Combat Guide (WIP)

Last updated: August 16, 2025

(This is a very work in progress guide. I'm still figuring out exactly how much to cover - I don't think anyone needs the difference between an Auto Rifle and a Hand Cannon explained to them, but there's still a lot of assumed knowledge in Destiny's combat that could use an explanation to players.)

Weapon slots & ammo types

You have three weapon slots: Kinetic, Energy, and Power. The Kinetic slot, confusingly, holds weapons with one of three different potential elements (I know, it's a bad name): Kinetic (white), Stasis (dark blue), or Strand (green). The Energy slot holds Arc (light blue), Solar (orange), or Void (purple) weapons. Weapons in the Power slot can have any of those six elements.

You also have three ammo types: Primary Ammo, which is infinite, Special Ammo, which comes from green boxes, and Heavy Ammo, which comes from purple boxes. You'll see what kind of ammo a weapon has when you hover over it.

For the most part - there are exceptions! - Auto Rifles, SMGs, Sidearms, Pulse Rifles, Scout Rifles, Hand Cannons, and Bows have Primary Ammo. Shotguns, Sniper Rifles, Trace Rifles, Fusion Rifles, and Glaives have Special Ammo. Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers, Swords, Linear Fusion Rifles, and anything else that goes in your Power slot will use Heavy Ammo. There are both Special Ammo and Heavy Ammo version of Grenade Launchers, with the former going in either the Kinetic or Energy slots and the latter going in the Power slot. And again, there are weird exceptions: Heavy Snipers, Special Swords, Special Sidearms, etc.

In general: weapons that use Special and Heavy Ammo do way more damage to enemies than weapons that use Primary Ammo does. This game will happily let you equip two Primary Ammo guns, but this is generally a really bad idea in terms of your overall damage output.

Because those weapons do way more damage, you will want to make sure you're generating as much Special/Heavy Ammo as you can. Every gun in Destiny 2 has an Ammo Generation stat that contributes to two meters that'll appear at the bottom of your ammo display, which indicates your progress to generating another ammo brick. Every kill you get helps generate ammo that will drop from the next enemy you kill once the meter is full.

You'll notice that Primary Ammo weapons have a much higher Ammo Generation stat. As you might expect, the gameplay loop is to use your Primary Ammo weapons to generate Special/Heavy Ammo for when you need it. As a simple example, in a boss fight, you might use Primary Ammo to clear weak enemies to generate ammo to use against the boss. As you reach harder Destiny 2 content, that'll get more complicated - you'll have fights with DPS phases, or fights that spawn a large number of difficult enemies that you might need to clear with a Machine Gun.

Abilities & cooldowns

All subclasses in Destiny 2 have access to:

A super (F key/LB+RB)
A grenade (Q key/LB)
A powered melee ability (C key/RB, shared with unpowered melee - you can bind that to a separate button if you want)
A class ability (V key/hold or double tap B, depending on class)
Some subclasses also get access to an air move (X key/hold B in the air)
Oh, and Prismatic can activate Transcendence (B key/press LS+RS).

That's a lot to keep track of! Every subclass has access to a couple different options for each of these, and Exotic Armor perks can make drastic changes to abilities as well.

Using these abilities is key to doing damage in this game, but at the outset. you might find that a lot of them take a long time to regenerate. You have three stats that impact your cooldowns: Grenade, Melee, and Class impact their respective abilities. The Super stat also impacts your super recharge, though in a different way - it affects how much Super charge you get from every Orb of Power you generate or pick up, plus the Super charge you get from taking/dealing damage. They affect some other things that I'll get into more in the Buildcrafting guide, but the main thing to know: higher stats in these mean you get to use them more.

There are many other ways to affect these cooldowns: subclass fragments & aspects, Exotic Armor pieces, armor mods, seasonal artifact perks, and even weapon perks. You can totally build into becoming someone who is just, for example, never not throwing grenades if you want. The buildcrafting guide covers that as well.

Advanced topics

Elemental buffs & debuffs

If you've looked at the subclass menu at all, you've probably noticed there are a bunch of buffs and debuffs associated with each. This aspect of the game can be a bit overwhelming, since this stuff was basically added in over the years, and it's pretty poorly-presented in game (unless you really think "hovering over a bunch of indistinguishable icons to read tooltips" is a good way to discover how something works, in which case, great news!).

There aren't as many buffs and debuffs as you might think there are, though, and usually you can think of them in the context of a specific subclass/energy type. Solar, for example, has the Scorch damage-over-time debuff which turns into an Ignition when it's been applied for long enough. That can come from some solar weapons that have the Incandescent perk, or it can come from, e.g., certain Solar grenades you can equip on your subclass.

Just like ability cooldowns, elemental buffs and debuffs can be affected by a number of sources: Fragments, Aspects, weapon perks, seasonal artifact perks, and Exotic Armor pieces. I'll go into this in a bit more detail in the Buildcrafting guide as well.

For your first 20+ hours in Destiny, you probably really won't need to worry about this, other than probably incidentally getting some bonus damage.

Champions

Once you hit Master difficulty in the Portal, you'll start encountering Champions. These enemies have special behavior that make them kind of a pain in the ass if you're not equipped to deal with them. Champions will have a ton of health or damage output unless you stun them.

There's three types of Champions, and each have their own behavior and stun sources. The main stun source are the anti-Champion mods on the first column of the seasonal artifact. The game also has a helpful UI for champion stuns on the main inventory screen - you'll see some icons to the right of your weapons that indicate which champion types you currently are equipped to deal with based on these mods and any exotic weapons you have equipped with intrinsic anti-champion abilities. I don't believe they take into account whether you can generate the other damage sources that can stun champions, but they do list them when you hover over the icons.

Barrier champions are maybe the most annoying: when their health hits a certain breakpoint, they'll put up a shield and start regenerating their health. This type really can't be brute forced as a solo player unless you can generate damage quickly to prevent them from getting that shield back up. They can be stunned with:

Anti-barrier Artifact mods
Damage with Radiant buff (Solar)
Volatile Rounds (Void)
Unraveling Rounds (Strand)

Overload champions restore health over time, deal more damage, and dodge constantly. They can be stunned with:

Overload mods (Overloading Shots)
Damage with Jolt buff (Arc)
Slow debuff (Stasis) stacks
Suppression debuff (Void)

Unstoppable champions are just what they sound like on the tin: they'll continuously chase you, and have a ton of damage resistance until they're stunned. They can be stunned with:

Unstoppable Artifiact mods (Unstoppable Shots)
Blind debuff (Arc)
Ignition debuff (Solar)
Frozen shatter damage (Stasis)
Suspend debuff (Strand)

Obviously, the easiest way to stun champions is to just bring the right mods for it. That said, doing this for all three champion types locks you into a pretty limited loadout (and in some cases, like this season, there's no Power weapon mod, so you can't cover it with just weapon mods). It's a good idea to play around with some of these other buffs & debuffs instead.