In Destiny 2, players can find or earn 21 Prismatic Fragments, known as Facets, but which are the best, and how can they be used?
The Prismatic Subclass coming within the Final Shape expansion in Destiny 2 comes packed with potential build crafting. With multiple skills, aspects, and fragments to merge into powerful combinations, you are going to want to know what fragments provide the best perks for your builds. Aspects and Skills are class-based, but fragments are available on any character. Often they provide little tweaks but can be crucial in build crafting and finishing our builds. So we are going to discuss the best prismatic fragments and how to use them.
Best Prismatic Fragments in Destiny 2
The best prismatic subclass fragment is the Facet of Purpose in Destiny 2. It provides a survivability buff by simply picking up an Orb of Power which is often plenty. Secondly, the Facet of Bravery. Lastly, Facet of Dawn.
The following list presents 10 of the best prismatic subclass fragments from best to worst:
- Facet of Purpose – Provides survivability
- Facet of Balance – Grants ability energy
- Facet of Dawn – Powered melees give Radiant
- Facet of Protection – Resistant to damage when surrounded
- Facet of Courage – Darkness-debuffed targets take additional light ability damage
- Facet of Defiance – Finishers create an elemental detonation
- Facet of Awakening – Rapid elemental kills generate elemental pickups
- Facet of Solitude – Rapid precision hits sever targets
- Facet of Mending – Grenade final blows cure you
- Facet of Blessing – Melee final blows start health regeneration
10 Facet of Blessing
Facet of Blessing features:
- Fragment: Facet of Blessing
- Description: Melee final blows start health regeneration. While Transcendent, Melee final blows start health regeneration for you and nearby allies.
- Benefit: Ideal for melee-based builds to provide some additional survivability
- How to use it: Any melee builds will benefit from this fragment. Since you will be in close range to deal with most melees this can provide some additional healing and survivability.
There are some fantastic prismatic melee builds currently in Destiny 2. These builds are quite dangerous due to being near the enemies, so additionally, healing is always beneficial. Any melee build can benefit from starting healing regeneration after a melee final blow. Since this fragment works best with melees, a lot of builds won’t see much use out of the fragment.
Most guardians will only find use for this fragment with melee prismatic builds, especially when paired with the exotic class items with perks like Spirit of Synthoceps, Spirit of Caliban, or Spirit of the Liar. These are great perks to buff melee builds and when used with this fragment provide us additional survivability. However, Facet of Blessing can be dangerous to use in end-game content since the risk of dying in the melee range is greater due to the additional damage we take. So this is why it ranks the lowest on our best prismatic fragments tier list.
9 Facet of Mending
Facet of Mending features:
- Fragment: Facet of Mending
- Description: Grenade final blows Cure you. Transcendent grenade final blows increase the strength of this effect.
- Benefit: Ideal for builds that use grenades that can easily kill enemies.
- How to use it: Anytime you are low, throw your grenade at a group of enemies to gain a boost of health.
Healing is an incredibly important part of Destiny 2 PVE as we are often taking damage from multiple sources at any given point. Being able to gain a burst of healing from simply getting kills with your grenades makes it potent for any build that is utilizing killing grenades. Some may choose to use utility grenades like duskfield grenades or shackle grenades that do not kill directly and will not get any benefit from this fragment. Also, with so many sources of healing like healing grenades, recuperation leg mod, and Well of Radiance, additional cures may not be beneficial.
Prismatic Warlock with Feed the Void aspect or any prismatic exotic class item with Spirt of Inmost Light will get the most benefit out of this fragment. We want to highest uptimes on our grenades to ensure we are constantly healing. Also, we want damaging grenades like Pulse Grenades or Vortex Grenades to make sure we are killing enemies with our grenades to get the healing.
8 Facet of Solitude
Facet of Solitude features:
- Fragment: Facet of Solitude
- Description: Rapid precision hits emits a severing burst from the target. While Transcendent, this effect is amplified.
- Benefit: Useful for end-game content to reduce the damage output of enemies.
- How to use it: Using rapid-fire weapons will benefit the greater like Submachine Guns or Pulse Rifles. Especially useful to reduce the damage done by enemies in more difficult content.
Survivability is one of the most important factors in completing end-game content. Since we are scaled weaker than the enemies we face, any additional reduction in their damage output can be the difference between dying in combat or not. Also, with limited revives in activities like Raids, it’s important to die as little as possible to reduce not completing an encounter due to a lack of resurrection tokens. Although in a lot of regular patrol content or non-scaled activities like the Vanguard playlist, reducing the enemy’s damage will provide little benefit. Since you will often kill them faster than they will kill you. This makes the Facet of Solitude incredibly situational and niche for end-game players and activities only.
7 Facet of Awakening
Facet of Awakening features:
- Fragment: Facet of Awakening
- Description: Rapid elemental final blows and Super final blows generate an elemental pickup of the matching damage type. (+10 Resilience)
- Benefit: Elemental pickups provide ability energy or survivability
- How to use it: Utilize your skills or weapons to rapidly defeat targets with the elemental pickups you want to create.
The Facet of Awakening works with nearly every build and playstyle due to its ease of use. Also, it doesn’t require playing any different, simply get rapid elemental elimations and you get an elemental pickup. Picking these up gives damage resistance, or various ability energy based on the spawned pick up. These elemental pickups aren’t game-changing but they do provide very easy benefits without much adjustment to your gameplay loop. That is why the Facet of Awakening is the seventh on our list of the best prismatic fragments to use in Destiny 2.
6 Facet of Defiance
Facet of Defiance features:
- Fragment: Facet of Defiance
- Description: Finishers create a detonation that either Jolts, Scorches, Slows, Severs, or makes targets Volatile, based on the damage type of your equipped super.
- Benefit: Finishing high-health targets can help eliminate any nearby enemies.
- How to use it: Get enemies low and finish them to help clear out more
Finishers can be done by any class, build, or play style. They are an animation that finishes off the health bar of any enemy low enough to be finished. Often they are used against high-health targets that tend to take a long time to kill even when already in low health. Your class item has a host of mods specifically designed for spending armor charges for various bonuses when finishing enemies. This allows the Facet of Defiance to provide more utility than just an area of effect explosion.
Finishers are potent weapons used especially in end-game content to help eliminate high-health targets as they get lower without needing to spend ammo. All classes have access to the Spirit of the Assassin perk on their exotic class items which grants invisibility upon a finisher and powered melee final blow. The Facet of Defiance paired with Hunter Prismatic Asepct, Stylish Executioner, ensures Hunters especially have near constant invisibility.
5 Facet of Courage
Facet of Courage features:
- Fragment: Facet of Courage
- Description: Your Light abilities deal increased damage to targets afflicted with Darkness debuffs. (+10 Discipline)
- Benefit: Ideal for builds utilizing both light and dark skills
- How to use it: Cast one of your skills to debuff that target to deal more damage with the opposite type here.
Allowing ourselves to deal more damage with skills of the opposite affinity can be useful for everyone utilizing multiple affinities in their builds. A very easy-to-activate debuff we can apply ourselves is always helpful for damage phases. Ensure you have at least one opposite skill from your super type, use that skill to debuff the target, and then cast your super for additional damage. So this can be done by anyone and in all content to simply allow your skills more damage. This does require pre-planning skills and could be a negative for build crafting by forcing you into skills you otherwise wouldn’t use. However, the pros outweigh the cons and that is why the Facet of Courage starts at the top half of our list of the best prismatic fragments in Destiny 2.
4 Facet of Protection
Facet of Protection features:
- Fragment: Facet of Protection
- Description: While surrounded by enemies, you are more resistant to incoming damage. (+10 Strength)
- Benefit: Beneficial mainly towards melee or close combat style builds
- How to use it: It works like a passive and is always active as long as enemies are nearby.
Perks that don’t require play style changes are great choices as they can be utilized by any player. Working as a passive bonus towards survivability, the Facet of Protection provides damage resistance by being near enemies. This damage resistance can be the difference between surviving a wave of enemies or not. The best part about this fragment is it doesn’t require thinking or pre-planning to work, it’s simply a passive when too close to too many enemies.
Similarly to the Facet of Blessing, the Facet of Protection is especially potent in melee-based builds. Since these builds require you to be close to enemies to deal damage, this provides some survivability when close to too many enemies. Melees builds primary drawback is their survivability in end-game content, however, this fragment helps to reduce that danger and keep you alive.
3 Facet of Dawn
Facet of Dawn features:
- Fragment: Facet of Dawn
- Description: Powered melee hits against targets make you Radiant. Powered melee final blows make both you and nearby allies Radiant. (-10 Strength)
- Benefit: Beneficial for all builds especially those with multiple melee charges.
- How to use it: Use your powered melees for a free damage buff here
Radiant is a weapon damage buff associated with the solar subclass. Using our powered melee to kill or deal damage gives us a free damage boost toward all weapons. This damage boost stacks with multiple other sources of damage boosts allowing us easy access to max damage even when solo. We recommend using melees that have multiple charges to ensure we have constant uptimes on Radiant. However, in group content, you might already be getting radiant from other sources including Well of Radiance. This can reduce the effectiveness of this aspect. Even with these small negatives, the damage boost and uptime with prismatic subclasses is why the Facet of Dawn is rounding out the top of our best prismatic fragments list in Destiny 2.
2 Facet of Balance
Facet of Balance features:
- Fragment: Facet of Balance
- Description: Rapidly defeating targets with Light damage grants melee energy. Rapidly defeating targets with Dark damage grants grenade energy.
- Benefit: Ability energy from killing targets
- How to use it: Passive ability energy by killing enemies you were already going to kill
As with some of the other best prismatic fragments, the ones that don’t require changing play styles and can be used by anyone are fantastic. Some of the best tools for our builds are bonuses for doing things we were already going to do. The Facet of Balance fits that description perfectly. Using skills or weapons to eliminate enemies rapidly and gain additional ability energy. This allows you to feed one skill with another skill and supplement your weapons into giving you ability energy.
We recommend combining the Facet of Balance with the Prismatic exotic class item perk, Spirit of Inmost Light, to guarantee constant ability uptimes. Since this perk and fragment are available on the prismatic subclass and class items, every build can utilize this combo. This is highly recommended for players who want to build heavily into ability spam.
1 Facet of Purpose
Facet of Purpose features:
- Fragment: Facet of Purpose
- Description: Picking up an Orb of Power grants either Amplified, Restoration, Frost Armor, Woven Mail, or Overshield, based on the damage type of your equipped super. (-10 Recovery)
- Benefit: Survivability buff by picking up an orb of power
- How to use it: Run orb generation mods or pick up other players’ generated orbs of power
As with many of our best prismatic fragments, they don’t require changes to builds or play styles to be effective. Survivability is incredibly important in Destiny 2 so a fragment that provides damage resistance or healing by picking up an orb of power is incredibly strong. Orbs of power are very easy to generate for yourself or to collect from others. Also, if we have access to one of these buffs already, we can run a different super to gain access to others. Effectively allowing us to stack multiple buffs to ensure we are never risking death.
We do recommend pairing this fragment with as many orb-generating armor mods as possible. Helmet Siphon mods, Firepower or Heavy Handed mods on your gloves, or Reaper on your class items to constantly be generating orbs of power. These orbs will not only provide super energy for us, but can buff our weapons, heal us, and give one of these buffs depending upon our other mod choices. This is why the Facet of Purpose is the best prismatic fragment in Destiny 2.
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