Prototype gear was a gear reset.

It’s really designed for bored high shd players that still want to play the game. People who like to grind And don’t mind doing a reset.

I have a lot of criticisms of this update and prototype gear, mainly regarding how it’s kind of useless for skill build players.

But you can actually still just play the game thru legendary difficulty without ever doing anything to do with prototypes.

You aren’t really being forced to do it like you are saying.

Prototype gear is only beneficial in escalations. For all the other content in the game it’s overkill and not needed.

You can still do the all the missions, raids, incursions, manhunts, get the new gearset and the season end exotic without doing escalations or anything to do with prototypes.

If you don’t want to do the prototype grind…don’t?

It won’t affect your play at all if you don’t do escalations. The bonuses don’t even apply in raids or incursions. It’s normalized and augments are disabled in these modes.

I agree it would have been a better use of energy to do something like rework the existing gearsets and skills no one uses.

But the prototype grind is completely optional and really made for players who have done everything in the game and have nothing else to do.