Summary
There are many ways to build one’s Guardian inDestiny 2in 2025, and that’s because Bungie has been investing in buildcrafting and build customization a lot over the past few years. This can be seen in the wayDestiny 2’s Arc subclasses were buffed in Heresy, the changes to Stasis to bring it more in line with 3.0 elements and Strand, the addition of Prismatic, the balance passes to Exotics, and more. Even though Heresy doesn’t add new Exotic armor pieces to the game, existing ones have been changed to become much better, and with Arc receiving massive buffs, one build that was dominating the meta in The Final Shape is now even stronger.
The Final Shape changed builds inDestiny 2forever with the addition of Prismatic and Exotic class items, but Bungie has been making changes to regular subclasses too in order not to make them feel too outdated and not powerful enough. This is a great thing to see, and it can help build diversity a lot going into Frontiers. With Heresy, despite the absence of a key Artifact mod, Getaway Artist Warlock builds arguably grew stronger as an indirect consequence of the changes to the Arc kit.
How Heresy’s Arc Buffs Take One Warlock Build to the Next Level
Destiny 2’s Getaway Artist buildswere very strong in The Final Shape because Episode 1 released a largely broken Artifact mod called Galvanic Armor, which added 30% damage resistance if Guardians with Arc or Prismatic subclasses equipped had the Amplified buff active. This was and still is pretty easy to do with Facet of Purpose and other means, but Galvanic Armor was a temporary mod and thus is no longer available. However, Heresy’s changes to Arc verbs and subclasses buffed Amplified, which now grants the following:
These are incredible buffs to Amplified, which was previously a movement speed buff at best, with some niche interactions with weapon perks. For example, Eddy Current has been buffed since and now is a very strong perk in builds that use Amplified, making it a great perk to have onHeresy’s new Psychopomp grenade launcheras well. In the case of Warlocks, the Getaway Artist Exotic grants Amplified when consuming an Arc grenade to turn it into an autonomous turret. Not only is the Exotic very strong on its own, especially on Prismatic with Feed the Void and Bleak Watcher as the Aspects of choice, but now also gives incredible buffs.
In The Final Shape, Getaway Artist was meta for the ease of use and how easily it could proc Amplified for Galvanic Armor, which combined with 100 Resilience andFacet of Protectioncould go a long way to make Guardians stay alive. Now, however, despite the damage resistance from Amplified being half that Galvanic Armor, Getaway Artist builds also have the perk of making enemies less accurate. That, combined with the baseline 15% damage resistance that doesn’t require an Artifact mod, makes this build very good even in Heresy - but that’s not all.
Why Destiny 2’s Getaway Artist Build is Stronger in Heresy
In fact,Heresy added Bolt Charge toDestiny 2, an Arc verb that accumulates stacks up to 10 to then unleash a big bolt of lightning on a target when using an ability against them. Since this works perfectly on Arc and can be used on Prismatic too, it further boosts the potential of Getaway Artist builds and takes them to the next level in terms of damage output. Many have now soloed the new Sundered Doctrine Dungeon with this kind of build, and it goes to show that it is now even stronger than it was in The Final Shape.
