I should preface this that I am mostly talking about the stats and how the effect PvE challenges. Yeah its long, I'm sorry it got so out of hand, TLDR at the bottom. It seems bizarre that a game so entrenched in the gear grind seems to give so little importance to the stats of said gear beyond the equally boring "light" stat. For example, the Defense stat of the game is very much useless, its normalized across all armor and classes and exists only as an extension of the light level damage reductions. There are no armor pieces you take for more survivability despite that stat being listed as a way to improve said survivability so really what point is there in having it other than listing a useless number? Lets look at Strength next, Another fairly useless stat for all but maybe Blade Dancers taking advantage of escape artist, melee is fairly weak in this game the damage is rarely if ever worth the effort. A max str scale reduces melee cooldowns from 60s to 20s but you would be hard pressed to find any player using melee enough to ever see this benefit weighed out. At the hardest content of the game melee can be all but written off entirely, using it pretty much guarantees death as it does a paltry amount compared to any amount of weapon damage that close but leaves you vulnerable to the near 1 shot return hits of any unit. This leaves str as easily the least desirable "stat" of the game as melee is so underpowered its left unused in the vast majority of content. Next lets talk about Discipline. Discipline is used to reduce the cooldown of grenades on the same scale as Str, it goes from a default 60s to 20s at 100% reduction. Discipline fairs a bit better than Str but not by much, its benefits are that they are usable at range and are usually large aoes allowing for damage comparable to large heavy weapon bursts if landed correctly. They also can come with some fairly nice perks like the Titan flashbang or the Warlock heal when specced for it which are generally very valuable in certain situations. For most specs however they are fairly inconsequential benefits, the most popular PvE specs for example being Defender/Sun Seeker/Gunslinger all have no real benefits tied to their grenades beyond damage, damage largely irrelevant in most situations. And then there was Intellect. As with Discipline and Strength, Intellect is a passive stat used to simply reduce another cooldown, the particular cooldown happens to be your class super. At 100% effect it reduces your default super cooldown from 5 minutes 30 seconds to 3 minutes 55 seconds for a total of 1:35 shaved off your cooldown. Intellect also provides you with TWICE the amount of super energy per skill at max effect. Intellect is by far the most valuable stat of the 3 although it doesnt make it any less boring, another CD reduction with no real affect on the ability itself. Again the benefit of this stat also hinges on the fact that your build takes advantage of your supers often enough to enjoy the cd reduction. Because of no real effect on the actual supers themselves the stat does not allow them to scale, due to the inability to scale many of the abilities get left behind, fist of havoc for example barely harms enemies at max level and only leaves the Titan vulnerable to being killed near enemies who easily survived his super. Finally, Light. Easily one of the most boring stats in a video game, this is essentially a gear check stat similar to an ilevel in other RPGs. It has no real effect on the game beyond what reductions enemies have when facing you and nothing else. Because of Destiny's scaling system it doesnt even effect the rest of the game beyond 3 different stat states which are lower than, even with, higher than. The conclusion really is that the stat portion of gear is incredibly boring and could outright be ignored with very little change in playstyle, fairly counter to the idea of stats in the first place. Lets talk about perks now. Destiny actually does a decent job of this with Weapons, they are numerous and a lot of them can really change the feel and playstyle of a gun loadout. Black Hammer is one of the more unique weapons in the game, a non exotic that can completely alter the way you play compared to other snipers so long as you have the skill to wield it. Another favorite is Fatebringer, arc damage, firefly, outlaw, these perks make the gun handle significantly different compared to most other guns and they help alter the gameplay from weapon to weapon. Then there is Armor. We'll start with Helmet perks, increased attack speed, increased grenade throw distance, increased super energy from PvE kills (intellect in disguise), increased grenade/super/melee energy from melee/grenade, then there are a few benefits tied to orb pickup like health from pickup or melee/grenade energy from pickup. This issue here being again that all these perks tie back into CD reductions for abilities largely unused and helmets are by far the most diverse in terms of armor perks which is almost sad to say. Next up is Gauntlets, there are really only 2 different perks packs here, increased reload speed, and then 4 of the same perks you got on Helmets already (melee/grenade energy, grenade distance/melee speed). Something worth mentioning is that two perks on gloves (grenade distance/attack speed) do not stack with the same helmet perks at all leaving many stat combos redundant going from doing "next to nothing" to doing simply nothing. Reload speed is the only thing worth looking at here, in combination with other weapons this can significantly increase reload speed and remedy some weapons biggest deficiency. I'm combining the last two simply because they share the exact same perks, Chest and Boots simply come with more max ammo additions, outside of Heavy these stats can be almost completely written off as design of the game works to never have you go empty and when you do it simply gives you more automatically. Overall these Armor perks offer nothing in terms of gameplay alterations, excluding reload speed on gauntlets. Lastly we are gonna tackle exotic perks/raid perks, Exotics range from near no effect to minor changes. Compare these to weapon exotics and you see just how little effect they have. Red Death heals you each and everytime you land a killing blow with it, it also dramatically speeds up reload speed and suffers less recoil when the user is under fire. Then we have Young Ahamkaras spine, its perk is simply that tripmine grenades last longer when placed. Thats it. Knucklehead Radar allows you to keep your radar when using ADS with primaries only, many primaries already come with this perk leaving it entirely redundant. Crest of Alpha Lupi, you resurrect teammates faster and spawn more orbs. I trust you see the pattern. And then there are raid perks, largely these perks are useless additions to armor for raids you already completed. Increased damage against Oversoul? More orbs from killing hive a specific way essentially tying back in just more CD reductions, one of if not the weakest reload perk. These perks offer additional convenience to raid mechanics you already beat without the assistance of. Its similar to how Destiny gives you the Stranger Rifle at the end of the game where the majority of players have already advanced past the part of it being relevant and helpful. The new raid items perks work only in the raid effectively making something you already completed easier and nothing else, they also tie right back into CD reduction yet again. Now I'm not one to poke holes without offering some kind of solution, Destiny need only look at its own weapon designs for a bit of inspiration for a Armor stat overhaul. Something like Boot perks that increase player speed or jumping height based on headshots, armor that that provides your shield with different resistance similar to enemies (aka change your shield to solar making you mitigate Arc/Void better), Helmets that reduce sniper shots at the cost of radar range. Armor with less mitigation but maybe a much faster recharging shield. Instead of something like Strength reducing melee cooldowns it instead causes your melee to hit much harder and give you more resistance to all damage. Intellect could give you increased elemental damage and better elemental damage reduction but leave you vulnerable to kinetic or melee damage. You get the point I trust. [b]TLDR Destiny has a serious lack of RPG focus in regards to its armor stats/perks, it leaves Destiny's RPG depth puddle deep and gives zero purpose to a large portion of its grind/gear choices.[/b]