Destiny Guardian Optimizing Guide

Destiny Guardian Optimizing Guide by govince

Congratulations. You’re level 30. What’s next? For those of you looking for that extra edge there is more to do. No two level 30’s are created the same.


272 is the magic number.

Thanks to some comprehensive breakdowns we can see the substantial benefits that come from effect bonuses. Here are MIN/MAX cooldown times for reference:

Stat0% Effect Bonus100% Effect Bonus
Intellect5:303:55
Discipline1:000:27
Strength1:090:31

100% Intellect Bonus also restores 2x super energy per kill on top of the reduced cooldown.

Unfortunately, 816 (272+272+272) is not feasible. It starts with optimizing your gear to best suite your play style. As many of you may already know, not all gear is created equal. And the same piece of raid gear can have different stats altogether.


The 500+ club

After running some numbers, we can deduce that a level 30 guardian who is equipped with optimal gear for each slot will amass a cumulative stat count north of 500. Here are the numbers:

ExoticBase MinBase MaxMax Potential
Helmet75105118
Gloves6793104
Chest100140157

I don’t have data on the baseline MIN/MAX values for raid Gear, but there has been some data compiled on the MIN/MAX values for upgraded raid items. You can see the results here.

RaidMin PotentialMax Potential
Helmet97117
Gloves87103
Chest132152
Boots118140

So if you were fully equipped with the highest potential gear, you would end up with something like this:

  • Raid Helmet, +117
  • Raid Gloves, +103
  • Exotic Chest, +157
  • Raid Boots, +140
  • TOTAL: 517

Seems like a lot of work. Where do you start? Well if you’re like me you probably scrapped all the “duplicate” raid or exotic items you may have come across. Stop doing that. I took the time to compile some data sets to determine the stat upgrade multiplier for exotic and raid gear, respectively. Hopefully this will help everyone decide whether or not upgrading their gear is worth the time.

TypeBase ValueMultiplierMax Potential
ExoticX1.1251.125X
RaidX1.1651.165X

A few examples,

  • Armantentarium with base value 104 will be 117 fully upgraded. (Week 6, Xur)
  • Armantentarium with base value of 136 will be 153 fully upgraded. (Week 8, Xur)
  • Armantentarium with base value of 138 will be 155 fully upgraded. (Week 10, Xur)
  • Raid boots with base value of 54int and 55str (109) will be 63int / 64str (127) fully upgraded with the % increased evenly distributed between the two stats.

So to begin optimizing, quickly compute the potential on any gear you acquire. If it falls in the higher ranges, hold on to it. It will be extremely beneficial to hold on to any high-potential gear you have. Once you acquire all the pieces, you’ll need to eventually mix-and-match combinations that give you your desired effect. Any point over 272 is a wasted point. So if you have boots that give you +140int, and two chest pieces, one that gives +157int and another that gives +75int/+75str, you’re better off using the second one even though it’s 7 stat points lower — otherwise you’d be wasting 25 points by having a total int rating of 297.


I hope this helps those of you looking to maximize your output efficiency. Happy hunting.

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