Destiny 2 Armor Stats Guide (2024)

How Destiny 2 Armor Stats Work

In this guide, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about how Destiny 2 Armor Stats work. Armor defines your character’s stats, which significantly impact gameplay: Mobility, Resilience, Recovery, Discipline, Intellect, and Strength. High-stat armor can drastically improve your chances of surviving, recovering, and dealing damage—it can mean the difference between victory and failure.

Any serious player must understand the bucket system, learn where to get their hands on high-stat armor and invest in it. To a degree, you can customize your builds’ stats to thrive in both PvE and PvP by understanding the ins and outs of stats and how to get the armor rolls you need. This allows you to go from being a passive player to a force to be reckoned with.

Let’s dive into all the information you need to get the most out of your armor and take those stats to the next level.

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Why Destiny 2 Armor Stats Are Important

The first and most crucial point to discuss is why your stats matter. All stats have benefits, but you may still need to learn exactly what those benefits are. I will go stat by stat and break it all down here!

Mobility

Mobility determines your walk speed, strafe speed, and jump height. At under 10 Mobility, your walk speed will only be 5 m/s. At 100 Mobility, this jumps to 7 m/s. As you can imagine, Mobility isn’t beneficial. On the other hand, Mobility also determines how quickly Hunters get their class abilities back. From 0 Mobility to 100 Mobility, your class ability regen on Hunter is cut in half.

Resilience

For anything PvE, this is your most important stat by far. Tier 10 Resilience grants you a massive 30% damage reduction in PvE! Resilience also determines, to a small degree, your shield capacity and flinch resistance. Tier 10 will give you an extra 15 shield health and a 10% flinch reduction. Resilience also plays into Titan class abilities, as Mobility does Hunters’. Having 100 Resilience shaves 31 seconds off your Rally Barricade cooldown and 58 seconds off your Towering Barricade cooldown.

Recovery

Recovery is all about regenerating health. Recovery governs how quickly your health and shields regenerate. For example, 100 Recovery will effectively slice 3 seconds off your total regen time. Recovery is also the Warlock class ability stat. 100 Recovery will take your rift cooldowns from under two minutes to 48 seconds! This is your most important stat for PvP. Being able to disengage and quickly get back into the fight is crucial, as is getting back to full health after winning a gunfight.

Discipline

Discipline is all about grenades. This is what controls how quickly you get those nades back. Tier 10 Discipline will remove a massive 60% of your grenade cooldown! This is typically the second-most valuable perk in PvE, but it all depends on your build!

Intellect

Intellect is the Super stat. Going from 0 to 100, Intellect will cut your Super Regen time in half. For example, Well of Radiance’s cooldown goes from 10 minutes and 55 seconds down to 5 minutes and 48 seconds. This is a handy stat in PvP, as those supers can decimate the enemy team quickly or easily hold down an objective.

Strength

Lastly, we have Strength. This is what affects your melee ability cooldowns. Like Discipline, this will cut 60% off your melee ability cooldown at tier 10. Discipline is typically better, but as I said earlier, it depends on the build!

Ideal Stats for Builds and Classes

Optimizing your armor can become a thrilling quest in and of itself. Before diving into the depths of stat prioritization and searching for armor with high stats, let’s plot our course by determining which vital stats to aim for.

Resilience is the main component and the foundation of any guardian’s survival plan. Because of its massive 30% damage reduction, reaching 100 Resilience is necessary for overcoming endgame threats. When it comes to stats, I say shoot for the stars. Just be aware that this is the only stat that is incredibly important in PvE.

Next up is Discipline. A smooth power flow in your arsenal is ensured by optimizing Discipline, whether you’re using it to strategically deploy Healing Grenades or annihilate adds with overcharged Vortex Grenades. This is typically what should be prioritized second.

On the other hand, Titans march to a different beat, one in which Resilience and strength coexist at the top of the priority list. Many Titan builds rely on melee abilities, so this stat can occasionally take second place!

The third stat to focus on can be either Strength or Recovery, depending on your class and build preferences. For Warlocks, this choice is highly build-dependent. Using mods to boost your melee or Rift uptime can be advantageous, giving you the flexibility to tailor your playstyle to your liking.

I main Titan and tend to shoot for this order: Resilience, Discipline, then Strength. I also play Warlock a good bit, and that is when I shift to Resilience, Discipline, and then allocate the rest of my stat points towards Recovery.

Truthfully, you only need to prioritize three stats in order. Intellect isn’t that valuable in PvE due to its ability to generate a large number of Orbs of Power. With the proper build, you have ample Super uptime without investing in Intellect.

Lastly, I want to discuss Mobility briefly. While it does grant you a quicker cooldown on your dodge if you play Hunter, it doesn’t have much to offer compared to stats like Discipline or Strength.

When playing Hunter, if you’re using the Arc subclass, you likely use Combination Blow as your melee ability. This restores your class ability on every powered melee kill, making Mobility all but pointless to invest in. Similarly, on Solar Hunter, the Knock ‘Em Down Aspect restores your melee on every throwing knife kill while Radiant, rendering your dodge less than crucial.

The one exception is if you would like to use Nightstalker. When on Void Hunter, invisibility is a crucial aspect of gameplay. Having a Mobility of 70 is perfect for maintaining invisibility uptime. You don’t need to go all out attempting to get to tier 8 or higher!

The Bucket System

In the world of Destiny 2, stats are divided into two “buckets”, and understanding this system is the key to focusing your armor rolls to achieve the stats you’re looking for. The top bucket includes Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery, while the bottom includes Discipline, Intellect, and Strength. Each group has a cap on the total number of stat points allocated among its stats.

Unmasterworked legendary armor can reach a maximum of 68 stat points, whereas pre-shadowkeep Exotic armor can go up to 71, thanks to a potential additional 3 points in Resilience, Recovery, or Mobility.

When a piece of armor is fully masterworked, each stat gains 2 points. The stat points are distributed across the three stats within each bucket. For standard armor, the top three stats collectively can have up to 34 points, as can the bottom three. Each stat must be at least 2 points and can go up to 30 points (32 for Exotic armor).

There’s Artifice armor, which is unique to Master Dungeon loot. The distinguishing feature of Artifice armor is the ability to equip a cost-free mod that adds an extra 3 points to any stat of your choice. This boost is perfect if you have a stat sitting at 97-99. The most consistent, high-stat Artifice armor comes from Master Grasp of Avarice, which will be the final weekly dungeon on May 28th!

Focusing Armor

Focusing Armor effectively hinges on the Ghost mod you have equipped. Your Ghost can be fitted with mods like Resilience Armorer, Recovery Armorer, Mobility Armorer, etc. Each mod guarantees that any armor you roll will have at least 10 points in the selected stat. What mod you need to run is determined by the three stats you want to maximize.

It might seem logical to use Resilience Armorer all the time, but that’s not always optimal. For instance, equipping Resilience Armorer will ensure high Resilience on any armor you roll, but it will also result in low Mobility and Recovery. When you focus armor, you can only achieve a peak in the stat selected by your Ghost mod and two peaks in the other stat bucket. For example, if you want your armor to peak in Resilience, Recovery, and Discipline, you should equip the Discipline Armorer mod.

While this might occasionally yield armor with high Mobility, it is the best way to secure a high Discipline stat and the possibility of high Resilience and Recovery.

Obtaining High-Stat Armor

The last order of business is unveiling the secrets of where the best armor in the game comes from. The most rewarding armor in the game comes from seasonal vendors. You can purchase armor at the H.E.L.M. from the War Table, the Sonar Station, the Ritual Table, and the Spirit of Riven.

These vendors tend to drop magnificent armor with remarkable stat rolls. Since the season is very close to concluding, I highly recommend you utilize any seasonal engrams to focus on some high-stat armor. At the same time, it’s still available (unless you need Deepsight weapons, of course)!

Raids can also drop some fairly nice armor, but Dungeons seem to drop higher-stat armor in my experience. Master and Grandmaster Nightfalls can occasionally bless you with some solid armor. If you’re more into PvP, Trials of Osiris also tends to drop high-stat armor!

In Conclusion

To wrap things up, mastering armor stats in Destiny 2 is all about tuning your build to your play style. Grasping the bucket system and using your Ghost mods properly will help you adjust your armor rolls to achieve your perfect stat distribution. With your seasonal engrams, focusing on high-level activities, and using the right Ghost mods, you have a much better chance of getting your hands on armor to fit your build.

Whether you want a tank that can take a lot of damage, a fighter that’s fast and agile, or an all-rounder with a mix of everything, the right approach to armor stats will take your play to a different level and give you a competitive edge in both PvE and PvP.

The challenge is embraced, hunting for the best armor, and your Guardian shines with perfectly rolled stats. Lastly, there is one tool you need to be aware of to perfect your builds. D2armorpicker.com is a website that goes through your armor per character and allows you to choose what stats you’d like per build.

It will show you exactly what armor you need to equip and what mods to run to reach the absolute best stat spreads you can achieve! Utilize the information you’ve been given, and transform those single 100 builds into double or even triple 100 builds!