Lucky Pants Solar Hunter Build
Last Updated:February 9, 2025|Changelog
Welcome to the Lucky Pants Solar Hunter Build Guide! Lucky Pants allow you to massively increase your Hand Cannon's damage output, to the point where they become competitive with Heavy Ammo Weapons! They're rather complicated in how they do this, though - here's a quick breakdown:
- Swapping to a Hand Cannon with a full magazine activates the perk. You have 6 seconds to stack a Weapon damage boosting buff once activated.
- Hitting enemies with your Hand Cannon gives you 1 stack of this Buff, up to 10. Each stack grants 45% increased damage, for a maximum of 450% increased damage.
- After 6 seconds pass, the perk deactivates and potentially goes on cooldown for 10 seconds.
- The 10 second cooldown doesn't occur if you have 6 or less stacks of the Buff as it expires or when swapping Weapons.
Putting all of it together, the Gunslinger Subclass is a complementary pairing thanks to its very high uptime on Radiant, Weapon-feel enhancements, and Restoration via Healing Grenades.
This Build is highly versatile and reliable, useful in a wide variety of activities from Grandmaster Nightfalls to Raids to Dungeons. Though, you may find it more difficult to use than other Builds.
Malfeasance counters Unstoppable Champions, the Radiant Buff allows your other Glaive to Stun Barrier Champions, and the Artifact allows your Machine Gun to stun Overload Champions.
WARNING: Malfeasance requires ownership of the Forsaken Pack DLC to unlock.
Gameplay Loop
This Build's Gameplay Loop focuses on using Malfeasance. Your other Weapons and Abilities are there to enhance it, keep you alive, or fill in for it while Lucky Pants' perk is unavailable.
- Have visuals on a tanky or dangerous target? Use your Melee Ability to gain Radiant then activate Lucky Pants and start firing!
- Always reload Malfeasance before you swap to another Weapon!
- On Your Mark makes this pretty quick.
- Reloading and swapping to another weapon while at 6 or less stacks of the Lucky Pants damage buff allows you to immediately reuse it!
When in danger, you should:
- Swap to your Glaive if you're taking heavy damage and use its Shield, which gives you 95% damage resistance!
- Throw a Healing Grenade at your feet. Try to do this after swapping to your Glaive so that Demolitionist reloads it. Getting Glaive projectile kills helps recharge your Grenade.
If you're not in imminent danger or focusing a tough target, you're free to roam around and kill enemies with your looping Knife Trick. Using your Gambler's Dodge activates On Your Mark.
Ability Breakdown
Super
- Blade Barrage - Throw a massive spread of exploding knives with mediocre tracking. Deals a lot of damage quickly, making it handy when dealing with bosses.
- For Raid boss damage scenarios, use Golden Gun: Marksman - Your teammates are bound to be grateful for the Orbs of Power this Super generates.
Abilities
- Gambler's Dodge - Instantly refills a Melee Ability Charge if used while near an enemy, handy as a backup for your "Knife-Loop" and for proccing On Your Mark.
- Triple Jump - Jump of your choice.
- Knife Trick - Used to gain Radiant via Ember of Torches and recharge your Class Ability through Ember of Singeing.
- Healing Grenade - A defensive Grenade that Cures and grants Restoration for your whole team, throw it at your feet!
Aspects
- On Your Mark - Getting Precision kills gives you and nearby allies a stacking reload and handling speed buff. Using your Class Ability instantly gives you maximums stacks. Lets you reload your Hand Cannon faster.
- Knock 'Em Down has two effects - It passively enhances certain parts of your Super Ability, and your Melee Abilities refund themselves if they kill a target while you are Radiant - which is every single time.
Fragments
- Ember of Singeing - Class ability recharges faster when Scorching targets, most commonly via your Knife Trick.
- Ember of Torches - Gain and grant nearby allies Radiant when damaging an enemy with your Knife Trick.
- Ember of Benevolence - You gain massively increased Ability regeneration speed when an ally collects a Healing Grenade or is made Radiant through your Ember of Torches Fragment.
- This Fragment doesn't do anything when playing solo, swap it out for Ember of Searing, granting slightly improved Healing Grenade uptime.
- Ember of Empyrean - Killing with your Glaive, Machine Gun, or Knife Trick briefly extends the duration of Restoration and Radiant effects applied to you.
- Ember of Solace - Your Solar Buffs last significantly longer.
Gearing
Required Gear and Weapons
- Exotic Armor: Lucky Pants are required since the entire Build is built around their Hand Cannon damage boosting effect.
How to acquire:
- Purchase from Xur (his loot rotates weekly).
- Complete the Vex Strike Force Public Event on Neomuna.
- Decrypt Exotic Engrams at Rahool in the Tower, Expert Lost Sectors are a great way to get them.
- Note: this exotic is not locked behind a DLC.
- Kinetic Weapon: Malfeasance is the best overall pairing Hand Cannon since Episode Revenant's sandbox changes, because its explosions were never affected by Lucky Pants so the nerf affects this Weapon significantly less. Its excellent base Reload speed stat makes it less clunky, while it separates itself from The Last Word as its high effective range doesn't force you into dangerous close quarters combat.
- Hitting an enemy with 5 shots causes them to detonate for massive damage. This Weapon deals massively increased damage towards Taken combatants and enemies affected by a teammate's Witherhoard.
- You can fire 5 Lucky Pants enhanced shots, reload, and then quickly swap to another Weapon, allowing you to reuse your Exotic Armor's Buff!
How to acquire:
- Play Gambit (I'm sorry) to obtain a quest, follow its steps and complete them to earn Malfeasance.
Warning: Malfeasance requires ownership of the Forsaken Pack DLC to unlock.
- Energy Weapon: Judgment of Kelgorath is the only Solar Glaive with Demolitionist. Aim for Incandescent, Surrounded, or Unstoppable Force as a pairing perk. Prioritize Shield Duration and magazine size!
- Glaives are an extremely powerful defensive layer thanks to their Shield, while Demolitionist is stronger on them than most other Weapon types. This Weapon alone is crucial to your survival.
How to acquire:
- Anyone can easily obtain this weapon by farming its Timeline Reflection mission! Access Timeline Reflections from the top-right of the Director's Solar System view.
Recommended Weapons
- Power Weapon: Speleologist - with Slideways and Killing Tally is an extremely efficient Ad clearing machine (gun). Repeatedly sliding keeps the Weapon loaded, letting you maintain the Killing Tally Buff for as long as you need to kill. This Craftable Weapon drops from Episode Echoes activities.
Stat Priorities
- Resilience > Discipline > Mobility.
- Resilience massively increases your overall survivability through increasing your maximum total health and giving you damage resistance.
- Discipline reduces your grenade cooldown.
- Mobility reduces your Dodge's cooldown.
Learn more about the Stats available to you in Destiny 2 with our dedicated guide.
Armor Mods
| Item | Slot | Mandatory Mods | Supporting Mods |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep Explorer Mask | Helmet | Harmonic Siphon Heavy Ammo Finder Kinetic Siphon | |
| Deep Explorer Grasps | Gloves | Heavy Handed | Focusing Strike Impact Induction |
| Deep Explorer Vest | Chest | Resist Mods of your choice | |
| Lucky Pants | Legs | Recuperation | Kinetic Weapon Surge Solar Weapon Surge |
| Deep Explorer Cloak | Class Item | Reaper Powerful Attraction | Bomber |
Armor Mods are unlocked by progressing your Guardian Rank. Check out the Guardian Ranks Guide for more information.
Artifact Perks
- Overload Machine Guns
- Gives your equipped Machine Gun the ability to Stun Overload Champions through sustained fire. Overloading effects also Exhaust targets, making them less lethal.
- Hold the Line
- While surrounded, your Machine Guns and Glaives have improved Reload Speed, Stability, and final blows with them partially heals you.
- Disruptor Spike
- Increases the potency of your Sever and Exhaustion debuffs, further lowering enemy damage (Overloading effects Exhaust enemies, lowering their damage).
- Dreadful Finisher
- Finishing powerful combatants creates Special Ammo for you and your fireteam. More Ammo is generated when Finishing Subjugators, Tormentors, and Champions.
- No Bell
- Your equipped Glaives are enhanced: Rapid Glaive Melee kills gives ammo to equipped Special Ammo Glaives, and blocking damage with a Glaive's shield increases its Melee damage.
- Heavy Ordnance Regeneration
- Dealing sustained damage with Machine Guns or Rocket Launchers gives you increased damage resistance as well as improved Grenade and Melee Ability regeneration for a short duration.
- Defibrillating Blast
- Stunning a Champion immediately grants and readies Bolt Charge while triggering an Arcbolt which Jolts enemies and partially heals you.
Variants
- For Dragon's Breath enthusiasts that stop at nothing to use Dragon's Breath.
- This Exotic Rocket Launcher is highly versatile, helping with boss-damage rotations and even ad-clear.
- The downside of using Dragon's Breath is that you're not using Malfeasance.
- Warden's Law is the next best Hand Cannon for Lucky Pants, though it falls fairly far behind it.
- Enlightened Action is used alongside the more classical Vorpal Weapon to ensure speedy reloads, since it's otherwise much slower than Malfeasance and would feel clunky.
WARNING: unlocking Dragon's Breath requires ownership of the Lightfall Expansion.
Summary
Lucky Pants makes your Primary Ammo Weapon as powerful as most Heavy Weapons, this makes it extremely versatile and very unique among the rest of Destiny 2's builds. This Build's other Weapons and Abilities covers the gaps left by your Exotics, giving you extremely high uptime on your Healing Grenade and on demand immortality via Judgment of Kelgorath.
It's never a bad idea to take this classic Hunter Build out for a spin, even if the Seasonal Artifact offers it little!
Credits
Written by: Xtra37
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