Building a powerful loadout for your Guardian in Destiny 2 is tough. It requires the right Exotics, the right weapons with the right rolls, and a well-thought-out selection of armor mods picked out from a plethora of available options. The most elusive elements of a good build, however, are high-stat armor and knowing the right way to farm it is crucial.
High-stat armor in Destiny 2 relies heavily on RNG, with each piece of randomly rolled Legendary or Exotic gear distributing stat points amongst six different statistics. Those six statistics—Mobility, Resilience, Recovery, Discipline, Intellect, and Strength—define crucial elements of your Guardian’s power such as ability cooldowns or damage resistance.
Getting armor with a large number of points to distribute amongst those six statistics can drastically improve the efficacy of many builds, as each stat can have up to 100 points total invested into them. Every 10 points invested into a stat improves its effect, so not every point invested counts unless it pushes that stat into the next tier of strength. For example, 80 Intellect will give you a base Blade Barrage Super cooldown of 6:03, but 90 Intellect shaves that down to 5:53. Wearing high-stat armor gives you a better chance at reaching those upper echelons with more points to distribute out.
But knowing where to find high-stat armor is half of the battle. Fortunately for those routinely cursed with bad luck, Destiny 2 offers a variety of permanent and limited-time methods for acquiring guaranteed drops of high-stat armor every week. Some methods are easier to farm than others, but each has the same end goal of awarding you with better armor and better stats.
All sources of High-Stat Armor in Destiny 2
| Source | Cap | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Dares of Eternity (Legend) | None | Upon completion of Dares of Eternity on Legend difficulty, players will receive one high-stat armor piece guaranteed to have two stats with 16 points each. |
| The Wellspring (Master) | None | Upon completion of The Wellspring activity on Master difficulty, players have a high chance of receiving high-stat armor. However, it is not guaranteed. |
| Empire Hunts | None | Upon completion of an Empire Hunt on Hero difficulty or higher, players have a chance of receiving high-stat armor. Higher difficulties grant a higher drop rate. |
| Iron Banner | None | Iron Banner armor can drop via Iron Engrams or match completions, and has a good chance of being high-stat. |
| Trials of Osiris | None | Trials of Osiris armor can drop via Trials Engrams, going Flawless or through weekly playlist rewards. Commonly drops high-stat armor. |
| Prime Engrams | None | Prime Engrams can drop armor pieces, and these armor pieces are commonly high-stat. |
| Raids | Weekly | On first clear with each character, all raids can drop high-stat armor in every encounter. It’s still possible to earn high-stat armor on subsequent clears, but it’s less likely. |
| Raids (Master) | Weekly | Raids that have a Master difficulty option (Vault of Glass, Vow of the Disciple and King’s Fall) drop high-stat armor with weighting toward specific stats. Weighting modifier changes weekly. |
| Prophecy dungeon | Weekly | The Prophecy dungeon has a high chance of dropping high-stat armor in each encounter. Every week, one clear of the Kell Echo boss per character will drop a guaranteed piece of high-stat armor. |
| Pit of Heresy dungeon | Weekly | Defeating Zulmak, the final boss of the Pit of Heresy, will award players one piece of high-stat armor each week guaranteed to have two stats with 16 points each. This can be farmed multiple times if Pit of Heresy is the weekly Pinnacle dungeon. |
| Grasp of Avarice dungeon | Weekly | Grasp of Avarice has a high chance of dropping high-stat armor in each encounter, and the first clear of Captain Avarokk—the final boss—will award one guaranteed piece of high-stat armor each week. |
| Duality dungeon | Weekly | Armor drops from the Duality dungeon are most commonly high-stat, but as with the other dungeons, the guaranteed high-stat armor drop from the final boss has a weekly cap for each character. |
| Weekly mission (Witch Queen) | None | The weekly campaign mission on Savathun’s Throne World can drop high-stat armor at Hero difficulty or higher, with the harder difficulties greatly increasing the drop rates. |
| Season of the Risen | None | Umbral Engrams can be focused at the War Table in the H.E.L.M into seasonal armor, all of which is guaranteed to be high-stat. This requires the Armor Decoding Clearance upgrade. |
| Season of the Haunted | None | Umbral Engrams can be focused at the Crown of Sorrow in the H.E.L.M into high-stat seasonal armor. This does not require an upgrade. |
| Sever | Weekly | Season of the Haunted’s rotating Sever mission awards a single high-stat armor piece upon the first weekly clear with each character. This requires the Sever Boss High Stat upgrade at the Crown of Sorrow. |
| Ketchcrash (Master) | None | Season of Plunder’s Ketchcrash activity on Master difficulty has a high chance of dropping high-stat seasonal armor upon completion. However, it is not guaranteed. |
Naturally, some of these sources will serve you better than others. Methods such as seasonal Umbral Engram focusing and Dares of Eternity having no limits on their drops means that they will undoubtedly be more efficient methods for farming high-stat armor. However, the diversity of sources does allow you to tackle a variety of activities while still working toward your end goal, rather than being forced into only one or two styles of play.
If you are looking to maximize the amount of high-stat armor you are earning though, be it because of a lack of time to dedicate to it or a pattern of bad luck with the RNG gods, choosing an efficient method will make your life a lot easier.
How to farm High-Stat Armor in Destiny 2
Before you set your sights on a spot to start fishing for those lucratively bountiful armor sets, understanding how points are distributed between the six stats and how to weight the random rolls in your favor are important.
Despite what the name implies, random rolls aren’t entirely random. They can be manipulated to some degree so that the stats you’re getting spikes in for each armor drop are the stats that you’re hoping to focus on. This is thanks to two different factors: stat pools and Armorer-style Ghost mods.
The six statistics are divided into two different pools when the points total on an armor set is getting distributed between them. The first stat pool is Mobility, Resilience, and Recovery, while the second stat pool is Discipline, Intellect, and Strength. Each of the two pools will receive an even amount of the distributed points, meaning that an armor roll of 64 will have 32 of those points distributed amongst the three stats in pool one and the other 32 shared by pool two’s three stats.
The most useful high-stat armor will not distribute those points evenly in each pool. Instead, certain stats like Recovery or Discipline will be awarded the majority of points. This is what makes the high-stat armor from the Pit of Heresy Zulmak encounter, as well as Legend difficulty Dares of Eternity, so lucrative, as it guarantees that the high-stat armor you earn will feature 16 points minimum in two of the stats. Combining multiple armor pieces with similar stat spikes is what enables players to reach 100 points in a variety of stats.
While this can sound like an additional layer of RNG too many, there is a set of mods that can dramatically improve the consistency of your armor rolls. Ghosts can take Armorer mods in their Economic slot, with one available for each of the six statistics. The Armorer mods guarantee that any randomly rolled armor pieces you acquire will have a guaranteed minimum of 10 points in the stat of your choosing, as well as increasing the likelihood that you will receive armor with a high points distribution in that stat. When trying to create a Discipline build, for example, equipping the Discipline Armorer mod makes certain that you consistently earn armor that aids in your build construction.
With this in the back of your mind, you’re set to start farming the high-stat armor of your dreams.
Seasonal Armor Focusing
Focusing Umbral Engrams into seasonal armor pieces in the H.E.L.M. is by far the fastest and easiest way to earn troves of high-stat armor in Destiny 2. As of right now, the two available vendors for this are the Crown of Sorrow and the War Table, with the War Table requiring the Armor Decoding Clearance upgrade to start awarding high-stat rolls.
Focusing Umbral Engrams this way will also cost you Legendary Shards and Umbral Energy. Despite the Crown of Sorrow offering high-stat armor through focusing intrinsically, it demands a costly 10 Opulent Umbral Energy for each transaction. If you have the upgrade for Season of the Risen’s War Table vendor, focusing high-stat armor there will only cost you four Risen Umbral Energy by comparison.
As of right now, only the Master difficulty version of Ketchcrash grants high-stat armor rewards in Season of Plunder specifically. The armor that you focus on at the Star Chart vendor is not guaranteed to come with good rolls.
Dares of Eternity
The Legend difficulty of the Dares of Eternity activity isn’t too much of a challenge if you’re able to gather a fireteam of six to take it on, and the unlimited access to high-stat armor pieces with each completion can be well worth the time invested. The high-stat armor that it drops is guaranteed to have spikes in two statistics with 16 points minimum, narrowing down how much RNG can affect the distribution of your rolls. Equipping an Armorer Ghost mod on top of this can make sure that one of those two stats is of your preference.
Pit of Heresy
It may not be a farm that is always available, but similarly to Dares of Eternity, the high-stat armor that Pit of Heresy can net you is guaranteed to have a good distribution. Killing the final boss, Zulmak, once per week on each character will always drop one piece of high-stat armor with a 16-point spike in two stats. When Pit of Heresy is the spotlighted dungeon with a Pinnacle reward, though, the Zulmak encounter can actually be farmed for multiple high-stat armor pieces throughout the week. Make sure to take advantage of this when you see Pit of Heresy rotate in.
Iron Banner
If PvP is more your speed, Iron Banner is a fantastic source of high-stat armor when it is available. Bungie has drastically reduced the number of times that Lord Saladin brings the Iron Banner back throughout each season, so capitalizing on its presence in the weeks that it’s available is crucial. Iron Banner armor that is earned either through Iron Engrams or Iron Banner match completions has a very high chance of being high-stat, with no limits on the amount that you can earn.
With the speed that matches play out, and the number of Iron Engrams you can earn through leveling up your reputation with Lord Saladin, there is no better source of high-stat armor with such a low barrier of entry. Best of all, Iron Banner is completely free, meaning that no other paid content is required in order to access this specific farm.
