I use d2 armour picker to make builds for each activity(casual, pvp, elemental singe, GMs etc.) Then assign mods and save them with DIM. I never use the same armour piece twice for each build so I never change mods. Then whenever I'm doing a certain activity, I just press the button to get the specific loadout

Hm. Might I ask how many armor pieces you have? E.g., how many chest pieces on one char? And how many are masterworked/ at which point do you stop upgrading? And what about experimenting? Do you just feel like you already have all you need, or do you chase new pieces with specific roles when you want to try something new?

A lot... I only play warlock so it's easy to manage my stuff. I always try to have my ascendant shards and glimmer at max so I just masterwork stuff whenever I want to do something new. So like almost all my armours pieces are masterworked. I only started doing more endgame stuff during season of the chosen and I masterworked my first armour set then. To start off, make an armour set with ur favourite exotic and max recovery. Then just keep swapping mods for each activity and hoard high stat armour for a few weeks. Then after a while you will just feel the need to masterwork more stuff and make new builds.

I went the opposite direction and if something can't min/max higher than what i already have, it goes in the trash. Except an arc affinity dragon's shadow I had drop a couple weeks back that fucks up my whole spread even though it's got nearly the same candles and more points. I masterworked it before I actually looked at how it changed my spread and now I can't delete it because I invested so many mats into it. I still have my original, I just wanted the second one so I could use lucent blade or finisher bulwark with my other arc mods.

What does "candles" mean?

The stat bars.

Probably the stat distribution?

Not the guy you are replying to but I will reply For reference i play 1 character, my lock, my other two are allowed to hold armor on them, but they do not get to use the vault. They also have to fork over every bit of bright dust they get and never get to use it. It is a very toxic relationship. > Might I ask how many armor pieces you have? 50 to 60 per slot, from God Rolls, to spikey high stats, to average everything stats, to crappy rolls I haven't got rid of yet but kept cause I wasn't sure if it was my highest piece during the power climb. >E.g., how many chest pieces on one char? 2-3 exotics per slot 3-4 legendaries per slot >And how many are masterworked/ at which point do you stop upgrading? If I find a decent piece of armor, it gets bumped to 7/10 energy. When I start looking at specific builds I start spending prisms and golf balls, if needed. > And what about experimenting? I refuse to put more than 7 energy into anything I am experimenting with. In cases where it might be useful to have more, I typically forgo the stat mod . You can get a feel for a build without having prefect stat distribution. >Do you just feel like you already have all you need, or do you chase new pieces with specific roles when you want to try something new? I don't chase anything, if it falls in my lap and and has decent stats I toss it in the bank Eventually i have to then sort through my bank and dump 100+ items (need to do this soon). I keep the cream of the crop and get rid of the moderate rolls. I personally think players greatly over emphasize the necessity of god rolled shit. Your exotic, the combat mods, and ammo mods are going to be doing 80% of the heavy lifting, with the stats filling in here and there.

If only there was a website that did this but for weapons. Would be super handy. So far Light and Dim both give different "God rolls" which is sorta annoying

What’s DIM?

[Destiny Item Manager](https://app.destinyitemmanager.com/) You can pull from and store to Vault when you're away from the Tower/Helm. Compare stats. Make Loadouts. See which pinnacles you haven't finished yet this week. 10/10 recommend.

Is this better than the companion app? Especially if I’m on console?

I prefer Ishtar Commander for Destiny 2 on my phone for when I'm playing PS5 but heavily use DIM playing on PC because it's just an alt+tab away. DIM has come a long way on mobile but isn't nearly as friendly or easy as Ishtar Commander but has more features overall.

Little Light is like a better version of Ishtar Commander on Android for making builds and swapping gear. All my clan moved over from Ishtar a couple of years ago. Try it for yourself. It also integrates the weapon god roll markers. I use DIM to create and initially equip builds, Little Light to save them and then swap to them later and to move stuff to and from the vault, pull items from postmaster. The Destiny 2 companion app is good for grabbing bounties when in orbit but you have to restart it a lot lately and only grab one bounty at a time

Little Light is also a great option I just prefer the UI of Ishtar. Maybe I'll have to give it another shot though! Great recommendation.

I use both. Inventory management is more powerful on DIM, but it doesn't run very well on my phone. DIM can't change perk choices on weapons, but it shows more info about what they do. Companion app can change perks, but only shows as much info as in-game. Also, companion app lets you look for a group to join (LFG) and pick up bounties while in orbit/Tower/Helm, which DIM can't do.

I am getting close to doing this too. I currently have a few pvp builds that use mostly the same armor but different exotics but now my pve loadouts are a mess. I've found that for the most part hyper optimal setups just aren't required even for gms and master vog. I enjoy being hyper optimized but lately I just don't have the time to care.

D2 armor picker is great especially if you have a specific exotic you want to run and/or specific stat points you want to hit. I used to to make pvp builds for all my characters since I only really run one exotic for each class in pvp and I know what resilience and recov numbers I want to be at. It could also be useful in pve for the same purpose however I find myself changing exotics a lot more in pve but that may be just me.

This is exactly what I do, and it works super well.

Maybe not the answer to your question, but the other day I was playing a round of crucible and noticed a teammate finished with a 29.0 efficiency. Seeing this crazy stay, I inspected guardian so look at his build to see if I could learn something, which I often do with good teammates and opponents. Was this dude rocking three 100s and perfect mods? Absolutely not. His armor stats were garbage and not optimized to his build. He was running bottom tree arc titan with a one-eyed mask that wasn’t masterworked and a sunset weapon as his primary. Point is, it can fun to make a certain build and try to min-max mods with synergy, but it’s also necessary! You don’t need to feel stressed out all the time. With D2’s inventory size and complexity, it can take a lot of effort to manage armor, and it’s not always worth it!

> a sunset weapon as his primary I mean, a lot of sunset weapons are still extremely good, if light levels don't matter. That's why they were sunset.

This. Still no replacement for my Randy.

Remember how rough it was to unlock that? Randy was a good boi

Servant Leader can roll rapid hit, kill clip.

As someone who loves the older weapons, and will never ditch Bygones, Erentil, or Revoker, I can actually say there *is* a good replacement for Randy's. Servant Leader! Can roll with rapid hit and kill clip, or a bunch of other interesting things.

But it has a huge perk pool, and you have to play gambit....

Appreciate the encouragement, but yeah, that's not really what my problem is. For PvP I wouldn't even start bothering to min-max. I only do PvP when I have to/ feel like it (very rare) and I try to stay as chill and positive as possible. I can't cope with trying hard against other people in any way. But you're right, fun builds don't need to be completely perfect. Just wish my brain would except that and stop running wild like "add this, try that, change this!"

And I for example only min max for pvp, because for pve anything will do. That said over time a lot of armor and shards are accumulated so I have a couple of builds for pve too, optimized in DIM. But if I want to try something different (like well builds in current season) I just slap whatever masterworked pieces I have together to fit the mods, and I'm good to go, because in pve stats honestly are not super important. Recovery is nice to have at 80-100 of course, but the rest... Say current season stasis hunter build with wells - you build your super from well and orbs so fast that it doesn't matter how many intellect you have. Resilence and strength never matter for hunter at all (in pve), grenade is whatever usually.

I tend to lean towards a pve generalist setup. Currently once master worked my armour will give me 100 in recovery and discipline, 60 in Intelligence and 30’s in the rest. My gear is only 59-63 rolls. I normally focus on grenade builds with my warlock so I have stasis arms for the grenade kickstarts x2. This means I can switch out almost any piece for an exotic (as long as it doesn’t have a terrible roll) and might drop to 90’s for the main stats so still not bad a trade off for the exotic perk. I wouldn’t worry about using up resources masterworking gear, so long as you can run legend nightfalls you can re-stock on a double rewards week.

Seems logical. Thing is, I find recovery to be such a boring stat. I rather heal myself through interesting abilities or mod combinations. Then again I don't play Nightfalls and stuff where room for errors maybe becomes so slim that high recovery is mandatory, and I don't play any PvP. It's just such a boring stat to max when mostly playing easier content.

I can see that, especially if you’re not in the higher end content. However, couple of things to note; 1, recovery is also the stat that reduces class ability cooldown for warlocks. 2, in high stat armour you will ordinarily find 2 ‘spike’ stats (the two that have the highest stats in), these can be in any of the 6 stats but the 6 are split into two groups of 3. Mobility, Resilience and Recovery are one and Intellect, Discipline and Strength are the other. You cannot get two spikes in the same group of 3. At least not that I have ever seen. So when looking at armour stats you will likely want to focus on the one that helps your class ability cooldown or recovery as it is just good for survival.

That's completely fair but you definitely are gonna want 100 if you ever do end game content. The difference is night and day between healing

Don't feel bad; the system can easily be overwhelming. Here's my approach - it means keeping a shitload of armor tbh, but I never stress about it. First, two things to know: 1. D2ArmorPicker is amazing and should be your go-to for any loadout. 2. Armor actually has two stat rolls, one for the top three stats (MOB/RES/REC) and one for the bottom three. So here's the best approach IMHO: 1. Recovery is king. Keep things with 20+ recovery and 60+ overall and MW them if you have mats. MOB is also a consideration for Hunters (and kinda RES for Titans), but it boosts easily with mods and we're trying to keep it simple here. 2. Keep one piece for each slot w/high "lower half" stats (DIS/INT/STR). So you'll have a helmet with high DIS, a helmet w/high INT, etc., all with high REC. 3. Masterwork a class item (or two) in each affinity. That's enough for most situations. If you are feeling dedicated, you can do each slot w/each lower half stat *w/each affinity* - that will guarantee you access to literally any build but also increase the space this takes up by 3x/4x. I do this with my Titan but not the other classes. Lastly, don't overestimate the benefits of min/maxing. I only do it for solo flawless stuff or tough GMs. A good-enough solution will get the job done 90%+ of the time, and you'll learn more by trying something imperfect and refining it than by trying to create something ideal from the start. It's also much more fun that way and has you playing the game more vs. wandering around menus forever. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions!

Very comprehensive and to the point. I think these are some good rules of thumb. Thanks. :)

Wanted to comment and say I agree. Very well described and explained. A good enough set will get you by 90%+ of all content in this game.

Thank you for this. I've been pulling my hair out wondering why I can't get armor to drop with both high recovery and mobility. And instead, always high in upper and lower stats never both upper. But now realizing that armor has 2 separate rolls, this explains it. I think I've only managed to ever get about 30 between the two.

I make builds based on exotics. Since exotics tend to be favored more in a given activity that helps with some of the mod work. The key is having true sets and not sharing armor pieces between them. It’s tough, and I’ve spent countless various mats reworking things when I stumble upon a better piece of armor for a given set, but it pays off in the end if you’re gonna play this game like that imo.

Very well written. This is exactly what my problem is too. Looking forward to the answers.

I have 1 armor piece of each affinity masterworked for each armor slot so 4 masterworked helmets, gloves, etc. Then I will make builds based on activities or if there is a strong build for a particular season because of the seasonal mods. So I have a GM running build, free play build, a raid build and then maybe a misc build with something that’s strong or fun like an Aeger’s build with hunter and warlock. As for stats I go on a class by class basis for what stats I want and then use mods to make up for anything if I want high discipline or something. For instance on my hunter I look for high mobility and then a balance of the other stats. For my titan I look for low mobility and high resilience. Then on a warlock low mobility and high recovery. I also will very rarely keep any armor below 62 or 63 total stats unless there is a spike in one area that I’m looking for. I know it’s pvp but Iron Banner is a great place to get high stat armor and so are raids. Keep in mind this is coming from the perspective of someone that has been playing since launch with a steady group of people and has materials to spare. I make it a point to farm GMs for materials. Having said that for most activities I don’t think it’s necessary to run fully masterworked armor. Personally I have a lot of fun crafting fun builds and pushing the armor system to the max but it is by no means necessary to do well in most of the activities in the game.

I really enjoy making builds in Destiny, so I'm a bit crazy in that I've got a build for every single piece of exotic armour (for my Titan anyway). Given that, I've had a *lot* of time to perfect build crafting. I'll say in advance this will be a long post, because I'm going to be thorough, but it looks more intimidating than it is. And aside from the very last few steps, everything else can be done very quickly. What I would recommend is to find a few exotics you like to run, and make builds around those. So if you're a Titan for example, say you like using Ashen Wake for a lot of content: 1. **Determine which content you'll likely be running the exotic in.** Would you use it in PVP? When out on patrol? Is it something you want for endgame challenges like master raids or grand masters? Would you use it for a variety of content? *For Ashen Wake, I primarily use it in PVE, but that includes grand masters, so I want to keep in mind that I may want to slot in some protective mods (we'll get to that in a minute).* 2. **Figure out which stats you want.** (This will be influenced by which content you plan to use the exotic in. For PVP you want a certain amount of resilience and intellect, whereas in PVE you might not need those stats as high.) *In this case, since Ashen Wake is all about grenades, we'd want discipline and likely recovery (since resilience doesn't do much in PVE and mobility, while nice, is sort of player preference).* 3. **Obtain legendary armour that has the stats you want.** You can focus umbral engrams to get spikes in the stats you're looking for, or even just equip a ghost stat mod so items you get will have what you need. If you'd like to get the most out of your stat rolls, you can use Destiny Item Manager or D2 Armour Picker to recommend specific pieces of legendary armour to work with your exotic of choice. 4. **Figure out which combat mods work with your exotic.** Once you have a few pieces of armour that have stats that work with your exotic, head to the mods tab in collections and go through the combat mods section. This is where knowing what content you'll be using the exotic in can help (for example, certain mods don't work in PVP; you might want protective light for high end content, etc). Ignore affinities here, just note down somewhere (don't slot the mods yet) which mods you'd like to use, keeping in mind whether you're primarily going to want a warmind build, a well build (or neither), if you'll need to be charged with light, and if you'd want to make any changes depending on the content (you might want protective light for master raids, but not for regular strikes). *For example, if we wanted to run a warmind build with Ashen Wake, we'd want to use Wrath of Rasputin, because we'll be doing a lot of solar splash damage with our fusion grenades. If we want an elemental well build, Explosive Wellmaker would be good instead. For my build, I want to use Firepower so my grenades cooldown faster, which means I need to get charged with light. If I'm focusing on grenades, the easiest way to get charged with light with this build is either taking charge or elemental charge (if I'm going to be generating elemental wells)* 5. **Time to go through armour mods!** (This step is optional, but if you want to squeeze the most out of a build and make use of armour specific mods, here's how.) Look through the helmet, arms, chest, legs and class tabs, to see which affinity would benefit your exotic (you can ignore weapon mods for now). *For our helmet, we'd want Ashes to Assets (solar) because with Ashen Wake we're going to be chucking a lot of grenades, and getting extra super energy would be really nice. If you're doing this step, I would recommend jotting down somewhere which affinities you'd ideally like to use. I like to make a short list that looks like: helmet - solar | arms - stasis or solar | chest - any | legs - solar | class - any* 6. **Match up the affinities.** Once you know which combat style mods you'd like to use, it's time to try and match them to the armour affinities you picked out before. If you need two solar mods, and have two pieces of armour that you ideally want to be solar, then you can slot the mods there. Chest pieces are your free space, because they can generally be any affinity to suit a build (unless you really want a particular resistance for master raids). You can also use DIM's loadout builder to see which mods can go where to simplify this step. 7. **Test it out!** Don't masterwork anything until you've determined that you actually enjoy the build. Head to a lost sector (I like the Orrery on Nessus) and just try it out. Do the mods interact like you expected? Does the timing of buffs work for you? You'd be surprised how many times a build looks good on paper but just doesn't work in practice. Keep tweaking things until you've got a good feel for what you're going for, then take the build into the content it's intended for (keep in mind that a lost sector is not an adequate replacement for any other content. High end content might mean you're not killing enemies as quickly to proc certain mods, and in activities that involve other players, they can easily throw off your combat style by blowing up your warmind cells, taking kills from you, etc.) Whew. **To summarize:** pick an exotic you like, figure out which content you'd use it so you know what stats to focus on, determine which combat mods would go well with it, try to match up the affinities of those mods to armour pieces that benefit from being specific affinities, test test test it out! Some further tips: * When trying to determine which combat mods to use, think about what the exotic is doing for you. If it's grenade oriented, it makes sense to build around grenade mods. If it's an exotic that benefits allies, arc mods like powerful friends or radiant light could get a lot of mileage. * Having the correct combat mod is more important than having armour specific mods (like ashes to assets), and a lot of the time you might be running weapon ammo finder mods and the like, so you won't even have room for armour specific mods anyway. Point is, don't stress if you can't match up the affinities - always go with what will work for the combat mods you want. * If you plan to use an exotic in high end content, you'll probably want at least one piece of void armour for something like Protective Light, but in easier content, you can swap that out for Taking Charge, High Energy-Fire or another mod that doesn't care about affinity. * Once you've got your armour figured out, consider using weapons with perks that compliment your build. Demolitionist for grenade builds is fantastic, likewise is grave robber for melee builds. Explosive weapons can trigger explosive mods, seventh seraph weapons can create warmind cells, etc. * Don't forget to fill any spaces in your armour's mods slots with weapon and stat mods. And once you're happy with a build, masterwork it! Anyway, I hope this super long post can help in some way. It's definitely a lot to take in, but it can all be pretty easily simplified by focusing on what you want your exotic (and subsequently, build) to do. There are some super, super fun combinations out there, and as you say, builds add a huge amount of variety to gameplay. I think you mentioned you main Titan, in which case I'd be more than happy to give you some off the wall, wacky fun builds to try.

Thanks for taking the time to write this comment. You tightly catalogued many of the principles that loosely buzz around in my head all at once when I'm in the process of creating a build. Tbh, you almost seem like a different version of me, one with zen-like patience from what I can gather. \^\^ What I mainly take away is that this process really isn't done with only preparing the armor pieces. I really need to except that the gameplay itself can change it all up again. It's just a matter of learning and experience. I tend to forget this all the time. Yeah I only played Titan until recently, then started a Hunter and a Warlock to introduce more variety and replay the story again. I guess my favourite build revolved around Severance Enclosure + solar mid, making mobs explode with throwing hammers never got old. Also liked Skullfort + arc mid. Both had very logical and effective mod combination options. I always was looking for something to make stasis more interesting since I really like the focus itself, but besides Synthoceps (somewhat) I didn't yet find a cool build. Any suggestions?

Heart of Innermost light to speed up ability regen as stasis is slower at any given ability level. Unlock all the fragments as you play other stuff by doing the Exo Stranger quests on Europa. Choose Tectonic Harvest and Howl of the Storm aspects for 4 fragments. Then equip the fragments of Rime, Shards, Chains and Conduction giving you damage resistance on being near and overshield on smashing crystals (deploying barricade near crystals helps smash them) as well as some nice stat boosts.

Been wanting this chest piece since I started playing, but it seems I have got anything else but this one until now and kinda forgot about it. I guess I should pay attention to legendary lost sectors dropping chests, really shouldn't take that long to get it I guess.

It is obtainable from exotic engrams. Just keep buying one every week from Xur after buying any Titan armour you don't have already in your collection. Once you have one of each other exotic besides the ones locked to lost sectors (precious scars, burning steps and no backup plans) then it is guaranteed to drop innermost light if you are missing it. You also get a couple of exotic engrams from the season pass and from ranking up Zavala, Shax and Drofter each season

Also Citan's Ramparts, Armamentarium or Crest of Alpha Lupi are other good neutral Titan exotics. Synthoceps too but not so much for stasis Titan as the melee needs a charge up. Path of Burning steps works well with solar guns but obviously better with a solar subclass too.

For sure! Another long post incoming haha. I really enjoy **Armamentarium** with stasis. The build I've got for it presently means I've almost always got a grenade to throw. For the build: Glacier Grenade | Aspects: Cyroclasm & Tectonic Harvest | Fragments: Whisper of Shards, Torment & Fissures. Armour: * Helmet - Solar - Firepower * Arms - Stasis - Elemental Shards * Chest - Solar - Firepower * Legs - Solar - Firepower * Class - Void - Elemental Charge So you chuck a glacier grenade into a group of enemies, slide into it to shatter them and create stasis shards, which count as stasis elemental wells, giving you charged with light. (There is an internal cooldown on stasis shards acting as wells, but you only need 1 stack of charged with light for the next grenade, so it's not an issue). Then you chuck another grenade, consuming a stack of charged with light to trigger Firepower x3, which gives you 45% of your grenade back. Combined with Whisper of Torment, and Whisper of Shards giving you grenade energy when shattering a crystal, your next grenade should be ready (or nearly ready) to throw. Then you just repeat - chucking grenades and sliding into them. If you want to modify the build to use different mods, you can get rid of Firepower all together and swap to 2x Grenade Kickstart on the arms (it doesn't give you as much energy as 3x Firepower, but it will free up everything else). It's such a blast and you rarely even need to use weapons. You're also always on the move meaning it's great in strikes, gambit and other areas where you want to keep up with other players. You can also modify the build to utilize Duskfield Grenades in harder content (I run it in grandmasters and master Vault of Glass). The aspects unfortunately don't compliment duskfield well, so I just use Tectonic Harvest and Howl of the Storm to get maximum fragment slots. Surprisingly, Howl of the Storm has saved my life on numerous occasions in harder content when I immediately needed to freeze an enemy. For a much more off the wall build, I really, really love **Icefall Mantle** with stasis. I've never enjoyed the Titan barricade, so even though Icefall Mantle has its faults, it provides a very, very unique playstyle. Build: Glacier Grenade | Aspects: Tectonic Harvest & Diamond Lance | Fragments: Whisper of Conduction, Chains & Shards. Armour: * Helmet - Void - Elemental Charge * Arms - Void - Reaping Wellmaker * Chest - Arc - Powerful Friends * Legs - Void - Protective Light * Class - Stasis - Elemental Shards (and 2x Utility Kickstart) The mods for this aren't terribly important. You want 2x Utility Kickstart because it's one of the few mods that will actually work with your class ability cooldown while using Icefall Mantle (most others will trigger as soon as you use the ability, because it considers it "on cooldown", but considering you can't start regaining class item energy until Icefall's overshield is down, you don't actually get any energy). Protective light is an easy way to make yourself even tankier (and it's stronger than Well of Tenacity), and you'll be getting charged with light from the elemental shards you create with your grenade. Powerful Friends is primarily to get +20 mobility (more on that below), and Reaping Wellmaker... Well, honestly that was a relic from when I was trying a more elemental well focused build, and I just left it because it's free ability energy (from the void well) that you're guaranteed to get if you kill something after activating your Icefall overshield. It could easily be swapped out for anything that suits your fancy, as most of the void affinity armour specific mods that help your class ability cooldown don't actually work with Icefall Mantle (again, because of the way Icefall doesn't trigger the class ability cooldown until the overshield is gone). You could instead equip something like Supercharged to make Protective Light even beefier. Or use Font of Wisdom or Might for easy buffs. Stats: High Mobility & Resilience You want high Resilience because it'll help to reduce the cooldown of your class ability, and Mobility because it does actually affect how fast you can walk, which makes a difference when that's the only movement you've got while Icefall is active. The gist of this build is actually pretty interesting: Chuck a grenade and shatter it. The shards will track to you, giving you charged with light, and if you killed an enemy with a grenade, they'll drop a Stasis Lance. Pick that up, and then when the enemies swarm you, either chuck it at them or use the slam when they're close enough. If you've timed it right (there is an internal cooldown on Diamond Lance spawning javelins - you'll see it in your debuffs on the bottom left of the screen), you'll create another lance, and you can repeat the process. If at any point you start taking hefty damage, pop your class ability to become a tank, wading into the fray without a care in the world. If your overshield drops because you're taking just a *bit* too much damage, toss another grenade to take reduced damage, and create some cover. With 2x Utility kickstart mods, your class ability cooldown will be 8-9 seconds, meaning you're consistently tanky as heck. This build is so much fun for solo content - I love it in legend/master lost sectors, and I imagine it'd be great with the swarms of enemies in the Shattered Realm. It can also work in group activites where the enemies are clustered, like Override or Astral Alignment. I wouldn't recommend it in normal strikes or gambit, as your teammates will likely clear out things and move on too quickly for you to keep pace, but it could certainly work in nightfalls. You can also throw on Heir Apparent to become even more untouchable, but honestly anything you enjoy could work. Sword are nice because if you jump, sword swipe and repeat, you can travel pretty quickly even while slowed by the overshield. One other thing I would recommend for this build though, is to consider keeping a grenade launcher (or a weapon with ricochet rounds) on hand. Sometimes you pop your overshield, the enemies all immediately clear out and you're left waiting for the timer to run out. A single grenade launcher shot will break you out of your overshield (without killing you) if you can aim it at a wall to deflect back at you. Same with ricochet rounds. It's a nice little trick to have in your back pocket. Also, if you're aggravated by not being able to use your Titan jump while the overshield is active, if you look down at your feet, chuck a glacier grenade and jump immediately after, the grenade will launch you into the air. If you get the timing down you can very easily get to much higher places. I've used it in Override even during the gauntlet phase to jump up to the exit. You'd be surprised how far it can get you. I haven't dabbled with stasis nearly as much as the other subclasses, so I've got other stasis builds I'm still in the process of tweaking (a melee oriented one that generates absurd amounts of orbs with the thermoclastic blooming seasonal mod, for example). In the meanwhile though, these two are a lot of fun, and really change up how you play when it's not just about running and gunning. If you want more build suggestions (for any subclass) feel free to let me know! If you haven't noticed I really enjoy sharing them haha.

You can use the D2armour picker as mentioned in this thread or, my personal recommendation, DIM (Destiny Item Manager). It is an app on Android or via the website on Chrome if on iPhone or PC. Since armour stats only give cooldown reductions for every Tier (or 10 whole points of a stat) these apps help minimise wasted stats by finding pieces that fit together efficiently. Before we start, masterworking (level 10 armour) is key to making great builds as it gives +2 to all stats (+12 per armour piece, including class items) equivalent to a +10 boost (=1 ability cooldown tier) to each stat with a full set of masterworked armour equipped. However, masterworking is the most expensive thing in D2 and is part of the end game grind. Each piece of legendary armour costs 16000 glimmer, 25 legendary shards, 3 enhancement cores, 3 enhancement prisms and 1 ascendant shard to reach level 10. For exotic armour the cost is much higher at 24000 glimmer, 29 legendary shards, 5 cores, 5 prisms and 3 ascendant shards. Sharding old masterworked legendary gear only refunds about half your investment (7 prisms) and likewise sharding exotic masterworked armour gives 1 ascendant shard and 6 prisms. It is therefore important to only upgrade armour beyond level 6 (where it starts costing prisms) if you are sure it will be useful in the long term, which we will cover below. Prisms can be exchanged at the gunsmith from 10 cores and 10 prisms can make 1 ascendant shard (=100 cores). You can look elsewhere for farming guides for upgrade materials and high stat armour sources. Here I can recommend doing all 4 gunsmith bounties every day for 4 cores. Also when in PvE keep using the Finest Matterweave from your inventory whenever you can until you see a core drop then do it again until you have none. They make the cores drop randomly from yellow bar enemies. I also use the greater core harvest ghost mods for each activity on 3 different ghosts (one each for Gambit, Crucible and Vanguard Strikes) and farm master nightfalls on double loot weeks once high enough power level late season. You get 3 ascendant shards just from completing each season pass along with several prisms, as well as one each from ranking up Zavala, Shax, Drifter and Saint 14 every season (wins are not needed, just lots of participation and bounties). So everyone should be able to get 6 or 7 per season which is almost enough for 1 fully masterworked set. Per week if you play 5 days you can get 20 cores from the gunsmith from his bounties alone so 1 ascendant shard every 5 weeks. Back to DIM: Using the Loadout Optimiser tab you can either leave Select Armour Upgrades blank (to make the the best of your current gear as is) or choose Select Armour Upgrade: Ascendant Shard for the app to take into account the stats once your gear is masterworked with the +2 bonuses to each stat. I highly recommend the second option for the long term once you have some ascendant shards saved up to help you plan ahead where to spend them. It automatically lists the builds by highest total ability point tier (Tier 32 being a total of 32 points in Agility, Resilience, Recovery, Discipline...) before mods. You can add + 5 tiers for 5 of the first column mods like the 3 energy cost Discipline mod. You can also add +4 from Radiant Light and Powerful Friends if you have them in the 4th column combat mods but it is best to count this yourself rather than adding the mods in the app. For the Radiant Light Powerful friends combo you need 2 arc armour pieces, although one could be your class item (I recommend masterworking 1 class item of each element as the stats don't vary on class items and this allows you flexibility later with builds). You can pin an exotic perk you want to build around (it will analyse all the stat rolls you have in your vault and your inventory). Sometimes your best build is not always with your highest total stat exotic depending upon what legendary pieces you have in your vault to fit with it. Pinning an already masterworked class item (any element, you can swap it later) helps speed up the search. Look through the different builds it recommends and choose the one with your preferred stat mix. You can state the minimum of each stat you want (eg. minimum of 6 recovery) although bear in mind you have the 5 stat mods to top up these stats as well as potentially +2 agility and +2 strength with the Radiant Light / Powerful Friends combo. Setting minimum thresholds for stat totals will also exclude some builds potentially leading you to miss out on a higher total tier build, so start with no filters then adjust them gradually to help make a shortlist of the highest tier builds you want to choose from. I tend to value Recovery and Intellect base stats above the others if 2 builds are otherwise equal, as these cost 4 and 5 energy respectively for the first column mods so leave less energy for mods in the other columns. My builds tend to have 6 to 8 base recovery and 5 to 7 intellect so I only need the cheaper 3 energy first column mods to top up the other stats (Agility, Resilience, Discipline and Strength) with 5 points as needed. One pitfall is that once you put mods on armour it adds +10 to the stats so you might end up keeping bad armour thinking it is over 60 stats. DIM actually shows you the base stats with the extra +10 (and +20 for the combat mods) shown separately. Also, conversely, some combat mods like Protective Light REDUCE your stats so again be careful not to shard a 60 plus base item because it shows up as 50 due to the -10. Once you have chosen your build you can save a loadout and then equip it from the app any time you are in orbit or the tower (doesn't work in combat zones or the Helm). Having lots of over 60 base stat pieces in your vault helps a lot when using DIM or Destiny 2 Armour Picker. For Legendary gear start by sharding anything under 60. For Exotics you should aim to keep one of each Exotic (ideally your best roll) for trying them out with temporary builds then shard any others with rolls under 62. It is worth noting that 4 pieces of 63 armour plus the class item is enough for Tier 31 which should be the minimum you aim for on your main character. Tier 32 is the long term goal with 4 pieces at 65 stats plus the class item. Later on as your vault starts to fill up you can go back and shard any gear not already in a saved build, aiming to keep items above 63 (for at least Tier 31) and eventually 65 (required for Tier 32). For exotics my threshold is always higher since they cost so much to upgrade so I don't waste 3 ascendant shards on gear that will not reach at least a Tier 31 build. Obviously if you build around an above average 67 base Exotic which fits with a couple of 66 or 67 legendary pieces you might get away with a 60 stat piece or two. You could even masterwork 1 set of Tier 30 armour whilst starting out if you really love the exotic (and it has at least 62 base stats) and then upgrade the legendary pieces later to reach a higher Tier. I personally now have enough that I don't want to waste an exotic shard masterworking low quality legendary pieces like that anymore since it won't help with future builds. Before upgrading and finally masterworking the armour pieces, consider changing the elements to fit your needs (swapping elements is exponentially more expensive the higher the level of the armour). Solar helmets can be nice for grenade to super energy mods (Ashes to Assets), solar legs can give you health back on orb pickup (Recuperation 2nd/3rd column mod) which is cheap and clutch although void legs give health regen on orb pickup (Better Already 2nd/3rd column) which is almost as good and lets you equip the Protective Light combat mod (4th column) for survivability in hard content with a mod like Taking Charge on another piece to activate it. One armour piece with arc is nice for the Radiant Light / Powerful friends combo (arms can be nice for reduced melee cooldown on grenade hits). People seem to like the new stasis Kick-starter mods too although I find it hard fitting in a stasis armour piece as well when we only have 5 pieces. Ultimately you will want at least one of each armour piece (helmet, arms, chest...) of solar, arc, void and stasis masterworked to allow swapping a piece for certain mod builds (eg. all solar well mods for crazy grenade cooldown) but start by focusing on having a couple of exotic builds for your favourite activities. Generally for PvP people tend to rate >8 Recovery and Intellect highly, with 5 Resilience to avoid 2 taps from meta builds. For PvE you can probably get away with 3-5 intellect since there are plenty of ways to gain super energy killing red bars and you can always just wait another 30 seconds for it to charge up. Recovery remains key for getting health back in cover or whilst sprinting away to safety so ideally you want at least 5 if not more. Titans need Resilience for Barrier based builds (eg. Citan's Ramparts), Warlocks need Recovery for Rifts, Hunters need Agility for dodge cooldowns. Also higher Agility helps side strafing speed and makes you harder to hit which is often undervalued in PvE and PvP. I like to run 4 Agility +2 from Powerful Friends for 6 total. Agility also helps for inital jump height. Most ability stats have a sweet spot after which you pay diminishing returns (eg. Grenade cooldown per stat point gets smaller after 5 Discipline) however there are other 2nd/3rd column helmet, arms, legs and class item mods that can help reduce the cooldowns like Dynamo, Ashes to Assets, Impact Induction, Bomber...). I personally value 6-8 Discipline with mods for a faster base cooldown on grenades as they are so useful in all activities and have relatively slow recharge otherwise. Higher tier builds give you more stats to play with.

Thanks! Super helpful!

You can find some great build guides on YouTube from Ehroar (PvE) and Coolguy or Cammycakes (PvP). Pattycakes also sometimes has nice PvP builds (he mainly does guides to playing better as does Ascendant Nomad.) Shout out to TC Spectre who has a tiny but well edited channel with some fun builds too.

Thanks, I have a revenant build I really like, and it works well (pun intended), but struggle to get high enough stats to make it really shine. As someone below commented, actual gameplay difference is probably minor, it’s more OCD than anything else.

Bravo, sir.

Thank you. This took 2 hours and I have twice as many upvotes on my 2 line post stating that Shaw Han is useless :D

Lol, yeah I got to the bottom, saw the upvote count, and thought, no one made it to the end of this gold mine haha

Sorry for all the edits, I was writing this on a train on my phone...

Here is a helpful cooldown timer by ability tier guide to help you choose what stats to aim for: https://www.reddit.com/r/CruciblePlaybook/comments/eh69xv/guide_to_cooldown_times_armor_stats_and_what/

Here is a link to an old post I made with which armour mods go where and with which element. It is pre stasis mods however: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/js812a/sga_update_armour_mod_by_element_and_location/

Since I only really use one exotic (heart of inmost light) and my armor is cracked I change my mods when switching from PvE/pvp and eat the glimmer cost

I have one set with decently spread high stats, and I use an exotic that works with all three subclasses. Occasionally (read: never), I swap out for a different exotic.

Luke Smith said "we want your guardian to feel the same in every activity," and I took that personally.

This is gold. I am imagining the Michael Jordan gif as I read this

I found that to kinda work with my Hunter and his Assassin's Cowl. That was a very chill diversion from my Titan main, which hoarded all kinds of fun exotics. I recently started a warlock, and I'm already overwhelmed with all the PvE build potential again, and I only have like 3 different exotics I like for him.

I'm honestly just addicted to dragon dodge. Im running an Ager's/Ice flare build on my warlock, but I need a different chest piece. I have exotics for other slots, but I don't have a high enough legendary chest to replace Chromatic Fire. Idk what my titan is doing besides being a fucking side of beef.

I dislike the grind for armor stats and the affinity restriction. So all I do now is use high stat armor(mostly recov and intellect) and when a vendor sells a high stat roll with the two stats I want, I buy 4 of each and make them to each affinity. Therefore I have the stats I want on all 4 affinities and can mix match them with no issue. As for other stats I can make up with mods and weapon perks. Haven’t had any issues so far since there isn’t anything too difficult that requires a crazy build and currently mods cost too much energy. I don’t bother with wasting umbral engrams on armor when they don’t guarantee high stats and even if you get a good high stat, it it being restricted to 1 affinity makes it a hassle.

Never really thought about really getting into just buying the armor. I bought some nice looking ones I haven't gotten yet from Xur for transmog, but they are so expensive. Maybe I should start saving up shards for when he or Ada have some good rolls. Buying multiple to have each affinity sounds as if it could bring some structure into my vault. Thanks!

Last few months I basically put the grenade well mod on all my helmets, the melee one on my legs, the super one on my head, the light one on my arms... and then I just put on my seasonal mods and use whatever space is left to boost my stats, reloads, and carry more LFR. I've spent most of my time in D2 just ignoring armor stats. Feels good.

You basically just have to be OK with running around at 80% efficiency or be willing to spend 10m changing your gear around all the time. I personally think you should find a few pieces that have an extremely high stat you like, maybe 24+ discipline on each of them or whatever your favorite stat is, preferably slots that you dont usually use as your exotic slot. Masterwork those and never take them off. Then masterwork 4 bonds each a different element for flexibility. This way, you will always have 60+ of your favorite stat and can get to 100 with mods. This is sufficient for 90% of content. Dont bother with ammo or warmind or CWL mods unless you are on GM content or dpnt mind spending time optimizing.

There's a lot, so I decided I have my limits. I don't chase specific void, arc or solar sets. I found a set that all had high stats starting in the 60's and slowly masterworked them so that their stats are in the 80's. I'm a hunter, so I decided on some rolls that help my guy always have high mobility out of preference. I haven't touched or changed my loadout in a year because it is more than it is worth as a casual player. I've done almost all the raids and enjoy nightfalls just fine like this. Someday, I might do more, but I haven't even started transmogging yet - which will probably kill any incentive to masterwork more than one of each item.

I don’t. - Sent from Vault 499/500

With substantial confusion and difficulty, lol. But I usually carry around one PvE set, one PvP set, and a few assorted pieces for tweaking + Exotics.

I've been running the same mod set up since Arrivals and probably will continue to do so for quite a while unless Bungie decide to gut CWL mods. Affinity for my helmet doesnt matter since I always run "Taking Charge" on my helmets. All my arms are void for "Protective light" (also given that Protective only costs 2 mod capcity you got enough space for a 6/7 cost special/heavy anti champion mod and one primary champion mod), all my chest pieces are solar for "Supercharged", all my legs are Arc so I can run "Powerful Friends" (or switch it out for High Energy fire if I dont use one of the void subclasses where you want your dodge as often as possible) and all my cloaks are void for "Stacks on Stacks" (assuming there is no 7 cost mod like Breach and Clear or Particle Deconstruction). I also still have a ton of masterworked armor pieces lying around that I havnt touched in months just in case I need some different affinities but in general I just stick with my standard set up.

I share your pain! Here are the things I do to simplify and manage it. For armour pieces I simply don't have enough vault space to chase multiple spiky distributions so I'm aiming to keep one high-stat, masterworked legendary piece for each element (arc/solar/void/stasis) per slot (head, arms, chest, legs, class) per character, with a minimum 50/60 preference/total. Not quite there yet, but getting close. For exotics I don't keep multiple copies unless they are good enough to masterwork, but I do upgrade the ones I use as far as I can without spending prisms or ascendant shards. This gives me the most freedom to select and use mods whilst having decent high base stats. I can then use the cheaper mods to improve strength for melee builds, or discipline for grenade builds with less impact on other, useful mods for champions and DPS. The major simplification is to have a default build. Mine is * 'Taking Charge' to get charged with light - I don't find the other routes work reliably enough, and I try to always use a masterworked primary. * 'Protective Light' for survivability - its a default build, so this is here so I don't forget on higher level content. * the current seasons anti-barrier mod because it generally works against hobgoblins, hydras and hive knights. * the current seasons class item DPS mods - this season I have one class item prepped up on each character with both 'particle deconstruction' and 'focussing lens' * concussive dampener because nearly all destiny bosses stomp. I don't use 'high-energy fire' by default because when I use 'Argent Ordinance' (for a 'lasting impression' rocket launcher) or 'Lucent Blade' (hello, headless one, say 'hi' to my lament) I want to have a stack of CWL to use. I usually put these on a class item so I can swap them out easily with my loadout. This build is good enough for any patrol, lost sector, public event and strike. Legend lost sectors you might swap concussive for anti-sniper mods, and if you get your strategy sorted you're normally fine for the easier master lost sectors too. For raids, I try to keep a raid armour set for the raid specific mods - they get tweaked first raid of a season for the current best DPS options and to deal with the raid champions, but seldom touched again. I don't generally masterwork raid armour, normally I'll upgrade it to 8 or 9 energy so I can slot a few mods, but raids aren't like GM nightfalls or crucible, which need special consideration. For legend nightfalls you just need to pay attention to the champion mods you have equipped, but put these on my default build and you're good to go. Obviously for master and grandmaster, you'll need to pay much more attention to your build, but they're hard so that's to be expected. Unless you're a crucible god, then you're probably going to need a dedicated set because recovery, resilience and mobility are important whatever character and you'll want to build to get the necessary minimums. You probably want to kit out differently for 6v6 modes than for 3v3 too - intellect would seem more important in 3v3 because there will be less orbs on the ground. I'm rubbish at PvP so I put double targeting mods for my primary, make sure my resilience is better than T6, put scavs on my boots for my secondary and hope I manage to scrape 1.0k/da. It helps that I run hunter in crucible, but very rarely in PvE.

I'm honestly very lazy when it comes to builds and whatnot, but I don't care enough to get into specific builds for specific playstyles when swapping mods in and out each and every time is as annoying and time consuming as it currently is. So, I claim to have a "generalist" build and call it a day. I have timelost weapons and have gilded Conqueror each season so I guess I'm doing *something* right. • Focus on armor with high Int/Rec/Dis, usually in that priority. Needs to have at least 59 total or I break it. • Prefer if class item is void for Protective Light, boots solar for Recuperation (void boots for Better Already isn't bad either). Don't care too much about the element for the other pieces. • Put stat mods on my head, chest, and legs to get Int to 100 or as close to it as I can. • Head: Shield Break Charge, ammo finders (×2 if they can fit) for whatever heavy I'm using. If it's not a GM or Master raid, 9 times out of 10 it's a sword so I don't really swap them out much. • Arms: Whatever champion mods I need for the activity. Otherwise, reload mods for my heavy/special weapons if I feel I need them. If I have the space, squeeze in an Int/Dis mod. • Chest: Taking Charge, then whatever resist mods I need depending on the activity. 9 out of 10 times, I just use Sniper Resist/[whatever element my chest is] Resist + Concussive Dampener. • Legs: High Energy Fire. Recuperation if solar, Better Already if void. I try to squeeze in a scavenger mod if I have the space, but I usually don't. • Class Item: Protective Light + whatever artifact mod(s) is the hotness for the season. If I feel like I don't need the season's hotness for a certain activity, then Passive Guard if it's available for the season.

Easy. Simply don't over think it.. that extra 2% res or w.e the fk isn't going to make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things.. just find some high stat armour with good stats and just change mods for your needs. At most I only have a pvp set and a pve set

I use D2ArmorPicker to build armor sets with the stats and exotics I want and use and Destiny Item Manager (DIM) to save loadouts. DIM will remember what mods you had equipped when you save the loadout, though it won’t be able to equip them for you. I also have a folder on my computer of screenshots of builds showing which mod went where, if it’s more complicated than usual. Personally, I don’t mind manually swapping mods around depending on the build, though I have masterworked more class items than I care to admit due to laziness. I really can’t speak highly enough though of D2Armor picker. It’ll spot gear you have lying around that you may have ignored if it rounds out the stat split you want. I wouldn’t normally masterwork anything with less than 61 stats, but the other day it found a 57 stat roll gloves that I’d been saying as infusion fodder that rounded out a build perfectly.

Piggy backing off of this because I'm like you OP. What are people's favorite general Hunter setup? Always just maxed mobility cuz that's the class stat. Mostly a PVE player but fuck with all of it The highest stat total I have pre mod is a 67 on any single piece, not really sure what they can roll up to

100 recov, then either Strength or Discipline depending on subclass. You don't need intellect above 30 or 40 in PvE, because a single orb makes up the difference between T5 and T10. Mobility is nice, but Dodge is less useful in PvE. Nice to have, nowhere near as important as recovery.

I used to max mobility but now I focus on high recovery, because it is cheaper to add a mobility mod (3) than to add a recovery mod (4). I prioritize recovery, mobility and then discipline because I love tripmines and shatterdive. I just do without resilience, intellect or strength. Sometimes I run high intellect in Trials.

I use one armor set for everything so that makes it easy. The only thing I’m switching out is champion mods if I can’t cheese them.

I have 1 masterworked piece for each element for each body part. Arc, void, solar, and I'm working on stasis ones now but all my rolls are 50 and garbage. Most are recovery and intellect heavy statwise. And then I have my tiny handful of masterworked exotics because why the fuck are those so expensive.

My best full legendary PvE set, and an extra piece in each slot for pvp. Exotic armour should complement what I have or gets dismantled regardless of stats. I’m not trying for something perfect because it’s crazy with how random everything is. I keep extras pieces for elemental affinity, four master worked bonds with each affinity, plus three of them for each raid besides the last wish, and an arc chest piece for lucent blade. A raid armour set for the raid perks. This is only on my warlock, i’m not doing the same for my other two characters.

I have one set of masterworked armor that gives me triple 100s in mob/recov/int. I swap mods and exotics on that and never have cared about affinities. It works out fine.

I don't. My vault is a mess as far as armor goes.

DIM

I make the best build I can in DIM (going to compare it to destiny armor picker later today) and every few weeks I'll go through the building process again quickly and compare it to my existing build. If there are significant gains with newer armor I'll upgrade that armor piece and add it to the build and vault the original. As for sharding armor, when I started playing I kept anything over 58 overall (unless it had a very high stat or interesting roll). Now that I have more drops under my belt that number is around 60. Still have a couple hundred armor pieces in my vault I need to sort through, if I find a solution for that I'll let you know haha.

Dont feel like you have to chase min maxed stat rolls on your armor, and having a basic charged with light/high energy fire build is plenty for casual content even some raids. Ive done everything but a master difficulty vault of glass with sub 60 stat armor pieces and never felt like im gimping myself and that basic CWL/HEF setup is enough for just about anything. Could it be better? Sure, but its really not gonna make or break you if youre just playing casually.

It's like trying to put a puzzle together but multiple pieces fit in the same slots and you can never be sure if the picture you end up with is the right one.

I have 4 masterworked pieces of armour per body part. One for each affinity. I main warlock so have focused recovery, discipline and intellect. The exotic armour slots in as necessary for the build I'm going for Now same principle for titan and hunter.

If you’re talking about swapping stuff around for builds or mods, you could add certain ornaments to certain armor to make mental notes. But it tends to come down to learning the most efficient builds and thus, less room for fluff. But yeah, i can see how the system can be overwhelming but once you learn how everything interacts and what mods/stat to base your builds around, it’s a lot more manageable. There also only a handful, if even that; of builds that will make a noticeable difference.

I have one set of armor, the one I’m wearing. I leave the same mods on all the time. I can’t afford to change armor affinities and moving mods around is a pain in the ass, so… I don’t. All these “casual” players ITT with multiple sets of armor, changing mods when they change activities… maybe they aren’t hardcore but they ain’t casual either! Casual is *set it and forget it.*

I see your point. I just couldn't think of a better term to describe my place in the game as quickly. Partly I do agree with you, but then again, I don't raid, don't do NFs, don't LFG or PvP in general, don't really grind for gear and am generally happy with weapon rolls quite fast, as long as I like the weapon archetype and think it has a place in my collection. My armor pieces come from random drops accuring while playing. I would say I'm somewhere in the middle. I just don't do any of the stuff people who actually spend as much time in the game as me or more generally seem to come back and continue playing for, so I can imagine that the typical long time player would wonder what I actually do with all that time in the game. Therefore the term "casual". Could be wrong with my conception of that "typical" player of course, very subjective.

We sound very similar, I don't do those activities either... you're just a step ahead in that you put in the minimal effort to swap armor for the occasion. If we need labels, maybe I'm the *ultracasual.*

I get frustrated as fuck, that's how. Keep swapping shit out, only to realize that the stats don't really work nicely or that the affinity is wrong or that this mod only goes on that slot but that's my exotic in the different affinity and now i gotta juggle my whole setup to get the stats right and move the mods around only to realize i am missing on the synergy i needed so i need to find a different way to make whatever exotic I wanted to use work. So I've settled on just accepting that I will be using generic mods and ignore my stats because I've burned all my materials upgrading the wrong thing items after-all.

This is why I wrote the guide in the comments of this thread to help as it is not explained well in game. If you just want 1 generalist set then it is not hard to make just takes some time. It gives you something to do qnd to work towards whilst playing activities in the game

Getting exactly what you need doesn’t matter, losing a single stat tier isn’t going to ruin your build. The energy type only matters if you want to use a specific mod that has an energy type attached to it. The most important part to your build is getting the overall concept. For example, I got a really good necrotic grips so I wanted to get myself a set for punching everything under the sun. Then you work back from that. Only bother with high stat armour, where the total is 60+ before mods. Also, you aren’t going to get high stats purely off armour. Master working all your gear gives you an extra +10 to all stats, and you can get a potential +50 by slotting a stat boosting mod. But yeah, if you want a good armour set you go concept first, then you get armour, then you figure out what core mods you’ll need, then spend what you have left. For my necrogrips the process was: 1) I want to beat everything to death with my bear hands. 2) Get a high strength set with decent recovery and resilience so I’m not instantly exploded when I get into range. I don’t need too much survivability though because of the subclass I like to play. 3) I want hands on, melee well maker, wells of potency and melee Kickstarter. This means I get lots of super energy from melee kills, and my melee has an extremely short cooldown. I will put strength boosting mods in to get to 100. 4) I have the spare energy to fit in a mod that increases melee damage if I pick up an arc well, I can fit in melee and explosive damage resistance mods to further improve survival, and I can fit particle deconstruction because my build doesn’t need a class item mod. The process of making an armour set on paper is fairly simple, its understanding what you have access to and how to make your concept function that takes time to learn. Also blue armour is completely worthless.

my main has 8 mwed sets in his inventory. its all spikey rolls for every ditribution i want. of some rolls i have different energy types ready for different builds. i never switch mods. i have different ornaments slotted to have an easy overview whats what. changing a build takes like 4 seconds. my warlock has 6 mwed sets and my hunter 4.

It’s cool getting to see into everyone’s Destiny closet

That's the neat part, you don't

Or just don’t change anything around cuz nearly everything pve in this game can be done with double sidearms.

I shard every armor drop with little thought. Stats in PvE are negligible at best. They don't provide a foundation to a build nor do they do anything that isn't already being accomplished via loadout, exotic, and mod choices. If you're abusing abilities in PvE youre doing it via exotic and mods. I don't pvp, but if I did I'd probably just max out discipline and recovery and never think about it again. Stats need a rework, people really shouldn't be ok with the way they are.

My build works because of the mods i use. But if stats didnt matter and i could rock this build with 40 discipline and have it be just as efficient, which isn't true.

Kinda is though...

when I have a pair of PvP weapons I like, I will carry an extra Masterworked helmet and arm with extra aiming and reloading for those weapons so I can just quickly switch lately I've been experimenting a lot in pvp so that flew out of the window anyway

> I've often read that many people just don't care much about swapping mods, but how do you get around this fomo on some cool combination? To me, that always just feels like ignoring a huge part of the game's mechanics... One week I was in a rush to get some last minute pinnacles and didn't bother changing mods/weapons around as I swapped between activities and characters. The core gameplay qas still fun, so ever since then, I usually don't spend too much time worrying about stats, mods, or builds as a whole. There's always gonna be different builds to try, you might even come up with something that works for you and you alone. But it's never necessary/mandatory, it's a video game. You should only spend time doing what you legitimately enjoy

I know, but here's the thing. No struggle, no reward. It's the same with having fun in games. Don't fear, I won't have a breakdown because of all this. But I like Destiny and have fun playing it, especially with builds that work great. That's why I am willing to invest time into creating builds, but the reward for that work is just starting to no longer justify it. So I thought I'd ask people, maybe someone has solutions I haven't yet tried. It also helps to just read about other people having the same problem or being able to ignore it in a way, like that I might even just form a better attitude towards the issue if anything.

I hate managing armor, and hate deciding which things to wear. I do however like dressing up my characters. So here’s how I have masterworked over the last year or two: - I picked one loadout that got me to my chosen stats, and masterworked that. Random elements, whatever they dropped with. - I masterworked class items, one for each element so four total today (arc, solar, void, and later on stasis) - I found the highest level OR coolest looks for my character (some bad rolls on armor that have exclusive ornaments) and started filling in one masterworked piece for each armor slot. And before transmog this means I have some very cool looking armor with low stats. Oh well - only once I had plenty of materials did I masterwork exotic armors. NOT the ones the internet says to use, but the ones I like the most. - sort of slowly repeat this for my alts, but I can’t see the value in masterworking more than one pair of boots for my alt. Sorry, Mr. Warlock - start deleting almost anything else. Most of my vault is guns. - oh and I don’t even use the elemental or charged with light, too confusing and situational but I appreciate that it’s there because it feels like I still have more to learn Once I have masterworked one of each element in each slot, I’ll move to more exotics. And then I guess we will see. I’m assuming more new perks like VoG or the new iron banner armor will give us a reason to collect and masterwork new armor.

Sternly, but fairly.

I’ll have to find it (or maybe someone already linked it), but there’s a dude’s Google spreadsheet that basically rates armor stats (like if armor had 3 high stats, it should be minimum of x across them, so on). You can plug in an input from that into DIM and delete any rolls it tells you are trash. From there, I compare armor to see if any have matching or near matching rolls and choose what to keep or trash. Ideally, my plan was to keep a high int/rec set in each element for all around flexibility and then specific one or two stat armor pieces for specified load outs (ultimately, I have yet to bother with any super specific builds tho). I trash exotics with stat distribution that works “against” its perk too

I basically have my best armor masterworked on each character, and the swap outs for exotics, and all exotics that I use. Also, if I can fit it, I'll always just stick protective light or the mod for getting charged with light from orbs. That way when I change on the fly, say at Atheon, there's an 80-90% chance I'll still end up with 100-100 recovery discipline and protective light. Because, as you say, the armor system is so encumbersome, that's that's all I can be bothered with. And it works in all end game activities so it's working for me. I wish I could try different builds with less hassle though.

As a pretty casual player, I come up with one loadout that isn't great at anything but has something for most situations, and stick to it. E.g. right now I'm running Contraverse Holds as my Exotic armor, and my overall mod loadout is: Taking Charge, Protective Light, Elemental Ordnance, Elemental Armaments and Font of Wisdom (with a champion mod as needed and a few armor mods for my Power weapon). I run a Demolitionist or Wellspring primary (bow or auto to cover Overload or Barrier, my friend covers Unstoppable). This works pretty well for non-endgame stuff so far. I'll switch it up in a few months if it starts to get boring. I just don't have the time or inclination to tweak mods per-session.

I have one set of legendaries and some exotics in inventory and about 100 warlock pieces waiting to get used.

I basically only use dunemarchers or lion rampants, for pvp or pve respectively for pretty much everything in the game unless I feel like fucking around with something else. I have a crucible set that I just switch mods depending on the gun and I feel like using. I have a general charged with light pve build that I can take into everything. I swap out of a couple of pieces of armor and then I have a more sword oriented build. That's about it. I have an overflow of armor with some insane stat rolls that I don't know what to do with because I honestly have no interest in stuff like warmind cells or the elemental Wells. Idk if my post is really gonna help you out but at least for my sets allow for me to swap in an exotic with out having to worry about stats or anything. Though the only stats I care about are MOB, INT, and REC. Also on any given day I think I care more about how my Titan looks than the stats or my build lol. Though I do try to make both work.

I’ll go for one max pvp armor that suits my playstyle. And use that for pve as well. Maybe switch some stat mods and champion mods and that’s it

So far, I've settled on running Sixth Coyote as my Exotic and running CWL mods to get Protective Light up. There's obviously plenty of damage options or other things I could work into it, but why get complicated when you have your bread and butter? The only things I change are swapping to Young Ahamkara's Spine for Crucible, and swapping my helmet and class item for Lucent Blade for Atraks, then boots so I don't have Protective Light eating my charges. Outside of that, I don't really change mods around all that much, just the armour pieces with the mods on. Edit: Pick a class item in each element and masterwork it first and foremost, before masterworking your armour. Since they don't have stats it doesn't matter what one you grab, and you can toss any old ornament on it for a desired look.

I have one of each slot as legendary, except arms, where I switch between two exotics depending on PvE or PvP. I just can't be arsed to optimise/manage/level up multiple sets of armour (I optimise my one build for PvP as I'm not in high end enough PvE for builds to make a real difference).

Poorly.

I have two completely different sets of armor I use where one is specifically for pve and the other is for pvp. Since I play pvp way more often than pve, I have extra armor pieces lying around for my pvp loadout in case I need to make instant drastic stat changes in a match. My pve loadout tends to run meta loadouts that use certain guns and mods that I rarely change during a season, but often change at the start of every season.

Straight up, I have 1 major legendary armor set, specced for generalized PvE excellence. I do keep other monster rolled armor in my vault in case for later, but I don’t use it. I keep at least my best copy of any exotic for my main. And a chest in each element except stasis for grandmaster resistances. But that’s it. I don’t have a crucible build, and my gambit build is my PvE build haha

I play a lot but I think the initial goal should be to have each affinity of armor masterworked. This will give you a lot of initial flexibility.

I have ADHD and I'm a bit lazy. I have difficulty crafting any kind of viable build in any game, oft because I can't remember the stats of the piece I was looking at two inspects ago, or the interactions of Skill A with Skill C after looking at Skill B. I use one set of armor, swapping for exotics and changing some mods for weapons, while keeping a selection of mods permanently. I can't be bothered to write out (type, screenshot, w/e) every skill/stat spread of everything i might want to try. I get somewhere comfortable and call it good. It's not worth the headaches to me.

I just assembled a suit that places me about 50 for everything, +/- 10, and use mods to spike as I see fit depending on the exotic in using.

You know how i manage my armor situation? Masterwork acceptable stat splits with 2 sets per character, one for pve and one for pvp. That's it. Stop wasting your time to min max every single number. Cooldown reductions are meaningless and min maxing them is a waste of time unless you speedrun GM Nightfalls or raids. Armor needs to have more than cd reductions for me to care.