Destiny 2: The Best PvP Hunter Build (2024)

Image: Bungie via HGG / Adam Watkins

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

When it comes to PvP, Hunters might just be the best class in the game. Hunters have access to some really strong abilities, including ranged melee attacks, powerful grenades, and versatile movement abilities. Solar Hunters are especially formidable in PvP, largely due to their extremely powerful Tripmine grenades. In this article, we’re breaking down the best Hunter PvP build in Destiny 2, focusing on making the most of Solar Hunter.

Let’s get started!

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Required Exotics

Like we mentioned before, this build is focused around the powerful Tripmine grenades Solar Hunters have access to. The goal of this build is to keep the uptime on your grenades as high as possible. These grenades are great for denying space and have the potential to kill multiple enemy Guardians at one time.

Exotic Armor

This build makes use of the Young Ahamkara’s Spine gauntlets as its Exotic armor piece. These gauntlets have the Wish-Dragon Teeth Armor Perk. This perk grants our Tripmine grenade a few new buffs and modifiers that make them even more deadly. The exact benefits provided by this Exotic are as follows:

• An increase to the explosive length and width of Tripmines by 14 meters.
• An increase of around 14% to explosive damage from Tripmines.
• Tripmine explosions no longer damage the user.
• Tripmine Explosions no longer have damage fall off.
• An increase to Tripmine placement duration from 10s to 30s.
• Tripmine durability increased to 100HP with 50% additional damage resistance.
• Solar ability damage recharges Tripmine grenade ability energy by 33%. 
• Hitting opponents directly with the Trimine counts as two instances of Solar ability damage.

Exotic Weapons

There is no required Exotic for this build. As a general rule, you should use whatever weapons you’re best with when taking on The Crucible. For this build in particular, we recommend using a weapon with the Demolitionist trait. 

Demolitionist grants 10% grenade ability energy each time you get a kill with a weapon that has this trait. This effect is increased to 20% when on a shotgun, sniper rifle, glaive, or fusion rifle. This trait also refills your weapon’s magazine whenever you use your grenade cooldown.

Aspects and Fragments

This build’s aspects and fragments are all centered around making our grenades even more deadly and increasing the recharge rate of our abilities while targets are Scorched. Our aspects and fragments also provide additional bonuses to our class ability and super.

Aspects

Our first Aspect for this build is called Knock’em Down. This Aspect grants 2 Fragment slots and provides enhancements to all three of our Solar supers. In the case of this build, Knock’em Down increases the number of projectiles thrown from the Blade Barrage Super.

Note that its secondary ability — which refills your melee whenever you get a Throwing Knife kill while Radiant — doesn’t apply here, since we have no way of becoming Radiant.

Our second Aspect is called On Your Mark. This Aspect grants 3 Fragment slots and grants you and nearby allies increased weapon handling reload speed whenever you get precision final blows with a weapon. This effect can stack up to 3 times, and activating your class ability grants max stacks of this buff.

Fragments

Our first Fragment is called Ember of Singeing. This Fragment grants increased regeneration to your class ability whenever you Scorch targets. This Fragment triggers whenever you hit enemies with your Tripmine grenade, melee ability, Super, or weapons, as long as they apply Scorch to your targets.

Ember of Mercy is our next Fragment and it grants a Restoration effect to yourself and nearby allies whenever you revive an ally. It also grants the user Restoration whenever you pick up a Firesprite. This Fragment grants the user plus 10 to their resistance stat. The first effect of this Fragment doesn’t trigger too often because not every Crucible game mode allows review for your teammates.

Ember of Searing takes our third Fragment slot for this build. It grants melee energy whenever you defeat Scorched targets, and will also spawn a Firesprite. Considering how often we use our grenade ability, we’ll be generating Firesprites left and right on the battlefield. There is also the cool little fact that Firesprites grant a small bit of grenade energy whenever you pick one up.

Our second to last Fragment is called Ember of Ashes. This fragment applies additional stacks of Scorch to targets, and while Scorch damage won’t get you a kill on its own, the tick damage is pretty good at getting targets low and preventing them from regenerating health. We would normally use this Fragment to help trigger Ignitions, but this isn’t really consistent in PvP, so we don’t recommend going for it.

Ember of Resolve is our final Fragment. It grants you the Cure effect whenever you get a kill with a grenade. This will allow you to get right back into the fight after getting a grenade kill. 

Abilities

Our abilities for this build are all about controlling space and shutting down the enemy. All abilities listed below can be traded out based on the user’s preference except the grenade ability, Tripmine.

Super: This build uses the Blade Barrage Super. This Super flings a bunch of Solar charged knives that explode on contact. While it does have a rather lengthy cooldown time, it makes up for it by being an excellent shutdown Super, shutting down defensive supers like Titan Bubble and Well of Radiance.

Class Ability: Our chosen class ability for this build is called Gambler’s Dodge. This ability makes your Hunter perform a tumbling dodge roll that dodges incoming damage. Using this ability near enemies refills your charged melee ability. When we combine this with some of our armor mods, we get a class ability that grants both melee and grenade energy on use near targets. Still, if you don’t like using your melee all that much, you can take any of the other class abilities instead — they’re all really good.

Melee Ability: Our melee ability of choice for this build is Proximity Knife. This Knife attaches to enemy Guardians and surfaces then explodes whenever an enemy comes close. We’re using this knife as another means of denying space to our opponents. Even if you miss your initial knife throw, there’s a chance another enemy Guardian will trigger its proximity-based explosion.

Grenade Ability: The main focus of this build is the Tripmine Grenade. This grenade sticks to surfaces and explodes whenever someone passes throw its laser trigger. This explosion deals good damage and moderately scorches targets. This grenade has a very high skill ceiling, but it’s really powerful. You can use it like the Proximity Knife and deny space, place it on the objective, stick it onto enemy Guardians, or stick it to a wall next to the cover enemy guardians are using to force them to either leave cover or trigger the Tripmine.

Armor Mods

The armor mods for this Destiny 2 Hunter PvP build are centered around getting our grenade energy back as quickly as possible, all while improving our general combat efficiency on the battlefield. A Hunter’s best stats in The Crucible are Recovery and Mobility, so use your first armor mod slot to make sure both of those stats are as close to 100 as possible.

Helmet Mods

Our helmet mods are Powerful Friends and Harmonic Targeting. Powerful Friends increases your allies’ armor charge stack by one each time you pick up an Orb of Power. Harmonic Targeting improves the targeting, accuracy, and aim-down-sights speed of all solar weapons. You could also run Ashes to Assets as your final helmet mod if you have the energy for it.

Gauntlet Mods

The mods used on our Exotic gauntlets are Font of Focus and Impact Induction. Font of Focus increases your Discipline stat by 30 points so long as you have at least one stack of armor charge. This is a great way of speeding up our grenade regen, given the fact that this build generates Orbs of Power pretty consistently. 

Impact Induction reduces your grenade cooldown whenever you deal damage with your melee attack. If you’ve got three spare energy, we recommend running the Firepower mod as well. This mod causes Orbs of Power to spawn whenever you get a grenade kill.

Chest Armor Mod

The general rule of thumb when it comes to chest mods in PvP is to run either flinch mods or damage reduction mods. In the case of this build, we are running two Unflinching Harmonic Aim mods, which reduce flinch from incoming damage while holding a solar weapon. Even so, the Sinper and Melee Damage Resistance mods are both great options as well.

Leg Mods

For our leg mods, we are running two copies of Innervation and a single copy of Font of Agility. Innervation reduces your grenade cooldown whenever you pick up an Orb of Power. With one equipped, you get a 10% cooldown reduction, and with two equipped you get a 13% reduction. It’s definitely better to pair one of these with a copy of Absolution, since that mod reduces all ability cooldowns by 5%. The only issue there is that Absolution costs 3 energy, so if you’re low on energy, a second copy of Innervation will just have to do.

Of course, we have Font of Agility, which increases your Agility stat by 30 points so long as you have at least one stack of armor charge. This mod is perfect if you can get your Agility stat up to 70 before equipping it, making your Agility stat 100 while armor charged.

Class Item Mod

Our final set of mods are some of the most important for this build. We have Reaper, Bomber, and Distribution. This build uses one copy of Reaper and two copies of Bomber. We would run a copy of Distribution as well, but we lack the energy slots for it. 

Reaper makes it so that the next kill you get after using your class ability will spawn an Orb of Power. This is super useful for both our Guardian and their teammates since we’re running the Powerful Friends mod. Next up, Bomber reduces our grenade cooldown each time we use our class ability. This situation is very similar to that of the Innervation and Absolution one — having one copy of both Bomber and Distribution is better than stacking two copies of Bomber, but if you’re running low on energy, two copies will do.

Join the High Ground!

And that’s it for or guide to the best Hunter PvP build in Destiny 2 — thanks for reading! It’s pretty remarkable that one of the oldest surviving Destiny 2 PvP builds is still really powerful, even in the current Seasons. Are you looking for more Destiny 2 build guides? Consider signing up for our newsletter today!

Happy gaming!