Tailor your Guardian's combat style through deep subclass customization. Destiny 2 offers extensive options to modify your elemental abilities, allowing for unique builds and playstyles. This section explores the components of subclass customization: Aspects, Fragments, and Super abilities.
Subclass Overview
Each of the three classes (Titan, Hunter, Warlock) has access to five elemental subclasses:
- Solar: Focuses on fire, radiant buffs, scorch, and ition.
- Arc: Emphasizes lightning, amplified speed, jolting, and chain reactions.
- Void: Provides invisibility, suppression, volatile rounds, and overshields.
- Stasis: Utilizes ice, slowing, freezing, and creating crystalline structures.
- Strand: Introduces grappling, suspending enemies, and creating Threadlings.
Each subclass comes with a unique Super ability, a powerful ultimate attack.
Super Abilities
Your Super ability is your most potent offensive or defensive tool. Examples include:
- Titan: Thundercrash (Arc), Hammer of Sol (Solar), Ward of Dawn (Void), Glacial Quake (Stasis), Burning Maul (Solar).
- Hunter: Golden Gun (Solar), Shadowshot (Void), Arc Staff (Arc), Gathering Storm (Arc), Silence and Squall (Stasis).
- Warlock: Nova Bomb (Void), Stormcaller (Arc), Dawnblade (Solar), Well of Radiance (Solar), Winter's Wrath (Stasis).
Choosing the right Super for the activity is crucial.
Aspects
Aspects are powerful, unique abilities that fundamentally alter or add to your subclass's core functionality. You can equip a limited number of Aspects per subclass.
- Titan Aspects: e.g., Throwing Hammer (Solar), Bastion (Void), Howl of the Storm (Stasis).
- Hunter Aspects: e.g., Knock-Knock (Arc), Stylish Executioner (Void), Flock (Strand).
- Warlock Aspects: e.g., Touch of Flame (Solar), Voidwalker's Rift (Void), Frostpulse (Stasis).
Aspects often unlock new ways to use your grenades, melee, or class abilities, and are key to building around specific synergies.
Fragments
Fragments are smaller modifiers that further enhance your subclass abilities. They often provide passive buffs or alter the effects of your abilities. Each Fragment has an associated stat penalty or bonus.
- Example Fragments:
- Solar: Ember of Torches (Powered melee hits make allies radiant), Ember of Ashes (Apply more scorch stacks).
- Arc: Spark of Resistance (While surrounded by enemies, you are more resistant to damage), Spark of Shock (Arc grenades jolt targets).
- Void: Echo of Starvation (Picking up an Orb of Power grants Devour), Echo of Instability (Grenade final blows grant Volatile Rounds to your Void weapons).
- Stasis: Whisper of Chains (While near a crystal or frozen target, you gain damage resistance), Whisper of Shards (Destroying a Stasis crystal increases your grenade recharge rate).
- Strand: Thread of Woven Mail (Picking up an Orb of Power grants Woven Mail), Thread of Mind (Defeating suspended targets grants class ability energy).
You can equip multiple Fragments, but you are limited by the number of available Aspect slots and the stat penalties they impose.
Unlocking Customization Options
Aspects and Fragments are typically unlocked by completing specific quests or purchasing them from the Cloudstrider vendor on Neomuna (for Stasis and Strand) or from Ikora Rey in the Tower (for Solar, Arc, and Void). You'll need to progress through the relevant campaign or unlock specific vendors to access these customization options.
Buildcrafting with Subclasses
The true power of subclass customization lies in combining Aspects and Fragments to create synergistic builds. For example:
- A Void Hunter might combine Stylish Executioner (Aspect) with Echo of Starvation and Echo of Instability (Fragments) to create a build focused on invisibility, Devour for healing, and Volatile Rounds for increased weapon damage.
- A Solar Warlock might use Touch of Flame (Aspect) with Ember of Torches and Ember of Solace to create a powerful support build that constantly makes allies radiant and grants them damage resistance.
Experimentation is key to discovering the most effective combinations for your playstyle and the activities you engage in.