What is the Titan class?
The Titans are the battle-hardened, heavy-hitting front line soldiers of the Guardian ranks. Covered head to toe in heavy armor plating, armed to the teeth and able to deploy protective shield barriers for both themselves and nearby Guardians, the Titan is a stalwart defender of the Light who is ready to fill the enemy with lead at a moment's notice.
Basic abilities
Regardless of which subclass you choose, every Titan possesses two types of abilities: barriers and jumps.
Barrier types:
- Towering Barricade - Create a large rectangular barrier that absorbs damage.
- Rally Barricade - Create a smaller barrier that allows you to peek over it to fire. In addition, it reloads your weapons automatically while you duck behind it.
Jump types:
- High Lift - After jumping, jump again to activate Lift, giving you a moderate height boost.
- Strafe Lift - After jumping, jump again to activate Strafe Lift, letting you change directional movement easily.
- Catapult Lift - After jumping, jump again to activate Catapult Lift, sending you into the air directly above with a hard burst of speed.
Subclasses
In Destiny 2, three subclasses are available to the Titan class — Sentinel, Striker, and Sunbreaker. Each offers their own unique strengths and weaknesses, as well as abilities, both regular and super, exclusive to that subclass. On top of that, each subclass also has two available skill trees that further increase the amount of playstyles you can adopt.
Sentinel
As the name suggests, Sentinels are the most defensively focused of the three Titan subclasses. Featuring abilities that provide protective buffs and other support powers, the Sentinel specializes on soaking up damage and holding positions. While one of the skill trees allows you to go on the offensive for a short amount of time, in general, you'll want to stick to playing around cover (either your own barriers or cover in the world), shredding enemies with your firearms.
SUPER ABILITY: Sentinel Shield - Summon a shield made of Void Light. This shield can be thrown at enemies, used to smash into them, or held in front of you to protect yourself from damage that would otherwise kill you easily.
Grenade abilities:
- Magnetic Grenade - A grenade that sticks to enemies and explodes twice, dealing double damage.
- Voidwall Grenade - A grenade that creates a horizontal wall of Void Light flames where it lands.
- Suppressor Grenade - A grenade that temporarily disables enemy ability usage.
Code of the Protector skill tree abilities:
- Defensive Strike - Killing an enemy with this melee attack creates an over shield around you and nearby Guardians.
- Rallying Force - Melee kills restore the health of both you and nearby allies.
- Turn the Tide - Defensive Strike's shield lasts longer and increases melee damage and reload speed.
- Ward of Dawn - Trades in your Sentinel Shield super ability for the Ward of Dawn, a large bubble shield that protects you and your allies from monumental amounts of damage.
Code of the Aggressor skill tree abilities:
- Shield Bash - After sprinting for a few seconds, use this melee power to bash your Void Light shield into enemies briefly, stunning them and doing damage.
- Superior Arsenal - Grenade kills recharge your grenade ability, allowing you to use a grenade again sooner.
- In the Trenches - Killing enemies while you are surrounded gives you charge for your super ability.
- Second Shield - You can now throw two shields during the duration of your Sentinel Shield super ability.
Striker
If the Sentinel is the most defensive of the Titans, then the Striker is easily the most offensive of them. Featuring high burst damage and an emphasis on melee attacks and grenade throwing, the Striker specializes in drawing enemy fire away from allies and damaging enemies hard and fast. You'll want to spend as little time as possible behind your barriers, as you want to constantly be up close and personal with your foes.
SUPER ABILITY: Fist of Havoc - Leap forward and smash the ground with a massive shockwave of electric energy, decimating foes in the radius of the blast. This can be done several times.
Grenade abilities:
- Flashbang Grenade - A grenade that disorients enemies it damages.
- Pulse Grenade - A grenade that damages enemies during regular intervals while they're in it's explosion radius.
- Lightning Grenade - A sticky grenade that can adhere to any surface and continuously emits lightning.
Code of the Earthshaker skill tree abilities:
- Seismic Strike - While sprinting, use this ability to explosively shoulder slam an enemy.
- Terminal Velocity - When using Fist of Havoc, slamming into the ground from a taller height will increase damage done. In addition, a large damage dealing field will be left behind after each slam.
- Magnitude - Gain an additional grenade charge. Grenade effects last longer as well.
- Aftershocks - Damage done with Seismic Strike will recharge your grenade.
Code of the Juggernaut skill tree abilities:
- Frontal Assault - This melee ability will reload your weapon and reduce recoil on your firearms upon hitting an enemy.
- Reversal - Melee kills immediately begin to regenerate your health.
- Knockout - Critically wounding an enemy or breaking their shields gives you a temporary boost in melee damage and range.
- Trample - Getting kills with Fist of Havoc increases its duration.
Sunbreaker
Where the Sentinel and Striker are heavily defensive or offensive, the Sunbreaker is the closest thing a Titan has to being the jack of all trades. With abilities that both provide supportive buffs to themselves and allies, as well as ones that directly increase the raw power of their attacks, Sunbreakers are the most well rounded of the Titans. Because most of their power is best leveraged from afar, you'll generally want to keep your distance from most enemies.
SUPER ABILITY: Hammer of Sol - Throw several flaming hammers at high speed, doing heavy damage on direct hits with enemies.
Grenade abilities:
- Incendiary Grenade - A grenade that, upon detonation, sets everything within it's radius aflame.
- Thermite Grenade - A grenade that creates a straight line of pulsing flame directly in front of where it lands.
- Fusion Grenade - This grenade causes solar damage. Damage increases if the grenade is stuck to a target.
Code of the Fire-Forged skill tree abilities:
- Hammer Strike - After sprinting for a short amount of time, triggering this melee ability lets you smash a hammer into an enemy.
- Tempered Metal - Solar kills give you and nearby allies a temporary movement and reload speed buff.
- Battle-Forge - Enemies will explode if killed by Hammer of Sol.
- Vulcan's Rage - Hammers will explode on impact, fragmenting and dealing area-of-effect (AoE) damage to enemies near the impact.
Code of the Siegebreaker skill tree abilities:
- Mortar Blast - Melee attacks will cause enemies near the target to take AoE damage.
- Sun Warrior - Solar kills restore your health and kills with grenades, or melee attacks will leave a sunspot where the enemy died. Sunspots damage nearby enemies while active.
- Rings of Fire - Solar abilities recharge quicker, and Hammer of Sol lasts longer if you stand in a sunspot.
- Solar Siege - Hammers create sunspots on impact. Standing in a sunspot will increase the throwing speed of your hammers.
Builds
While a lot of the fun comes from mixing and matching your abilities and arsenal, we've come up with three different types of builds (one for each subclass) for aspiring Titans — each one complete with their own name.
Sentinel build: Wall of Stone
- Movement ability: Strafe Lift
- Grenade ability: Voidwall Grenade
- Barricade ability: Towering Barricade
- Skill path: Code of the Defender
- Kinetic weapon: Pulse Rifle
- Energy weapon: Submachine Gun
- Heavy weapon: Grenade Launcher
The "Wall of Stone" build focuses on maximizing the Sentinel's ability to tank damage for both themselves and their teammates, as well as helping to thin out enemy numbers and deny them space.
With this setup, you'll want to make sure you prioritize putting your barricade up in key positions to give your team a large piece of cover to work around. When enemies get too close, you can utilize your melee powers in order to provide both health regen and shield boosts to you and your allies. When melee isn't enough to take down the horde, your trusty pulse rifle and submachine gun will be more than sufficient to do high amounts of burst damage to shred through the enemy's numbers up close.
When things start to get hairy, the strafe lift ability will help you to get exactly where your allies need you quickly. If you're facing a group of enemies too strong to take care of with your firearms, the voidwall grenade is an excellent area denial tool that will punish mobs that dare to cross places you deem off limits. If all else fails, the heavy hitting grenade launcher will put large amounts of damage into groups of high-tier enemies.
Finally, if your fireteam is under unrelenting firepower, you can use your Ward of Dawn super in order to protect everyone and give you several seconds to reload and recharge.
Striker build: Unrelenting Force
- Movement ability: Strafe Lift
- Grenade ability: Pulse Grenade
- Barricade ability: Rally Barricade
- Skill path: Code of the Juggernaut
- Kinetic weapon: Auto Rifle
- Energy weapon: Submachine Gun
- Heavy weapon: Sword
The "Unrelenting Force" build encourages Titan Strikers to constantly fight up close and personal with foes by using strafe lift to close the distance. With full investment into the juggernaut skill tree, you will be extremely resilient in close quarters thanks to the health regeneration and ammo reloading perks you get from melee kills.
When melee attacks start to fail, your rally barrier gives you a nice form of cover (and instant reloads) to work with as you spray and pray with your auto rifle and submachine gun. To help thin out the horde, the pulse grenade does nice AoE damage to enemies.
When the time comes to pop your super, your Fist of Havoc will prove devastating in wiping out entire small armies. Because of the juggernaut skills, any kill with it increases its duration, meaning that the super will last much longer as long as you're smashing enemies into dust with it. Lastly, if you're ever caught in a situation where you need super-level damage in close quarters, your sword will prove extremely useful, though it eats up heavy ammo energy quickly. Use it sparingly!
Sunbreaker build: Designated Marksman
- Movement ability: Catapult Lift
- Grenade ability: Thermite Grenade
- Barricade ability: Rally Barricade
- Skill path: Code of the Siegebreaker
- Kinetic weapon: Scout Rifle/Hand Cannon
- Energy weapon: Scout Rifle/Hand Cannon
- Heavy weapon: Sniper Rifle
The "Designated Marksman" build focuses on taking advantage of the Sunbreaker's long range potential. Using catapult lift, you can get to advantageous marksman positions. Then, place down your rally barricade. Since you're far away from the main engagement, this cover will prove enough to protect you, and as an added bonus it will reload your weapons.
From this position, you can precisely take out enemies one by one with your scout rifle or hand cannon. It doesn't matter which is kinetic and which is energy; headshots from both will devastate mobs. When your foes get near, the thermite grenade is great at taking out several enemies who are running towards you.
For tough enemies, you can utilize your sniper rifle to land extremely damaging headshots and either kill them outright or soften them up. Lastly, for overwhelming mobs or boss fights, Hammer of Sol is incredible at destroying your foes from afar. Firstly, place a rally barricade for cover. Then, throw a hammer behind it to create a sunspot, and then use your bonuses from the siegebreaker tree to pepper the enemy with several hammers.
Tips and tricks
We're going to round this guide out with five tips and tricks that will help every Titan find success.
- Don't be afraid to take a few hits. While having full HP is good, your class is built to handle some punishment.
- Use natural cover as much as possible. The less amount of time you need to use your barricades, the more often you'll have them when you really need them.
- Don't use your super when you're hurt. Using your super when you're close to death risks dying during its duration.
- Place barricades tactically. Try and find a spot for your barricade that will maximize damage blocked, but also not hinder the firing lanes of you or your allies.
- Use your vertical jumps sparingly. While it's tempting to fly like a bird, putting yourself in the open air means you'll be leaving your cover, making you an easier target for enemy shooters.
Destiny 2 is available now on Xbox One and PS4 for $59.99
