Destiny 2 tier lists date faster than almost anything, because the seasonal artifact rewrites which weapons are viable every few months. This ranks the things that change slowly: subclasses, exotic armour archetypes, and stat priorities.
Written September 2026. Check the date before trusting any Destiny list.
Subclasses
| Tier | Subclass | Why |
|---|---|---|
| S | Prismatic | Draws from multiple damage types and reaches combinations single-element subclasses cannot. |
| S | Void | Invisibility, devour and volatile. The most complete survivability toolkit. |
| A | Solar | Restoration and radiant. Healing that keeps you alive through content that kills other builds. |
| A | Strand | Suspend is the strongest crowd control in the game. |
| A | Arc | Highest raw damage uptime, thinnest defensive layer. |
| B | Stasis | Excellent control, weaker sustain, held back in higher-end PvE. |
Stats
Resilience to 100 first. Flat damage resistance that matters everywhere.
After that it depends on your loop: Discipline for grenade builds, Strength for melee, Recovery if you keep dying. Intellect is the trap, because modern builds generate power from abilities rather than supers.
Exotic armour, by what it does
Rank exotics by whether they return a resource, not by their damage number.
The strongest builds all follow the same shape: an exotic refunds ability energy, aspects and fragments spend it, mods return it again. If you cannot describe your build as a sentence containing the word "then", it is a collection of items rather than a build.
Fragments carry hidden costs
Several fragments apply stat penalties. A build running four fragments with negative Resilience has quietly undone the first recommendation on this page. Check the total.
Champions decide weapons, not preference
Barrier, Overload and Unstoppable appear in all endgame content, and the artifact grants the perks that handle them. That means your weapon choice is dictated by the artifact rather than by what you enjoy, and it is the single most common reason a build that felt strong last season feels bad now.
Where the seasonal churn actually bites
A build that cleared Grandmaster last season can be non-functional this one without a single change to your gear, because the artifact perks that handled champions rotated out.
Read the artifact in the first week of a season and build into it. It is free power, it expires, and ignoring it is the single most common reason players conclude their build got nerfed when nothing about it changed.
PvE versus PvP
Everything above is PvE. Crucible inverts several entries, particularly Stasis, which is considerably stronger against players than against enemies, and Void invisibility, which is decisive in ways it never is against AI.
Free-to-play limits
A large amount of the content the rankings above assume sits behind expansions. A free account cannot reach most endgame activities, which makes the champion discussion academic until that changes.
The Destiny 2 builds guide covers building the ability loop.
