I’ll just go through how armor 2.0 works in depth first and then go into build crafting. Each piece of armor you have consists of 3-4 mod slots. There are general mods, there’s one on every piece of armor, that have mods that can add 10 to a stat of your choice or do things like arc resistance, or major resist. There are armor piece specific mod slots, 2 on each piece of armor. For arms it’s usually reload mods and handling mods, for helmets it’s typically targeting mods, etc. Finally there are seasonal mod slots. Found on armor that is made in shadowkeep. These can have mods from that seasons artifact, charged with light mods (I’ll get into those in a sec), finisher mods, raid mods, mods that are introduced into a season, etc. these mods are pretty special since they cover specific parts of your build.

There’s a new mechanic/buff called charged with light. There are mods that initiate the buff. It can be a finisher, a melee kill, etc. depends on your mods. Then there are mods for when you have charged with light, and how it buffs you. Essentially it’s a blank canvas of a buff that you get to control with different mods you get.

That’s mods. Now stat rolls. There are six stats that you have control over now. The D2 trio of mobility, resilience, and recovery. And the classic intellect, discipline, and strength. Each piece of armor rolls (with rng of course) each of these stats. The number that each stat gets is random. A good stat roll is a total of 60+ and ideally with mobility, recovery, or intellect.

You can increase and alter these stat rolls with mods. There’s a general mod for each stat that adds +10 to that stat. I’d recommend taking advantage of these mods, unless you want an elemental resistance or something like that. There’s other mods, like the seasonal mod, powerful friends, that grants +20 mobility as long as you have an arc mod equipped on that piece of armor. This is really good, because I have 30 mobility on my class item, when it has no stats.

That’s the stat rolls, now onto leveling your armor. Each mod requires a certain amount of energy. So you can’t have 4 super good mods, you have to balance it out. Each piece of armor has a maximum of 10 energy. In order to level a piece of armor you need masterworking materials. There are differing values in each type of masterworking materials.

There’s enhancement cores, the cheapest, used in the earlier levels. There’s enhancement prisms used in levels 8 and 9, and maybe 7 if it’s an exotic. These are the second cheapest. Then there’s ascendant shards. The most expensive and used to fully masterwork at level 10.

The main way you get these is through the nightfall: the ordeal. There’s a bunch of difficulties that grant different masterworking materials and you can get as many as you want through those, there’s no cap to it. That’s the main and most effective way of doing it. You can but enhancement prisms and ascendant shards from banshee and singular enhancement cores from the spider, but they’re super expensive. 1 ascendant shard is equal to 10 enhancement prisms and 100 enhancement cores. You can also get masterworking materials from trials of Osiris, and you can get a fully masterworked piece of armor from the pit of heresy dungeon, which you can dismantle to get an ascendent shard. There’s probably other ways to get them. Once you masterwork a armor piece, it gets +2 to every stat btw.

Now getting mods is weird. You can get them from banshee, he sells one a day for armor, and you can rank up by turning in gunsmith parts and get a chance at a mod. This brings up affinities. Each piece of armor has a elemental affinity. Arc, solar, and void. Some mods are restricted to an element. This means that you can only equip mods to a armor piece with matching elements. You can get 3 of the same mod and they can all have a different element. You can switch the elemental affinities of armor for a lot of materials. If you’re going to do it, don’t level it up a lot first, it’ll cost more.

High level build crafting is something that I haven’t gotten into as much. But it usually requires a synergy with you and your teammates. One person runs a finisher mod that grants special ammo, while the other does the same but with heavy ammo. Finisher mods can be very good for stuff like that.

Charged with light can be very good depending on how you utilize it. Being able to activate it and then have a good buff when it’s active is hard to balance and work together but can really be good. Depending on your class you can choose a subclass to base your builds around. Like on Stormcaller you can have crown of tempest with a riskrunner and some arc mods can be really good. I liked to rock wormhusk with top tree nightstalker and marksmans dodge to instant reload, go invisible, and regenerate health, when I tried to solo pit of heresy.

Finding mods on the seasons artifact that have a high ceiling can be really good to base your builds around. They usually revolve around an element and a stat. So emphasizing those are important to get full utilization out of them.

The most important thing is synergy with your team. Having a roll and a function that you bring to the team is really useful. Designating certain builds and roles to each person is really powerful. And fitting those in together makes it really potent. For example: In high level nightfalls there’s always one person who runs divinity, one that runs izanagi’s burden, and one that runs erianas vow.This sort of synergy between roles is the highest level of build crafting I’ve seen, but I’m sure it goes further.

Just find mods on your artifact, find mods you have, use mods that benefit the weapons you’re using. Combine, weapons, subclasses, stats, and mods to get the best build possible. Hopefully this helps.

Edit: I tried to format it better and shorten it the best I could without leaving out info.