Every Guardian in Destiny 2 fights with an element, and each element comes with its own vocabulary. Words like Scorch, Jolt and Unravel show up on grenades, aspects, fragments and weapon perks, and they decide how your build actually plays. This guide walks through each damage type, explains its keywords (often called verbs) in plain terms, and covers how aspects and fragments tie it all together.
Light, Darkness and Kinetic
The elements fall into two families. Solar, Arc and Void are the Light elements that Guardians have used since the start. Stasis and Strand are Darkness elements, added later: Stasis with Beyond Light and Strand with Lightfall. Prismatic, which arrived with The Final Shape, mixes both families into a single subclass.
Kinetic is the odd one out. It is plain, non-elemental damage, mostly found on weapons in your first slot. There is no Kinetic subclass and no Kinetic keywords, but Kinetic damage still matters on Prismatic, as you will see below.
Each class has one subclass per element, which gives every character six to choose from:
| Element | Hunter | Titan | Warlock |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar | Gunslinger | Sunbreaker | Dawnblade |
| Arc | Arcstrider | Striker | Stormcaller |
| Void | Nightstalker | Sentinel | Voidwalker |
| Stasis | Revenant | Behemoth | Shadebinder |
| Strand | Threadrunner | Berserker | Broodweaver |
| Prismatic | Prismatic Hunter | Prismatic Titan | Prismatic Warlock |
Every subclass has its own page in our subclasses section, with the full list of supers, abilities, aspects and fragments.
How keywords work
Each element has a small set of keywords that fall into three groups: buffs that help you, debuffs that hurt enemies, and pickups (Bungie calls them constructs) that you create and collect for extra ability energy. Learning these is the fastest way to read any ability or perk description, because almost every one of them refers back to a keyword.
Solar: healing and burning
Solar leans on sustain and damage over time.
- Scorch stacks a burning debuff on enemies. Enough stacks trigger Ignition.
- Ignition is a Solar explosion that damages everything around the target.
- Radiant increases your weapon damage for a while.
- Restoration heals you steadily over several seconds.
- Cure is an instant burst of healing.
- Firesprites are pickups that give grenade energy.
Arc: speed and chain lightning
Arc is built for fast, aggressive play.
- Jolt marks an enemy so that damaging it sends lightning to nearby targets.
- Blind stops enemies from shooting and disorients them. Against players, it scrambles the screen and sound.
- Amplified is a buff earned through rapid Arc kills that boosts movement and weapon handling.
- Bolt Charge builds up stacks and releases a strong Arc bolt when full.
- Ionic Traces are streaks of Arc energy that fly to you and refill ability energy.
Void: debuffs, defence and stealth
Void has the widest toolkit, mixing survivability with powerful enemy debuffs.
- Volatile enemies explode in Void energy once they take enough damage. Volatile Rounds let your weapons apply it.
- Weaken makes enemies take more damage.
- Suppression shuts down a target’s abilities for a short time.
- Devour heals you on final blows and feeds your grenade energy.
- Overshield adds an extra layer of protection on top of your normal health.
- Invisibility hides you from enemies and radar until you attack or it runs out.
- Void Breaches are pickups that give class ability energy.
Stasis: crowd control through ice
Stasis is about locking enemies down and breaking them apart.
- Slow stacks on a target and reduces how fast it moves and acts. Enough stacks freeze it.
- Freeze encases the target in Stasis and locks it in place.
- Shatter happens when a frozen target or crystal takes enough damage, causing an explosion that hurts nearby enemies.
- Stasis crystals freeze enemies next to them and can be shattered for area damage.
- Frost Armor gives you damage reduction that grows as stacks build.
- Stasis Shards are pickups that give melee energy.
Strand: threads and control
Strand combines crowd control with summons and mobility.
- Suspend lifts enemies into the air and holds them in place.
- Unravel causes affected enemies to burst into Strand threads that hit and unravel nearby targets.
- Sever lowers how much damage the target deals.
- Woven Mail is a damage reduction buff for you.
- Threadlings are small Strand creatures that seek out enemies and explode.
- Tangles are Strand clumps you can shoot or throw to cause an explosion.
Prismatic and Transcendence
Prismatic lets you combine a selection of Light and Darkness abilities, aspects and fragments in one loadout. Not every ability from every subclass is available, but the mix opens up builds no single element can match.
Its signature mechanic is Transcendence. A meter under your Super is split into a Light half and a Darkness half. Light damage fills one side, Darkness damage fills the other, and Kinetic damage slowly fills both. When both halves are full you can activate Transcendence, a short power state that refreshes your grenade and melee, boosts weapon damage and damage resistance, and gives you a special grenade that combines Light and Darkness. The trick to playing Prismatic well is keeping both sides of the meter moving, so mix Light and Darkness damage sources rather than leaning on one.
Aspects and fragments
Your super, grenade, melee, class ability and movement ability give a subclass its core shape. Aspects and fragments are where you customise it.
- Aspects are the big modifiers. They are unique to each class and subclass, and you can equip two at a time. Each aspect also opens a number of fragment slots.
- Fragments are smaller tweaks tied to an element rather than a class, so a Solar fragment works the same way on a Hunter, Titan or Warlock. They often add a keyword trigger, such as applying a debuff on certain kills or creating extra pickups.
Because the number of fragment slots depends on your aspects, picking aspects comes first. Then fill the slots with fragments that feed the keywords your aspects and abilities already use. You can browse every aspect and fragment, filtered by type and element, in our abilities database.
How to pick a subclass
There is no single best element. The right choice depends on what you are doing and how you like to play. A few practical guidelines:
Start with your problem
If you keep dying, Solar’s Restoration, Void’s Devour and Overshield, Stasis Frost Armor and Strand Woven Mail all add survivability. If you need to control big groups, Stasis and Strand freeze, slow and suspend enemies. If you want raw speed and add clear, Arc’s chain lightning and Amplified are hard to beat.
Build around one or two keywords
Strong builds usually loop a small number of keywords. For example, a build that applies Scorch with its grenade, triggers Ignitions and picks up Firesprites to get the grenade back is easier to run than one that tries to use every Solar verb at once. Pick aspects that create your chosen keyword, then fragments that reward it.
Match your weapons
Many weapon perks and armor mods respond to the same keywords, so lining up the element of your weapons with your subclass often unlocks extra synergy. Our weapons database and mods database can both be filtered to help you find matching gear.
Think about Champions
In endgame content, some debuffs also stun Champions. Jolt, Suppression and Slow can stun Overload Champions, while Blind, Ignition and Suspend can stun Unstoppable ones. That can save you a weapon slot when you know which Champions an activity contains. Our Champions guide covers the rest.
Try Prismatic once you know the basics
Prismatic is flexible, but it makes much more sense once you understand what each element’s keywords do on their own. Spend some time with the single-element subclasses first, then use what you learned to mix pieces together.
When you are ready to put a loadout together, the build planner lets you choose a subclass, aspects, fragments, armor and weapon rolls in one place and share the result with a single link.