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The Destiny 2 Solstice of Heroes 2019 (opens in new tab) is underway, and on top of grinding out armor sets, players are using the event to utterly delete raid bosses. As the above video from top PvE player Gladd (opens in new tab) shows, the Solstice event’s elemental buffs have taken a popular DPS strategy to absurd new heights.
As Gladd explained in his video, this strategy uses a frankly irresponsible amount of melee damage buffs. The base is the Liar’s Handshake Exotic, which gives Arc Hunters’ follow-up melee attacks a huge damage boost. Next, stack this with Combination Blow, which gives you a damage bonus on every melee kill, and the One-Two Punch shotgun perk which gives another melee buff after landing a full spread. Throw in a universal damage boost from Tractor Cannon for good measure, and last but not least, add in the Arc Empowerment buff provided by the Solstice of Heroes Elemental Orbs, giving you yet more melee damage.
Basically, this is One Punch Man: The Build, and it does work.
Some raid bosses are health-gated by mechanics or immunity windows, but anything with an open DPS phase gets destroyed by this combo. Gladd and his team used it to wreck everything from Val Ca’uor of the Spire of Stars to Riven of The Last Wish. They even melted Argos from the Eater of Worlds, a boss with moving and hard-to-reach weak spots. That said, I think the fight that best illustrates the power of this build is the first one in the video: the dog pack in the Leviathan. Gladd and the gang totally ignored the damage buff that’s baked into this encounter, yet they still killed all the dogs in one round. That’s disgusting.
Earlier this year, a Destiny 2 player named Tazus used a similar combination of buffs (and bugs) (opens in new tab) to solo Riven, and at the time many players – myself included – speculated that Tazus’ strategy would never be matched. Of course, nobody counted on Liar’s Handshake being as strong as it is, let alone another event-specific damage buff which pairs perfectly with it. I genuinely can’t picture Bungie making something stronger than this, so once more, with feeling: this DPS build will probably never be matched.
Some good news for Destiny 2 players (opens in new tab): Bungie is nerfing the Mountaintop quest and buffing loot from Menagerie, Reckoning, Gambit Prime and more.
