Do You Prefer Up Close Combat?
There are a lot of ways to fight The Darkness in Destiny, but one of the most common is actually melee-based. Every single class in Destiny has a base melee ability that allows them to activate a unique skill when used. These can range from siphoning life from your enemies, causing the player to go invisible after a successful hit, or gaining a powerful Overshield to help them sustain more damage.
While many engagements will take place at a distance, there are a plethora of foes that prefer to rush their targets over hiding behind cover. Enemies such as the Fallen Captains rely on their dual swords to cleave through Guardians at a rapid rate, while the Hive’s Thralls prefer to swarm you in masses. Even certain bosses in Destiny will favor getting in your face over shooting at players from a distance, which can mean life or death depending on your class.
This isn’t to say that you should pick a class required to fight up close, because others have fantastic tools to pin even the liveliest of foes down. There are more than enough ways for certain classes to keep the fight at a comfortable distance. However, others just prefer to jump head first into the chaos and punch their way out.
In order to figure out which class is best for you, we here at Twinfinite have worked tirelessly with the Vanguard to produce this quiz. Instead of using the arrows towards the top of this page, simply click on the bold phrase below that you agree with more. Eventually, this will lead you to not only which class you should play, but which of the three sub-classes fits your playstyle best.
Up Close
Keep My Distance
Do You Want to be Agile or Slow?
So, you’re a fan of getting up close and bringing the fight to the alien menace plaguing our star system. Now the bigger question is, are you a person who prefers to be quicker on their feet at the risk of taking more damage, or move slower and tank a large amount of punishment from foes? If you want to be faster, then you’ll need to rely on hit and run tactics when it comes to melee combat. Using abilities such as a cloak or smoke to blind enemies will let you deal some damage and retreat behind cover before enemies know what hit them.
In contrast, fighting up close will allow you to sustain a large amount of damage via activating shields or dealing a heavy amount of elemental burst damage. This class doesn’t have any core ability to dodge, so you will need to rely on smart positioning and making the most of your up close skills. Plus, two of your three supers encourage being close to enemies which can either be a positive or negative depending on your play style.
Fast
Slow
Area of Effect or Single Target Damage?
For those who don’t want to risk their lives out in the open, you will then have to decide on which style of powers you prefer to use in combat. This is where recognizing what kind of role you want to have within high-level activities such as raids, strikes, and nightfalls will come in handy. If you want to deal with a lot of enemies at once via electrical storms, energy bombs, and explosive fire grenades, then you’ll lean more towards AoE and zone denial powers.
However, if dealing the most damage to a single target is more important, then consider the class that has two supers designed for it. Whether it’s through debuffing a single target for everyone else to pour damage onto them or using your power to inflict a high amount of pain, there is a class for this style. It really comes down to if you want to kill the boss first or the guards surrounding them.
Area of Effect
Single Target
Titan
Congratulations, you have picked the powerhouse of Destiny, the Titan. This class is focused around tanking damage and then outputting a hefty amount of it via close range powers. Across all three sub-classes, there is a heavy emphasis on closing the distance between you and your opponent. Despite having one of the fastest base jumps (outside of Blink), this allows Titan players to glide across the ground and deliver powerful punches. Combo this with the variety of grenades and powerful shields to make one of the most resilient classes in the entire game.
However, now we need to determine which of the three sub-classes is right for you. When playing, it’s important to recognize whether you’re a lone wolf or a person who prefers to work together with a team. While all the classes can complement a strong team, some sub-classes are far better than others for solo play.
Solo
Team
Hunter
The Hunter is a class that finely balances up close combat with other powers that encourage long distance, single target damage. This is the most agile of all the classes in Destiny, as it can obtain the ability to go invisible instantly or roll out of the way. Being on the move is always one of the most important parts of playing a Hunter, as it allows you to make use of a lot of the tools at your disposable. Along with this are a variety of grenades and supers that span a gambit of usefulness, allowing you more versatility than the other classes offer.
This does come at the price of you being quite easy to kill and one of your supers being reliant on working with others to focus fire a target. So when deciding which of the three sub-classes are for you, you will need to take into consideration whether you want to be the damage dealer or the damage enabler.
Dealer
Enabler
Warlock
You’ve picked the space wizards of Destiny, the Warlock, masters of knowledge and the limitless power of the void. Warlocks are classes that focus heavily on dealing with enemies that aren’t massive bosses. A large variety of their powers can chain or target multiple opponents, allowing them to clear entire waves of enemies with little effort. Warlocks also have some extremely powerful supers that can decimate the front lines and help clear out troublesome foes that have your Fireteam pinned down.
When deciding on which sub-class benefits you most, you’ll need to figure out if you’re a person who likes to play it safe or take risks. Given one of the sub-classes is based around risking your life, it’s important to decide where you stand when playing Destiny’s PvE.
Take Risks
Don’t Take Risks
Defender
Defenders are the physical embodiment of “Hold the Line,” as their close quarters style of play allows them to block off entire areas. Their super, Ward of Dawn, allows a Defender Titan to produce a large bubble that can either grant a powerful overshield to you and your teammates or upgraded damage to your guns. This makes a Defender Titan invaluable to a Destiny team fighting a boss or powerful wave of angry enemies, as this bubble can offer a safe haven from the gunfire.
Along with this, the Defender Titan can gain an overshield or quick reloading ability by punching an enemy. Their grenades can also create cones of damage or prevent a target’s abilities entirely. This is a class based around helping your team and giving them an edge in battles.
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Burst Damage or Damage Over Time?
Now that we’ve determined that you want to focus on playing a self-sufficient character, we need to look towards what kind of damage you want to inflict on others. If you prefer to deal a high amount of pain all at once, then you are someone who would prefer a class based around bursts of damage. On the other hand, the Titan’s newest class is more focused on burning enemies and causing your foe’s health to deplete over time.
Burst Damage
Damage Over Time
Striker
This powerhouse of sub-class gifts Titan players with the ability to strike down their foe with lighting. Many of their abilities are based around inflicting a high amount of pain at once, preferring to put their targets down in one shot. The super, Fists of Havoc, allows Titans to slam down on their foes and deal an extreme amount of damage in a radius around them.
They also come equipped with a plethora of grenades and melee abilities that can unleash a torrent of burst damage on targets. Picking the Striker means you like to bring the fight to your foes that will leave an army of dead aliens around you.
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Sunbreaker
The Sunbreaker is a class that utilizes the powerful Hammer of Sol super that gifts players the ability to throw fiery projectiles at enemies. These hammers can cause an immense amount of damage to targets, but can also track or form sunspots where the projectile connects. Sunbreakers can also heal themselves after each kill, ignite enemies on fire, or create walls of fire to burn your foes alive.
While Sunbreakers can do an obscene amount of damage via their super, it’s their mastery of damage over time that makes them incredibly dangerous. If the hammer doesn’t kill you, then the fire surely will.
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Nightstalker
For those who want to help their team deal as much damage as possible to a target, the Nightstalker class is second to none. Users of this void power can fire an arrow that causes the affected target(s) to take far more damage from all outside sources, allowing teammates to decimate the health bars of bosses.
Along with this are helpful tools such as smoke and venom, which can either turn teammates invisible for a brief period of time or render a foe virtually useless when engulfed in the toxin. While their grenades are nothing fancy, the Nightstalker is all about helping the team out as much as possible.
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Are You an Accurate Shooter?
While this may seem like a silly question in an FPS, your ability or inability to make long distance shots will play a big factor in choosing the right sub-class. One of the Hunter’s powers is based around melee combat, while the other requires precision shots to deal high amounts of damage. If you can’t land your bullets, then you might want to rethink which sub-class is best for you.
Accurate
Not Accurate
Bladedancer
Bladedancers are a powerful close quarters class that rely on invisibility to close the gap between them and their targets. Certain abilities, such as Blink Strike, allow a Hunter to melee an opponent and instantly go invisible after the hit. Not only can this be used to disengage from fights, but also inject them with powerful venom via the Khepri’s String exotic gauntlets.
While their grenades can get the job done, their true power is based around the Arc Blade super. Activating this allows users to take on multiple foes with quick, high damage strikes before using one of their many abilities to disengage and get away. Hunters of the Bladedancer sub-class pride themselves on using deception and tricks to always keep their opponents guessing.
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Gunslinger
For all the prospective sharpshooters in Destiny, the gunslinger class is the one for you. This class imbues players with the ability to use a fiery hand cannon that can cause a high amount of single target damage per each target hit. Given that you can only fire three shots and can cause critical damage, having good accuracy is a must.
Along with this is a throwing knife that, if mastered, can instantly kill a Guardian in the Crucible or deal a high amount of damage to one enemy. While the Gunslinger can use trip grenades to catch foes off guard, the most important thing to master is landing your headshots. Plus, if you add the Celestial Nighthawk exotic helm, you can do an almost stupid amount of damage to targets with a single Golden Gun shot.
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Sunsinger
So you like taking risks in battle, huh? The Sunsinger class is a very high risk/high reward class that can actually let players come back from the grave if they die. This gives Warlocks the ability to take on situations that others may not be able to, such as tanking a strike from a raid boss or going for an objective.
Couple this with their ability to gain a powerful overshield upon a melee strike, and this sub-class has a lot of sustainability in battle. If you aren’t looking to revive yourself upon death, this super can also let players hurl volleys of solar grenades at enemies. These can also burn enemies, which will cause them to take additional damage for as long as they’re suffering from fire damage.
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Synergy or Power?
Warlocks have an interesting set of sub-classes to choose from, both of which play quite differently from one another. If your class and abilities having a high amount of synergy with one another is important, then there’s a sub-class for you. However, if you are looking to unleash a torrent of damage over a longer period of time, you will be pleasantly surprised with what this space wizard can do. In the end, you will need to pick between a class whose abilities rely on working together or one that sacrifices synergy for the sake of raw stopping power.
Synergy
Power
Voidwalker
The Voidwalker is perhaps the most synergistic class in all of Destiny, as each ability can feed nicely into others. With a maximum discipline stat, Warlocks can throw near endless grenades at enemies as long as they kill their targets. Melees and other projectiles feed nicely into reducing the cooldown time of each other, allowing for Warlocks to constantly have an ability up all the time.
Feeding into this energy is their Nova Bomb super, which can either destroy entire lines of enemies or be altered to focus fire on bigger targets. It may take some fine tuning, but once you gain the right gear and stats, you’ll be a powerhouse on the battlefield.
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Stormcaller
Power! Unlimited, Power! … Ahem. If you want to shoot lighting from your hands, the Stormcaller sub-class is perfect for you. While its grenades may lack some punch, this is made up for by their ability to chain across multiple different targets. Your melee can be upgraded to have an insane amount of reach, allowing you to still engage targets at a distance.
However, the true key to the this Warlock subclass is the Stormtrance super, which gives users the ability to glide across the floor and electrocute a number of different enemies. This can be adjusted to either last longer, chain across multiple targets, or even give you the ability to warp from place to place. If you want to embrace your inner Sith Lord in Destiny, the Stormcaller is the class for you.
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