Destiny 2: Best Arc 3.0 Titan Build For PvE

Image: Bungie via HGG / Adam Watkins

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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 Jeffrey Hsu

With the recent release of the 21st Season of Destiny 2, the Arc subclass has received some much-needed buffs. This includes buffs to Arc supers, armor mods, and some powerful perks available through the seasonal Artifact. With all of these changes, why not try out an Arc Titan build… in PvE!

While it’s definitely no secret that Arc Titans are absolute units in The Crucible, they’re much less common in PvE. With Season 21 bringing us Arc Surge, we here at High Ground Gaming figured now would be a great time to show off the havoc a well-crafted Arc Titan build can reap in PvE.

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Required Exotics for PvE Arc Titan

This build makes use of two Exotics: Coldheart and Armamentarium. If you have it available, we also recommend running Thunderlord in your heavy weapon inventory.

While you can’t have both Coldheart and Thunderlord equipped at the same time, it is nice to have Thunderlord in your inventory just in case you need a weapon with a bit more oomph while fighting a boss. 

Exotic Armor

Our Exotic armor of choice is Armamentarium. This Exotic chest piece grants our Titan an extra grenade slot. This slot will hold a spare grenade of the same type you have equipped, so you can’t take 2 different grenades with you into a fight. This Exotic is not limited to just the Arc sub-class and will work for any Titan sub-class grenade.

Exotic Weapons

Our Exotic weapon of choice is Coldheart, which should come as no surprise. Trace Rifles are some of the strongest special weapons in the game and this one is no exception.

While Coldheart does deal great damage, its main function in this PvE Arc Titan build revolves around its intrinsic ability to generate Ionic Traces whenever the weapon’s beam is at full power. This weapon becomes even better for Season 21 once you unlock the Seasonal Artifact Perk, as it gains the ability to stun Overload Champions!

Arc Aspects and Fragments for PvE Arc Titan

This build’s Aspects and Fragments are designed to improve the effectiveness of our class grenades and generate massive blinding explosions when killing enemies with Arc weapons. All three of the available Arc Aspects can be used in this build, but one of them is mandatory.

Arc Aspects

Touch of Thunder is the only mandatory Aspect in this build, due to its buff to your Arc grenades.

This build makes use of the Flashbang grenade, as this Aspect will grant them a small shockwave on bounce that Blinds targets. That way, you won’t have to wait for the grenade to detonate in order to quickly blind targets.

Alternatively, you can run the other types of grenades such as Pulse for extra Ionic Traces, Lightning if you want to jolt targets without an additional fragment, or Storm if you want an effect that has a bit more tracking.

Our second Aspect is up to the player’s choice. Both Aspects have their strengths and are useful in different situations based on your playstyle.

Knockout is great for those wanting to really channel their inner Titan and melee anything that gets too close. While its perks are great, the real issue is that we hardly ever find time to use it, as this build is all about dispatching enemies with grenades and Arc weapons.

Coldheart works best at medium range, so you shouldn’t really find yourself in melee range with enemies too often. Not to mention that getting up close and personal in higher-difficulty content is almost always a death sentence. It’s for these reasons that we suggest running the next Aspect instead of Knockout.

Juggernaut grants your Titan a frontal over-shield that blocks damage while your class ability energy is full. When this shield takes enough damage it will break and consume your class ability energy. Notably, the shield has significantly more health while you are Amplified.

This Aspect grants us some increased survivability when repositioning, closing the distance, or running to cover. It’s also a passive ability, so you don’t have to think about using it in order to gain its buffs. Just play like you normally would, and you’ll get value from it. 

Arc Fragments

Our first Arc Fragment, Spark of Beacons, grants our Titan’s Arc Special weapons the ability to generate a Blinding explosion whenever you get a kill with them while Amplified.

This effectively turns our Coldheart into a grenade launcher, because killing enemies with this weapon is super easy. Regardless if your targets are mini-bosses, Champions, or regular adds, this thing will melt health bars.

Spark of Amplitude is up next. This Fragment will generate orbs of power whenever you get 2 or more kills in quick succession while amplified. This is mostly here to provide orbs of power to our team, but we also have a few armor mods that make use of orbs of power as well.

Our next Fragment is called Spark of Shock, and it’s probably the most important Fragment in this build. This Fragment allows your Arc grenades to apply Jolt to targets.

This effect stacks with the Blinding effect the Flashbang grenade has, turning your Flashbang grenade into a Blinding/Jolting grenade. This Fragment will reduce your Discipline stat by 10.

Spark of Ions is our final Fragment and serves as an extension of the previous Fragment. This Fragment will generate an Ionic Trace whenever you defeat a Jolted target.

Considering our grenade now Jolts targets, this means your grenade kills will spawn Ionic Traces, and any enemies that didn’t die to your grenade can be quickly followed up on with your kinetic or Arc special weapon to generate an Ionic Trace.

Arc Abilities

Arc Super: Choose based on personal preference. Both Fists of Havoc and Thunder Crash are fine supers. They both deal good damage and both received balance changes in Season 21 to improve their performance in PvE.

For this PvE Arc Titan Build, we’re running Thunder Crash for its high single-target damage, but Fist of Havoc is also a great pick for all-around use.

Arc Class Ability:  This build is running the Towering Barricade class ability, because sometimes you and your team need a bit more cover. This class ability is perfect for protecting yourself or allies that are going for a revive. It can also be used to peak enemies and get a little bit of damage in while waiting for your abilities to recharge.

Rally Barricade is also a perfectly fine option, it just doesn’t provide as much cover as the Towering Barricade.

Arc Melee Ability: Our Melee ability of choice is Thunderclap. This ability forces you to plant your feet and charge up a melee strike. The longer you charge it, the more damage it will do. This ability has a decent amount of range to it, and it can hit multiple opponents at one time.

You can release this melee attack early to get a quick melee that’s similar to most other Titan melee attacks. While you can run any of the other Titan melee abilities, we find that having to run for a few seconds before you can use your ability feels a bit clunky.

Arc Grenade Ability: As mentioned before, we are running the Flashbang grenade for this build. This allows us to Blind especially dangerous enemies from a distance, so we can take care of weaker enemies first. The Blind status effect prevents those affected by it from firing their weapons.

Thanks to our Fragments, this grenade will also Jolt targets, which makes them take more damage Plus, when they die, an electric current will chain to other nearby enemies and deal Arc damage to them.

Armor Mods for PvE Arc Titan

Our armor mods for this PvE Arc Titan build are centered around stat and ability improvements, as well as orb of power generation for our fireteam. These mods should allow you to always have a grenade available, so long as you are killing enemies.

Helmet Mods

Ashes to Assests is our first helmet mod, and it’s pretty strong in this build. This mod generates Super energy based on the number of kills you get with your grenade. Considering how often we will be throwing out our grenade, it’s safe to say you’ll be getting your super back pretty quickly.

Harmonic Siphon is our next mod, but you can run Kinetic Siphon instead if you have the energy. This will generate orbs of power whenever you kill multiple enemies in quick succession with your Arc element weapons.

Our final helmet mod is called Powerful Friends, and it grants armor charge to your allies whenever you pick up an orb of power.

Gauntlet Mods

We are running Firepower as our first gauntlet mod. This mod spawns an orb of power on grenade kills.

Next up is Momentum Trancer, which generates melee energy whenever you deal damage with your grenade ability.

Finally, we have Impact Induction. This mod restores grenade energy whenever you deal damage with your melee attack.

Chest Armor Mod

Font of Endurance is our first chest mod. This mod increases our Resilience stat by 30 points while we have armor charge.

Arc Reserves is up next, and it simply increases the amount of ammo we can carry in all our Arc weapons.

Our last chest mod is whatever elemental resistance mod you need for the end-game content you’re running. Alternatively, you could just run an extra copy of Arc Reserves.

Leg Mods

The most important mod in this build is Elemental Charge, which is also our first leg mod. This mod makes it so that your Ionic Traces have a chance of granting you armor charge. Due to the amount of Ionic Traces this build can generate, this mod will make sure you never run out of armor charge. 

Innervation is the next one, and it restores grenade energy whenever you pick up an orb of power. Fun fact – Ionic Traces count as orbs of power for this mod, so long as you have Elemental Charge equipped.

You can either choose to run another copy of Innervation, or you can run a copy of Arc Surge as your third mod, whichever works best for you.

Class Item Mod

Finally, we have our class item mods. First up is Font of Restoration, which will provide a +30 to your Recovery stat while you have armor charge.

Next up is another new mod, Powerful Attraction. This mod will pull in any nearby orbs of power whenever you use your class ability.

Last but not least is Bomber, which grants grenade energy whenever you use your class ability near enemies. 

Join the High Ground!

With this PvE Arc Titan build, you’ll be providing value to your fire team in a multitude of ways – dealing great damage, Blinding and Jolting enemies, generating orbs of power, granting armor charge, and providing cover for your fireteam when they need it most.

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Happy gaming!