Best Destiny 2 Exotic armor for Hunters, Titans, and Warlocks

Equipping the best Destiny 2 Exotic armor pieces can make a huge difference in your build, with some adding hugely useful abilities and buffs. These might include massively buffing your Super with increased damage or changing how it works entirely, new ways to benefit from and activate Subclass keywords, or huge buffs to particular Aspects. Basically, having some solid Exotic armor pieces to don for each of your Subclasses will help a lot in some of the toughest activities in Destiny 2.

Below, I've laid out five of the best Exotic armor pieces in the game for each Class for Destiny 2 The Final Shape. Many of them work with new Prismatic Subclass too, but you can use the exclusive Destiny 2 Prismatic Exotic Class item instead.

Best Destiny 2 Hunter Exotic Armor

• Assassin's Cowl
  • Type: Helmet, any Hunter Subclass
  • Exotic perk: Powered melee kills make you invisible and restore a portion of health and shields. Finishers and kills against more powerful targets increase the duration of the invisibility and the amount of health and shields restored.
  • Invisibility is one of the Void Hunter Subclasses most useful tools, particularly for surviving in the hardest endgame activities, so letting any Hunter Subclass go invisible (and heal!) is a huge boon. Assassin's Cowl works especially well when paired with the speed and melee strength of the Arc Subclass, letting you stay alive deep in the heart of combat.
•  Gyrfalcon's Hauberk
  • Type: Chest Armor, Void and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: Your Void weapons gain Volatile Rounds after your invisibility ends. When you are invisible and defeat combatant using a finisher, all of your weapons gain bonus damage, and you and your allies gain a reserve Overshield and improved Class ability regeneration. Reserve Overshields are deployed by using a Class ability.
  • This chest armor lets you benefit massively from several of the best Void keywords and can grant a flat weapon damage bonus. With Volatile Rounds and bonus damage on your Void weapons, you'll be shredding through foes, causing explosions everywhere. If you've got the Stylish Execution Aspect on, you'll be going invisible all the time with the Exotic armor too, so it's great for aggressive Nightstalker builds.
• Omnioculus
  • Type: Chest Armor, Void and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: You gain a second Snare Bomb and damage resistance while invisible. When you make an ally invisible, they also gain damage resistance while invisible and you gain melee ability energy.
  • For a good team support Exotic, look no further than Omnioculus. With an extra Snare Bomb Melee ability and damage resistance while invisible, you can easily dip out of danger and survive. Making allies invisible also gives you a good chunk of Melee energy back, so you'll have almost constant Snare Bombs for a quick escape, protecting yourself and your fireteam.
•  Renewal Grasps
  • Type: Gauntlets, Stasis and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: Your Duskfield Grenades have a much larger effect radius. Allies inside the Duskfield take less damage and enemies inside the field deal less damage.
  • Duskfield Grenades are already quite powerful, creating a large, slowing bubble that can also freeze enemies. With Renewal Grasps, they get bigger and better, and serve almost like a Ward of Dawn with increases damage resistance for allies.
• Star-Eater Scales
  • Type: Leg Armor, any Hunter Subclass
  • Exotic perk: You gain additional Super ability energy from Orbs of Power you collect. While your Super energy is full, picking up an Orb of Power overcharges your Super, causing you to gain a burst of healing when cast and bonus Super damage. At maximum overcharge (Feast of Light x6), you also gain an overshield.
  • If you're building into maximizing your Super damage, Star-Eater Scales are usually the way to go (Golden Gun users should look to Celestial Nighthawk). Working with any Subclass and requiring Orbs of Power to function, which are very easy to get with the right armor mods, this Exotic is easy to use and can be very impactful during boss fight damage phases.

Best Destiny 2 Titan Exotic Armor

• Abeyant Leap
  • Type: Leg Armor, Strand and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: The Drengr's Lash Aspect spawns two additional projectiles, tracks targets more aggressively, and travels farther. You also gain Woven Mail when suspending targets.
  • Drengr's Lash is already a great Strand Aspect, letting you suspend enemies easily with your Barricade, but Abeyant Leap makes it so much better. For three total suspending projectiles, you can immobilize many more foes, and gaining Woven Mail from suspending any enemies is a massive help for survivability.
• Cuirass of the Falling Star
  • Type: Leg Armor, Arc and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: Greatly increases impact damage of Thundercrash. Gain an overshield that lasts longer the farther you travel before hitting an enemy.
  • For Titans like sending themselves head-first into the enemy with Thundercrash, Cuirass of the Falling Star is your main option. The Exotic chest armor substantially increases the damage dealt by the Super, letting you smack bosses and often insta-kill minibosses and champions.
• Heart of Inmost Light
  • Type: Chest Armor, any Titan Subclass
  • Exotic perk: Using your Grenade, Melee, or Class ability empowers the other two abilities. Empowered abilities regenerate faster. Melee and Grenade abilities also deal more damage when empowered, while Barricades can take more damage.
  • If a generalist ability spam build is what you're after for your Titan, look no further than the Heart of Inmost Light. This is a really good all-rounder Exotic armor piece for Titans since it works with all Subclasses and provides nice damage boosts to all abilities.
• Helm of Saint-14
  • Type: Helmet, Void Subclass only
  • Exotic perk: Enemies that enter your Ward of Dawn are blinded, while allies that pass through gain a Void overshield and Weapons of Light, increasing weapon damage. Guarding with Sentinel Shield blinds nearby targets.
  • Newly buffed with the power of Weapons of Light, the Helm of Saint-14 is the ultimate Ward of Dawn Exotic, providing lots of defense and damage buffs to yourself and allies that pass through or stand in your Ward.
• Pyrogale Gauntlets
  • Type: Gauntlets, Solar Subclass only
  • Exotic perk: Changes Burning Maul into a single, high-damage slam of your Solar maul hammer that creates several cyclones of flame. The Consecration Aspect's second slam creates a cyclone of flame.
  • Turning Burning Maul into a one-and-done Super means you can massively increase your damage potential against bosses as you can use your weapons while your fire cyclones do their work – that work being causing massive scorch damage leading to lots of devastating ignitions.

Best Destiny 2 Warlock Exotic Armor

• Contraverse Hold
  • Type: Gauntlets, Void and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: Resist incoming damage while charging your Void grenade. Charged Void grenades return grenade ability energy on a hit.
  • The Contraverse Hold guantlets are a reliable pick for Void Warlock builds, letting you spam some very powerful grenades and benefit from some added damage resistance when paired with the Chaos Accelerant Aspect. 
• Geomag Stabilizers
  • Type: Leg Armor, Arc Subclass only
  • Exotic perk: Damaging enemies with Chaos Reach extends its duration. Collecting Ionic Traces grants you Super energy for Chaos Reach.
  • Chaos Reach is a great Super for the Stormcaller Subclass that's effective against bosses and minibosses in particular. With Geomag Stabilizers, you can massively increase the amount of damage you get out of it by extending its duration, and you should charge up your Chaos Reach quickly thanks to improved Ionic Traces.
• Nezarec's Sin
  • Type: Helmet, any Warlock Subclass
  • Exotic perk: Kills with Void damage (weapons and abilities) increase ability regeneration rate.
  • If you're suitably equipped with Void weapons, Nezarec's Sin can work with any Subclass, facilitating and ability spam build like the Heart of Inmost Light for Titans. Obviously, it works best with the Void walker Subclass though, letting you toss out lots of Grenades and deploy Rifts for team support.
• Osmiomancy Gloves
  • Type: Gauntlets, Stasis and Prismatic Subclasses only
  • Exotic perk: Your Coldsnap Grenades have an additional charge that recharges quicker when directly impacting an enemy. The seekers spawned from Coldsnap Grenades travel further.
  • The Bleak Watcher Stasis Aspect is one of the best in the game, letting you summon icy turrets that slow and can even freeze enemies. With the added Coldsnap Grenade benefits of Osmiomancy Gloves, you can deploy several of these turrets at once, locking down the battlefield with lots of crowd control.  
• Sunbracers
  • Type: Gauntlets, Solar Subclass only
  • Exotic perk: Solar Grenades last longer. Solar melee kills grant unlimited Solar Grenade energy for a few seconds.
  • Many of these Exotics help with Grenade spamming, but Sunbracers are the Grenade-Spam Exotic. Pair it with the Touch of Flame Aspect so that you have long-lasting Solar Grenades that spit out blobs of lava, dealing loads of damage in an area. With the brief window of infinite Grenades, you can throw out several of them to cover an entire area in fire, or scorch a boss so much that it ignites a few times.

How to get Exotic armor in Destiny 2

Unlike Exotic weapons, there are no quests for Exotic armor, which means Exotic Engrams are the only source of Exotic armor pieces to add to your collection. If you’re after brand-new armor, you’ll need to know how to get new Exotics in Destiny 2 via Rahool’s Novel Focusing, which requires you to get Exotic Engrams. Although, there are a few ways you can get Exotic armor pieces outside of completing Lost Sectors and killing enemies to get Exotic Engram:

• Buy Exotic armor from Xur: The special vendor known as Xur always sells one piece of Exotic armor for each of the three Destiny 2 Classes. You can also buy an Exotic Engram from Xur, which will award an Exotic armor piece from the world loot pool. Xur appears with the Friday daily reset every week and stays around until the Destiny 2 weekly reset on the following Tuesday.
• Exotic Ciphers: You can get Exotic Ciphers through Season Passes or by completing the weekly Xenology quest from Xur. Ciphers can be exchanged for another Exotic Engram from Xur, though you will also need Ciphers for unlocking some of the best Destiny 2 Exotics found at the Monument to Lost Lights and for Rahool’s Novel Focusing.
• Completing Expansion campaigns: Completing the Witch Queen, Lightfall, and Final Shape campaigns on Legendary difficulty lets you choose one of two specific Exotic armor pieces to unlock.

Note that if you're a new player, it's more likely that you'll get Exotic weapons from Exotic Engrams until you've added all those weapons to your collections – from that point, Exotic Engrams will only ever give you random rolls of Exotic armor pieces. Some Exotic armor pieces are also locked behind expansions, so you must own the relevant expansion to focus the armor piece too.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.