Become Invincible With the Best Solar 3.0 Titan Build in Destiny 2 Right Now

With the recent release of Season 17: Season of the Haunted in Destiny 2, along came the next huge subclass overhaul - Solar 3.0 - following on from Void 3.0 with Season of the Risen. These updates of the Solar subclass for Titans, Hunters, and Warlocks alike have fundamentally changed how these classes are built and used in both PvE and PvP.

While initial reactions to these updates were… mixed, players have now had time to learn the ins and outs of these new powers. They have discovered that Titans especially are now stronger than they have ever been, with the ability to become nigh invincible in PvE activities, no matter the difficulty.

In the new Light 3.0 system, players are given much greater depth and control in their build crafting. Yet, with this added complexity come extra challenges and potentially overwhelming possibilities with lots of moving parts to consider when thinking about making a full build. Thankfully, this guide has you covered with the most powerful Solar 3.0 Titan build in Destiny right now.

This guide will cover:

1. Playstyle
2. Subclass (abilities, Aspects, and Fragments)
3. Weapons (good synergies and perks)
4. Armour and Mods (stats and mods)

Playstyle

This build is centered around high survivability via the new restoration and cure Solar effects, and high damage through rapid ability regen, new scorch effects, and weapon/ability buffs. You’ll often be in close range, throwing a barrage of flaming hammers directly at enemies’ noggins to increase ability damage and weapon damage alike.

This style features:

• Near invincibility
• Incredible crowd-control
• Strong single-target damage
• Rapid ability recharge
• Versatility and easy use

It is important to note that this build does not rely on seasonal mods, such as Classy Restoration. Therefore, it should stay powerful and relevant in the future, unless Bungie nerfs features integral to its effectiveness.

Subclass: The Tools of Destruction

As a reminder, this is a Solar 3.0 Titan build so we’ll be making use of the abilities and Aspects unique to this class and subclass to powerful effect.

Keywords

As was the case with Void 3.0, having knowledge of the new Solar 3.0 keywords is integral to understanding how and why a build works so well. With Solar, however, there are more keywords to be aware of at any given time than Void.

• Cure: You are healed in a burst of mending Solar Light. This buff simply heals you for a fixed portion of health.
• Restoration: You regenerate health and shields over time. Importantly, this effect cannot be interrupted by taking damage. This buff is crucial to our survivability, so we’ll be focusing on maintaining this buff.
• Radiant: Your weapons are enhanced by the power of the Traveler and deal increased damage to foes. Who doesn’t love bonus damage? Like restoration, we’ll be focusing on maintaining this buff.
• Scorch: The target is singed by destructive Solar Light, taking damage over time. Scorch damage increases as the target accumulates more scorch stacks. After 100 scorch stacks are applied to the target, they ignite. In essence, this is a damage-over-time effect that will boost our damage output with the potential to cause high-damage ignitions once enough scorch stacks are applied.
• Ignite: A large, damaging Solar explosion in an area around the target. Ignitions are perfect for clearing groups of enemies or dealing bonus damage to bosses.

Abilities:

• Super - Hammer of Sol: Summon a flaming hammer that can be thrown repeatedly, exploding into molten shards upon impact. Great damage output and range. Thrown Hammers are also a source of Sunspots in this build and serve to increase Super duration.
• Class Ability - Towering Barricade: Either Barricade works well but Towering provides extra protection over the Rally Barricade.
• Jump - As always this is up to personal preference but I’m a big fan of Strafe Lift for the added manoeuverability.
• Charged Melee - Throwing Hammer: Throw a hammer from a distance. Picking up a thrown hammer fully recharges your melee ability. This ability is the backbone of the build as the main source of Sunspots and gaining stacks of Roaring Flames to further increase our damage potential.

• Grenade - Preference: Unlike Void 3.0 where Suppression Grenades were a clear choice, there are a lot of viable grenade options open to all Solar 3.0 subclasses. Personally, I’ve been a big fan of Incendiary Grenades for their huge damage and heavy scorch potential.

Aspects & Fragments

Now we get to the really interesting part - Aspects and Fragments. These allow us to significantly alter the way certain abilities function or add major benefits to them, as well as dictate how many Fragment slots we have available. These are incredibly powerful upgrades that establish the playstyle we’re aiming for. The key is to pick Aspects that will be giving you as big a benefit as often as possible.

Roaring Flames (Aspect)

Final blows with Solar abilities or ignitions increase the damage of your Solar abilities up to a 3x damage stack. Additionally, while Roaring Flames is active, your uncharged melee attack deals Solar damage and scorches targets.

The main reason for choosing this Aspect is to pair it with the Throwing Hammer melee ability to quickly gain the max damage boost as the hammer can be picked up and thrown again, bypassing ability cooldowns entirely. Furthermore, with each stack your hammer will deal increased damage, going as far as to allow you to kill many tougher enemies in a single hammer throw.

Roaring Flames also grants two Fragment slots, letting us raise the power of this build even further.

Sol Invictus (Aspect)

Solar ability final blows, Hammer of Sol impacts, and defeating scorched targets create Sunspots. While standing in a Sunspot, abilities regenerate faster and your Super drains more slowly. Additionally, Sunspots apply scorch and damage any enemies foolish enough to walk through them. Most importantly, however, entering a Sunspot applies restoration, regenerating your health and shields.

Pairing Sol Invictus with the Throwing Hammer melee ability and the Exotic helmet Loreley Splendor will allow you to more or less heal on demand by creating Sunspots. Simply get a final blow with an ability such as a Throwing Hammer (even easier when you have 3x stacks of Roaring Flames) or use your Barricade to create a Sunspot (thanks to Loreley Splendor), healing you greatly and increasing ability regeneration.

Like Roaring Flames, Sol Invictus also grants two Fragment slots, bringing us to a total of four Fragment slots.

Ember of Torches (Fragment): Powered melee attacks (in our case, Throwing Hammers) against combatants make you and your nearby allies radiant. In other words, using our melee ability will increase our weapon damage!

Ember of Singeing (Fragment): Your class ability recharges faster when you scorch targets. This Fragment is great for keeping the engine running so to speak, as there are armour mods that take advantage of activating class abilities and, thanks to Loreley Splendor, our Barricade is the main source of Sunspots that provide healing and ability regeneration.

Ember of Searing (Fragment): Defeating scorched targets grants melee energy. While this may sound pointless considering the plan is to pick up our Throwing Hammer immediately, bypassing cooldowns, plans don’t always work out quite how we imagine. The Throwing Hammer is key to the build, so you never want to be without it. But what if you lose it in a crowd of enemies or it ricocheted away from you? It’s not worth potentially dying in endgame content to collect it. Ember of Searing gives us an easy ‘get out of jail free’ card if we lose our hammer.

Ember of Solace (Fragment): This Fragment increases the duration of
radiant and restoration effects, boosting the efficiency of the boost and thereby increasing damage potential and survivability.

Weapons: Picks and Perks

While the best Void 3.0 Titan build did not favour any particular weapons or perks besides Void weapons and general ability regeneration perks, there are some important details to note when creating a Solar 3.0 build. Weapons are still very much up to personal preference, but perks tailor-made for the new Solar kit are much more influential.

The elephant in the room here is Incandescent, a new weapon perk added with Season of the Haunted. Incandescent spreads scorch to nearby enemies upon final blows, with more powerful combatants and Guardians causing scorch in a larger radius. This perk paired with the powerhouse Calus Mini-Tool submachine gun is a destructive combination for any Solar 3.0 build. Not only will foes be toppled with ease through deadly firepower, but the Ember of Singeing and Ember of Searing Fragments are activated through scorching targets, granting class ability energy and melee energy respectively.

Besides the Incandescent perk, the usual perks for increasing damage or ability regeneration are also strong contenders:

• Adrenaline Junkie: Gain stacks of increased weapon handling and damage for a short time, up to a maximum of 5x stacks (33% damage increase). Weapon final blows grant a single stack while grenade kills grant maximum stacks. Given how fast ability regeneration is in this build, acquiring the full benefit of this perk is a breeze.
• Demolitionist is helpful for getting grenade energy back even quicker as kills using a weapon with this perk grant 10% grenade energy (with a 3-second cooldown).
• Killing Wind is a fun perk to accelerate the chaos with weapon kills granting bonus range, mobility, and handling.

Any perks that are typically strong will be just as good as usual, such as Frenzy, Vorpal Weapon, and Heating Up.

Additionally, if you’re using the Elemental Armaments Well mod then using a Solar weapon to match your subclass is a great boost to creating Wells that replenish ability energy among other effects.

Armour and Mods: Dressed to Impress

Armour stats and mods, along with the Exotic armour piece you wear will always have a big impact on the performance of your build. They take it from good to great with only a few small tweaks, bringing everything in your build together in a nice, neat package.

Armour

As mentioned earlier, the best Exotic armour piece for this build is the Exotic helmet Loreley Splendor. If you are critically wounded with full class ability energy or when you activate your Barricade class ability, you create a Sunspot at your location that has improved restoration effects. However, as we have the Sol Invictus Aspect equipped, we also gain increased ability regeneration.

This is a powerful boost on its own, but when paired with our Aspects and Fragments we can really take advantage of this Exotic to become a nearly invincible force of nature on the battlefield. Given our Aspects and Fragments, along with armour stats and mods, our class ability recharges extremely fast. In other words, we will nearly always have access to a powerful source of healing and increased ability regeneration.

If you’ve missed a hammer or grenade, then simply activate your Barricade to recharge them faster. Low on health? Loreley Splendor will automatically consume your Barricade to create a Sunspot that heals you and counteracts virtually all damage thrown your way. It’s a lifesaver and an impressive tool in our toolbox.

Mods:

To take this build even further we have armour mods that increase our ability regeneration, particularly if we make a mistake and lose our rhythm.

• Ashes to Assets x2 (Helmet/Solar/3 Energy Cost) - Gain bonus Super on grenade kills.
• Grenade Kickstart x1 (Arms/Stasis/4 Energy Cost) - When your grenade energy is fully expended, you gain grenade energy.
• Bomber x2 (Class Item/Solar/2 Energy Cost) - Reduces grenade cooldown when using your class ability.

These mods are centered around grenades, getting them back quicker, and using them to gain Super energy in a simple but effective loop. This is notable as our Throwing Hammer melee ability can be picked up to bypass ability regeneration, making mods that regenerate melee ability relatively redundant, especially as we have the Ember of Searing Fragment already equipped.

For the remaining mods slots, we’ll be utilising Elemental Wells. Picking up an Elemental Well grants ability energy to your ability with the lowest current energy. However, picking up a Well matching your subclass (in this case Solar) grants energy to all of your abilities. These will further fuel the ability loop and enhance damage potential while being really easy to reap the rewards from, requiring little to no change to our playstyle.

Spawning Elemental Wells:

• Melee Wellmaker (4 Energy Cost) - Powered melee combatant final blows spawn Elemental Wells matching your subclass energy type. Given our specialisation around the Throwing Hammer melee ability, this mod is a must-have.
• Elemental Ordnance (3 Energy Cost) - Defeating a combatant with a grenade spawns an elemental well that matches your subclass energy type.
• Elemental Armaments (2 Energy Cost) - Combatant weapon final blows with a damage type that matches your subclass element have an escalating chance to spawn an Elemental Well. I personally prefer the versatility and consistency of Elemental Ordnance as I will not always be using a Solar weapon, yet many of this season’s best weapons are indeed Solar, such as the Calus Mini-Tool.

Weaponising the Elemental Wells:

• Well of Ordnance x2 (1 Energy Cost/Solar) - Picking up a Solar Elemental Well grants you additional grenade energy. Multiple copies of this mod increase this effect. This synergises well with Elemental Ordnance to create Wells that contribute to their own recharge in a simple cycle.
• Font of Might (4 Energy Cost) - Picking up an Elemental Well that matches your subclass energy type grants a temporary bonus to weapon damage of that same elemental type. As we’ll be generating Solar Wells regularly, Font of Might will provide great damage boosts to some of this season’s best weapons, including the powerful Calus Mini-Tool submachine gun.

Stats:

Lastly, we have armour stats, those fun little numbers spread across six stats. These are mostly up to personal preference so play around until you’ve found what stat distribution works best for you. Nevertheless, not all stats are made equally, and some are worth prioritising over others:

• Resilience: Prior to Season of the Haunted this was one of the weakest skills in the game. Now, however, it is undoubtedly the strongest stat in the entire game. It is worth reaching at least 80 or 90 for every build but reaching the full 100 Resilience will provide a whopping 40% damage resistance. I highly recommend reaching 100 if you can, making use of high Resilience stat armour and mods to boost this stat. Alongside the incredible healing potential of this build, Resilience is the major player in our survivability. Additionally, for Titans, this stat increases the recharge rate of class abilities, meaning our trusty Barricade will nearly always be at hand.
• Recovery: While this stat has perhaps become overshadowed by Resilience, Recovery is still a strong stat to have because it changes the speed at which your health will begin to recharge. In endgame activities, it is not always possible to utilise Sunspots so having moderately high Recovery can save you in a pinch.
• Discipline: This stat increases the grenade recharge rate, further ensuring you’ll always have a grenade ready. This is particularly important since they deal great damage and activate several of our powerful Aspects and Fragments.
• Intellect: This stat provides an increase to the Super recharge rate, and who doesn’t love summoning destructive flaming hammers?

Mighty Flaming Thor

Now you’re fully equipped to become the fire version of Thor with destructive searing throwing hammers and near invincibility.

With this build, you will burn through the new seasonal activity, Strikes, and even the new Dungeon, Duality, with ease. Furthermore, this build does not rely on seasonal mods and therefore should stay powerful and relevant in the future, unless Bungie decides certain features are too strong and need a nerf.

Enjoy your newfound power to destroy the enemies of the Light, Guardians.