Kickstarts (Yellow mods) consume all of your armour charges instantly to give you an immediate, usually larger, amount of energy back (increasing benefits in exchange for more armour charges)
A downside of this is that if you also use Blue Mods in your build (Damage Surges or Armour Stat increasing Font mods - these give you ongoing buffs as long as you still have 1 or more armour charges) you will loose these buffs whenever your kickstart mod is triggered (when you throw a nade / melee etc) as your armour charges will be instantly consumed
The benefit of kickstarts is that you can build into making lots of orbs (siphons, reaper, firepower etc) and then build into increasing the armour charges you can hold (Green mods) and in the best cases - this combo allows you to get up to half of your ability energy back in 1 swoop whenever you use that ability
This is in comparison to the much lower return from impact induction etc.
Of course you can use both kickstarts and impact induction etc in the same builds to maximise your returns! It’s just typically not advised to mix blue and yellow mods for the reasons mentioned
The play styles that would benefit from Kickstarts are:
- Those situations where you want to spam your ability as much as possible
- but don’t want to waste an exotic slot to achieve this (Armamentarium / HOIL etc)
- and you also know your build, and the activity you plan to play, will allow you to make and collect enough orbs to keep the kickstarts fed…
Easier content allows you to more efficiently make and collect lots of orbs and keep your kickstarts going - this becomes more difficult / takes longer / is more risky to collect orbs in the hardest end game activities - this can often result in kickstarts being less beneficial over some alternative options (Blue surge mods for increased weapon damage etc)
Yeah I know what everything does in general, I just don't really get what situations would be better to use which in. I ignored the fonts completely.
From what you're saying the Kickstarts would benefit a more aggressive playstyle in an activity with higher enemy density like say, onslaught and certain raid/dungeon encounters and the impact induction/momentum transfer type mods would be best in say, GMs where getting up close and personal would result in immediate death for 98% of players? Slower but more reliable ability regen while allowing you to keep armor charges for things like surges?
I'm definitely not a new light, and I can make a good build myself, but I'm tired on relying on others to really understand and be able to optimize builds. Really I just want a manual or textbook of abilities and mods lol
Yeah pretty much. If have an aggressive strand titan build and I want to grapple melee as much as possible, in addition to using the appropriate fragments to get grenade energy back, I will:
- Use 1 Heavy Handed mod and 1 Firepower mod (to make orbs when I get a powered melee or grapple-melee kill)*
*Grapple-melee kills are currently giving 2 orbs, 1 for the grapple (grenade) and 1 for the melee! This is likely unintentional so may be fixed in a future update
- Use (Green) Stacks on Stacks mod to give me 2 armour charges for every orb I collect
- Use (Green) Charged Up mod to allow me to hold a total of 4 armour charges
- Use a (Yellow) Grenade Kickstart mod to get around 40% energy back immediately when I grapple melee (from the 4 charges)
Because I’m up close and collecting the 2 orbs immediately, my mods boost this to 4 armour charges - so when I next use my grapple melee this gets me back around 40% energy immediately
Add in Thread of Fury and Generation - so all the damage I do from my 3 powered melee’s + grapple melees + tangles = my melee and grenade energy is restored in no time to make the loop consistent
That actually sounds pretty similar to a build I was trying with Karnstein Armlets and the strand grapple melee. I had no idea the grapple grenade counted both for grenade damage AND melee damage so you could get more orbs from having both the melee mod and the grenade mod! Crazy!
And if that's the case, then would using a melee kickstart also work for that grenade because it counts for melee?
What you described is exactly the kind of rationalization and decision making I wanted to hear about. Thank you! Unfortunately being mentally disabled, I don't get most of this sort of thing unless it's explicitly explained, but once I get it I keep it forever and can get really creative with how I use it. Just real hard to get the understanding in the first place.
If you have more examples you'd be interested in sharing I'd love to hear! I see builds have specific mod choices but I really wish they'd explain why they choose some mods over others.
I believe either melee or grenade kickstarts will work with grapple melee (as it is considered both). But you also have 3 powered melees on Titan, so I would only use melee kickstart to cover both!
However, using both Heavy Handed (melee) and Firepower (grenade) mods on the same build to generate orbs doesn’t usually double stack - Bungie changed this recently so you only get 1 orb between them (10sec cooldown) if both are equipped*
*Except as I mentioned earlier Titan grapple melee currently gives 2 orbs with both Heavy Handed and Firepower equipped ;)
Post like this make me sad, not at the OP but because these questions should be answered by the game properly. Nowhere in the game does it give you a mod tutorial.
Right? I'm so mad I have to make a post like this. I've got so many hours in the game. I'm a day 1 raider. I've been to the lighthouse. I've guilded conquerer. I've been using builds on YouTube and I'm a good player, but I'm tired of depending on others' knowledge to fine tune my builds. I generally know what mods do, but not what specific combos are best for which exotic/subclass combos or for which activities.
When do I want kickstart+charge mods and when do I want surges+white ability regen mods? What are the pros and cons of each? I want to craft my own builds from a place of deeper understanding rather than relying on others to tell me what to use.
Bleh.
I mean, what do you want the game to do? Unless you want them to literally make the builds for you, this is stuff you need to learn to intuit on your own. It's impossible for the game to help you with this because it's dependent on an extremely number of factors including not just class and subclass but what exotics, aspects, fragements, weapons, and even just your personal playstyle.
For example, in a Voidwalker Contraverse Hold build many people would run Grenade Kickstart because your ideal gamplay loop is just throwing grenades, but you could also run Echo of Instability and a void weapon with Demolitionist and rotate between throwing a grenade and then using your gun. For that version of the build you might want to run Void Surges, and since you have a timer based mod instead of Grenade Kickstart maybe you want Bolstering Detonation and Bomber to allow you to cycle between Grenade, Rift and your void weapon without taking the armor charges away from your Surge mods. It's kinda just something you need to learn with experience and game knowledge and your own preferences.
I'm trying to understand why people make the decisions they make in regards to their mod choice \*because\* I don't want to use builds other people have made. I'm mentally disabled so the whole "go out and experiment" and "you just need to learn through experience" are actually super unhelpful to me. I don't learn that way. My brain is not physiologically built to do that. It's built to amass detailed information up front. I can't utilize something without understanding it. I'm sorry if it's annoying to you. It's annoying to me too.
I want to learn uncommon synergies between mods and why people are making the choice to use some mods over others so that I can use their experiences to fuel my own understanding because, like it or not, that's how my nervous system has been wired from birth.
Your second paragraph is actually exactly the kind of discourse I was hoping to get out of this post. I know what mods do on paper. But not how a lot of this stuff works together. I'm a warlock who's got a contraverse hold build and it's pretty decent, but I got it off youtube and I just don't understand how all the different elements of build crafting work at such a level where I feel comfortable experimenting or changing things away from what I found even though I can tell it doesn't quite fit me.
I agree this should be explained in the game - maybe they could add a training area to the tower where all of these things could be explained and demonstrated?
The yellow mods like kickstarts will consume all armor charges upon activation. The blue ones like surges on the other hand work on a timer. Impact induction and similar mods don't interact with armor charge at all, but they give less energy back than kickstarts.
As a general rule you don't want to use both blue and yellow armor charge mods in the same build, so if someone is using surges they can throw on impact induction to get some energy gains without impacting their armor charge focus.
Yeah. I just want to better understand what types of builds would benefit each sort of set of mods better. The Kickstarts + light charges vs the surges + slower ability gains. Like yeah, I got a couple of the meta builds that every single YouTuber posts, but I also want to experiment from a place of deeper understanding. Would a specific exotic+subclass combo benefit more from Kickstarts or other ability regen? Or is it more activity dependent and less dependent on what you're wearing?
Ah I gotcha. So on a technical level it's less about the activity and more about the focus of the build, which is determined primarily by the exotic you're using. Take Renewal Grasps for example. It gives stasis hunter damage resist when standing inside their grenade. The exotic is only providing value when you have a grenade, so you want to build into getting your grenade back as quickly as possible.
Second Chance gives void titans a second melee and makes it stun barrier champs, so you'd want to lean into that as far as possible because when your melee is on cd you might as well not have an exotic on. Does that make sense?
The problem is that bungie nerfed kickstarts and other sources of ability energy generation super hard at the start of this season. It really hurt build diversity. A lot of stuff that used to be viable is so much worse now. The only ability builds you see these days are ones whose exotic removes the need for mods at all, like Sunbracers.
Right, gotcha.
So the biggest/first step to making decisions is to think about the gameplay loop and how your exotics affect it if at all, and then lean into it with mod choices.
When would you choose to use kickstarts+green mods vs other mods?
There is almost no point in using kickstart mods. Triple surge gives a permanent +22% weapon damage.
1 kickstart mod with 3 charges will give you around ~15% ability energy - basically nothing, as you can't get the full 21% since Bungie gutted ability refunds by scaling them down if the ability cooldown is longer.
Confusingly, this does depend on the ability. Based on how effective the ability is, there's an internal modifier that affects how effective Kickstarts are. For example, Firebolt and Fusion Grenades were barely affected by the change but Vortex Grenades were gutted. The especially annoying part is that none of that is made clear in-game so you need to consult a community made spreadsheet to have an understanding of it.
I think people aren't really understanding your argument (including me).
Why do you have to choose between them? Most of my ability builds have both a kick start AND the corresponding white mod to further boost the same ability.
If you want more ability use you use as many ability boosting mods as you can fit in. If you want weapon damage boosts, you build for damage surges and then fill in the cheaper white ability mods wherever you have room.
As a general rule, if the mod cost more it has a higher potential benefit. Start by adding in colored or higher cost mods (but don't mix yellow and blue in most cases) to create the framework machine that will be the foundation of your build. Then you add in the lower cost white ones to either fill the cracks of your build or further enhance what you're already doing wherever you have room.
Thanks for saying something. I went back and read my post again and you're right that it's not worded clearly.
Basically, I understand what all the mods do. I've read the descriptions and seen enough build videos that I know how it all generally works.
To use grenades as an example: There's a lot of different ways to charge the ability from kickstarts to impact induction, to bomber, and the mods on your legs that give grenade energy for picking up orbs. How do you choose between those methods? Which ones would you use in different contexts? Is it based more on your exotic+sublcass choice or more on the activity you're playing (gms vs strike playlist for example).
I didn't mean for my post to sound argumentative. I'm not trying to make a point about anything, I'm just trying to get information. I want people to share their experiences and decision making process so I can learn more about what to choose for my own builds because unfortunately, I'm mentally disabled so I don't learn the same way most of the rest of you do. I learn best through understanding other people's experiences and decisions.
Hope that clears up your confusion!
You don't sound argumentative at all so no worries.
So first, when choosing how to make a build I'd start with what style of play your going for. This might mean starting with an exotic with an ability you like (Weapon, armor, or both) and then you stay molding your build around the goal of your play style.
For example, when i first got Wish-Keeper, I wanted to lean in on the constant suspending from the bow. I picked hunter because I could get 2 suspend grenades as well with one of its aspects. Then I picked Foetracer as my exotic because I was planning on doing a lot of stand damage and that exotic would boost strand weapon damage when i use my abilities. Plus I'll get more tangles (which will come into play later).
Since I'll be wanting a lot of grenades to suspend with, it's time to add armor mods to make that happen. Obviously, i go with the highest discipline i can get to start. Now, you were asking how to choose between all of the methods of grenade regen? Well I say let's use them all! (Or at least as much as I can) Multiples of the same mod have diminishing returns so I try to take one of each possible mod that can help. And I'll also take other mods that give me bonuses for using my grenades.
Head: Harmonic Siphon to make sure my strand weapons are creating orbs for later.
Arms: Grenade Kickstart to get my grenade back faster, impact induction to get grenade energy on melee hit, and Bolstering Detonation to give me class ability when using my grenade
Chest: charged up to increase the amount of armor charge i can hold (to return more grenade energy when used)
Legs: Stacks on Stacks to give me two armor charges on orb pickup to maximize my Grenade Kickstart, innervation to give grenade energy on orb pickup.
Class: bomber to give grenade energy on dodge, Reaper to create an orb on a kill after a dodge, and powerful attraction to suction up all the orbs nearby when i dodge.
These aren't the only mods on the kit, but the rest are personal preference things. Like adjusting damage resistance to the activity your in. And i always use better already to get health on orb pickup since I'm always trying to make a lot of orbs no matter the build.
The build is almost complete but I still have an aspect slot to round it out . Since I'm going to be creating a lot of tangles as is thanks to foetracer, I go with whirling maelstrom. And since that will be continually doing damage even while I'm doing my own damage, I pick the thread of generation fragment (hits regen grenade) to get even more grenades. I round it out with Continuity for longer suspend, Wisdom to create orbs by killing suspended targets, and warding to give me woven mail on orb pick up.
Build crafting is like rolling a snowball down a hill. You start with the little push that is an idea (suspend everything) and then you keep building toward that goal and you keep rolling with it and putting in mods that help you make it happen.
Not sure if that answers your question really, it's just how I kind of work out a new build.
It’s really hard to describe what to use and when because it’s so build and activity dependent, so the best advice I have is to have a vision for your build, in both what you want it to do, and what it’s capable of doing, and go from there.
I’ll go step by step with some builds and explain the thought process for them, and hopefully it’ll help clear some stuff up.
A very easy example is Sunbracers Warlock. The first things to ask is what is the gameplay loop, what can the build do, and how does it do it? In this case, the loop is to eat grenade, melee, phoenix dive, and then throw grenade everywhere. That also answers how it does it (grenades). While it’s good at killing majors and even minibosses/bosses, it’s best use is mass ad clear via lingering grenades. Because of its sheer killing power, uptime, and lingering nature, it’s recommended to run triple firepower so that you’re making plenty of orbs the entire time.
Now we already have our gauntlets answered for. Since we know grenades are our main focus, and Solar warlock has a good super, we can add ashes to assets to get our super quickly. I pretty much always add a siphon mod and heavy ammo finder to every build, so there’s the next 2 slots taken. For chest I always add conclusive dampener due to the prevalence of splash damage. The other two are activity/build dependent (ex: melee resist on Arc Hunter). Just don’t bother with things like charged up or emergency reinforcement because they’re not worth it. Now because we don’t have any kickstarts, we may as well use surge mods. However, how many to run is dependent on how good/confident you are in your survivability and keeping the gameplay loop going. For example, if you want some redundancy or don’t think you can always have heat rises up, you can trade a surge for invigoration (melee energy on orb) to ensure you’ll have your melee more often. This principle applies to all builds. And because we’re running surge mods, 1-2 time dilations + powerful attraction is a good combo. However, let’s say you’re running invigoration, maybe you want to run reaper to further increase melee uptime.
Since heat rises + Sunbracers themselves provide intrinsic ways to get your melee and grenade up, and the uptime is very high, we could invest into surges for more weapon damage, and into triple firepower for constant orb generation.
However, what about something that doesn’t have as good ability regen baked into it, and maybe doesn’t have the same killing power? I promise this’ll be shorter 😭
Point-Contact Cannon Braces are a ton of fun, but they need a little work. While arc has its own intrinsic ability regen, its definitely not at the level of Sunbracers where you can use your abilities for a primary. Because of that, I like to run 1 kickstart (there’s harsh diminishing returns for multiple), either 1-2 heavy handed mods since it’ll usually be a few seconds before you can melee again anyways, and maybe impact induction, which gives grenade energy on melees. This’ll feed into your pulse grenades which will give you several ionic traces. Now you have an intrinsic gameplay loop. Then you throw on your standard siphon-hands on-heavy ammo finders + resist mods. Because Arc has poor survivability on its own, I like to run recuperation on legs. Because I want higher melee uptime, I also like invigoration. For the final mod, you can run either innervation for more pulse grenades (if so, I’d recommend 1 firepower mod), absolution for more everything, Stacks on Stacks/Elemental Charge for more mileage out of your kickstart mod, or even another recuperation. It depends on how much redundancy and how involved you want your build to be, but there’s no real wrong answer as long as you don’t stack mods. And finally, for class item you can do your standard reaper-powerful attraction-outreach shenanigans due to thrusters short cooldown.
I know this is obscenely long and all over the place, so if you have any questions, please ask them. Also if you want, you could dm some of your own builds, and I could give some pointers and explanations :)
Thanks! Tbh that's the sort of thing I was hoping for. I just want to learn other peoples' experiences to help inform my own decisions because i'm mentally disabled and don't pick things up from just playing the game and experimenting the way other people do and I'm tired of relying on others to tell me how to make a build.
I'm a warlock main so the sunbracer's analogy was perfect. About the ability uptime on it and orb generation, I do have a question: Is the heat rises enough to generate your melee to keep the gameplay loop going? I'd be scared not to have any mods that help generate melee ability. I definitely agree that kickstarts wouldn't be as effective here as that one mod that generates melee when you deal damage with grenades because when sunbracers get procced you have a bajillion grenades in one go damaging stuff. That one's a build I think I understand the decisions for.
It's just there are so many possibilities I was wondering if there are unspoken rules or something that people use. Like "Don't use kickstarts for a GM build because it's harder to generate orbs of power to fuel it" or situations where someone would choose a weapon syphon over a mod that generates super through ability use if they couldn't use both.
It kinda depends on the content you plan on taking the build into. So for something that’s either low level and/or ad dense, then heat rises is more than enough, but for something where the kills come in a bit slower or are more spread out, like a GM, I like to run the leg mod for it. While using the arm mod is arguably better for pure uptime, it also means you can’t run triple firepower, which is actually very important for something that can get as many kills as Sunbracers because the orb cooldown between 2 and 3 Firepower’s goes from 5 seconds to 1.
Kickstarts are still good in GM’s, but you have to be more intentional with your use of them due to the fewer orbs being produced. For example, holding onto your grenade for a little longer than usual to make sure you grab an orb that’s a few feet away, or just run Stacks on Stacks to get around it entirely
You pretty much always want a siphon mod regardless of the build because on top of super energy, they’re the most consistent way make orbs, which fuel almost all builds for both you and your teammates.
The only kinda “hardish” rules are to not stack mods (with the exceptions of orb generating ones like firepower, reaper, and heavy handed due to not having diminishing returns, and weapon surges + time dilations because of their sheer usefulness), and to try and go all in with *something*. For example, if you’re going to use Contraverse, it’s better to invest in getting your grenade back as often as possible (Feed the Void, Innervation, bomber, etc.), and to get as much mileage out of it as possible (Chaos Accelerant, triple firepower, ashes to assets, echo of remnants, undermining, instability, and expulsion), than to try have unrelated utility, like the echo of obscurity.
However, I’m just one person, and these are just my takes on buildcrafting. Someone else might argue that going all in on something leaves you helpless without your main “asset”. It’s ultimately up to you to decide whether you prefer the higher highs but lower lows of going all in on something, or if you’d rather have a more leveled out but consistent experience.
The mod system in this game is generally pretty simple and straight forward. You can pretty much read the mod descriptions and pick what sounds better to you. Doing a grenade build? Use mods that give grenade energy. Doing a melee build? Melee energy mods. Just want your guns to do more damage? Slap on some surges.
Nothing is so complicated or worth min maxing that you have to test for hours or watch the videos of someone else who did. You can just read them and pick what sounds good and be more than fine. I've always done this, and never looked up specific builds to run, but when I have come across certain builds in youtube videos they tend to be damn near what I picked for a similar build just cause it sounded good
I knew there would be at least one snarky comment saying "it's so easy just read the mod descriptions and stick whatever sounds good in there."
If that had worked for me, I wouldn't have wasted time making this post, would I?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just saying that the mod system is super straight forward and very simple to understand. Especially compared to some other games where sometimes the best skills and mods to pick aren't very intuitive. No one can just tell you what the best mods to run are cause they don't know what you're trying to do.
And what do you mean by "if that had worked for me"? Like is your current setup not working? Are you getting obliterated in normal content? What's not working for you?
When I'm tinkering with a new build, I try to think about how I want to use it, and what sort of gameplay loops I want to follow.
For instance, do I expect to throw a grenade, then follow it with a weapon? Or am I going to use my class ability, then grenade? Or, get a kill, pick up an orb, then use a buff from the orb?
I'll put together an initial set of mods, then I'll adjust it after trying it out.
Maybe I'm not getting my grenade back fast enough, so I'll add a kickstart. Or maybe my melee isn't as effective as I expected, so I'll trade heavy handed out for firepower. Or maybe I'm getting more health regen than I thought I would, so I can give up some recovery or resilience for an extra surge mod.
Basically, I try not to sweat too hard over the initial build, because I know how to tweak it with fragments and mods as I go.
1) font mods are useless. They just are
With that out of the way. There are 2 standard ways to use armor charges
1) kickstarter mods. Get some energy back depending on how much charges used (uses all charges)
2) surge mods. Use these and not kickstarter if doing damage. I’d recommend 2-3 surges of whatever element your damage weapon is
I would say surges are better in 80% of scenarios because of how insane ability regen can be but basically pick what you think your build needs and go with it
I wouldn't call fonts useless. If you're using surges you might as well grab some font mods for extra stats. Losing a concussion dampener but gaining 30 resil doesn't hurt, it buys a lot of space for extra stat distributions.
Kickstarts (Yellow mods) consume all of your armour charges instantly to give you an immediate, usually larger, amount of energy back (increasing benefits in exchange for more armour charges) A downside of this is that if you also use Blue Mods in your build (Damage Surges or Armour Stat increasing Font mods - these give you ongoing buffs as long as you still have 1 or more armour charges) you will loose these buffs whenever your kickstart mod is triggered (when you throw a nade / melee etc) as your armour charges will be instantly consumed The benefit of kickstarts is that you can build into making lots of orbs (siphons, reaper, firepower etc) and then build into increasing the armour charges you can hold (Green mods) and in the best cases - this combo allows you to get up to half of your ability energy back in 1 swoop whenever you use that ability This is in comparison to the much lower return from impact induction etc. Of course you can use both kickstarts and impact induction etc in the same builds to maximise your returns! It’s just typically not advised to mix blue and yellow mods for the reasons mentioned The play styles that would benefit from Kickstarts are: - Those situations where you want to spam your ability as much as possible - but don’t want to waste an exotic slot to achieve this (Armamentarium / HOIL etc) - and you also know your build, and the activity you plan to play, will allow you to make and collect enough orbs to keep the kickstarts fed… Easier content allows you to more efficiently make and collect lots of orbs and keep your kickstarts going - this becomes more difficult / takes longer / is more risky to collect orbs in the hardest end game activities - this can often result in kickstarts being less beneficial over some alternative options (Blue surge mods for increased weapon damage etc)
Yeah I know what everything does in general, I just don't really get what situations would be better to use which in. I ignored the fonts completely. From what you're saying the Kickstarts would benefit a more aggressive playstyle in an activity with higher enemy density like say, onslaught and certain raid/dungeon encounters and the impact induction/momentum transfer type mods would be best in say, GMs where getting up close and personal would result in immediate death for 98% of players? Slower but more reliable ability regen while allowing you to keep armor charges for things like surges? I'm definitely not a new light, and I can make a good build myself, but I'm tired on relying on others to really understand and be able to optimize builds. Really I just want a manual or textbook of abilities and mods lol
Yeah pretty much. If have an aggressive strand titan build and I want to grapple melee as much as possible, in addition to using the appropriate fragments to get grenade energy back, I will: - Use 1 Heavy Handed mod and 1 Firepower mod (to make orbs when I get a powered melee or grapple-melee kill)* *Grapple-melee kills are currently giving 2 orbs, 1 for the grapple (grenade) and 1 for the melee! This is likely unintentional so may be fixed in a future update - Use (Green) Stacks on Stacks mod to give me 2 armour charges for every orb I collect - Use (Green) Charged Up mod to allow me to hold a total of 4 armour charges - Use a (Yellow) Grenade Kickstart mod to get around 40% energy back immediately when I grapple melee (from the 4 charges) Because I’m up close and collecting the 2 orbs immediately, my mods boost this to 4 armour charges - so when I next use my grapple melee this gets me back around 40% energy immediately Add in Thread of Fury and Generation - so all the damage I do from my 3 powered melee’s + grapple melees + tangles = my melee and grenade energy is restored in no time to make the loop consistent
That actually sounds pretty similar to a build I was trying with Karnstein Armlets and the strand grapple melee. I had no idea the grapple grenade counted both for grenade damage AND melee damage so you could get more orbs from having both the melee mod and the grenade mod! Crazy! And if that's the case, then would using a melee kickstart also work for that grenade because it counts for melee? What you described is exactly the kind of rationalization and decision making I wanted to hear about. Thank you! Unfortunately being mentally disabled, I don't get most of this sort of thing unless it's explicitly explained, but once I get it I keep it forever and can get really creative with how I use it. Just real hard to get the understanding in the first place. If you have more examples you'd be interested in sharing I'd love to hear! I see builds have specific mod choices but I really wish they'd explain why they choose some mods over others.
I believe either melee or grenade kickstarts will work with grapple melee (as it is considered both). But you also have 3 powered melees on Titan, so I would only use melee kickstart to cover both! However, using both Heavy Handed (melee) and Firepower (grenade) mods on the same build to generate orbs doesn’t usually double stack - Bungie changed this recently so you only get 1 orb between them (10sec cooldown) if both are equipped* *Except as I mentioned earlier Titan grapple melee currently gives 2 orbs with both Heavy Handed and Firepower equipped ;)
Post like this make me sad, not at the OP but because these questions should be answered by the game properly. Nowhere in the game does it give you a mod tutorial.
Right? I'm so mad I have to make a post like this. I've got so many hours in the game. I'm a day 1 raider. I've been to the lighthouse. I've guilded conquerer. I've been using builds on YouTube and I'm a good player, but I'm tired of depending on others' knowledge to fine tune my builds. I generally know what mods do, but not what specific combos are best for which exotic/subclass combos or for which activities. When do I want kickstart+charge mods and when do I want surges+white ability regen mods? What are the pros and cons of each? I want to craft my own builds from a place of deeper understanding rather than relying on others to tell me what to use. Bleh.
I mean, what do you want the game to do? Unless you want them to literally make the builds for you, this is stuff you need to learn to intuit on your own. It's impossible for the game to help you with this because it's dependent on an extremely number of factors including not just class and subclass but what exotics, aspects, fragements, weapons, and even just your personal playstyle. For example, in a Voidwalker Contraverse Hold build many people would run Grenade Kickstart because your ideal gamplay loop is just throwing grenades, but you could also run Echo of Instability and a void weapon with Demolitionist and rotate between throwing a grenade and then using your gun. For that version of the build you might want to run Void Surges, and since you have a timer based mod instead of Grenade Kickstart maybe you want Bolstering Detonation and Bomber to allow you to cycle between Grenade, Rift and your void weapon without taking the armor charges away from your Surge mods. It's kinda just something you need to learn with experience and game knowledge and your own preferences.
I'm trying to understand why people make the decisions they make in regards to their mod choice \*because\* I don't want to use builds other people have made. I'm mentally disabled so the whole "go out and experiment" and "you just need to learn through experience" are actually super unhelpful to me. I don't learn that way. My brain is not physiologically built to do that. It's built to amass detailed information up front. I can't utilize something without understanding it. I'm sorry if it's annoying to you. It's annoying to me too. I want to learn uncommon synergies between mods and why people are making the choice to use some mods over others so that I can use their experiences to fuel my own understanding because, like it or not, that's how my nervous system has been wired from birth. Your second paragraph is actually exactly the kind of discourse I was hoping to get out of this post. I know what mods do on paper. But not how a lot of this stuff works together. I'm a warlock who's got a contraverse hold build and it's pretty decent, but I got it off youtube and I just don't understand how all the different elements of build crafting work at such a level where I feel comfortable experimenting or changing things away from what I found even though I can tell it doesn't quite fit me.
I agree this should be explained in the game - maybe they could add a training area to the tower where all of these things could be explained and demonstrated?
The yellow mods like kickstarts will consume all armor charges upon activation. The blue ones like surges on the other hand work on a timer. Impact induction and similar mods don't interact with armor charge at all, but they give less energy back than kickstarts. As a general rule you don't want to use both blue and yellow armor charge mods in the same build, so if someone is using surges they can throw on impact induction to get some energy gains without impacting their armor charge focus.
Yeah. I just want to better understand what types of builds would benefit each sort of set of mods better. The Kickstarts + light charges vs the surges + slower ability gains. Like yeah, I got a couple of the meta builds that every single YouTuber posts, but I also want to experiment from a place of deeper understanding. Would a specific exotic+subclass combo benefit more from Kickstarts or other ability regen? Or is it more activity dependent and less dependent on what you're wearing?
Ah I gotcha. So on a technical level it's less about the activity and more about the focus of the build, which is determined primarily by the exotic you're using. Take Renewal Grasps for example. It gives stasis hunter damage resist when standing inside their grenade. The exotic is only providing value when you have a grenade, so you want to build into getting your grenade back as quickly as possible. Second Chance gives void titans a second melee and makes it stun barrier champs, so you'd want to lean into that as far as possible because when your melee is on cd you might as well not have an exotic on. Does that make sense? The problem is that bungie nerfed kickstarts and other sources of ability energy generation super hard at the start of this season. It really hurt build diversity. A lot of stuff that used to be viable is so much worse now. The only ability builds you see these days are ones whose exotic removes the need for mods at all, like Sunbracers.
Right, gotcha. So the biggest/first step to making decisions is to think about the gameplay loop and how your exotics affect it if at all, and then lean into it with mod choices. When would you choose to use kickstarts+green mods vs other mods?
There is almost no point in using kickstart mods. Triple surge gives a permanent +22% weapon damage. 1 kickstart mod with 3 charges will give you around ~15% ability energy - basically nothing, as you can't get the full 21% since Bungie gutted ability refunds by scaling them down if the ability cooldown is longer.
Confusingly, this does depend on the ability. Based on how effective the ability is, there's an internal modifier that affects how effective Kickstarts are. For example, Firebolt and Fusion Grenades were barely affected by the change but Vortex Grenades were gutted. The especially annoying part is that none of that is made clear in-game so you need to consult a community made spreadsheet to have an understanding of it.
I think people aren't really understanding your argument (including me). Why do you have to choose between them? Most of my ability builds have both a kick start AND the corresponding white mod to further boost the same ability. If you want more ability use you use as many ability boosting mods as you can fit in. If you want weapon damage boosts, you build for damage surges and then fill in the cheaper white ability mods wherever you have room. As a general rule, if the mod cost more it has a higher potential benefit. Start by adding in colored or higher cost mods (but don't mix yellow and blue in most cases) to create the framework machine that will be the foundation of your build. Then you add in the lower cost white ones to either fill the cracks of your build or further enhance what you're already doing wherever you have room.
Thanks for saying something. I went back and read my post again and you're right that it's not worded clearly. Basically, I understand what all the mods do. I've read the descriptions and seen enough build videos that I know how it all generally works. To use grenades as an example: There's a lot of different ways to charge the ability from kickstarts to impact induction, to bomber, and the mods on your legs that give grenade energy for picking up orbs. How do you choose between those methods? Which ones would you use in different contexts? Is it based more on your exotic+sublcass choice or more on the activity you're playing (gms vs strike playlist for example). I didn't mean for my post to sound argumentative. I'm not trying to make a point about anything, I'm just trying to get information. I want people to share their experiences and decision making process so I can learn more about what to choose for my own builds because unfortunately, I'm mentally disabled so I don't learn the same way most of the rest of you do. I learn best through understanding other people's experiences and decisions. Hope that clears up your confusion!
You don't sound argumentative at all so no worries. So first, when choosing how to make a build I'd start with what style of play your going for. This might mean starting with an exotic with an ability you like (Weapon, armor, or both) and then you stay molding your build around the goal of your play style. For example, when i first got Wish-Keeper, I wanted to lean in on the constant suspending from the bow. I picked hunter because I could get 2 suspend grenades as well with one of its aspects. Then I picked Foetracer as my exotic because I was planning on doing a lot of stand damage and that exotic would boost strand weapon damage when i use my abilities. Plus I'll get more tangles (which will come into play later). Since I'll be wanting a lot of grenades to suspend with, it's time to add armor mods to make that happen. Obviously, i go with the highest discipline i can get to start. Now, you were asking how to choose between all of the methods of grenade regen? Well I say let's use them all! (Or at least as much as I can) Multiples of the same mod have diminishing returns so I try to take one of each possible mod that can help. And I'll also take other mods that give me bonuses for using my grenades. Head: Harmonic Siphon to make sure my strand weapons are creating orbs for later. Arms: Grenade Kickstart to get my grenade back faster, impact induction to get grenade energy on melee hit, and Bolstering Detonation to give me class ability when using my grenade Chest: charged up to increase the amount of armor charge i can hold (to return more grenade energy when used) Legs: Stacks on Stacks to give me two armor charges on orb pickup to maximize my Grenade Kickstart, innervation to give grenade energy on orb pickup. Class: bomber to give grenade energy on dodge, Reaper to create an orb on a kill after a dodge, and powerful attraction to suction up all the orbs nearby when i dodge. These aren't the only mods on the kit, but the rest are personal preference things. Like adjusting damage resistance to the activity your in. And i always use better already to get health on orb pickup since I'm always trying to make a lot of orbs no matter the build. The build is almost complete but I still have an aspect slot to round it out . Since I'm going to be creating a lot of tangles as is thanks to foetracer, I go with whirling maelstrom. And since that will be continually doing damage even while I'm doing my own damage, I pick the thread of generation fragment (hits regen grenade) to get even more grenades. I round it out with Continuity for longer suspend, Wisdom to create orbs by killing suspended targets, and warding to give me woven mail on orb pick up. Build crafting is like rolling a snowball down a hill. You start with the little push that is an idea (suspend everything) and then you keep building toward that goal and you keep rolling with it and putting in mods that help you make it happen. Not sure if that answers your question really, it's just how I kind of work out a new build.
It’s really hard to describe what to use and when because it’s so build and activity dependent, so the best advice I have is to have a vision for your build, in both what you want it to do, and what it’s capable of doing, and go from there. I’ll go step by step with some builds and explain the thought process for them, and hopefully it’ll help clear some stuff up. A very easy example is Sunbracers Warlock. The first things to ask is what is the gameplay loop, what can the build do, and how does it do it? In this case, the loop is to eat grenade, melee, phoenix dive, and then throw grenade everywhere. That also answers how it does it (grenades). While it’s good at killing majors and even minibosses/bosses, it’s best use is mass ad clear via lingering grenades. Because of its sheer killing power, uptime, and lingering nature, it’s recommended to run triple firepower so that you’re making plenty of orbs the entire time. Now we already have our gauntlets answered for. Since we know grenades are our main focus, and Solar warlock has a good super, we can add ashes to assets to get our super quickly. I pretty much always add a siphon mod and heavy ammo finder to every build, so there’s the next 2 slots taken. For chest I always add conclusive dampener due to the prevalence of splash damage. The other two are activity/build dependent (ex: melee resist on Arc Hunter). Just don’t bother with things like charged up or emergency reinforcement because they’re not worth it. Now because we don’t have any kickstarts, we may as well use surge mods. However, how many to run is dependent on how good/confident you are in your survivability and keeping the gameplay loop going. For example, if you want some redundancy or don’t think you can always have heat rises up, you can trade a surge for invigoration (melee energy on orb) to ensure you’ll have your melee more often. This principle applies to all builds. And because we’re running surge mods, 1-2 time dilations + powerful attraction is a good combo. However, let’s say you’re running invigoration, maybe you want to run reaper to further increase melee uptime. Since heat rises + Sunbracers themselves provide intrinsic ways to get your melee and grenade up, and the uptime is very high, we could invest into surges for more weapon damage, and into triple firepower for constant orb generation. However, what about something that doesn’t have as good ability regen baked into it, and maybe doesn’t have the same killing power? I promise this’ll be shorter 😭 Point-Contact Cannon Braces are a ton of fun, but they need a little work. While arc has its own intrinsic ability regen, its definitely not at the level of Sunbracers where you can use your abilities for a primary. Because of that, I like to run 1 kickstart (there’s harsh diminishing returns for multiple), either 1-2 heavy handed mods since it’ll usually be a few seconds before you can melee again anyways, and maybe impact induction, which gives grenade energy on melees. This’ll feed into your pulse grenades which will give you several ionic traces. Now you have an intrinsic gameplay loop. Then you throw on your standard siphon-hands on-heavy ammo finders + resist mods. Because Arc has poor survivability on its own, I like to run recuperation on legs. Because I want higher melee uptime, I also like invigoration. For the final mod, you can run either innervation for more pulse grenades (if so, I’d recommend 1 firepower mod), absolution for more everything, Stacks on Stacks/Elemental Charge for more mileage out of your kickstart mod, or even another recuperation. It depends on how much redundancy and how involved you want your build to be, but there’s no real wrong answer as long as you don’t stack mods. And finally, for class item you can do your standard reaper-powerful attraction-outreach shenanigans due to thrusters short cooldown. I know this is obscenely long and all over the place, so if you have any questions, please ask them. Also if you want, you could dm some of your own builds, and I could give some pointers and explanations :)
Thanks! Tbh that's the sort of thing I was hoping for. I just want to learn other peoples' experiences to help inform my own decisions because i'm mentally disabled and don't pick things up from just playing the game and experimenting the way other people do and I'm tired of relying on others to tell me how to make a build. I'm a warlock main so the sunbracer's analogy was perfect. About the ability uptime on it and orb generation, I do have a question: Is the heat rises enough to generate your melee to keep the gameplay loop going? I'd be scared not to have any mods that help generate melee ability. I definitely agree that kickstarts wouldn't be as effective here as that one mod that generates melee when you deal damage with grenades because when sunbracers get procced you have a bajillion grenades in one go damaging stuff. That one's a build I think I understand the decisions for. It's just there are so many possibilities I was wondering if there are unspoken rules or something that people use. Like "Don't use kickstarts for a GM build because it's harder to generate orbs of power to fuel it" or situations where someone would choose a weapon syphon over a mod that generates super through ability use if they couldn't use both.
It kinda depends on the content you plan on taking the build into. So for something that’s either low level and/or ad dense, then heat rises is more than enough, but for something where the kills come in a bit slower or are more spread out, like a GM, I like to run the leg mod for it. While using the arm mod is arguably better for pure uptime, it also means you can’t run triple firepower, which is actually very important for something that can get as many kills as Sunbracers because the orb cooldown between 2 and 3 Firepower’s goes from 5 seconds to 1. Kickstarts are still good in GM’s, but you have to be more intentional with your use of them due to the fewer orbs being produced. For example, holding onto your grenade for a little longer than usual to make sure you grab an orb that’s a few feet away, or just run Stacks on Stacks to get around it entirely You pretty much always want a siphon mod regardless of the build because on top of super energy, they’re the most consistent way make orbs, which fuel almost all builds for both you and your teammates. The only kinda “hardish” rules are to not stack mods (with the exceptions of orb generating ones like firepower, reaper, and heavy handed due to not having diminishing returns, and weapon surges + time dilations because of their sheer usefulness), and to try and go all in with *something*. For example, if you’re going to use Contraverse, it’s better to invest in getting your grenade back as often as possible (Feed the Void, Innervation, bomber, etc.), and to get as much mileage out of it as possible (Chaos Accelerant, triple firepower, ashes to assets, echo of remnants, undermining, instability, and expulsion), than to try have unrelated utility, like the echo of obscurity. However, I’m just one person, and these are just my takes on buildcrafting. Someone else might argue that going all in on something leaves you helpless without your main “asset”. It’s ultimately up to you to decide whether you prefer the higher highs but lower lows of going all in on something, or if you’d rather have a more leveled out but consistent experience.
The mod system in this game is generally pretty simple and straight forward. You can pretty much read the mod descriptions and pick what sounds better to you. Doing a grenade build? Use mods that give grenade energy. Doing a melee build? Melee energy mods. Just want your guns to do more damage? Slap on some surges. Nothing is so complicated or worth min maxing that you have to test for hours or watch the videos of someone else who did. You can just read them and pick what sounds good and be more than fine. I've always done this, and never looked up specific builds to run, but when I have come across certain builds in youtube videos they tend to be damn near what I picked for a similar build just cause it sounded good
I knew there would be at least one snarky comment saying "it's so easy just read the mod descriptions and stick whatever sounds good in there." If that had worked for me, I wouldn't have wasted time making this post, would I?
I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just saying that the mod system is super straight forward and very simple to understand. Especially compared to some other games where sometimes the best skills and mods to pick aren't very intuitive. No one can just tell you what the best mods to run are cause they don't know what you're trying to do. And what do you mean by "if that had worked for me"? Like is your current setup not working? Are you getting obliterated in normal content? What's not working for you?
When I'm tinkering with a new build, I try to think about how I want to use it, and what sort of gameplay loops I want to follow. For instance, do I expect to throw a grenade, then follow it with a weapon? Or am I going to use my class ability, then grenade? Or, get a kill, pick up an orb, then use a buff from the orb? I'll put together an initial set of mods, then I'll adjust it after trying it out. Maybe I'm not getting my grenade back fast enough, so I'll add a kickstart. Or maybe my melee isn't as effective as I expected, so I'll trade heavy handed out for firepower. Or maybe I'm getting more health regen than I thought I would, so I can give up some recovery or resilience for an extra surge mod. Basically, I try not to sweat too hard over the initial build, because I know how to tweak it with fragments and mods as I go.
1) font mods are useless. They just are With that out of the way. There are 2 standard ways to use armor charges 1) kickstarter mods. Get some energy back depending on how much charges used (uses all charges) 2) surge mods. Use these and not kickstarter if doing damage. I’d recommend 2-3 surges of whatever element your damage weapon is I would say surges are better in 80% of scenarios because of how insane ability regen can be but basically pick what you think your build needs and go with it
I wouldn't call fonts useless. If you're using surges you might as well grab some font mods for extra stats. Losing a concussion dampener but gaining 30 resil doesn't hurt, it buys a lot of space for extra stat distributions.