The Ultimate Trick to Optimize Your Destiny 2 Armor in Just a Few Steps

Not much seems to be happening in Destiny 2 lately, even with the upcoming reset. Festival of the Lost is in full swing, and while I’ve already completed most of it, there’s still the grind for the gilded Ghost Writer title. So, let’s take a step back and delve into some more general advice that I’ve picked up over the years.

For around two years now, Destiny 2 has featured new ghost mods that allow you to enhance your gameplay. These mods include increased glimmer and XP gains, bonus rewards in playlists, and most intriguingly, the ability to focus on specific armor stats.

You get to choose six stats, and any high-stat armor or exotics (excluding vendor engrams) you acquire will have a minimum bonus of +10 in the selected stat. In many cases, the bonus is even higher, often exceeding 20+. Combined with the high-stat armor focusing from the Season of the Risen War Table, it has never been easier to optimize your stats and tailor them to your specific needs.

However, it took me quite a while to discover what could arguably be the best way to approach this. A reader actually pointed it out to me a few weeks ago, and I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner. Here’s what you need to know about how focusing works:

Destiny 2 categorizes stats into two pools: mobility, resilience, and recovery, followed by discipline, intellect, and strength. In the past, the main stats of interest were recovery and intellect (except for some Hunters), which later shifted to recovery and discipline. With the resilience buff, where tier 10 grants a substantial 40% damage resistance, it’s now crucial to focus on both recovery and resilience, maximizing their values as much as possible.

Now, here’s the trick. Use the discipline focus ghost mod. Why? It all comes down to how Bungie distributes stats between the two pools. With high-stat armor, rated at 60 or above, you’re guaranteed to have approximately 30+ stats in one group and 30+ stats in the other. This ensures that you won’t end up with imbalanced stats like +20 in mobility, recovery, and resilience, and just +2 in discipline, intellect, and strength. Armor doesn’t work like that.

By focusing on discipline, you’re essentially targeting the most popular stat among the bottom three. This means that when you use high-stat armor focusing, you have a 2 in 3 chance of obtaining a significant bonus in either recovery or resilience, or even a solid amount in both. Personally, I prefer discipline since intellect took a significant hit and having more grenades more frequently is often more desirable than maximizing strength. But, of course, it’s a matter of personal preference.

On the other hand, if you choose to focus on recovery or resilience directly through the ghost mod, you’re increasing the odds of getting a high stat on the other side, which may not be as favorable.

Let me tell you, this trick has worked wonders for me. I can’t emphasize enough how much the quality of my armor has improved since I made this switch. Now, I can confidently hold onto way more pieces of armor with great stat distributions. Oh, and don’t forget, this also applies to wild drop exotics, so it’s always a good idea to keep that discipline mod on, just in case.

So, I hope you’ve learned something valuable, just as I did. Happy hunting, Guardians!

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