When Destiny 2 launched Armor 2.0, many, including myself, cheered the move as it finally made armor interesting again.
For all of Destiny 2 up until that point, getting good armor was entirely dependent on luck, and even then its impact on your builds was questionable unless you got the absolute godliest of god rolls.
Armor 2.0, when it released alongside Shadowkeep, allowed players to slot in armor perks that they had unlocked. Instead of praying to the RNG gods that you’d get an armor piece that worked within your build, it was much easier now to unlock the mod you wanted/needed to create fun builds.
Many in the hardcore community, however, took issue with a new layer of RNG that was thrown in with armor 2.0, namely, elemental armor pieces.
Certain mods, including crucial weapon finder and reload mods, were tied to specific elements that could only be slotted into matching elemental armor.
Meaning if you have an Arc chest piece, you can’t slot Hand Cannon mods in there as they are assigned to the Void element. So if you had found a powerful stat roll armor, you might get burned if the element wasn’t what you wanted.
While Armor 2.0 was still an improvement over what was there before, this wrinkle was a wet blanket that dampened enthusiasm.
Eventually, Bungie would introduce a system that allowed players to spend materials to change the element of an armor, but this process is expensive and didn’t address the underlying issue.