A Destiny 2 build is a loop. Not a list of gear, a loop: you do a thing, that thing gives you a resource, the resource lets you do the thing again sooner. If your loadout does not close that circle, it is a collection of items rather than a build.
The pieces that close it are an exotic armour piece, two aspects, up to five fragments, and your mods.
Resilience to 100 first, then think about anything else
Armour rolls six stats and only one of them is close to mandatory. Resilience gives flat damage resistance that matters everywhere in the game, and the difference between 60 and 100 is substantial in endgame content.
After that it depends on the loop. Discipline for grenade builds, Strength for melee builds, Recovery if you keep dying.
Intellect is the trap. Super regeneration sounds important and is the weakest stat in most builds, because modern builds generate their power from abilities rather than supers.
Exotic armour is the thesis statement
Almost every good build starts with an exotic that does something unusual, then works backwards.
The pattern is always the same: find an exotic that returns a resource, then take the aspects and fragments that spend that resource, then take mods that return it again. An exotic that refunds grenade energy wants fragments boosting grenades and mods granting grenade energy on kill.
If you cannot describe your build as a sentence with the word "then" in it, it is not finished.
Aspects and fragments, and the stat cost
Aspects define what your subclass can do and provide the fragment slots. Fragments modify behaviour, and several carry stat penalties.
Those penalties are real. A build running four fragments with negative Resilience has quietly undone the first section of this page. Check the total before settling.
Prismatic complicates this further by drawing from multiple damage types, which opens combinations the single-element subclasses cannot reach and asks for tighter fragment discipline in return.
Champions decide your weapons, not your preference
Barrier, Overload and Unstoppable champions appear in all endgame content and require specific handling to damage properly.
The seasonal artifact grants the perks that handle them, and those perks change every season. This means your weapon choice in high-end content is dictated by the artifact rather than by what you like, and it is the single most common reason a build that felt strong last season feels bad now.
Read the artifact at the start of a season and build into it. It is free power and it expires.
Weapon slots follow from the same logic. You want one weapon that handles champions, one that clears ordinary enemies quickly, and one heavy for damage phases. A loadout carrying three champion-capable weapons has no add clear, and a loadout with none does not finish the encounter.
Where the loop usually breaks
Three failures cover most bad builds.
Not enough ability regeneration, so the loop runs once and stops. No answer to champions, so the build works everywhere except the content it was made for. And stat spreads that ignored Resilience in favour of something more exciting.
Fix those three and most loadouts become functional.
The Destiny 2 beginner's guide covers subclasses and the current campaign order.
