Source
r/DestinyTheGame•
AgentPoYo

Does T7 Resilience actually let you survive a sniper shot in GMs?

SGA

TL;DR: vandals sniper shots will kill you at less than 5 resilience if running no resist mods.

I’ve seen it mentioned by redditors on r/DTG that T7 resilience will help you survive a sniper shot in Grandmasters. I haven’t seen any testing to prove this so with the launch of GMs for the season I set out to test it myself.

In order to test this I loaded into the Glassway GM solo and cleared out the first group of marauders, shanks and the overload champion, right after this first group is killed there are two vandal snipers, I killed the first sniper and used the second to test various resilience values and resist mods. The Glassway has a modifier which increases incoming void damage and since vandal sniper attacks are arc this modifier has no effect.

The following is a screenshot compiling each test and how much health remained after a single shot. A single snipe at T1 to T4 resilience resulted in death so those are not shown. I did not test above T7 since I was out to find the bare minimum required to survive a sniper shot.

When the resist mods were reworked in Beyond Light there was much talk and testing done so nothing I’m demonstrated pertaining to them is new but I think the key takeaway is how much more of an impact on survivability running the right resist mods are compared to just running high resilience. This doesn’t mean that resilience is completely worthless, rather if used in combination with proper resist mods it should give you many more options when building for survivability in GMs. Also protective light and 6+ resilience make a great pairing since any less and you could die before protective light even activates.

A word of caution before you put any of this info to practical use, my testing was done using a vandal sniper which is only a minor enemy, it is quite possible for sniper attacks from bosses or champions to one-shot you if you only run the bare minimum T5 resilience and no resist mods. I plan on looking into this again when Insight Terminus rolls around since there’s a sniper hobgoblin Champion right at the beginning.

Final weird tidbit, I tried testing resilience weeks ago by running a Legendary Lost Sector at 27 LL under and managed to survive a snipe at T1 resilience fine with no resist mods so there appears to be hidden variables for damage taken in a GM besides simply being under leveled.

Posted Jun 24, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

77391
easyJYT•

This is a top quality and useful post. Thank you.

129
SimpleDialectics•

Never did I ever think that resilience would have even this miniscule marginal value in pve.

100
BaconIsntThatGoodJade Rabbit is my Spirit Animal•

All it does is add a small amount of HP to your shields per resilience, it doesn't actually reduce damage.

67
Rinewick•

It does reduce the amount of damage you take from breaking out of being frozen, which only matters at all in Glassway.

41
BaconIsntThatGoodJade Rabbit is my Spirit Animal•

Ah true, tbh I forgot about that because it's rare I need to breakout these days. There's barely any PvE content where you're dealing with a serious stasis enemy and it's only supers in PvP now.

1
Faust_8•

Well for Titans, getting more barricades has more than zero value. It can save you or help get a revive, etc

0
APartyInMyPants•

It surprisingly does. I just wish it were more apparent. Like maybe the higher the Resilience, the higher percentage chance that a shot against you does zero damage.

During the Hawkmoon mission, I upped my Resilience to 60, and it made soloing the first boss encounter so much easier.

Edit: because people clearly don’t understand. Dying in the first boss in the Hawkmoon mission means restarting the entire boss encounter. So upping my resilience meant the difference between dying from a sniper shot and being able to tank one shot and retreat. Which, in turn, made the encounter easier.

-33
Zommander_CabalaYes, you wanted it. Don't lie. We all wanted it. Whether or not.•

I guarantee you it wasn't the resilience that helped you there, unless you were regularly and often reaching exactly 0.01% health.

Look at the difference between 5 and 6 on OP's screenshots. Increasing up to 6 only gives PIXELS worth of benefits.

And I'm not even sure there's a difference between 6 and 7 at all.

So going up to 6 from wherever you were (3, 4, 5) would have had no difference.

29
APartyInMyPants•

No. The point is when I kept my resilience low, I was getting OHK’d by the snipers. Boom. You have to restart the entire encounter. Bumped my resilience up and I was surviving those first sniper shots so I can retreat.

Believe me or not, I don’t give a shit. But being able to tank a sniper shot means I can pop my rift and in a few seconds I’m right back in it.

4†
User0977Q•

A lot of people in this thread severely undervalue surviving. It doesn’t matter if you survived with 1% or 10% health, your still a stern look away from death… not wiping however, is huge.

13
SkyburnerTheBest•

I think resilience cannot matter too much because of PvP. Having PvP in the game takes out so much possible fun...

-10
CMDR_KaiTitan Main •

So change how it functions, or just make it non-functional in PVP and lock everybody at 5 resilience value.

8
LucasFrankeRC•

Not really, they can definitely have different values for PVP and PVE

5
ZincAzNtrue oppression•

each tier of resilience gives a % damage resist in pve, boom, the stat is useful in pve and it doesn’t shatter the pvp landscape

2
I3igB:W:•

Thank you for this post, it was very informative.

My biggest take away from this is that resilience, as we already knew, is under performing greatly in PvE. We can see that in your comparisons of 5-7 resilience with no other effects up. Slotting an elemental resist, sniper resist, melee resist, or concussive dampener mod does more than getting 10 resilience and then some.

Resilience needs to do more for you than decrease Titan's barricade cool down. It feels terrible to spec into it. I can understand the hesitancy of giving us too much shields or damage resistance for the sake of PvP balance, but can't we get something else?

I've seen it suggested before that increasing your resilience could lower the amount of flinch you receive or specifically be tuned to offer a DR % from non-guardian sources only. It wouldn't have to be a lot, I'd say somewhere in the ball park of 35% at 100 resilience to be slightly higher than resist mods since you can literally slot one of those for 1 energy cost. It could even have an inverse scaling as recovery does to incentivize pumping stat points into it for higher ranks.

On the same topic, it'd be nice to give mobility some extra benefits too. Like an inherent increase to handling speed for weapons and/or reload. Anything at all is needed for these two stats. It's insane how much more important recovery is than both of them.

61
AgentPoYoOP•

Thanks for taking the time to reply

I think Bungie might be hesitant to shift the stat meta too much, they seem to be comfortable with it currently. With stasis they tried tying freeze breakout damage to resilience but that didnt make a huge difference in PvE and with the stasis nerfs it's less important now in PvP.

Although it would probably be in Bungie's best interest to make some sort of change to stats if only because sunsetting is gone and it could possibly give players incentive to replace their current god roll armour sets.

16
I3igB:W:•

Yeah that's the unfortunate reality of it. They don't want to dip that heavily into the MMO territory. Still, makes you wonder why they allow recovery to be as impactful as it is but not mobility or resilience.

I remember the patch back during D1 when they went, "recovery feels pretty pointless so we're buffing the hell out of it". It's been the most important stat ever since. The only time I ever remember resilience feeling as impactful was the shenanigans with The Ram exotic and max (read: max that Warlock could get) resilience making you able to survive some non sense like shoulder charge.

I'd love to feel as fast with 100 mobility as I do when using a movement based exotic like Transversive Steps or Stompees. It's so odd that it only effect walking speed and jump height.

14
LucasFrankeRC•

I think mobility is fine the way it is right now. It would absolutely break PVP if they would make you as fast as with movement exotics. And hunters would get much more benefited from that change than other classes, since they already run 100 mobility for their dodge CD

Resilience could definitely get a big buff on PVE though. For PVP it would also be interesting if it did something like reduce incoming flinch. As of now I feel like titans got the short end of the stick with resilience being the stat of their class ability. Having 5 or 6 is probably ideal for surviving some stuff on PVP, but what do you need 10 resilience for? Surviving a slightly out of range 140 3 tap?

12
atfricks•

At least barricade is the class ability where cooldown matters the least.

I run less than 40 resilience and it's always available when I want it

2
ThisUsernameIsMyName•

Titans barricade is pretty mediocre at best too so theres no reason at all to go into it. Citans ramparts are the only use for barricades and theyre only okay.

8
BattleForTheSun•

I can understand the hesitancy of giving us too much shields or damage resistance for the sake of PvP balance, but can't we get something else?

My understanding is that PvP and PvE are balanced separately now. They are different sandboxes. So resilience could stay as is for PvP, but perhaps have it's effect doubled in PvE

1
XtahBX•

That's not really true. The only real thing they've done differently is how things affect different targets. As an example duskfield grenades act exactly the same, but they affect enemies differently, pve enemies experience much harder pulling effect and a much faster slowing/freezing effect than enemy guardians in pvp.

Saying that, however, they could theoretically make resilience have more effect on pve enemies damage vs pvp. I have no idea if they could actually do that or how easy it would be, but it would seem to be the same type of changes as they've already made (kind of inverted)

3
Aethermancer•

The destiny 1 thread reminded me, d2 suffers from speed. Enemies die fast, we do more damage, and very little can withstand for long. As a result the margins got squeezed super thin.

I think resilience is a casualty of that thinning margin.

1
o8Stu•

With a sniper resist mod you'll survive a sniper shot even at low resilience levels.

I'd advise everyone run sniper resist and void resist if you can / concussive dampener if you can't run void.

37
AgentPoYoOP•

With a sniper resist mod you'll survive a sniper shot even at low resilience levels.

This is shown in my screenshot, 1 resilience and 1 resist mod leaves you with more health than just high resilience alone. All resist mods offer the same damage resist %.

30
TR_OllingtonTitan, PAWNCH!•

Your screen show only shows resilience + Arc (elemental) resist.

There isn’t one that says Resilience + Sniper Resist. I’m curious to see how that works. As opposed to just elemental resistance.

6
AgentPoYoOP•

All resist mods offer the same damage resistance % so the results should be the same, however melee and sniper resist require the enemy to be at certain ranges to proc.

Edit: sorry i missed the context of your reply. There are others who have tested the resist mods so I didn't feel the need to go through every possible combination. If you want more info you can check out the Destiny 2 Data Compendium

6
TR_OllingtonTitan, PAWNCH!•

Hey no worries and thanks for linking that. I never knew that page existed.

2
fidchell:D: Drifter's Crew•

For Glassway, you have to choose to mod against two engagement scenarios (which is basically pre-boss and boss room). Sniper Resist or Tier 5 Resilience will prevent unnecessary deaths on the way to the boss room. I believe that with T5 resilience, only the stasis captain's sniper shot can kill you in one shot before boss room. Double Concussive Dampener on the hand will significantly lessen the effect of Belmon's Algorithm during the boss encounter. I don't think it can save you from a direct wyvern crash hit, but it does allow you to survive one or two torch hammers from big hydra.

T5 Resilience and double Concussive Dampener effectively lets you counter both. I do believe that CDx2 is more important as a death in the boss room is more likely a wipe than anywhere else in the strike. Its also easy to counter the snipers with banner, rifts/wells, and cover so sniper resist has less value if your team is covering their bases.

13
o8Stu•

Does concussive offer any protection against the wyvern's projectile attack (I forget the name)? If not, it seems like you might be better off with void resist, based on OP's comment that "All resist mods offer the same damage resist %" and 1 Concussive, since there's diminishing returns on stacking mods.

2
AgentPoYoOP•

In theory a void resist should offer the same DR as a concussive dampener in the boss room since most of the AOE damage is both void and concussive. Running two void or two CD would effectively be the same. Stacking two of the same resist mods do have diminishing returns like you say however running two different resist mods actually stack multiplicatively. So if you want the most protection against wyverns and the boss you would run a void resist and concussive dampener.

6
fidchell:D: Drifter's Crew•

The wyvern crash will only deal concussive damage and the warp lances will only deal void damage. Running double void is probably the best choice IF wyvern crash is an OHKO even with CDx2 (I don't know if it is for sure). In the same scenario, I don't know if double void may necessarily save you if you are getting tagged by 5 warp lances.

Running Void + Concussive is only like 2-3% more damage reduction (compared to double mod stacking). Against the wyvern, you're still vulnerable to either crash or warp lance.

3
moonlitcurse•

The issue with sniper resist is that it only works at far distances. I heard it was 25m+ but no one gave me any proof. So if the sniper is closer then that distance then you will take damage as if you werent running the mod

5
o8Stu•

That sounds right, but it's really only the barrier hobgoblins (in this GM anyway) that'll get closer than that, and at that point you should all be focused on them so they won't get any shots off.

4
doesnotlikecricket:GP: Gambit Prime•

Yeah I've done more than ten GMs at 2 resilience. I chose ignore on resilience when I'm making builds on dim.

5
HaloGuy381•

Not a GM player (too solo for that, and too inconsistent to grind levels), but resilience -could- have some utility for Titans seeking to tank shots, since that also gives them more barricade opportunities, and a towering barricade can buy at least a couple seconds of mercy for a rez or whatnot under sniper fire, or to keep one sniper at bay while dealing with another (use cover to reduce number of visible snipers to 2 or 3, put barricade to cover against one side, shoot that one, then aim through shield and peek shoot to kill the others).

Wound up using that tactic in my first ever Expunge run yesterday after not expecting so many snipers and so little cover, and a long history of it in other awkward spots like Shattered Throne or Pit of Heresy where long sightlines and high sniper damage have been issues. I imagine the shield isn’t -as- durable in a GM, not even close, but in terms of surviving snipers, enough resilience to tank a sniper shot would also make it more likely to have a fresh barricade ready to keep other snipers or adds from finishing you off while you kill said sniper.

12
AgentPoYoOP•

Great points

I personally find 6 or 7 resilience on my titan the perfect amount to run so that my barricade is charged anytime I need it. More than 7 and it seems like a bit of a waste. I rather spec the rest into recovery if I can.

9
The_new_Osiris•

Barricade comes super clutch in high end PvE every now and then.

3
BillehBearYou're pretty good..•

I don't feel bad about all my characters having a perfect 18 resilience now

10
BNEWZON:D: Drifter's Crew•

18 resilience Hunter feels like a trophy

6
_Kindakrazy_:H: "Get your rock off my map!"•

I have a PvE build with 100 mobility and recovery and 50 resilience because my only star eater scales drop has 30 resilience on it and it annoys me so god damn much.

4
Misicks0349•

armor rolls are a pain

2
Captain_LonkI'm blue da ba dee da ba daa•

How many pieces of gear do you have masterworked? Assuming you have all of them 20 res is the minimum.

1
FaTSwords•

18 was the minimum, as class item has default 0 resilience. With season of the splicer getting 1 drops, 14 is minimum.

5
Captain_LonkI'm blue da ba dee da ba daa•

Right, of course. I'm an idiot. I didn't know about the min dropping to 1 though, that's interesting. I haven't come across that just yet.

2
FaTSwords•

Lol no worries, if everybody who got caught out on niche D2 knowledge on this sub was an idiot, we'd have a lot of idiots.

Season of the splicer changed how armour rolls, there's some useful threads in here if you search, but the tl;dr is that they can minmax significantly more spikey than older sources.

1
BillehBearYou're pretty good..•

I have everything masterworked

Could've had 16 res if I didn't mw the class items but it looked odd to me

Everything but class item had 2 res as base, then 4 when it was Masterworked

1
space_boobs•

Great post, nice formatting on the image.

4
Supreme_Math_DebaterThis bread gave me diabetes•

I was running 2 resilience yesterday. Had on sniper resist and concussive dampener and wasn't getting one shot by vandal snipers. Next run I replaced concussive with melee resist and I started getting one shot consistently somehow. Next run I put concussive back on and survived the snipes. I didn't do any testing outside of that, but does concussive dampener affect vandal snipers somehow? I'm like 99% sure I was at full HP every time I got one shot without concussive.

4
AgentPoYoOP•

Thats really odd, one sniper resist alone should have saved you whether you had CD or melee paired with it. The only thing I could think of is maybe PvE enemies have range falloff just like guardians do in PvP and your distance from the enemy had something to do with it. Either that or CD has some hidden perks we don't know of (like how melee resist can count as an arc mod for cwl mods) and that somehow saved you.

3
c14rk0•

Was this on GM or another difficulty? If it wasn't GM with the fixed light level it might have been due to light level differences if you changed gear.

Alteratively it might have just been the range of the snipers. They may have range drop off at some point or it's possible that apparently the sniper resist mod only works beyond a certain range (25m?) and you were too close for it to work in the one instance.

If you had a hunter running bottom tree void walker I believe the buff they can give from their smokes can also greatly increase your resilience which might have been a factor.

3
Supreme_Math_DebaterThis bread gave me diabetes•

It was GM. We didn't have any hunters for the heart of the pack resil buff. Not exactly sure how far 25 meters is in game but I know most of the one shots were out of range for my hand cannon. Range dropoff on the snipers makes sense I guess but I had no idea PvE enemies had range dropoff.

2
c14rk0•

I honestly don't think they do usually outside of stuff like shotguns... But even then I don't think they have range drop off as much as just spread leading to generally being hit by less pellets or such. That said I've never personally tested it. Best guess is it really is being too close for sniper resist to work... Which I also didn't know was even a thing before today and I'm going to want to test personally.

1
Supreme_Math_DebaterThis bread gave me diabetes•

Yeah that one would make the most since, but I was definitely outside 25 (got sniped by the guys on the balconies in the area right before the boss).

1
Tubbycat1115•

I’ve also heard this is tied to frame rate, maybe you should do some tests on that. Regardless, thanks for the chart!

4
CMDR_KaiTitan Main •

Isn’t that only for splash damage? I know I’ve been taking so much more damage from boomers and cyclops since I got a Series X.

6
Tubbycat1115•

I’m not sure actually… I know it Applies to splash, and I assumed it applied to any damage. I only have a Xbox one so I can’t confirm

3
AgentPoYoOP•

I believe that's only for certain types of attacks and sadly I can't test since I play on stadia and you can't adjust frame rate.

4
_Kindakrazy_:H: "Get your rock off my map!"•

Wow! A stadia D2 player in the wild! What a sight!

3
notmashed•

I normally rock five or six resilience and protective light, and snipers need to two hit me to kill me, if I am full health and not taking damage from other sources. I’ve found no difference btw 5-7, and never have gone to 8, personally because I find more value in recovery and being able to get faster. I also go into GMs with recuperation or better already and there’s always orbs so harder to truly tell.. but that’s the combo that works for me well!

3
Phorrum:W: She/Her•

A really cool post, thank you so much o7

3
gilbertbenjamington•

I think I want to stick with just 7 and void concussive resist for glassway, im much more scared of the boss room then the run up to the boss.

3
cactusswordA thousand salt crystals was not enough for master Rahool•

Resilience really needs a rework. There is no reason to pay any attention to it whatsoever 99% of the time in PvE.

3
droonick•

This is great to know, those 'random' Vandal snipes are so crucial. I run Resilience builds against crucible anyway, so I might take those same armor pieces for GM now.

3
AgentPoYoOP•

I like that minimum ended up being T5 resilience, my pvp builds all have 5 so most of my armour pieces and some builds transfer over.

2
squriellord:W: Warlock Floaty Boi•

The sniper miniboss in the 3rd room can 1-shot you, I was running T6 resilience in a rift and got domed. But was able to survive red bar vandals at least. The barrier hobgoblins in the boss room also seemed to be 1-shots or very close to it.

3
Faust_8•

Ah, 5 Resil.

Let’s you survive crit-body-body from 120 hand cannons in the crucible and now has PvE applications as well

It’s like an old friend at this point, that 5 Resil

3
Gio25us•

That’s why I concentrate on recovery more than anything, great post I’ll do some testing too.

3
CrashKeyss•

This kind of thing makes me never want to try GMs. How do you manage to even clear this stuff without getting hit? Especially in boss fights. Sounds insane to me

2†
AgentPoYoOP•

You can get hit and survive but it all boils down to positioning and running the right mods. It's a different mindset then the rest of Destiny but it can be fun if you're into deck building. In most D2 PvE, loadouts and stats don't matter but GMs are the place where you can really nerd out. With a coordinated team GMs actually aren't excruciatingly difficult.

19
IJustJason•

Thats where gearing your character right, having a good team composition and playing tactically, using everything in your arsenal to beat the GM.

GMs are (imo) the epitome of D2's endgame, so naturally you gotta be at your best (and maybe be lucky) to complete it.

10
SimpleDialectics•

To each their own of course, but I highly recommend giving it some practice--it's mostly about learning to use cover, which is not something you really need to do outside of pvp in Destiny. Learning how to run GMs is one of the best ways I felt I improved my game elsewhere, in pvp and raids

5
Stifology•

By memorizing where snipers spawn and prioritizing them first. The only snipers in Glassway boss are the anti barrier champs, which are very slow and never push inside. The real threat are overloads/Wyverns.

5
Saphesil•

They can actually push inside if somebody is close to one of the entrances, but ye in normal situation they do not push in

2
ReaperOfTime__•

Tell that to the one that flanked us by coming through the far back door to the back alley on the left side behind us once, as we were killing another one... it either came through the mid door or the first one on the left side... it did not end well as we were def not expecting it lol

2
o8Stu•

As a potato, my team cleared it on our 2nd attempt last night.

You have to set up accordingly, but once you do it's genuinely not that bad. Just have to play much more cautiously than in pretty much any other content (except a day 1 raid).

Everyone should have a sniper resist and either void or concussive dampener (for this GM).

From there, having a well of radiance warlock helps significantly - moment to moment the well itself isn't as important as having a healing rift available constantly. If they lose the rift for some reason they can get it back quickly by using a healing grenade on their teammates.

All that said - most of the combat is about prioritizing targets and teamshooting them down. Snipers first, rushing adds second, normal adds (dregs and goblins) 3rd, then the champions or shielded enemies.

The boss room gets hectic in this strike because all of that shit spawns at the same time, and the wyverns, overloads, and mini-boss will all come into the left room. It's for this reason that blinding GLs are so good - they'll blind everything but the overload champs. Warlock Stasis turrets too - can lock down a whole wave, or at the end of one, can freeze-lock the last enemy / champ so people can go pick up ammo and get ready for the next wave.

5
APartyInMyPants•

Stay back, play smart and choose your shots. The meta for GMs is also very different from general PVE. Scout rifles are actually indispensable … at least the last two seasons where barrier champion mods were on scout rifles and snipers.

5
doesnotlikecricket:GP: Gambit Prime•

Positioning. If your team is on mic you'll almost always be calling them out and they'll all be dead before they get any of you.

Also simply running a single sniper resist mod.

4
droonick•

I thought like this at some point when I was new and just want a chill experience (and it's totally fair to play the game that way forever), but I think once you reach some form of endgame state youfeel the itch for that challenge GMs are perfect for it.

You reach a certain point where you know a BUNCH of stuff now and want to put it to use and the real endgame is the deckbuilding, As the other poster said, and doing various kits to fit certain GMs.

The entire game changes for you, it's quite fun figuring out super minmaxed builds, figuring out the exact setups like OPs to survive getting one-shot, and figuring out all the little things you can do in a Nightfall to game the system.

2
RyseToProIce Ice Baby•

I'm gonna be completely honest here: Destiny's AI is actually terrible at shooting you. Strafe left and right constantly (as in jiggle yourself left and right) while shooting adds and when you're hurt jump and slide A LOT in A LOT of different directions. The enemies will have trouble hitting you.

In GMs that movement combined with knowing cover areas/peek shooting and using a Titan with Ursa Banner Shield super really trivializes it. Especially with Ursa Banner because enemies hit so hard that Ursa refunds almost a guaranteed 75% of your super every time and when you are blocking your team mates stand behind it and literally have free reign to shoot whatever they want (prioritize snipers usually) with literally nothing able to shoot them unless they move out past your Banner Shield.

1
aiafati•

I run a 10 res on my Titan and I do survive a normal vandal snipe. What kills me one shot is the snipe from those big Fallens.

2
thecatnipsterflair-HunterLogo•

Wow. So outside of barricade builds, resilience is 100% useless in pve.

2