Destiny 2: Mods guide – Legendary mods, best mods, mod components and Infusion

Mods: A Basic Overview

A Basic Outline

Here’s a very brief outline of what mods are and how they work. We’ll go more in depth on these points in the sections down below.

• Mods are a consumable resource that attach to your armour and weapons, giving them bonus defensive stats and/or perks.
• There are two different qualities of mod: Rare (Blue) and Legendary (Purple). Rare mods are more common, while Legendaries are less abundant and more powerful.
• You’ll earn Rare mods randomly from loot drops and Engrams until the point you’re inventory is stuffed to the brim with them. Legendary mods cannot be earned randomly though, and the only way to get them is from Banshee-44 at the Tower.
• There are many different mod effects which can alter the way your chosen subclass plays, or the handling of your equipped power weapon – among many, many more.
• Some Legendary weapons and armour come pre-equipped with Legendary mods. For Exotic weapons and armour, this is always the case.
• Really, mods only become truly important once you’ve reached the Power Level cap of around 290-305. Legendary mods are the only way of boosting your character from Power Level 300 to the cap of 305.

How do I get hold of mods?

You’ll earn Rare (blue) mods throughout your time playing Destiny 2. Engrams and Chests will often grant you a mod or two. Legendary mods can be obtained from Banshee-44 at the Tower, but only when your character has reached Power Level 280.

All of the mods you’ve collected will sit in your inventory, and you can hover over them to see what bonuses they’ll give.

Some weapons and armour come pre-equipped with Legendary Mods.

What types of mod are there?

There are two main types of mod: weapon and armour. You can slot mods into any piece of armour you own and every weapon type too.

Mods have different perks that affect your character in a certain way, whether that’s increasing your Resilience or the reload speed of an equipped Kinetic weapon. Below we’ve listed all of these unique effects.

All mods

An important point to note here: Legendary versions of these mods will always add +5 to that weapon or armour’s Power Level.

• Absorption Mod – Increases armor resilience, allowing players to absorb more damage.
• Bracket Mod – Improves weapon handling for equipped weapon type.
• Counterbalance Mod – Reduces recoil for the designated weapon type.
• Damage Mod – Equip to to change its rounds to the specified damage type.
• Impact Mod – Designated subclass melee abilities recharge faster.
• Munition Loader – Improves reload speed for the designated weapon type.
• Ordinance Mod – Grenades recharge faster when using the designated subclass.
• Paragon Mod – Class abilities recharge faster when using the designated subclass.

Weapon mods

• Weapon Attack Mod – Raises the equipped Kinetic weapon’s power level by 5.
• Arc, Void, Solar Damage Mod – Changes the elemental damage type of your energy weapon.

Class Mods

• Impact Absorption, Acceleration and Repairing Mods – These mods increase your Guardians Resilience, Mobility and Recovery stats. This boils down to bolstering how much damage you can take, bonuses to movement speed and swifter armour/health regeneration.

Subclass Mods

• Paragon, Impact and Ordinance Mods – These are mods designed with the purpose of aiding your subclass’s abilities. This means that they’re split into Solar, Void and Arc. An example being a Void Sentinel Titan equipping a Void Ordinance mod to reduce the cooldown of their grenades.

Energy Weapon Mods

• Energy Counterbalance Mods – Equip these in your armour slots to reduce the recoil of your Energy weapon.
• Energy Bracket Mods – These mods increase the handling of your Energy weapon, meaning that you can aim down sights (ADS) even quicker.

Power Weapon Mods

• Power Munition Loader Mods – These mods increase the reload speed of your power weapons.
• Power Bracket Mods – Power weapons will have increased ADS ability.

How do I equip mods?

You can slot mods into pieces of weapon and armour by viewing your gear in more detail. In this menu you’ll see three slots in the left hand corner.

Starting from the far left: Infusion, Mod Slot, Shader.

The middle slot may be occupied by a Rare or Legendary Mod already. Sometimes it’s completely empty. In either case, you just hover over it and select which mod you’d like to equip from the drop down menu.

Getting Infusion Right

When you’re first starting off, the act of buffing your equipment with Legendary Mods can be a confusing process, especially when you’re working with equipment that’s already come with a Legendary Mod. Coming at it fresh can be a little overwhelming, but we’ve broken the whole process down for you below.

Why are Legendary Mods so important?

Popping Legendary mods into your gear is the only way you’ll be able to get from Power Level 300 to 305. What’s more, it’s one of the main ways that’ll help you creep from 290 to 300. Equipping these mods into each of your slots boosts their Power Level by 5, which increases the average overall level of your gear tremendously.

Eliminating the confusion from Infusion

One of the key aspects of levelling your character through mods is Infusion. To put it simply, it means increasing the Power Level of a piece of gear by consuming a similar piece of equipment that’s at a higher Power Level.

For instance, you may have a pair of gauntlets at Power Level 150. You’ve just cracked open an Engram that’s given you another pair of gauntlets at a Power Level of 160. Turns out you like the perks and aesthetic of the lower level gear. This is where you’ll infuse the level 160 gauntlets into the lower level ones, bringing them up from level 150 to 160 and consuming the higher level gauntlets in the process.

This system can be a little tricky to understand when you’ve got a piece of gear with a Legendary mod already equipped. It’s not worth infusing a piece of gear using another which has a Legendary mod already slotted into it. However, it’s good to do the opposite. We’ll explain this all below using examples.

• Lets say we have a gun called Tango which is at Power Level 290. It has a Legendary Mod equipped.
• We have another gun called Charlie which is at Power Level 280. It does not have a Legendary Mod equipped.
• We are looking to improve the base Power Level of Charlie (280) and we’re thinking of doing this by Infusing Tango into it. We believe that Charlie will shoot up to 290 Power Level once the process is complete. Unfortunately, it won’t.
• Infusing Tango (290) into Charlie (280) will only increase Charlie’s level to 285 not 290.
• Charlie will only improve by +5 because Tango’s base Power Level was actually 285, not 290. The Legendary Mod attached to Tango was boosting its base Power Level the whole time.

So, it’s more worthwhile – most of the time – to Infuse into gear with Legendary Mods already equipped. Here’s a quick example of why below.

• We have Tango at Power Level 290 – it’s got a Legendary Mod equipped. This means that it’s base Power Level is actually at 285.
• We have Charlie at a slightly higher Power Level this time, sitting at 290 without a Mod too.
• If we Infuse Charlie into Tango, Tango will jump from 290 to 295.
• This is because we’re taking into account both of their base Power Levels. Tango was actually at 285, while Charlie was at 290 without a Mod.
• So, Tango will get a base power jump from 285 to 290 initially, but get an extra boost from its Legendary Mod of +5 on top. This brings it from 285 to 290, to 295.

Infusion: Video Walkthrough

If you’re still a little perplexed by the whole process of Infusion (we don’t blame you), then it’s worth taking a look at the system in action. Below we’ve linked a video which’ll explain how it works and show exactly what the entire process of infusing gear actually entails.

Found it helpful? Give the video a thumbs up to support the creator!

Understanding Banshee-44’s Legendary Mods

Located in the Tower, Banshee-44’s your go-to vendor for all things mod related, although Destiny 2 doesn’t do a fantastic job of explaining how doing business with him works. We’ve put together a simple breakdown to remedy this and make sure you’re making the most of what Banshee has to offer.

• As soon as you unlock Banshee-44 you’ll be able to spend 2500 Glimmer to purchase one random Rare Mod.
• Banshee only starts dealing in Legendary Mods once you’ve reached Power Level 280.
• At 280 you can you trade in 3 of the same type of Rare Mod to Banshee. He will then convert this into 1 Legendary Mod of the same type.
• You can also dismantle a Legendary Mod into 1 Mod Component. You can trade in 2 Mod Components with Banshee and he’ll give you 1 Legendary Mod in return. The key part here, is that you can choose what type of Mod this will be: Armour or Weapon.
• Trading in Mod Components with Banshee is the only way you can obtain the sought after +5 Kinetic Weapon Attack Mod.

What are the best Legendary Mods to equip?

There are a tremendous amount of Legendary Mods with all sorts of effects, so it’s very tricky to safely say, “You must have this mod”. It all comes down to your playstyle and preferences. Having said that, we can give you a little guidance into what mods to choose for both PVP and PVE scenarios.

PVE mods

As you’re not needing to rely on twitch aiming, speed and finesse in Destiny 2’s PVE challenges we recommend you steer away from mobility, reload speeds and the like. Instead you’ll want to focus on upping the recharge rate of your subclass’ abilities for higher damage output, and perhaps some Resilience in there for survivability too.

PVP mods

We believe PVP is where mods really shine and allow you to optimise your own playstyle. If you’re a Hunter who wants to go fast – slap a ton of movement speeds mod on. Again, if you’re a fan of Hand Cannons, one which reduces their recoil could come in handy.

Many Legendary mods focus on the little things that make such a key difference in PVP, so you’ll want to focus mainly on movement and weapon bonuses.

Arekkz has a great video explaining Mods and gives some easy to understand advice on what you should be equipping on all of your gear. Do make sure it a thumbs up if you found it helpful and consider subscribing to his channel for more brilliant Destiny 2 content.

How to farm Weapon Attack mods

Weapon Attack mods slot into your Kinetic weapon and raise their Power Level by +5. In general, they’re pretty hard to come by and you won’t just stumble into them when playing the game – you’ve got to actively hunt them down. This can prove pretty frustrating for those who’ve modded most of their equipment to get closer to the level cap of 305 but can’t seem to get hold of a mod for their Kinetic weapon to nudge it even further.

To help you out, we’ve put together a simple walkthrough based on Youtuber DPJ’s video on how he goes about getting plenty of these sought after Kinetic weapon mods.

• First, you’ll need a tonne of Glimmer. Preferably a good 50,000 +.
• Next, go into your inventory and dismantle any Legendary mods which you don’t need to get a bunch of Mod Components back.
• Once you’ve dismantled them all, you’ll have a pile of Mod Components which you can take over to Banshee-44. Select “Create Weapon Mod” and Banshee could gift you with a fair few of these Weapon Attack Mods.
• Doing this gives a good chance of receiving them as there’s a pretty high drop rate from Banshee.
• After this process you might be a little thin on other mods, but not to worry! Use your pile of Glimmer to buy loads of Rare Weapon Mods back from Banshee and eventually you’ll get enough to turn these duplicates back into Legendary Mods and replenish your inventory.
• Try to avoid spending all your Glimmer as it’s quite a valuable resource and can take a little while to build back.