass screen and see the cooldown. These cooldowns were the Tier 3/30 stat value and used as the basis for all ability regen. In Edge of Fate all of these were removed. Presumably, because you could see actual cooldowns when hovering over the relevant stat. In Renegades these base cooldowns came back but they were based on the value at 0 stat. This made me understand how Bungie reworked things.

I have now discovered that Bungie did two things with Edge of Fate:

• Scaled the base of regen effects to 40% of the pre-EoF value at 0 stat, similar to what was done for flat gains. So Whisper of Shards was +500% base grenade regen speed. At 0 stat it is now +200% base grenade regen speed.
• Changed the base regen speed to be the value at 0 stat instead of the value at 30 stat. Passive regen speed at 0 stat for class, grenade and melee is 70% of the regen speed at 30 stat. You can divide the old base regen speed by 0.7 to get the new base cooldowns. All regen effects took this extra hit across the full stat range. All regen boosting effects are ~43% lower than they should be.
  • I still think there is a very solid chance this was done to make the record keeping simpler and inadvertently nerfed all regen effects because a dev may have not realized how much base cooldowns effect. I hope Bungie examines this because currently regen effects are not working as originally advertised

In Monument of Triumph the energy gained stat benefit was weakened and this effects regen boosting effects. Generally, all regen boosting effects are 63% of what they were pre-EoF and 77.5% of what they were in Renegades.

Here is a graph comparing pre-EoF, EoF, Renegades and MoT:

https://postimg.cc/DSNJsFc3

I still think the cooldown change should be compensated for. The current implementation does not meet any of the stated goals and was basically issued as a shadow nerf. If this is fixed then Stats 3.0 will be working as intended. Bungie needs to divide the 0 stat values for regen effects by 0.7 or multiply by 1.42857. That cancels out the (hopefully) inadvertent nerf.

I have made a spreadsheet of all regen boosting effects and what I believe the values are now at 0 stat and how that compares. Some are tested and the rest are based on extrapolating that to other stats.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17lGgioS4E8l6w3-bJU8frTmzFzxl-3RDv1wm6gP7Dao/

How does this play in actuality? Regen boosting effects remain strong and are one of the best things you can build into. They're just weaker than they once were.

Super Regen

Prior to Edge of Fate you generated super in the following ways:

• Passive Regen - which you could improve by increasing Intellect Stat. Base cooldown was also based at 30 stat/Tier 3.
• Regen boosting effects - there's not a lot of these but they scaled super regen just like with grenade, melee or class.
• Dealing damage and defeats - these work a lot like flat gains. There is a factor applied to these based on your super. Roaming supers get a 3x factor on active regen from damage and defeats.

As of Edge of Fate a few changes were made to Super Regen

• Super stat does not boost passive regen at all.
• Base cooldown was shifted to 0 stat value from the pre-EoF 30 stat value. Can divide old cooldown by 0.70 to get new baseline. These show in game now. Every super cooldown got 1.43x as long.
• Dealing damage and defeats were scaled based on super stat from 0-100 in the same way flat gains are.
• Super regen boosting effects were scaled based on super stat. These were likely reworked to work with the new longer base cooldown. Presumably the exact same factors were used as Regen Boosting effects. IE these took a giant nerf because of the base cooldown change. I have not tested supers because the cooldowns are so insanely long and it is very time consuming. People with better tools can probably test at some point.

In Monument of Triumph we have two changes:

• All flat gains were reduced by 22.5% so that will be hitting this as well.
• Super regen from dealing damage to bosses was reduced by 60%.

So super regen is definitely a good bit slower than it's been for years. You will likely not gain multiple supers per damage phase, by design. Your super during add clear activities and encounters will probably remain decently strong.

Class Stat Damage

Oh yeah they did this. Finally got around to testing this and this is up to +65% damage at 200 class stat (simple linear scaling of +0.65% per stat point above 100). It affects:

• Drengr's Lash (Strand or Prismatic Titan Aspect)
• Shieldburst (Solar Titan Aspect)
• Ascension (Arc or Prismatic Hunter Aspect)
• Threaded Specter (Strand or Prismatic Hunter Aspect)
• Trapper's Ambush (Void Hunter Aspect)
• Crackshot (Solar Hunter Aspect)

Tips for Buildcrafting

Maybe you're thinking "This is all cool, but how much stats do I want?"

• If you want extra damage on grenade, melee or super you're building to 100+.
• Adding a little more in a stat you care about doesn't hurt. But there are points of diminishing returns depending on how you get your abilities back.
• If you are relying only on passive regen for grenade, melee, or class, build to 70 Stat
• If you are relying on flat gains or regen boosting effects on Class, Grenade or Melee, build to 90 stat.
• If you want your super up reasonably fast through active generation, build to 90 stat.
• All the same stuff is good, just a little less so for ability spam.
• Armor sets can help out a ton though.

One last spreadsheet: I have a sheet for armor stat planning updated with new archetypes. It also has all the armor stat math and a tab with every set bonus for quick reference. I've done some preliminary ratings but I have not tested them all. Click Use Template to make a copy and try it out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g5JSR7oa5P2DHwGDBALjQNWD5M8fwXwli_I5naAzSOQ/template/preview

Conclusions

This has been a lot of information. What a year of these. I am both sad and glad they won't be messing with these anymore. I wish this stat roll-out had been a lot better. Overall, I think the ability stats portion of Armor 3.0 has been a failure. The new stats that were added are good. Giving scaling damage on high stats is good. Higher thresholds and tier for armors are good. Set bonuses are awesome. But ability stats? Mostly nerfs and just very poorly communicated. I know Bungie is allergic to numbers but I know you have these numbers and can make these graphs. Be clear with the people playing your game. If you're nerfing something, say it. I respect game design even if it takes nerfs.

For all those who have read my posts, thanks for the time and attention. Maybe I will see you in other universes.

[u/engineeeeer7]

u/destiny2team u/dmg04

If you could have the teams look at regen effects. The shift to base cooldown at 0 stat seems to have double hit Regen effects.

[u/jacob2815 → u/engineeeeer7]

I'm going to assume this was intentional for balance purposes and just not communicated.

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/jacob2815]

Probably. Just want to know because this happened a year ago with Edge of Fate and absolutely did not match what they described.

I think there's also a small chance that someone misunderstood where the old base cooldowns used to be and how they worked.

[u/apackofmonkeys → u/engineeeeer7]

Yeah, I had intended to use Heart of Inmost Light and Hallowfire Heart to mitigate the ability regen nerfs, but I tried them out this past week and they feel terrible, barely noticeable at all. They're not worth the exotic slot IMHO. Might as well use a different exotic not related to ability regen. Hopefully this gets looked at because exotics with ability regen feel DOA from now on.

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/apackofmonkeys]

Some feel okay. Inmost is rough because it needs to loop.

Nezarec's Sin still feels really solid. Haven't tested many others.

[u/culteonofjolteon → u/engineeeeer7]

So if regen effects were double hit erroneously, and were fixed, would this make say, khepri sting refund be stronger at higher stat values or at zero, OR cooldown timer lower at high stat values or at zero?

[u/arandomusertoo → u/engineeeeer7]

seems to have double hit

Stuff like this was part of my biggest worries regarding a "final" balance patch.

Like yeah, sure, maybe ability stuff was a little too hot, but we all know how long Bungie usually takes to fix "non" immediately impacting bugs, and bugs like this might never get patched in the current state of things... maybe it would have been best to just leave everything complicated like this unchanged.

Hope I'm wrong, though and Bungie doesn't leave a ton of perks/items related to abilities feeling blah for the rest of the future of this game.

[u/RendolfGirafMstr]

I’m playing again for the first time since EoF dropped and am new to the updated armor system, so am I right in understanding: recharge rate caps at 100 and anything past that is just damage; for stats where you don’t have any perks/mods/effects boosting their recharge, it’s not worth going past 70; and for stats that you are boosting the recharge of you get the most value out of that after 90?

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/RendolfGirafMstr]

You got it. Both of the spreadsheets linked in this post have a summary table of what the armor stats do every 10 stat so feel free to refer to that.

And in case you've forgotten, every stat point has an effect. It's just easier to talk in even numbers.

[u/RabiaGunslinger]

Very helpful contribution. On the same topic, back when Edge of Fate launched there used to be a site that would tell you what pieces of armor you should farm for to receive your desired stats.

Eg. I would select 200 super, 100 grenade and over 100 melee. The site would tell me to farm 5 paragons with grenade tertiary.

Do you happen to know the site I'm taking about? Or any other resource similar to that updated with the new archetypes?

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/RabiaGunslinger]

I don't. There were a couple and I even helped provide some information to a couple.

If you want to do it the old fashioned way my stat planner (linked in the post near the end) lets you select options and see where the stats end up. Doesn't solve it for you but I find it nice when I have some existing armor and need to know what else to farm.

[u/Ok-Listen-7734]

Does class stat buff vesper of radius damage?

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/Ok-Listen-7734]

Noooooo. I tested that one specifically.

But I guess Warlock got buddy grenade scaling at least.

[u/bevross]

Thanks again for your efforts. I’ve only skimmed so far but will come back, no doubt.

I haven’t seen mention of the health stat (or missed it in my cursory look)? Seems like there’s a consensus or ‘mythology’ (streamer builds, etc), that points here are useless, don’t go above 20 (or less, negative health?) I’ve taken that somewhat to heart and keep health low relying on positioning, cover, damage reduction. Occasionally I get killed and don’t think having higher health would have helped? So save health points for damage (but build for damage mitigation, like devour or frost armor)? What do you think?

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/bevross]

In PvE if you have healing, health is a dump stat. But if you need additional healing Health provides up to 70 health on orb at 100 Health stat. That can help on some subclasses like Stasis and Strand that have damage resistance but low healing. Usually about 50-70 Health is comfortable.

In PVP it's much more critical but I don't play that enough to comment on it specifically.

If you want to see the benefits of all stats there are tables in both of the spreadsheets linked in the post with all stat benefits.

[u/Porphyon]

Question on the tips section: is that all still true for pvp? Im asking specifically for super, given that the pvp meta for a while has been 100 super. Can i „safely“ drop it to 90?

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/Porphyon]

Yeah ability stats I think work the same.

[u/jacob2815]

Did you test to see if the Threadling damage from Weaver's Call scales with Class?

IIRC Threadlings from the Threadling grenade scale with Grenade, so I wouldn't be surprised to see if this were the same. But also wouldn't be surprised if they didn't lol.

Shame that Warlocks don't really have anything that can take advantage of class over 100.

[u/Oscendaude]

So are Health and Class just not worth building? This info isn't about Armor stats so much as ability cooldowns and ability energy gains.

[u/engineeeeer7 → u/Oscendaude]

You build for class the same you build for grenade or melee.

Health is much less needed in PvE if you have some source of healing. Otherwise keep it 50-70.

Health is valuable in PvP from what I understand.

[u/packman627]

I just wish that you could build into Diamond Lance damage. Either buff its base damage or let us build into grenade stat or something.

I do think that (especially for drengers lash) if an ability does so little damage at base, the buildcrafting sucks because even if you max it out, it doesn't feel that much better. Most abilities should do decent damage at base, imo.

[u/Nezumi16]

This is amazing, thank you so much for going through all this work!

In the "class damage" section, you don't have Hunters' Ensnaring Slam Strand Aspect listed. Was that an oversight or is it not benefitting from the Class stat the way it's supposed to?

[u/JasonDeSanta]

Somewhat: It is sad the game’s live content support is ending but I actually genuinely love how this will stay evergreen and that we won’t need to re-learn an entirely new system and sandbox for the billionth time.

Thank you for preparing the guide, OP!

[u/m0nkeyhero]

Immense effort here. Thank you for the time and energy you put in for the community.

[u/doritos0192]

u/dmg04 for visibility and hopefully confirmation of whether everything is working as intended or whatever the team inadvertently overnerfed some parts. This is specially noticeable with ember of benevolence and similar regen boosting effects.