Hey there, Guardians! Librarian Husky here, ready to walk you through our latest guide on Destiny 2’s subclasses and their rankings. Whether you’re a seasoned player or just starting out, this guide will help you navigate the strengths and weaknesses of each subclass. If you find this guide helpful, don’t forget to like and subscribe for more content. Let’s dive in and see where each subclass stands in the current meta! Enjoy the read and gear up for some epic gameplay.
Rules and Ratings
So, to start off with the rules, I’m going to break a lot of the rules today, not going to be very consistent, going mostly with my gut in play experience rather than anything that is objective here. My plus rating is going to be; it is strong enough to stand by itself, and when you see it on a team, you’re almost always going to just be like, all right, that’s awesome, yeah, join our team, whereas the minus is going to have some conditions that come along with it.
The Pinnacle of Power
S is the pinnacle of power right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most powerful that has ever existed in Destiny 2. An example of this could be day one stasis versus what we have now. Day one stasis was so much easier to use and gave you so much bang for your buck.
Competitive Ceiling
The next thing is we’re going to assume that you are playing at the competitive ceiling of this subclass against other players that are playing the competitive ceiling of their subclass. Is there a realistic excuse to make if you are losing the match to an equally skilled player playing their best? That’s how I’m going about this.
S Plus Tier Subclasses
So to start, I think there are two very obvious S Plus tiers going to be the Dom blade and the Sentinel Titan. Both of these have fast-charging supers that are very difficult to counter again, assuming a similar skilled opponent playing their ceiling.
Strategy and Gameplay
This means for bubble Titan, you’re walking in and out of the bubble to refresh, and for well, this means you are placing the well somewhere smart where you can defend against the sword and constantly go in and out of cover to refill health when you’re getting chunked too much.
Neutral Kit
Just the supers alone put them in S Plus tier, but how difficult they are to deal with and how specific you have to be to deal with them if you are not one of these now. These subclasses themselves, the rest of the neutral kit, is incredible. Dom blade gets an Icarus Dash, and Sentinel gets to give their entire team an overshield.
Conclusion
Their neutral is mostly like restoring health and picking up orbs of light to get devour and that type of thing, which can snowball into victory if you know what you’re doing. But for the most part, you kind of just throw these subclasses on and just win more. I want to do some deter now, just so we can have a comparison. I think these two are extremely conditional. I would say before Behemoth was nerfed.
Behemoth and Team Play
It was like up here if you played three of them on the same team, you are uncontested. Now it’s kind of like you need the team to make it playable. There are some solo Behemoth builds that I’m toying around with now that are good and fun, and that I can beat most players with, but again, if I’m playing a similarly skilled Dawn blade, I feel like my Behemoth play is in the D tier.
Sunbreaker Abilities
The same can be said for Sunbreaker. What makes Sunbreaker incredible on teams is being able to use the throwing hammer to instantly refill your teammates’ melee abilities, so you completely skip the melee cooldowns. And yes, this does work in Checkmate; it’s one of the ability oversights.
Tier List Planning
This is a vanilla tier list, by the way, not Checkmate, not even taking that into account. I will do a single Checkmate tier list way later down the line when I have more time to play it, but right now, multiple Behemoths is still really, really strong.
Ability Analysis
I will also say, uh, cryo slide; you can do some pretty cool skill ceiling things with it, but ultimately you are going to get choked out by Wells of Radiance and the neutral game that comes along with Dawnblade, just being able to simply aim your gun while activating your movement ability.
Gunslinger and Arc Staff
It’s just, it can’t be stated how much of an advantage that is to a competitive player. Now I will do something in the middle, so we will go with Gunslinger and with Arc staff. This is Baby’s First FPS class right here, and it has to be kind of simple because of that.
Simplicity in Gameplay
You want somebody who’s never played Destiny 2 but is an FPS player to have something that feels like they’re going home to, and this is the class that does it. I will say that this relative power level right here is where I like the game being played.
Power Balance
The strength of the Dawnblade and strength of the Sentinel, I think, are a little bit too much and honestly have too many get-out-of-jail-free cards that are just frustrating to deal with. B seems like it’s fair to counter in a lot of aspects.
Class Comparison
Like if someone pops a golden gun, yes, the three-shooter lasts a little bit too long, but you can just kill it by sniping it or shooting it with a shotgun or just having your entire team
post up on a lane, and maybe one or two of you die, but you’re for sure going to kill it.
Overall Class Evaluation
Arc staff, the actual like super, is pretty much uncounterable, but it takes a while to get to it, and then you also have to play this class overall. I would say this class here, when you’re doing everything correct, it can keep up with some of the S tier, but it has so many moving parts that come along with the subclass that it’s hard to fulfill all of those conditions all of the time. So now I’m going to start filling in the gaps here with what we’re missing.
Descending Order Explanation
I think I’m going to go in descending order down, starting with the S minus and justifying them as we go along. Now that you know what I’m comparing to, and I will also continue talking about Golden Gun and Arc staff when I get back to it, and Bohemoth and Hammer when I get back to it.
Missile Titan Analysis
Okay, so we’re putting uh, missile Titan up here. Why is this conditional now? Well, before it got nerfed, it was undoubtedly up here, but now that the super is a little bit slower, that is a bottleneck that can cause you to lose games. And I would say that um, it kind of also counters itself.
Tactical Discussion
The barricade goes up, and then the lightning Aid jolts the barricade, which turns it into a, you know, catalyst, and that amount of chip damage can be the difference between just like wiping a team. So these lightning grenades are really strong, but I think now if you don’t have a bubble or a well on your team, triple missile just doesn’t make as much sense as having a bubble and two missiles.
Subclass Evaluation
Still a really good subclass, knockout is honestly kind of a BS to deal with, same with the Sentinel. The Sentinel also gets a melee lunge extender, though I do like controlled demolition. I do think of the melee lunge extender is kind of like the winning hot juniors of winning a gunfight in this game.
Gameplay Strategy
It’s just, oh, my opponent’s within 10 meters of me, better melee and hope the servers like me more than them, that’s how it feels all the time. So both of these classes have like similar levels of BS; it just bubbles ultimately a better super. Also, the Devourer and whatnot, yes, you can get your health back by punching people, but you can also just do that on Sentinel, so it’s nothing special.
Arc vs. Void Analysis
I will say, though, the 1v3 capabilities of Arc versus void, I see Arc Titans pull it off way more than I see void, even though, on paper, it should be equally impossible. In experience, I see the Arc titans in full Titan magic out of their ass way more often than void Titan, even though when I’m playing my best on void Titan, I see more combo lines to make the 1v3 happen. The next one.
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Introduction to Strand Hunter
Strand Hunter has the highest absolute ceiling of any class in the game, but mechanically we’re not all there yet as players. Some of us are getting closer when they play and they’re doing that cool thing, you know that it’s up here, but we’re not consistent enough with it yet as a player base.
Learning and Mastery
I’m still really learning this class and how to stretch the ability economy with it. So an example of this is on a team setting if you have multiple Strand Hunters, you get to set a grapple point and then the rest of your strand teammates, whether that’s Warlock or Titan or Hunter, they get to use your grapple point and not consume their grenade.
Team Strategy with Strand Hunter
So that right there, just learning to use that as a team, helps elevate it up here. Another thing, using a strand ability to create a tangle, then the tangle can be used as a third-person look, as a grapple saver or as a grenade, as damage, and you can also combine all three of those at once.
Future Predictions
You can hold a tangle and tell your teammates, hey, I’m about to throw this towards B flag, you ready to fly in? Also, the aerial play, the Airborne Effectiveness stat, and handling that it gets for free, the Rope Dart is a little too forgiving. There were just so many broken aspects of this class, and I don’t mean like the aspect fragment system.
Class Effectiveness Analysis
I just mean, philosophy-wise, with this, it’s too strong; it does way too much stuff. We’re just not at a consistent or high ceiling yet as players to be able to really see that. I think in a month, maybe six months from now, if people just grind this class harder, we’re going to see just how problematic it is.
Behemoth Titan Comparison
And not even talking about the Strand clone, which on certain maps is completely uncontestable. You put that strand clone somewhere, and someone basically just has to accept that they’re taking damage for having the audacity to enter the mid map. I’m not going to go too much more into this, just put this one in the back of your head as you see players get better with it.
Concluding Thoughts
If you have any doubts about what I’m saying here, I said the same thing about Behemoth Titan a very long time ago. A lot of people just threw on three Behemoths, and they just beat fantastic players just because they were on three Behemoths, and the other team wasn’t. Another part of that is the Antaeus Ward on Titans.
Strategic Game Insights
I identified that a very long time ago after a nerf and said I don’t know why y’all are putting this away; it’s still the best. You should just be using this if you want to win; it’s still problematic. Another one before that was Lord of Wolves. Lord of Wolves got a pretty significant nerf, and I still used it, and I still go y’all are putting this away too early; it’s still just the best.
Strand Hunter Analysis
So trust my gut here on Strand Hunter; it has so many moves. As people get better, you will see what I mean. It’s going to be up here. I’m going to move on, though; I’m talking in circles. Next up is Shade Binder. I think this is my last S minus Edition.
Shade Binder: Super Charging
Shade Binder has the flaw of having a slow-charging super. There is a workaround with a fragment that gives you super energy for getting Frozen kills. Recently that was quote-unquote buffed, but it was kind of nerfed in Trials.
Ability Energy and Strategy
I could have my super round two if I did everything correctly, really played my grind, getting only freeze kills and making sure I’m extending the length of the round. That type of thing you really could rip supers before well and bubble if you knew what you were doing, but that fragment got changed.
Game Modifications and Effects
Now it makes an orb of light when you kill a frozen target, which is still super energy, don’t get me wrong, and that can turn into ability energy. That just means that when they got the kill, orbs went on the floor, they probably reaped an orb ahead of time, and then they also had like boot mods that had Absolution and grenade recharge and stuff like that.
Conditional Finality in Shade Binder
And the cold snaps on OsmioMancy themselves give you a faster cooldown when it tags an enemy. Conditional Finality has completely elevated the Shade Binder kit, and it was already one of the best to begin with. Here it is, it has a stasis freeze and a solar pellet as the final shot.
Customizing the Subclass
So the stasis freeze on the first shot is what makes this incredible because it synergizes with all of the fragment aspects of a Shade Binder. For that reason, it’s an S minus, or rather the S tier. The reason it’s a minus is because.
Super Economy in Gaming
I don’t think the super economy is consistent enough to keep up with the top two, so therefore the top two can kind of round out a Shade Binder team. So if you have two Shade Binders and one well or one bubble, that’s going to be a lot better. Even just one of these can guarantee that a high intellect Shade Binder can get its super, and the loadout that I run with it is this; it runs like uh, nine and nine intellect, very, very high discipline, and almost no strength. I just don’t use my melee unless it’s an emergency.
Tactical Advantages
So when you play against Shade Binders that know what they’re doing with their util, you’re not going to have a fun time. This can completely break some maps, just like I said, the Strand clone can break some maps; the stasis turret can, yes, it’s a very harsh cooldown, but as long as your team knows when to time their approach, I don’t think anybody beats it.
Opponent Expectations
And if the team knows what to look for, that’s when you start getting into the real competitive tiers of thinking with they’re just going to be looking up for a stasis turret to land. Those types of things like you get into the Mind Games here with these three classes, so you really, really can just make your opponent play straight into your hand.
Evaluation of Underappreciated Aspects
Okay, moving on to a plus, we got this one has been in criminally underappreciated. Unlike a lot of classes in the game, it has some definitive answers to some of the best abilities in the game and the hardest maps to have a game plan on, and that is because of Blink, and not just blink, Enhanced Blink.
Game Mechanics: Blink and Slide
When you run Astrocyte Verse, Astrocyte Verse by the way, I’m gonna I always have a bone to pick for this. It has a bug where if you blink three times, you are not allowed to slide until you have another blink cooldown, but the way the game plays is sometimes.
Game Mechanics and Strategies
I do have to burn all three, and sometimes I do have to slide directly after it, just feels so, um, unintuitive compared to everything else in the game. Why doesn’t more powerful things have a slide penalty if this one warrants it? Food for thought.
The Power of Void Class
So what makes this powerful is it’s a Void class, first of all, so it has access to Reaper. So use your class ability; your next skill drops an orb, pick up the orb, you could devour, and now all your kills refill your health. Its 1v3 capability for that is incredible.
Dealing with Opponents
Then it has a melee that like offsets your movement, knocks you out of the way, so it’s very, very good with dealing with shotgunners, protecting herself. Then the Child of the Old Gods from the rift, that thing is so difficult to deal with.
Challenges and Counter-Strategies
I know what you say is just oh, just shotgun it when it comes close to you or shoot it with the primary. The problem is I shoot it while it’s in flight, and it says one damage or it says immune. So you really can’t play around this ability; it’s maybe too strong.
Evaluation of Classes and Abilities
But since you can’t play around it, it’s a plus. I don’t think it deserves an S because it’s a lot harder to use, and blink has pros and cons, it’s not just all good things. These classes don’t really have cons within the team composition of themselves.
Comparing Abilities and Classes
Including a bubble or a well with the Shade Binder that they can work around, yeah blink, for every awesome moment, you have a really stupid moment. So for that reason, it’s a plus, whereas Gemini’s writer is B.
Final Thoughts on Strategy
I do think the radar manipulation aspect of it is really strong, but then again, getting health back with Devourer, the offset melee, Child of the Old Gods, when you combine it all together, it’s just, I think this gets you more.
Game Strategy Analysis
I just think, again, these require less brain power, less weaknesses. Anything else on void before I forget, okay, you might be wondering like specifically live link, why does blank answer some maps, all right.
Tactical Use of Abilities
If someone puts a strand clone at a corner, you can just blink past it and have an answer to that. If someone is a god-tier sniper and never misses, you can blink from cover to cover. The Echo of Vigilance when your shields are down and you get a kill gives you a temporary void overshield.
Strategic Advantage of Echo Vigilance
So your ability to 1v3 is pretty strong with this because your first kill is going to involve the Child of the Old Gods. Then you make a reaper orb, then you pick it up with Devourer, or you get the ability kill. Either way, you’re getting devour, so you’re back to full health.
Real-Time Game Calculations
Now, if that overshield wasn’t there, because of the way that the servers calculate this, you just die, devour doesn’t go through even though you got the kill. Servers don’t recognize that you got the kill; yeah, it’s too late. Echo of Vigilance is that little bit of buffer that allows you to make pop-off plays with devour.
Evaluation of Revenant Class
Okay, the next one is Revenant. Revenant is a grime class; this is one where if you shatter dive every corner for third person, you wait to have your nades to a full team commit; you fish for shuriken tags before doing anything, it can be pretty oppressive to play against.
Utilizing Different Classes
Also, you can use your Glacier nade or your Enhanced Dust Field to get some really interesting off angles and completely dominate certain maps. For all those reasons, it’s up here. It also has a pretty fast charging super, same with Nova Bomb. Nova Warp is also pretty good if you haven’t tried it before.
Team Composition and Contribution
So, these are my A pluses, these are plug and play, but they’re less impactful than these plug and plays. Also, you have to consider its contribution to a team. The team composition contribution absolutely matters, and while Voidwalker can give some synergy to, let’s say, Night Stalker, just giving, having the first super on the board, and giving your team orbs of light for their super that they might not otherwise get, is way better than some elemental synergy.
Game Strategy: Super Utilization
I would argue that getting your super to close out a game or to Mercy a game is way better than those elemental synergies. So now, let’s just move to talking about Night Stalker.
In-depth Analysis: Night
Stalker
This is a class that gets a minus because it comes with a condition, and the condition is you must be able to number one, know the rules of invis. Just simply using it to be less visible, hard to see, and get the drop on your opponent is completely different than being off the radar.
Effective Invisibility Utilization
Using the smoke beings as a distraction and having a game plan with both of those two things, you should be able to tell your teammates where to go, when to peak, based on your invisibility timing. If you cannot do that, it’s here. If you can do that, it’s here.
Execution and Adaptability
But if you’re average in your execution of this, even though you’re one of the best in the world, it sits firmly at a minus because you’re not always going to have a perfect game plan, and you’re not always going to have perfect execution.
Exploring Other Classes
Even though it does have a lot of value to a team, you have to completely be a shot caller at the same time that you’re keeping track of these convoluted rules with invisibility. For as much as people just think it belongs here because they fly forward with a grenade launcher and rat king, and you can’t see them because you’re playing on eternity, the real ceiling of it is playing with your team and using the radar manipulation.
Potential Dark Horses
So, Food For Thought again, the next two are going to be some dark horses y’all may not agree with these. I think they’re really, really good, and it’s easier to think about these two if Strand Hunter didn’t exist. These two are living in the shadow of Strand Hunter.
Analyzing Newer Classes
The gimmick of, I don’t even know what they’re called, so Broodweaver, it’s the one with the Threadlings. The gimmick of this is it either commands Threadlings or it has Armor Lock from Halo. I haven’t explored the armor locked aspect very much, but I do see that being extremely powerful in a team setting, especially in objective mode. So we’re gonna revisit this, and it might have potential to be up here. The Strand Titan, I think, is a sleeper Dark Horse pick for controller players, not Mouse and keyboard players.
The melee acts as a pseudo dodge, and you can build into refilling it very, very, very fast while still being able to play these strong builds of a Titan, whether that’s Peacekeepers, Lion Rampant, that type of thing.
Strategy and Class Analysis
So, you can have the freedom of movement like you would on a hunter but have the barricade of a Titan. When I describe it like that, you might understand why I put this in a minus. On controller, you can use the melee to instantly, without looking, go forward, left, or right but not backwards.
Mechanics: Controller vs. Keyboard
So, what this means in-game is you might take a very wide SMG Challenge and, as soon as the instant you see you’re going to lose the fight, just hold to the left and melee. On mouse and keyboard, you cannot do this because you have to physically look in the direction to start your melee.
Aerial Play and Strategy
If you’re already physically looking at the direction you want to melee, why wouldn’t you just play Arc Titan and just slide or Void Titan and just slide? Sometimes it’s because you want to have a more aerial play style, which is why I use this with Lion Rampant in Dead Man’s Tale. A mouse and keyboard can’t slide in the air.
Loadout Adaptability and Optimization
So, what I do is I overextend in the air, and as soon as I see I am outnumbered or in trouble, I just hit the button and melee back into cover. And if I build this kit right, I either build around not having a grapple and borrowing my Hunter friends’ grapple, or I try to have a pretty self-sufficient kit.
Loadout Solutions and Choices
The reason it’s in the minus category is that it kind of gets bullied by not having a super often enough, which means that you have to spec out of your grenade or your melee, which is equally important on that class, to have a super at all. So, I’m still trying to min-max this one and find out what the best ways to play it are.
Specific Loadout Strategies
I would say, if I have any solved loadouts today to talk about, Dawnblade is a very solved loadout. You play a hand cannon and a sniper rifle, or you substitute for a scout rifle and a shotgun. Those are the ways to play it; you play heat rises, you look for your off-angles, and you put a lot of pressure on spawning players.
Advantages and Equip Choices
A lot of the time, they can’t even challenge you with their weapons. Like they’ll hit you for 10 damage when you’re hitting them for like 70. You run Transversive Steps or you run Ophidian Aspects, both of those have pretty similar bonuses—advantages, I mean. The next solved loadout is the Peacekeeper Arc Titan; you either play Thruster or barricade SMG. You use this class’s speed and shoulder charge amplified to get into lethal distance with your SMG, and you let your melee ability bail you out. Use the barricade to wall up in the snipe to put pressure on your opponent, and anytime you see from the safety of the barricade that you have an opportunity to lob a lightning nade, that makes your opponent more predictable, you do it, and then you play off that.
That’s another solved class. Another solved one is the Gemini Blink Arcstrider. That one is so good, but it has way too many moving parts to be consistently A-tier. So, I think you run a hand cannon with that because if you use the arc wave melee, you can pop them once in the head with a hand cannon and just chunk the melee down a lane, and it sometimes can pick up a special if you use a 120, especially with a damage booster. It just all adds to the consistency of it.
Exploration of Gemini Arcuator
I think that a Gemini Arcuator is something that I’m going to re-explore not just in Checkmate. It
has a lot of moves, and it’s really, really fun to succeed with—really cool to see pop-off plays. So, I think in the medium term, I’m going to be picking up Arcstrider again.
Adjustment and Improvement
But in the long term, Strand Hunter is just the best, and it has everything. I even switch my sensitivity to be a lot faster to accommodate it, and that gamble is paying off. Though I have a lot of moments in my shot just being bad, and I know that’s going to go away with more practice. It’ll be worth it.
Arc Titan Dominance
Foreign class is, I think, our only C tier. This is a really, really sad sight to see because Arc Titan pretty much just ate Arc Hunter and Arc Warlock and just took fantastic parts about their kit and just made it its own. And in exchange, Bungie’s like, “Alright, you’re losing your identity, Arc lock, but we’re gonna give you the most broken melee in the game.”
In-Game Experience and Class Potential
And it is. The funny thing about this class is like, when I look at it on paper, it’s not that good. But my experience in-game with the remaining storm callers that play the game, they’re incredible. They’re all like tournament-grade winning players that beat the asses of Dom blades and Sentinels. But for what the class offers, I just can’t justify putting it higher.
Utility and Versatility of the Class
But something about this class, man, it’s just that neuron activated for that go-to player, that when they throw this on, it doesn’t matter if it’s in C-tier, they’re gonna win anyway. I feel like this class and the ability to just completely, let’s say, whip punish somebody with that melee also has a little bit of a toolbox.
Tactical Strategies and Considerations
The toolbox is a word I should have been using the entire time I describe these, by the way. So, I might go back and make sure that’s clear, but there is a little bit of a toolbox with the ball lightning, where you can use it to hit players above barricades and stuff like that. I also think Flux Nades are a little unexplored.
Gimmick Builds and Unconventional Strategies
But because you have to dedicate so much to run a Flux Nade with discipline, you’re often not getting a super, which means you’re losing to those up top. What else on this? There are some gimmick builds you can do, like Lumina and always having a rift, and giving your bad teammates axels, so at least when they enter a room, you’re guaranteeing some form of damage if they can’t do it with their guns. It’s a terrible way to think, but it gets results in Iron Banner. I can win a lot of games in Iron Banner with Lumina and axels, but…
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High-Level Gameplay Mechanics
I think at the high level it’s just having that split-second read and using that melee; it’s a broken-ass melee. But if you use your one cooldown for a round, maybe two cooldowns per round in pivotal moments, you’re beating everybody. That’s just how it is.
Team Composition and Strategy
Okay, so now let’s recap everything here. These two at the top, fast-charging supers, great neutral game, plug and play, and they get the plus signification because if you’re trying to create a team of three and someone comes up and says, “hey, let me join, I’m bringing a bubble,” you’re happy about that. You have no questions.
Comparative Analysis of Classes
But if somebody says they’re bringing a Shade Binder, and you don’t have a bubble or a well, suddenly you have some questions. Even though Shade Binder has some moments that are arguably better to stop to Strand Hunter, we’re not there yet as a community. Some of us are getting closer and more consistent; we just need an upper skill with it before it truly ascends.
Striker Titan and Void Walker
Striker Titan just got nerfed; Void Walker competitively unappreciated until recently, and it has some moves. Blink is really strong but has some trade-offs. For every pop-up moment, you fall off the map, and it’s overall consistency, I think, lands it in A plus.
Building a Balanced Team
And again, the signification here is you’re building a team. You know it’s something from the A-tier. If it’s a Nova Bomb, you’re like cool, that’s great. If it’s a Revenant, you’re like that’s fantastic, no qualms about it.
Evaluating Other Subclasses
Revenant
Destiny 2: Subclass Tier Analysis for Competitive PVP in Season 22