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Welcome to the Assassin's Cowl Arc Hunter Build Guide! Assassin's Cowl on Arc Hunter is an incredibly powerful combination because it provides massive melee damage output, health sustain, and invisibility. This allows for melee to be used in high end difficulty content without the worry of dying often.
What is the Assassin's Cowl though? This exotic allows for powered melee final blows to grant Invisibility and restore a portion of health and shields. Finishers and final blows against more powerful targets increase the duration of the invisibility and the amount of health and shields restored. This creates a great way to stay in close and sustain health while outputting major melee damage.
This build creates dozens of Orbs of Power while providing near infinite Invisibility on top of clearing hordes in just one punch with the Jolted applied to targets. The simplicity of this build makes it very beginner friendly while also being able to tackle most content within Destiny 2.
- Healing
- Constant Jolts
- Many Orbs of Power
- Stealth on Melee Kill
- Activity Dependent
- Must be Melee Range
- Kills to Stack Damage
Gameplay Loop
This build is all about getting close to start gathering melee kills, preferably starting with weaker enemies to build stacks of Combination Blow. After spending your melee energy on a kill, dodge near another enemy to regain your melee charge. This is easy to do as you are invisible due to the Assassin's Cowl activating on your melee kill. Melee kills refund your Dodge cooldown, allowing for infinite chaining of the two abilities.
From there, you add One-Two Punch shotgun shots and Tractor Cannon on larger targets to stack even more damage. Keep in mind your melees after a dodge applies Jolted to the target, so it is ideal to target the strongest enemy in a group when you are already at maximum stacks of Combination Blow. The Jolt Arcs takes care of any small targets within the vicinity. Usually, you not need to use One Two Punch or Tractor Cannon on just red bars at any difficulty; save ammo for Majors, Champions, and Bosses. From there, it is as simple as melee then dodge then repeat.
Ability Breakdown
Super
- Gathering Storm, Hurl your Arc Staff forward, embedding it into surfaces or large targets and jolting nearby targets. After a short time, a devastating lightning bolt strikes the staff, overcharging it with Arc energy. While overcharged, your staff discharges lightning at nearby foes. Since it is a passive super, this creates more time to stay in the Assassin's Cowl Arc Hunter loop.
Abilities
- Gambler's Dodge, Dodging refunds your melee energy.
- Triple Jump, Jump of your choice.
- Combination Blow, A quick strike that temporarily increases your melee damage when defeating a target, stacking three times. Defeating targets with this ability also fully refills your class ability energy and restores a small amount of health. Big part of stacking the melee damage on the build.
- Pulse Grenade, A grenade that periodically damages targets within its explosion radius. Great for crowd control and passive damage while you melee.
Aspects
- Lethal Current, After dodging, your next melee attack has increased lunge range, Jolts the target, and creates a damaging aftershock. Damaging any Jolted target with melee attacks also Blinds them.
- Flow State, Defeating a jolted target makes you Amplified. While you are amplified, your dodge recharges more quickly, you are more resilient while dodging, and your reload speed is greatly increased. You spend a lot of time dodging so these benefits are active at all times.
Fragments
- Spark of Resistance, Grants 25% Damage Resistance while within 15 meters of 3+ enemies. Remains active for 2 seconds once the activation condition is no longer met.
- Spark of Instinct, While critically wounded, taking damage emits a burst of damaging Arc energy that jolts targets.
- Spark of Feedback, Being struck by a Melee Attack grants 75% increased Melee Damage for your next Melee Attack within 5 seconds.
- Spark of Frequency, Scoring a Melee Hit grants 50 Reload Speed and a 0.8x Reload Duration Multiplier for 5 seconds. Extremely helpful for the One-Two Punch shotgun.
Gearing
Required Gear and Weapons
Assassin's Cowl is required to provide the Invisibility to get in close to targets, and most importantly the healing after every melee kill.
How to acquire:
- Purchase from Xur (his loot rotates weekly).
- Decrypting exotic engrams at Rahool (it will be a random exotic drop, but will prioritize exotics you currently do not have, known as the knockout system).
- Farm the expert lost sector on Helmet Armor days.
- Note: this exotic is not locked behind a DLC.
Recommended Weapons
- Kinetic Weapon: Wastelander M5 - Craftable with Lead from Gold and One-Two Punch, perfect for ammo sustain and boosting the damage of your melees.
- Energy Weapon: Zaouli's Bane - One of the best primary ammo weapons in the game right now. WithExplosive Payload and Incandescent, it offers great clear at almost any range.
- Power Weapon: Tractor Cannon - This is the perfect exotic to pair with almost any melee build. It allows for a 30% debuff on any target it hits and can stun Overload Champions.
Stat Priorities
- Resilience > Discipline > Mobility.
- Resilience is the amount of damage you can take before dying, as well as your shield capacity.
- Discipline is what reduces your grenade cooldown.
- Mobility gives you more movement speed and jump height, and lowers dodge cooldown.
Learn more about the Stats available to you in Destiny 2 with our dedicated guide.
Armor Mods
- Helmet
- Harmonic Siphon - Rapid final blows create Orbs of Power.
- Hands-On - Reduce Super cool down when getting melee kills
- Dynamo - Reduces Super cooldown when using your class ability near targets.
- Gauntlets
- Heavy Handed x3 - Spawns Orbs of Power on melee kills, with 3 copies this cooldown lowers to 1 second.
- Chest
- Resist mods, your choice - choose for the activity you are going into!
- Leg
- Solar Weapon Surge - Your Kinetic weapons gain a small bonus to damage while you have any Armor Charge. Your Armor Charge now decays over time. Collection of an Orb of Power causes you to gain 1 temporary Armor Charge.
- Kinetic Weapon Surge - Your Kinetic weapons gain a small bonus to damage while you have any Armor Charge. Your Armor Charge now decays over time. Collection of an Orb of Power causes you to gain 1 temporary Armor Charge. This can be swapped to a 2nd Solar Weapon Surge for better clear with Zaouli's Bane.
- Recuperation - Replenishes health each time you pick up an Orb of Power. Very useful to help survivability between melee kills due to how many are created.
- Mark
- Time Dilation - Your decaying Armor Charge has a longer duration.
- Powerful Attraction - Use class ability to collect orbs around you automatically
- Bomber - Reduces grenade cooldown when using your class ability.
Armor Mods are unlocked by progressing your Guardian Rank. Check out the Guardian Ranks Guide for more information.
Artifact Mods
This build does not require any artifact mods from season/episode.
Variants
- Weapons can be shifted depending on your preference.
- Any One-Two Punch Shotgun or Primary weapon if using an Energy One-Two Punch Shotgun.
- Any Primary or Energy One-Two Punch Shotgun of your choice.
- Any Heavy of your choice. Edge Transit is a great all around option if you need more of a ranged loadout.
Summary
Assassin's Cowl Arc Hunter is a fantastic option for high difficulty Nightfalls and excels the most in Legend Lost Sectors. The melee damage combined with the invisibility from the exotic are a perfect match and allow for a near one hit on Legend Champions when hit with a Tractor Cannon debuff and One-Two Punch shotgun.
One of the more fun builds out there in the game right now, I highly recommend it if you want a fast paced close quarters combat feeling!
Credits
Written by: Chadly
Reviewed by: Shield Maiden, snail