How to Create the Best Builds in Destiny 2

Destiny 2 Guide: How to Create a Good Build

Creating builds is now more important than ever.

The base difficulty of the game has increased immensely and a good build will heavily dictate success in all aspects of the game from strikes to master raids.

We’ll be discussing how to create your own builds from the ground up.

For more guides on weapon god rolls, exotic weapon guides, and Destiny 2 tier lists, head to our new Destiny 2 site.

What goes into a build?

First let’s dictate the pieces that go into a build. These are all of the things that need to be considered and tuned to perform what a build seeks out to do as best as it can. The list of build components are as follows:

• Class
• Subclass
• Aspects
• Fragments
• Super and Abilities
• Exotic Armor
• Exotic Weapon
• Legendary Weapons
• Mods
• Stats

All of these contribute to a build and some of them are the defining features of a build. There are a lot of pieces here, so let’s discuss where to start.

Starting Points

There are a few things to consider when starting to create a build. These 3 questions are the best things to utilize to start a build:

1. What Class is used?
2. What does the build accomplish? (e.g. Boss Damage, clearing groups of enemies, PvP, CQC, etc.)
3. What exotic weapon and armor is the build based around and/or enhances the build?

The first question is quite easy to answer. Either start with your favorite class or pick the class based on the exotic armor that you want to base your build around. The second question can be answered by asking yourself what playlist and activities the build will be used in, if raiding what encounters it’ll be used for, and identify your role and what you’ll be performing with the build. This can be started by identifying an exotic weapon or armor piece you like using and basing the build around that exotic and its main role.

For example if you enjoy using the Wormgod Caress or Winter’s Guile exotic gloves, you can dictate your class from the exotic to be Titan or Warlock, and the build will accomplish close quarters melee play by dealing high single target damage or taking out groups of enemies by punching them.

If you cannot come up with a starting point from any of these questions, one last way to start a build is from basing it around a win condition that you identify. A win condition can be another means of starting a build, or is the next step after identifying your starting points.

Identifying a Win Condition

A win condition is a specific means which is used to achieve victory. This is typically through choosing an ability, exotic, and/or mechanic that will be utilized and built around to fulfill the role and accomplish what the build sets out to do. Identifying a win condition takes a bit of knowledge in knowing what abilities and exotics are strong in the current sandbox, as that will help you hone in on what you should be using.

For example here are some win conditions that some current meta builds utilize:

• Starfire Protocol Solar Warlock: Fusion Grenades
• Osteo Striga + Necrotic Grip Strand Warlock: The Suspend mechanic
• Boss DPS Solar Hunter: Golden Gun or Blade Barrage
• Heart of Inmost Light Arc Titan: Storm Grenades
• Synthoceps Solar Titan: Throwing Hammer

These win conditions are used to accomplish the role the build is seeking out. An easy one to look at is the Solar Hunter and the role of the build is to deal high boss DPS and a win condition of Blade Barrage as that is one of the highest damage supers in the game. Now that a role and win condition are determined the rest of the build is to enhance the win condition(s) so they are as strong as possible and available as often as they can be. Enhancing the win condition is what we will go over next.

Enhancement

Now that you have a role and a win condition, it is time to enhance your win condition so it can best serve the role you seek out to accomplish. In our solar hunter example who has a win condition of Blade Barrage with a role of boss DPS, Blade Barrage is enhanced in a few ways.

The first is with the use of Star Eater Scales, an exotic that deals bonus super damage based on collecting orbs. That exotic is the perfect choice as it enhances the win condition to accomplish the set out role of dealing high damage. The means in which it does that is by collecting orbs, so a good portion of the build is to easily create orbs for yourself to charge up Blade Barrage and Star Eater Scales. Creating orbs is done through mods applied to your armor pieces. The final portion of enhancement is through Aspects and Fragments. So to review, here is how we enhance:

• Exotic Armor/Weapons
• Mods
• Aspects and Fragments
• Stats

We’ll go over mods first.

Mods

The main purpose of mods is to enhance and supplement your build. They do this by providing these important features: a means of increasing damage, creating Orbs of Power, lowering cooldowns, and providing sustain through healing.

There are two main ways to classify mods, the armor slot it goes in and the mod type. The slot is easy to discern, and each armor slot (helmet, legs, etc.) have a subset of mods that can only be utilized in those slots.

The types are different, and are very important in mixing and matching mods in a build. One thing that is important to know is the Armor Charge system. This system is how mods buff you, and charges are gained with collecting an Orb of Power, and can be seen in the lower left side of your screen. The type of mod is shown by its color, and the mod types are as follows:

• Standard Mods: These mods are always active
• Armor Charge Mods: These mods improve the ability for you and your allies’ to gain armor charges
• Consumption Mods: These mods consume all stacks of Armor Charge for some benefit
• Timed Mods: These mods give a benefit on a timer, and make Armor Charges dissipate over time.

When utilizing mods you want to focus around the ability you are playing around. For example if you are utilizing a build where grenades are your win condition, consider using mods such as Firepower to create orbs on grenade kills and Bomber which reduces grenade cooldown when using your class abilities. It is a good practice to use your build without any seasonal mods to get a feel for it without temporary assistance, and you can go even one step further and play your build with no mods whatsoever to get a feel for where mods can help cover any weakness with the build. Mods should do as much of the following for your win condition:

• Reduce your win condition’s cooldown
• Kills with your win condition create orbs
• Damage with win condition will recharge other abilities (prioritize those that help get your win condition back)
• Synergize with the weapons you will be using to increase their damage or have them create orbs

There are two important things to note about mods when applying them. The first is that it’s important to take note of the colors of the mods. The Yellow and Blue mods clash with one another, this is because Yellow mods will instantly use all of your stacks of Armor Charge and if their conditions are met you will not be able to take advantage of the Blue mods which will make Armor Charge count down for a timed effect such as increased damage. The second important effect is that all mods have diminishing returns when applying multiple copies. There is nothing wrong with stacking mods that are very important to your build, but if a mod isn’t the crux of your build, only utilize one copy to prevent wasted benefits. For example the Elemental Weapon Surge mods boost damage. These mods will get the following effects:

• 1 Mod = 10% damage buff (+10%)
• 2 Mods = 17% damage buff (+7%)
• 3 Mods = 22% damage buff (+5%)

Stats

This is a quick and simple part of making a build. There are 6 stats in the game, 3 affect cooldowns, and 3 affect attributes of your Guardian. All you need to do here is prioritize stats that impact the cooldowns your build is based around. Here is a breakdown of the 6 stats:

Mobility:

Increases movement speed when walking and strafing. Also Reduces base cooldown of Hunter Dodge.

Resilience:

Adds Damage Resistance in PvE, increases health in PvP, and reduces Titan Barricade cooldown.

Recovery:

Hastens time to recover health and reduces Warlock Rift cooldown.

Discipline:

Reduces Grenade Cooldown.

Intellect:

Reduces Super Cooldown.

Strength:

Reduces Melee Cooldown.

Tying It All Together

Now that you have information of all of the pieces of a build, the next step is bringing it all together. As mentioned before, here are all of the pieces that need to be completed:

• Class
• Subclass
• Aspects
• Fragments
• Super and Abilities
• Exotic Armor
• Exotic Weapon
• Legendary Weapons
• Mods
• Stats

Once you have a starting point, it will knock out quite a few of these right away. Say your starting point is the Young Ahamkara’s Spine exotic. That will dictate your Class, Subclass, and give a good idea of how to base your mods, stats, Aspects, and Fragments to benefit this exotic.

When you have a win condition or starting point go through this list and think of how each of these pieces can buff, reduce the cooldown of, and enhance your win condition/starting point. If you are unsure of which to use, try to play with your build with none set and get a feel of where your build is lacking.

If you feel your win condition isn’t up enough, build more stats into it and/or use more mods so it gets back faster. If you feel your build doesn’t survive well consider looking at Fragments that help with Survivability or those that create orbs and pair them with Recuperation or Better Already. Getting a feel for the weaknesses of the shell of your build is a great way to fill in the gaps so it has fewer weaknesses.

Wrap Up

Best of luck with creating your new builds. If you are in need of some other builds to test or as inspiration, you can check out our builds page here.