How Destiny 2 reworked Aeon Cult Exotic Armor in Season of the Chosen

At the start of Season of the Chosen, the Aeon Cult received a sort of mini-rework that boosted their overall viability considerably, mainly in Nightfall activities. The problem is that these Exotics were so underwhelming when they first came out that since the buff still hardly anyone is using them, or they don't know about the rework. Here’s a breakdown of the context behind the rework, and why these Exotics could become the go-to for Nightfalls.

The Aeon Cult Exotic armor pieces were released during the Curse of Osiris expansion in late 2017 and were essentially dead on arrival. These Exotics saw next to no use amongst the community and were the butt of many jokes around how boring and niche they were.

As the years passed by these Exotics faded into obscurity once the playerbase realised they would not be changed any time soon. I bet at least a few people reading this article don't even know what the Aeon Cult Exotics do, they just simply know they aren't worth the time.

The way these Exotics worked is that they granted ability energy to the wearer and other nearby allies when a certain ability was cast. The ability energy granted and the type of ability that needed to be cast to grant energy was dependent on the class of the player. The ability granted to nearby allies was increased greatly if these allies were also wearing an Aeon Cult Exotic. Here’s an example of the Warlock Exotic, Aeon Soul:

In a TWAB that was released before Season of the Chosen, the Destiny 2 Dev team gave their thoughts on their goals behind the rework and what direction they wanted to take these Exotics.

“...we wanted to lean hard into the idea that these are the Exotics you and your fireteam wear when you really want to work together as a team. With that in mind, we had three main goals for the revamped mechanics:

• Create role-based mechanics that reward you for doing the things that your role is supposed to be good at.
• Create mechanics that reward other players on your fireteam when you fulfill your role.
• Give your fireteam incentive for each player to take on a different role.” says the Dev Team.

It is through this approach that instead of creating a completely new Exotic perk, these Aeon Cult Exotics now come with a special mod socket and armor mods that are instantly unlocked once the player acquires one of the Exotics. It is important to note that these three new mods are not class specific and can be used in any combination between the Hunter, Warlock and Titan classes.

Here are the three new mods for the Aeon Cult Exotics:

These new mods have two different perks. The top perk is focused on the player themselves and grants effects like increased reload speed, generating orbs on precision kills and ability generation depending on which mod you have equipped.

The bottom perk is more of a supportive perk and grants ability generation, creating ammo for allies and also healing nearby allies. These bottom perks grant an additional effect to nearby allies if they are wearing an Aeon Cult Exotic with a different mod equipped. This is to nudge players into diversifying their Fireteam and equipping all Aeon Cult Exotics with all three mods equipped.

After fiddling around with these mods in a Fireteam I can say that having one of each mod on each of the Fireteam members can be extremely powerful, especially Nightfalls.

The bonus reload speed given by Sect of Force is extremely noticeable and the mod can be combined with Surge Detonators from the Seasonal Artifact. This means the player is able to stun Overload Champions with an Arc grenade to regenerate their grenade ability to be able to stun the next Overload Champion, as well as receiving melee and giving Super energy to allies.

This bonus Super energy can then feed into the Sect of Vigor mod to use these extra Super casts as a sort of health boost when dealing with tough encounters.

Sect of Insight is also a must for high difficulty content as ammo economy is always tough to get around. This will ensure your entire Fireteam is always topped up with ammo for the next encounter. The Orbs of Power given by the top perk in Sect of Insight can also feed into the healing Supers from Sect of Vigor.

All in all, these three mods can create an almost infinite feedback loop of ammo, ability energy, and Fireteam healing which can absolutely come in clutch when you and your allies are backed into a corner.

The one problem with these Exotics is that to get the full potential from them you need to equip them across the entire Fireteam. This is fine for lesser Strikes and Nightfalls but can be a tough sell for Grandmaster as this means replacing meta Exotic picks like Phoenix Protocol and Orpheus Rigs. Sect of Insight and its ammo generation is certainly good enough to replace other meta Exotics but most of the time these Exotics are too good to replace them all with the new Aeon Cult Exotics.

What do you think of these changes to the Aeon Cult Exotics? Is it good enough for over 3 years in the making? Will these Exotics make their way into the meta? Be sure to leave a comment below or as a reply on Twitter with your thoughts.