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With the massive rework to armor inDestiny 2: The Edge of Fate, many players are left wondering what the best stats are to chase. All six stats have some potent effects when heavily invested, yet you’re only able to reasonably hit 200 in a single stat. Picking the best stat package for your character can prove tricky, especially if you swap between PvE and PvP.
After some community testing and number considerations, we’ve figured out some strong stat combinations you can use to make the best builds possible in Destiny 2. But before we cover those stat combinations, we first need to give a rundown of how armor stats work in Edge of Fate and explain why you shouldn’t invest all of your points into Weapons.
How Armor Stats Work
Every armor piece you get in Destiny 2 comes with three of six stats. The stats that roll on the item are dictated by thearmor’s archetype.An archetype will dictate the top two stats that drop; the tertiary stat you get is completely random. The six stats are listed below.
We cover this system in more detail in ourArmor 3.0 breakdown.
Max Stat Values
Weapons
0–100:Governs weapon reload speed, handling, and damage versus PvE minor and major combatants.
101–200:Governs ammo restored from bricks, and improves weapon damage versus Guardians and PvE bosses.
0–100:Governs flinch resistance and HP restored from Orbs of Power.
101–200:Governs shield capacity in PvE and shield recharge speed.
0–100:Governs class ability cooldowns and energy scalars.
0–100:Governs grenade cooldowns and energy scalars.
0–100:Governs melee ability cooldowns and energy scalars.
101–200:Governs melee damage, including uncharged melees and Glaives.
Assuming you get T5 armor and use stat mods,the highest stat total you’re able to get on an armor set is 103, which means you have an upward limit of 515 points to play with—Exotics technically roll a little lower, so this number should be treated as an estimate.
Since you have a limited number of points and are restricted to the armor archetype system,you can realistically getonestat to 200 and the rest to roughly 100.You’ll need to focus on a single stat or aim to spread your stats evenly across multiple characters. For most players, we suggest the latter due to the way ability cooldowns work.
How Ability Cooldowns (Don’t) Work
In The Edge of Fate, Bungie adjusted all ability stats to influence an ability’s base cooldownandchunk scalars provided by armor mods, weapon perks, and subclass features. For example, if you triggered Devour before The Edge of Fate, you’d receive 10% grenade energy. In the current game, you’d receive 10% grenade energy at70grenade stat. If it was at zero, you’d get roughly 5% instead.
Naturally, you’d assume that going past 70 would affect how these scalars behave, but that’s not the case.According to testing done by community member engineeeeer7 and several Destiny data scientists,the difference between 70 and 100 for all ability stats (excluding Class) is roughly 5%.If you’d get an ability in 30 seconds at 70 Grenade, you’d receive it in roughly 29 seconds at 100 Grenade. It’s as nonsensical as it sounds.
There are two curves when discussing ability cooldowns:passive cooldowns and energy scalars.
For most builds in Destiny 2,there is little incentive to scale past 70 for Grenade and Melee.The diminishing returns you get past 70 are so extreme that it’s seldom noticeable in endgame PvE and PvP content. The Class stat benefits more from higher investment, as does the Super stat if you play PvP specifically. Outside those exceptions, going past 70 stat is simply not worth it.
Is Weapons The Best Stat?
There’s a common consensus among the community that Weapons is the best stat in the game, and there’s some truth to it. This stat influences weapon damage, reload speed, handling, and even affects how much ammo you receive from ammo bricks. Nearly every build in the game can leverage the extra damage and ammo drops, but doing so comes at the opportunity cost of other stats.
Generally speaking,Weapons is the best stat if you’re min-maxing DPS in PvE or looking to hit certain TTK breakpoints in PvP.Most builds in Destiny 2 are using weapons as their main source of damage during endgame boss encounters, not abilities. A high Weapons stat grants a damage bonus that applies toallweapons and stacks multiplicatively with all other sources, leading to some immense damage values if you’restacking buffs and debuffs.
Consider making a loadout that hotswaps to an armor set with 200 Weapons before you start a boss DPS phase.
For endgame content that’s less structured, you don’t need to worry about damage to this degree. You’re typically better off investing those points elsewhere, such as in Grenade or Melee, to optimize your ability uptime to make add clear a little easier.In raids and dungeons, Weapons is a great choice. For every other PvE activity, you might benefit more from other stats.
For PvP, the main consideration is your primary weapon’s damage profile. Some weapon archetypes receive a massive TTK downshift if you spec heavily into the Weapons stat, which can offset the opportunity cost of neglecting Health and Super. These values are shown below.
257 RPM
0.93s
0.57s
200
180 RPM
1.00s
0.67s
169
390 RPM
0.60s
155
450 RPM
0.87s
0.80s
187
540 RPM
0.73s
170
491 RPM
0.50s
186
600 RPM
0.70s
140
Best Stats For PvE
Our recommendation for a general PvE stat package looks like this:
25
25 or 100
70
As much as possible
Melee
Due to how masterworking works, three of your stats will be set to25by default. These are your dump stats and should be ignored. Health is an easy dump stat to pick because the health on Orb pickup is negligible, while the remaining stat buffs are focused on PvP performance.Class and Weapons are situationaland should be specced into if your build heavily leverages them. If not, they’re easy dump stats.
Every build should aim to achieve70 Grenade and Meleeif possible, as this makes your weapon perks and subclass verbs function as expected. Going past 70 is not worth it unless your build is focused on grenade or melee damage, in which case you should invest 200 points into the respective stat. If your build doesn’t have a stat you want to hit 200 with, you can either spread your stats evenly or focus onWeapons.
If you’ve achieved these stats and still have points left over, you might want to invest in yourSuperstat. Getting near 70 will help with recovering your Super in combat. And if you’re able to get a higher stat through mods, the Super damage bonus stacks multiplicatively with any Exotics you’re wearing that buff Super damage—Cuirass of the Falling Star,Star-Eater Scales, etc.
Invest if your primary gets a TTK shift
165
65
100
This configuration uses a mix ofBulwark, Grenadier, Paragon, and Brawlerarmor to achieve a solid stat distribution across five of your six stats. We’ve opted to dump Weapons entirely since the stat doesn’t grant any noticeable TTK shifts without immense investment. Doing so would hurt our Health stat, which is easily the most important stat for PvP. Aim for160 Healthto mimic what T10 Recovery felt like in the old system. If you can afford to go even higher, feel free to do so.
Your second most important stat isSuper. Get this to 100 so you can reliably get your Super charged during a Crucible game. If this is below 70, you’ll almost never get your Super before a match ends.Grenade and Melee should be at 70to reduce their cooldowns by half. You should have enough points to get 65 class if you’re using full T5 armor, which will make your class ability recharge much faster. Use a primary that doesn’t rely on the Weapons stat, and you should be fine.
