Good article by Paul Tassi on why affinity breaks armour 2.0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/10/14/the-verdict-is-in-destiny-2s-new-elemental-armor-affinity-must-die/ In a nutshell, an unnecessary additional level of rng which makes no sense and has no purpose except to extend the grind. TLDR edit 3 below for a solution to this. Its laughable to get exotics that roll with the wrong affinity for the weapons they are designed for, e.g. mechaneers tricksleeves that roll without the sidearm affinity perk, actium war rig without auto rifle affinity... This garbage idea needs to go, pronto. Edit: if affinities are a way to artificially extend grind, as a majority of players seem to believe, why not keep the grind by making 3 versions of each mod for each affinity, so tripling time to get them all but then allowing total build control, rather than the fake and arbitrary restrictions most people seem to hate. Edit 2: thanks for the great replies and discussion on this thread. Edit 3: possible solution! When you upgrade the armour you choose what affinity those new slots are, so you get the build diversity you want but the slots are permanently fixed to that affinity, and if you later want to slot in other mods, you need a new copy of the armour.... this means you still need multiple copies of armour for different builds, but the choice of how to set this up is yours. A win-win? Alternately the armour rolls preset combos of affinity 50/50 locked slots, e.g. double arc, arc solar, arc void, double solar, solar void, double void, etc. This would mean you still need to grind multiple armors, but one could drop with the affinity combo you need. DO IT BUNGIE! I personally am pretty sure that the reason for this system is to extend the grind waiting for the right drop rather than to actually to control or minimise cookie cutter meta builds. The unwanted artifact of this are restrictions in build diversity and freedom. The reason I think this is the arbitrary nature of the affinities. Hand cannon sniper works, hand cannon shotgun doesn't. Both typical meta builds. This also undermines this idea that "it's to control and stop meta builds and introduce diversity" as other metas will and have to emerge. In fact this will reduce, not increase build diversity and metas. There are LESS pinnacle choices not more! So min maxing players will be less diverse in loudout as they will consider some builds less viable as they cant roll enhanced perks. I don't see how this is even debatable? Luke Smith's reassurance that generalist mods can be used is weak and a band aid solution, reduces your slots, and totally undermines the idea of build freedom. I think it's a betrayal of what they said they would do. Thanks all. Edit 4: great suggestion that exotics should handle all elements when fully upgraded. Edit 5: suggestion that you can slot perks into the wrong affinity armour at a significantly increased material cost.