Destiny 2: Best Armor Mods Ranked (2024)

Human Made

Penned by Kody Wirth

Kody is our expert Destiny 2 and shooter genre writer. He lives in Oregon.

Reviewed by Adam Watkins

Armor in Destiny 2 was a bit of a mess at launch. Thankfully, the introduction of Armor 2.0 with the Shadowkeep expansion led to a drastic overhaul. This not only simplified resource management and brought back core vanilla Destiny stats, but introduced a refined Armor Mods system that allows you to slot different mod combinations within Armor sets. 

These changes to the Armor Mod system, as well as the inclusion of saveable load-outs, make min/maxing easier than ever before. With the game having so many Armor Mods to choose from, selecting the perfect Mod for your build can be a harrowing experience. Well, worry not. We have combed through all the Armor Mods available in Destiny 2. We selected the 15 best mods/types of mods you should be using in your builds.

So what are the best Destiny 2 Armor 2.0 mods right now? Let’s rank them and find out.

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What Are Armor Mods and How to Acquire Them

Before we begin let’s make sure everyone is up to speed on what Armor mods are and how they are obtained. Armor Mods are equipable perks that apply different buffs to your Guardian. They can provide boosts to your base stats, weapon targeting/damage increases, additional resistance, and much more. You have four slots per piece of armor, meaning that you have sixteen in total to work with. These are split into one General slot and three Armor-Specific slots. 

All of your Armor Mods are going to require energy to equip You can have a maximum number of Mods that equal up to ten energy if you Masterwork the armor piece. Luckily you can change these out at any time for a minimal Glimmer cost, meaning there’s no limit to how often you can mix and match. 

Acquiring Armor Mods is actually much simpler than it was in the past. Players who have played Destiny 2 at any point in the past will have all the armor mods unlocked for them upon relogging into the game. Players who are new to Destiny 2 will need to reach Guardian rank 6 and complete the Threats of Surge challenge in order to unlock every armor mod.

Best Armor Mods in Destiny 2 Ranked Worst to Best

This list is going to cover what we believe to be the 15 best armor mods in the game. This in itself isn’t a simple task. What determines how “good” an Armor mod will be is entirely dependent on the user’s build and playstyle. There is also the issue of certain Classes and Subclasses benefiting more from specific Mods compared to others. So in an effort to avoid these issues, we are going to be ranking these Mods based on their universal usefulness across all builds, Classes, and Subclasses.

#15 General Armor Mods

General Armor Mods are a build crafter’s bread and butter. The only reason they are in the number 15 slot is because their true effectiveness doesn’t really shine until you have higher-level armor and plenty of crafting materials to Masterwork your gear. Once you reach that point you can use General Mods to fine-tune your build’s stats to perfection.

You can equip one General Mod to each piece of armor for a total of five General Mods equipped. The two best General Mods are the Resilience mods and the Recovery mods. These two stats are your most important for PvE and PvP activities and will absolutely make your life easier the closer they get to tier ten.

• Description: Increases specified stat by either +5 or +10 depending on the energy cost.
• Mod Type: General
• Cost: 1-4 Energy

#14 Ammo Finder Mods

These mods provide an increase to the drop rate of either special or heavy weapon ammo bricks. These mods actually have a built-in meter that fills as you get kills with your different weapons. When this invisible meter reaches 100% an ammo brick will spawn. Weapons that are not associated with the ammo finder mod in use will fill this meter faster, with exotic primary filling this meter the fastest.

These mods are really good when you’re running powerful special/heavy weapons. They work best in PvE content since there are higher densities of enemies to help trigger the effect consistently. Not to mention you’ll need hard-hitting special and heavy weapons in order to get through a lot of Destiny 2’s end-game content.

• Description: Increase the drop chance of ammo bricks of the specified ammo type. Dropped ammo bricks reward additional ammo compared to regular ammo bricks.
• Mod Type: Helmet
• Cost: 3 Energy

#13 Powerful Friends and Radiant Light

These two mods can only be made useful while you are in a fire team, and even then their value is entirely dependent on the build competency of your fire team members. In the hands of a powerful fire team these mods can keep the entire team charged throughout an entire activity or during boss phases where armor charge may be hard to come by. Unfortunately, these mods have little to no use when playing solo or with random players.

• Descriptions: Grants a stack(s) of armor charge to nearby allies on super cast or collection of an Orb of Power.
• Mod Type: Helmet
• Cost: 1 Energy

#12 Charged-Up

Charged-Up provides users with a longer duration on their Surge and Font mods. It also improves the effectiveness of Kickstart mods and other yellow mods since their effects improve based on the number of armor charge stacks you have when triggered. Charged-Up is great if you can’t afford the Dimdilation mod on your class item. The reason this mod receives the placement it does is because there are a couple of chest mods competing with it.

• Description: Increases maximum armor charge stacks by one for each copy equipped.
• Mod Type: Chest
• Cost: 3 Energy

#11 Firepower

Here we have our first ability-focused mod, Firepower. When picking between the other ability-focused mods in the gauntlet slot this one stuck up as the best one for general use. Grenades have the best odds of killing multiple enemies from a safe distance allowing you to generate Orbs of Power with minimal risk to your safety. It also helps that these orbs grant a small bit of super energy. In truth, you can substitute this mod with any of the other white melee or grenade-focused mods in this category and get really good results depending on your build.

• Description: Grenade kills spawn orbs of power.
• Mod Type: Gauntlet
• Cost: 3 Energy

#10 Ashes to Assets

The second of our ability-focused mods and what do you know? It’s grenade-focused again. Much like Firepower, this mod ranks as high as it does because of the amount of value a player can get from a single grenade. Since this mod grants super energy based on the number of kills your grenade gets, you can generate a pretty sizeable chunk of super energy with a well-placed grenade.

• Description: Grenade Kills grant super energy.
• Mod Type: Helmet
• Cost: 3 Energy

#9 Kickstart Mods

You might think we have a bias towards grenade abilities, and you’d be right. All of the Kickstart mods function in the exact same way, the only differences are the stat/ability they improve/restore. Grenade Kickstart is probably the best one from this group due to the incredible value grenade abilities can provide the player. If you’re going to run yellow mods over blues, this is one that absolutely should be in your loadout. Honestly, this mod might make running yellow mods worth it on its own.

• Description: Consumes a minimum of three stacks of armor charge to grant grenade energy relative to the number of armor charge stacks consumed.
• Mod Type: Gauntlets
• Cost: 3 Energy

#8 Loader Mods

These mods provide a nice little bonus to your weapons’ consistency by increasing their reload speed. These are best used only if your build allows for only one of these mods to affect multiple weapons at a time. The increase isn’t that great with a single copy but it is nice to have in PvP and endgame PvE content.

• Description: Reduces reload time for specific weapon types.
• Mod Type: Gauntlet
• Cost: 2 Energy

#7 Reserves Mods

These mods are absolute staples for all heavy and special weapon builds. Reserve mods increase the maximum amount of ammo your weapons can carry and that means more opportunity to dish out some pain. These mods are great to equip just before a boss and raid banner to juice up your heavies before a big fight. It is absolutely not uncommon to see boss encounter builds running three copies of this mod, realistically you should be fine with only one or two copies.

• Description: Increases ammo reserves of a specified weapon or element type. This effect stacks.
• Mod Type: Chest
• Cost: 2-3 Energy

#6 Ammo Scavenger Mods

Another set of ammo-focused mods, this time it’s one for the leg armor slot. What can we say, there are some really powerful weapons out there, and having ammo for them is really important. These mods are best paired with Reserve mods for maximum effectiveness. These are also relatively inexpensive and have a stacking effect when used with the Ammo Finder mods in the helmet slot.

• Description: Gain bonus ammo reserves for a given weapon type when you pick up ammo bricks for weapons of the specified type.
• Mod Type: Leg
• Cost: 2-3 Energy

#5 Absolution

This mod might be a bit on the expensive side but it is definitely worth equipping. Unlike the other Orb pick-up mods that grant ability energy, Absolution grants 10% with a single mod equipped. The other mods only grant 5% at one equipped mod. This mod pairs really well with a single other Orb pick-up mod that grants ability energy since the effects stack. Still, if you can only run one of these types of mod, we highly recommend Absolution.

• Description: Pick up Orbs of Power grants ability energy to all of your abilities.
• Mod Type: Universal
• Cost: 3 Energy

#4 Siphon Mods

These mods are pretty much a must-run for almost every build. Nothing beats the level of consistency you get from these mods when it comes to Orb of Power generation. You can get the most out of these mods by combining Harmonic Siphon with weapons matching your Subclass type, or by running a powerful exotic kinetic weapon and the Kinetic Siphon mod. These mods continue to be great picks even in end-game content.

• Description: Spawns an orb of power after getting 2 kills in quick succession with the specified weapon type. Orbs generated by these mods also provide a small amount of Super energy.
• Mod Type: Helmet
• Cost: 1-3 Energy

#3 Time Dilation

The go-to armor charge-extending mod for builds everywhere. One copy of Time Dilation will grant 15 extra seconds to your total armor charge decay time, while Charged-Up will only provide 10 extra seconds. This mod can be paired with Charged-Up for even longer armor charge durations. Considering the fact that Blue armor mods like Surge and Font mods are the most popular in the community, Time-Dilation is an absolute must-run if you want to keep your build running at maximum efficiency.

• Description: Increases armor charge decay time by 15/18/20 seconds based on the number of Time Dilation mods equipped.
• Mod Type: Class Item
• Cost: 1 Energy

#2 Surge Mods

One of the strongest mod types in the entire game is Surge Mods. These mods in combination with other buffs like Radiant and Empowering Rift allow you and your fire team to absolutely melt end-game bosses in one or two damage phases. These buffs also allow your already powerful exotic weapons to do even more damage while you have stacks of armor charge. These mods are pretty much must-runs for a lot of builds and if they aren’t, players are constantly looking for an excuse to add them in. You really can’t go wrong with equipping one or two of these mods.

• Description: Increases specified weapon damage by 10/17/22% while the player has armor charge. Stack with many other damage buffs.
• Mod Type: Leg Armor
• Cost: 3 Energy

#1 Font Mods

Font mods are the most versatile mods in the entire game, practically every build in the game can make use of at least one Font mod and have it be really impactful to their build’s overall performance. A single Font mod provides your Guardian with 30 extra points in the specified stat while active, that is a three-tier boost to any stat you want so long as you have armor charge. This is insane because you can effectively use these mods to get multiple stats to tier 10 while in activities, and those extra seconds of cooldown reduction or resistance can mean the difference between beating an encounter and wiping to it.

• Description: Grants 30/50/60 additional points to a given stat while the user has armor charge. You can have multiple Font mods of a different name equipped at a time.
• Mod Type: All Armor Pieces
• Cost: 3 Energy

Armor Up

Armor Mods have been an interesting and key aspect of effective Titan, Hunter, and Warlock builds in Destiny 2 since the launch of Armor 2.0. This list didn’t break down any of the game’s many seasonal mods/perks available from the seasonal artifact. These often augment your Guardian’s abilities, weapons, or mods to make them more powerful, cheaper, or more efficient. Unfortunately, these mods are not permanent and often change between seasons, hence why they weren’t covered in this list.

Be sure to let your Fireteam know which Mods they should be running by sharing this article on your favorite social platforms. For the latest on Destiny 2, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.