Destiny 2: The Best Hunter Solar 3.0 Build (2024)

(Image: Bungie via HGG / Adam W.)

Human Made

Penned by Adam Watkins

My name is Adam Watkins. I am an English Literature and Media major who absolutely loves video games. Some of my favorites are Super Mario Bros. 3,... Read more

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

There are a number of ways a player can build a Solar Hunter. Our pick for the best hunter solar 3.0 build is centered around the Solar Hunter’s ability to spam almost infinite melee supers. This build has a strong base that New Light players can use to clear activities, while also being a build that can expand upon to fit different activities and playstyles. 

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Prepwork & New Light Considerations

While this build was made with New Light players in mind, some prep work is needed in order to obtain everything that makes this build come together. If you’re a New Light player, you may or may not have the Solar sub-class unlocked for your Hunter at the start of the game. If you do, great! If not, no worries, you’ll unlock the Solar sub-class as you complete New Light missions and raise your Guardian Rank.

The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re a New Light player is complete the New Light campaign missions. These missions will reward you with glimmer, resources, gear, and experience. These missions will also teach you the basic systems within Destiny 2. If you’re an experienced player who is already Guardian Rank 6 or higher you don’t really need to worry about doing this part, since you likely have the glimmer, resources, and game knowledge needed to make full use of this build.

After you complete the New Light campaign you are going to want to start stacking some glimmer, around 175,000 to 250,000. It’s recommended that you acquire this sum of money by completing various Destiny 2 activities, such as Strikes, Patrols, Public Events, or even the seasonal campaign. Crucible and Gambit are also activities your welcome to try but do keep in mind that these activities have PvP elements to them. PvP may be overwhelming to players who are just getting into Destiny 2. 

The Core of the Build

Now that you have enough glimmer we can finally start putting the build together. First, you’ll need to head over to the tower. Once there you’ll need to make your way down to the Bazaar and speak with Ikora.

Here is where you can buy Fragments and Aspects for each of your Guardian’s sub-classes. You can also purchase movement abilities, grenade variants, melee ability variants, class ability variants, and Super variants from Ikora. You are free to choose whichever movement, grenade, or melee ability you wish for this build.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Aspects

The two Aspects we’ll be using for this build are Knock’em Down and On Your Mark. Knock’em Down is the star of the show here. This Aspect grants your Guardian 2 Fragment slots, which can be used to equip Fragments that modify your Guardian’s abilities even further. It gives your Guardian the ability to fully refund your melee ability while you have the Radiant status buff and grants some additional effects to your Guardian’s Super.

The Radiant status condition grants Guardians increased weapon damage and allows you to pierce the shields of Barrier Champions. There are a number of ways you can gain the Radiant status effect, this build makes use of a specific Fragment to gain the Radiant effect.

Our Second Aspect is On Your Mark. On Your Mark grants your Guardian 3 additional Fragment slots. It also grants you and your allies increased weapon handling and reload speed for a short period of time after getting precision kills. You can also get the max stack of three of these effects by using your class ability.

We are only really using this fragment for its three additional Fragment slots. Fragments are game-changing modifiers to your build and having more of them is always a good thing. The buff On Your Mark gives you and your fireteam can also come in handy from time-to-time.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Fragments

This build has a total of 5 Fragment slots to work with and each one is key to making the build as powerful as possible. The first Fragment you’ll need to get your hands on is the Ember of Torches Fragment.

This Fragment synergizes perfectly with the Knock Em Down Aspect and provides the core gameplay loop of this build. When you kill an enemy with your charged melee attack you will both become radiant and regain your melee ability at the same time! The rest of this build is centered around using this loop to also regain your grenade ability and Super as quickly as possible.

The rest of the four fragments can be whatever Fragments you need based on the direction you want to take your build.  

Recommended Fragments

Ember of Ashes makes your Solar abilities apply more scorch stacks to targets. This is great for our build because a few of our other fragments trigger when targets ignite. Next is the Ember of Searing which grants melee energy and creates a Firesprite when you defeat a scorched target. 

Keeping with the scorching theme of the build we have the Ember of Char. This fragment makes your Solar ignitions spread scorch stacks to nearby targets, allowing you to scorch more enemies during a crowd fight. 

Finally, we have the Ember of Mercy, which grants your Guardian the Restoration buff whenever you pick up a Firesprite or revive an ally. Most of these fragments also provide stat bonuses which makes them even better for New Light players who may not have the best gear.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Recommended Melee

The recommended melee for this build is called Knife Trick. This Solar Melee throws a fan of flaming knives out in front of you. These knives scorch targets on hit. Each knife has its own hitbox and damage, which means each knife can hit a different enemy or multiple knives can hit the same enemy.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Recommended Class Ability

While experienced players can change this to whichever class ability they feel best works for their play style, we recommend that players new to Destiny 2 and the Hunter class use the Gambler’s Dodge Class ability. This ability allows the user to dodge enemy attacks. If you use this class ability while near an enemy, your melee ability will be fully recharged. 

This synergizes really well with the rest of the build by allowing you to effectively have two melee abilities. It’s great for players who miss their melee on occasion, or for enemies that live with just a little bit of hp after your first knife throw.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Recommended Movement Ability

For this build, we went with the Triple Jump ability. Considering this build is recommended for New Light players, this movement ability seems like it’s the easiest to understand and master. In addition, it makes a lot of the game’s platforming challenges fairly easy.

Hunter Solar 3.0 Build Recommended Grenade Ability

The grenade is one of the most powerful tools at a Guardian’s disposal. This build can make use of either the Fusion Grenade or the Solar Grenade. The Solar Grenade has a lingering effect that can apply lots of scorch stacks over time to enemies in a specific area. However, the Fusion Grenade has a much lower cooldown time. It also attaches to a target and explodes dealing pretty good damage while also moderately scorching those in the blast radius. This build loves to spread scorch stacks and these two grenades help with that.

Best Hunter Solar 3.0 Build: Recommended Armor Mods

An integral part of any good Destiny 2 build are the armor mods. These grant your Guardian brand-new abilities, buffs, or modifications to your existing abilities. A fair warning, most mods will only become available for your Guardian to use after you reach Guardian Rank 6. 

You’re free to adjust these mods to best fit your playstyle, gear, and current activity, but these are the mods we find work best for this build when tackling most activities in Destiny 2. Keep in mind that armor mods require energy to equip. You’ll need to spend resources to increase your armor’s energy, with more resources being required the higher your armor’s energy level gets. 

Armor Charge is an integral part of this build’s armor mod choice. If you want to know the best methods for generating orbs of power for Armor Charge, check our guide here. We will be getting the majority of our armor charge stacks from Firesprites generated by our sub-class abilities and fragments.

Helmet Mods

This build will be making use of mods that increase the speed at which you get your grenade and super abilities back. As a result, we want to equip the following to our helmet: Ashes to Assets, Hands-On, and Kinetic Siphon.

Ashes to Assets generates Super energy whenever you get grenade kills while Hands-On allows the user to gain Super energy after getting melee kills. This allows for both of your class abilities to generate bonus Super energy!

If you find your not armor charged quite as often as you’d like you can equip the Kinetic Siphon mod to your helmet which will allow you to generate orbs of power by getting multiple kills with your Kinetic weapon in a short period of time.

Arm Mods

Our arm mods are centered around getting our grenade energy back as quickly as possible. We can accomplish this by using a combination of the following mods: Font of Focus, Grenade Kick Start, and or Impact Induction.

Font of Focus grants you a bonus to your Discipline stat while you have a stack of armor charge which will increase the speed by which you get your grenade ability back. This mod will also cause your armor charge to slowly decay over time so keep that in mind.

Grenade Kick Start will refill your grenade energy by consuming stacks of armor charge. The more stacks of armor charge you have, the more grenade energy you will get back. It isn’t recommended that you use both Grenade Kick Start and Font of Focus since each one uses armor charge in different ways. The next arm mod can be used with either of these two.

Impact Induction has the very simple effect of granting you grenade energy whenever you cause damage with your melee attack. Considering the fact that this build has almost infinite melee attacks this is indeed the most desirable arm mod out of the three.

It is recommended that you run two to three copies of Impact Induction with only one copy of Grenade Kickstart or Font of Focus.

Chest Mods

There really aren’t any chest mods that are integral to this build’s function. Run whatever mods you feel best fit your playstyle. A solid recommendation is Font of Endurance since it will increase your Guardian’s Resilience stat while you have at least one stack of charge. This effect can be stacked with multiple copies of the same mod, so feel free to do so if your base resilience stat isn’t very high.

Leg Mods

This build makes use of three mods: Kinetic Weapon Surge, Innervation, and Invigoration. The most important of the three leg mods is Kinetic Weapon Surge. Kinetic Weapon Surge boosts your Kinetic Weapon damage while you have at least one stack of Armor Charge. This mod’s effect can be stacked by equipping multiple copies of the mod. 

Unfortunately, this mod costs 3 energy to equip which might be a bit expensive for players that don’t have high-level gear. If you don’t have the energy to spare, or you’d just rather have even faster cooldowns on your grenade or melee abilities then you should equip the Innervation or Invigoration mods. 

Innervation reduces your grenade cooldown each time you pick up an orb of power. Invigoration reduces your melee cooldown each time you pick up an orb of power. Generating orbs of power isn’t really a focus for this build thanks to Firesprites being able to give us armor charge. However, our fire team members may generate orbs of power for us so these mods can still be pretty useful on many different occasions.

Class Item Mods

When it comes to class item mods, we recommend Font of Restoration which grants a boost to your Guardian’s recovery stat while you have at least one stack of armor charge. You can also take the Time Dilation mod which will slow your Armor Charge decay, granting you longer blue armor mod buffs. Finally, you’ll want to take the Bomber mod which will reduce your grenade cool-down each time you use your class ability dodge. 

Recommended Armor Exotics

After you’ve spent some time mastering this build you may want to kick it up a notch by making use of any one of these following exotic armors:

Assassin’s Cowl is a fantastic exotic for this build. Its armor perk Vanishing Execution grants your Guardian the ability to become invisible after killing an enemy with a powered melee attack. This effect also restores a portion of your Guardian’s health and shields. The stronger the enemy that triggers this effect, the longer the invisibility will last and the more health and shields you will regain. 

Radiant Dance Machines is another great option, it grants the user the ability to dodge multiple times for a short period of time after dodging near an enemy. This ability is perfect for this build since we only get our melee ability back if we use our dodge near an enemy. All of these exotics increase the frequency at which you can use the build’s primary gameplay loop.

Join the High Ground

With this build’s core gameplay loop you should be able to clear most content Destiny 2 has to offer. Whether you want to be the primary damage dealer of your fireteam or you want to clear some content solo, this build has the potential and flexibility to do it all. Looking for more powerful Destiny 2 builds? Sign up for our newsletter today and lead your fire team to the high ground!

Happy Gaming!