There are a lot of different armor pieces in Destiny 2. It can be hard to tell which ones are worth getting.
In this guide, we will go over the best Exotic armor pieces that you can get for each of the three Classes.
Recommended Read: How to Get Forbearance in Destiny 2
Just about every Legendary armor piece in Destiny 2 has the capability of being the best. It all comes down to what stat roll you get.
With that said, we will be focusing on Exotic armor pieces as they heavily affect the way you play the game. Here are the top three Exotic armor pieces for each Class.
The best armor pieces in Destiny 2 are Synthocepts for Titans, Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk for Hunters, and Cenotaph Mask for Warlocks.
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Best Armor for Titan in Destiny 2
Titan Exotic armor pieces usually rely on your abilities, either enhancing their damage or up-time. Most of the time, this means you will be able to punch things harder.
Synthocepts
This very well may be the best Exotic armor piece in the game.
Synthocepts have been around for a long time. They are a staple among Titan players as they enhance the one thing the class is good at – punching.
Synthocepts come with the Intrinsic Perk Biotic Enhancements, increasing your melee lunge range and improving the damage of your melee attacks and Super abilities when surrounded by enemies.
While being surrounded might sound like a tough situation to survive in, you’ll quickly realize that this is exactly where the Titan wants to be.
The increase to melee damage is the true star of this armor piece, allowing for some of the most broken builds in the game as far as DPS Loadouts go.
Solar Titans rely on this Exotic to increase the damage of their throwing hammer and give them an infinite source of free damage that can wipe out Champions and devastate Boss health bars.
The Titan’s Strand Aspect, Banner of War, is another offender that takes full advantage of Synthocepts to give you free health regeneration while you go around and melee end-game-level enemies with ease.
This isn’t the only busted thing Strand Titans can do with This Exotic.
When paired with the Titan’s Strand subclass and a Shotgun with the One-Two Punch Perk, Titants are able to deal a massive amount of damage spamming Graplle melee abilities with the bonus damage from One-Two Punch and Synthocepts.
This build has allowed players to solo Raid Bosses and Dungeons, all while staying alive with Banner of War.
Heart of Inmost Light
The best general-use Exotic armor piece for Titans.
The Heart of Inmost Light is one of the few Exotics that can be abused by every subclass on Titan. It can lead to some very interesting build crafting choices as well.
The Intrinsic Perk Overflowing Light causes your Class ability, Grenade ability, and Melee ability to empower each other. Empowered abilities will regenerate faster, deal more damage, and give your Barricades more health.
While the extra damage on each of your abilities is nice, the main reason players will use this Exotic is for the ability regeneration.
Being able to quickly cycle through all of your abilities and spam grenades and powerful melee hits into crowds of enemies makes for a great ad-clearing Exotic.
Heart of Inmost Light can be used on any of your Titan subclasses to enhance your general game plan. This makes it a great Exotic for newer players or players who don’t quite have a build prepared for a certain subclass yet.
As you will be getting a lot of ability kills, pairing this Exotic armor piece with Super regeneration mods is a great idea.
Ashes to Assets, Hand-On, and Dynamo will each give you a bit of Super ability energy while you cycle through your abilities, allowing you to constantly have your Super ready when you need it.
Curiass of the Falling Star
Titan’s very own nuke.
Curiass of the Falling Star is an Exotic that is necessary for many Titans to compete in end-game DPS checks. Luckily, it is a lot of fun to use.
It comes with the Intrinsic Perk Glorious Charge which greatly increases the damage of your Thundercrash Super ability to take it from a decent damage Super to one of the best.
It will also grant you an overshield after the impact of your Super so you can safely retreat should anything somehow survive the impact.
This isn’t the type of Exotic armor piece that you just wear casually. Most players will take advantage of a neutral-game Exotic, such as Heart of Inmost Light, until their Super ability is ready.
Once you get your Thundercrash Supercharged, you will want to swap to Curiass of the Falling Star before casting your Super and annihilating whatever target you choose.
This is a common theme with Exotics that only provides benefits after you cast your Super ability.
In content that locks players into a single Loadout and doesn’t allow armor swapping, such as Grandmaster Nightfalls, many players will still opt to keep Curiass of the Falling Star on as the damage it provides is just too good to pass up.
Best Armor for Hunter
Hunter Exotic armor focuses on either enhancing your neutral game or your damage capabilities. These are only a few of the great armor pieces available to this Class.
Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk
A blessing to invisible Hunter builds everywhere.
Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk has single-handedly allowed Void Hunters to finally take advantage of their invisibility abilities for more than just getting off easy revives. It comes with the Intrinsic Perk See Me, Feel Me, which does a lot.
Firstly, it grants all of your Void weapons Volatile Rounds after you exit invisibility, allowing you to debuff enemies on command.
Using your Finisher ability while invisible will give all of your weapons bonus damage for a short duration while granting you and all of your nearby Fireteam members a reserve overshield that can be consumed with their Class abilities.
The general game plan with Gyrfalcon’s Hauberks is to take advantage of the bonus damage and Volatile Rounds by using a Void Primary weapon or Machine Gun, giving you easy access to a constant debuff while you clear out enemies.
Pair this with the Hunter’s Stylish Executioner Aspect to refresh your invisibility every time you kill an enemy with your Volatile Rounds.
This leads to endless invisibility and infinite Volatile Rounds for your Void weapons, meaning you should have an easy time staying alive even in the toughest encounters.
If your teammates are struggling to survive, feel free to use your finisher to give them much-needed overshields.
This is the Exotic of choice both for solo players and players looking to help out their Fireteam. While it does lock you into using the Void subclass, many players will see that as a positive anyway.
Star-Eater Scales
Celestial Nighthawk for all of your subclasses.
Star-Eater Scales should not exist. They provide Hunters with a general-use Super damage enhancement that can be used on any subclass.
The Intrinsic Perk Feast of Light will give you additional Super ability energy with every Orb of Power you pick up. Picking up Orbs of Power will also grant you a stack of Feast of Light, with a maximum of four stacks.
Each stack will increase the amount of damage your next Super ability deals while granting you a burst of healing on activation and an overshield if you have maximum stacks.
When Star-Eater Scales was first introduced, it became an immediate replacement to the Hunter’s Celestial Nighthawk Helmet as it just provided more overall damage for your Golden Gun.
Recent buffs have seen Celestial Nighthawk put back on top, but it doesn’t stop Star-Eater Scales from being the best for every other Super ability.
The obvious candidates for this Exotic are Blade Barrage and Gathering Storm as it has a quick cast time and a lingering damage effect that is also enhanced with Feast of Light. This leads to one of the highest-damage Super abilities in the game.
While you do need to pick up four Orbs of Power to get the most out of this Exotic, it isn’t as hard as you might think.
In Raids and Dungeons, where you will almost always be doing damage inside of a Well of Radiance, you will have access to plenty of Orbs of Power created after your Fireteam activates their Super abilities.
Much like Curiass of the Falling Star, this allows players to use other general-purpose Exotic armor pieces right up until it is time for the damage phase of the encounter, where they will swap to Star-Eater Scales and gather a few Orbs of Power before casting their Super ability.
Lucky Pants
The reason Hunters are topping the DPS charts.
Lucky Pants have recently been reworked into something of a monster when paired with the right weapon.
It comes with the Intrinsic Perk Illegally Modded Holster, making your Hand Cannons ready faster and boosting their accuracy and airborne effectiveness while the Perk is activated.
When you swap to a fully loaded Hand Cannon that deals Kinetic damage or a damage type that matches your subclass, you will activate the Illegally Modded Holster buff.
Every hit you deal with a Hand Cannon will increase the damage of subsequent hits, stacking for a staggering amount of damage per shot.
While this is a fine Perk to boost the damage of any Hand Cannon you use, it becomes insane when paired with Hand Cannons that can deal multiple hits of damage with a single shot.
Hand Cannons such as Malfeasance with its poison slug rounds and Warden’s Law with its burst fire will quickly build up stacks of Illegally Modded Holster and allow you to take full advantage of the maximum damage bonus as fast as possible.
These two Hand Cannons, when paired with Lucky Pants Armor piece, make for the single highest damaging Primary weapon Loadouts in the game.
In end-game activities where Heavy ammo can be scarce, you will quickly realize how important it is to have a damage rotation that doesn’t rely heavily on Power weapons.
Lucky Pants are a great choice for both solo players and group activities.
You can take out Champions without using a single Special or Heavy ammo shot, and they will always be relevant in DPS phases no matter what your ammo economy is looking like.
Best Armor for Warlock
Most Warlock Exotic armor pieces focus on supporting the team. There are a few that are a great choice for solo players, however.
Cenotaph Mask
It is busted.
Cenotaph Mask is one of those Exotic armor pieces that completely breaks the traditional flow of the game, especially in end-game activities. It does this all while making a mostly underused weapon archetype viable again.
Cenotaph Mask comes with the Intrinsic Perk High Priority, steadily reloading your equipped Trace Rifle magazine from reserves.
Damage a vehicle, Boss, or Champion with a Trace Rifle will make the target for you and your Fireteam.
When a marked target is defeated, it will drop Special ammo for you and heavy ammo for all of your teammates.
This changes everything in regards to end-game Boss encounters as players normally have to be very careful with their Heavy ammo usage to ensure they save enough to actually kill the Boss.
Having on-demand Heavy ammo for your entire Fireteam is a big deal and allows players to take our Majors and Champions with ease knowing that they can replenish their reserves before the damage phase of a Boss.
For Boss encounters that typically go to the third phase, Cenotaph Mask will ensure your team never runs out of ammo.
While most Fireteams will usually have one player using the Divinity Exotic Trace Rifle to debuff enemies, this armor piece makes it a much better general-use weapon as you will debuff Champions while marking them for your Fireteam.
This also opens up the door for other decent Trace Rifles to see actual play since you can always refresh your Special ammo reserves.
Sunbracers
Another name for ad-clear.
Sunbracers have got to be one of the most fun Exotic armor pieces you can use on a Warlock. They also happen to be one of the best in terms of ad-clearing.
They come with the Intrinsic Perk Helium Spirals, increasing the duration of your Solar Grenades.
Solar Melee ability kills will grant you unlimited Solar Grenade Energy for a brief time, allowing you to spam grenade after grenade at any enemy in your sight.
This armor piece, paired with some of the Warlock’s grenade enhancing Fragments, makes for the single best ad-clearing Loadout in the game.
All it takes is one melee kill, and you can unleash a volley of grenades around the encounter that will linger and deal damage over time to any enemies near them, killing off anything that isn’t a Champion.
While this armor piece may seem one-dimensional, it is very, very good at what it does. Fireteams can rely on a single player to take care of the Minor enemies through an encounter when using Sunbracers.
Pair it with the Ashes to Assets Mod to quickly build up your Super Ability as well.
Lunafaction Boots
The used-to-be-best armor piece is still pretty good.
Lunafaction Boots were once the staple Exotic armor piece for every Well of Radiance Warlock as they would provide auto-reloading to the entire Fireteam.
Now, while they don’t reload your weapons from reserves anymore, they still provide your team with a much-needed reload speed buff.
Lunafaction Boots come with the Intrinsic Perk Alchemical Etchings, giving your Healing Rifts the ability to increase reload speed and your Empowering Rifts the ability to increase the effective range of all of your weapons.
Your Well of Radiance will gain both of these effects.
This Perk greatly contributes to the DPS of your entire Fireteam.
Boosting the reload speed of Rocket Launchers and Sniper Rifles especially is great and will make clearing Boss damage phases much more consistent for your Fireteam.
If you aren’t quite sure what Exotic armor piece to use on Warlock, you can’t go wrong with Lunafaction Boots.
These are the best armor pieces for each Class. Go ahead and take your pick!
What armor pieces would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments!
