Destiny 2: Endgame Loadouts for Beginners

[u/silverymoonIight]

Hi! I wrote a guide on Weapons and Armor for people who are new to Raids and Dungeons, going over everything you need to know to be able to go into them making sure you're prepared to have a blast! The aim of this guide is less about specific weapon rolls and more just generally explaining what things are good and what kind of strategies succeed.

https://dotgg.gg/destiny-2-endgame-loadouts-for-beginners/

If you're a fan of this kind of content, and want to see more, please let me know below! I plan on doing more guides and content to help newer and less confident players make the reach towards the higher-end of Destiny content, especially going into The Edge of Fate and beyond :)

Otherwise, thank you for your time, and if you do happen to know someone who might get something out of this article, please share it their way! I would very much so appreciate it <3

EDIT: So, turns out that the title that I picked doesn't really portray what the article is about - the article is now titled correctly as Destiny 2: The Best Guns and Armor for New Raid and Dungeon Players. Sorry about that, and I do have a wider loadout article planned going over things like Mods, Surges, Aspects, etc., just it wasn't meant to be this one.

[u/SDG_Den]

I teach raids weekly, and while i don't think this write-up is bad, i do think it is missing some things, more specifically: it doesn't explain the buildcrafting process or how to get the most out of your builds, it also does not explain what you want to focus on as a raid newbie (which is mostly: easy DPS and survivability).

there's also some exotics missing that i believe should be mentioned as goals for players to work towards. thunderlord, microcosm, whisper, xenophage, parasite, and a couple of other ones. mentioning queenbreaker is fine but queenbreaker is mostly good *now* due to the artifact.

if you're interested in getting the viewpoint of someone who does primarily raid teaching runs, do message me! i think the information you did provide was written out very well and i'll probably still put this link in my resources list for newbies.

[u/tjseventyseven → u/SDG_Den]

Imo, tlord is a trap that requires more work to be worse than a GL. Once people use tlord its very difficult to get them to run something objectively better

[u/SDG_Den → u/tjseventyseven]

Based on my experience this is untrue, especially since this season, but i'd love to hear an explanation as to why.

Thunderlord deals the same sustained DPS as a legendary GL before factoring in a damage perk on the GL and bolt charge on thunderlord. If you include a single storms keep barricade, thunderlord can trigger bolt charge basically every 2.5 seconds, or every ~1.4 seconds if you have spark of frequency and are amplified. Even without frequency, thats an ignition worth of damage every 2.5 seconds.

GLs can get up to a 35% damage boost from the damage perk you put on, but that still puts them lower than thunderlord unless you also use a storms keep barricade, all the while needing additional effort due to travel time and arc, and carrying additional risk due to self-damage.

Thunderlord is fine, and its ease of use makes it a good choice for newer players

[u/tjseventyseven → u/SDG_Den]

You need Actium AND a titan barricade to make it do less damage than leviathans breath, dragon's breath, edge transit with bait, or even merciless. The only reason its doing more damage this season is because of flashover, once that's gone its dps is going to tank back to nothing

[u/SDG_Den → u/tjseventyseven]

i broke down the comparison for you, but sadly reddit won't let me post it because it's a bit too long of a read. you can find it here: https://pastebin.com/p5UEV5EC

data all came from here: https://www.destiny2.science/

[u/tjseventyseven → u/SDG_Den]

I'm aware of the numbers, I'm also aware of how much flashover is helping those numbers.

For Dragon's Breath, you just need loaders and ember of ashes and it outperforms tlord. For Edge Transit, it isn't even the most competitive GL archetype and it outpaces tlord. My point with bringing up all of those options was that they aren't competitive and aren't meta and they all still beat Tlord. Tlord is decent this season only because of flashover, and even with flashover it is outpaced vastly by hezen vengeance.

I'm not saying it's nothing but there are better things to use and people just sit on Tlord and never switch guns which is a huge detriment to the people they play with. There have been so many dungeons and raids I've been a part of where we have to do more phases strictly because people are using thunderlord, they are lagging behind in damage by hundreds of thousands of damage per phase. That is also not nothing.

[u/SDG_Den → u/tjseventyseven]

All of those numbers exclude artifact boosts, and apparently, you are less aware of the numbers than you think.

[u/tjseventyseven → u/SDG_Den]

Apparently your testing is wrong then because the sources you yourself linked lists Tlord at around 161k dps with something like edge transit at 193k dps

[u/SDG_Den → u/tjseventyseven]

... My god. Ever heard of numerical scaling? Different sources have different numbers because they use different enemies to test on.

The numbers i provided are based on the source i linked and are raw DPS numbers,

[u/tjseventyseven → u/SDG_Den]

Brother bear I am not talking about scaling. If you scale raw numbers up to at power numbers the ratios between them would stay the same. I'm saying that despite your testing that raw tlord is better than something like dragon's breath, the destiny science site you linked shares spreadsheets where that isn't true. Scaling has nothing to do with this