Destiny 2 | List of Destiny 2 Terminology

Destiny has a great community that started back in 2014. As more content continues to be released, requiring an extensive understanding, socializing with fellow guardians can be quite intimidating. While you’re in a Fireteam with friends or complete strangers, learning the “language” will reduce the experience. So instead of feeling lost, or overwhelmed during those high energy moments, we have compiled the most common terms. Good luck out there Guardian.

A

• Adds – Additional enemies – Enemies that fill the PvE space that add to a boss fight or leading up to a boss.
• ADS – Aim down sights – When aiming you are aiming down sights.
• Adventures – These are equivalent to side missions that add to the story. These can be found on each planet.
• Aggro – A term that has deep roots in MMO’s, it basically means that an enemies focus is on you. When raiding and in strikes, you may be tasked with taking the bosses aggro so other players can damage it.

B

• Back-out – A term that basically means to back out of the matchmaking queue.
• Blues – Rare engrams that are called by their color.
• Blueberry – on the mini-map members that are not part of your fireteam appear as blue dots whereas fireteam members appear as a teal dot.
• Bottom Tree – The bottom cluster of abilities that are found within the skill tree.
• Build(s) – weapons and armor that have been put together to achieve the best results for your playstyle.

C

• Challenges – Every activity has a challenge system associated with it, except for social space(s) and story missions. These challenges provide a high-level reward once completed.
• Comp – Shortened for competitive play in The Crucible.

D

• D2 – Abbreviation for Destiny 2.
• Dailies – Daily activities to acquire high-level loot.
• DIM – Destiny Item Manager – A very intuitive tool to manage your inventory. This is a tool that we highly recommend!
• DPS – Damage Per Second – DPS is the amount of damage that can be inflicted onto an enemy.

E

• Exotics – The rarest class of Engrams in Destiny 2. The color of this Engram is yellow and have a limitation on use. (only 1 gear exotic and 1 weapon exotic can be equipped at any given time).
• Engagements – You’ll hear this term in reference to PvP. Engagements are how you approach situations.
• EP – Shortened for Escalation Protocol, A wave-based public event located on Mars.

F

• Factions – In Destiny 2 factions have deviated from the 5 that were originally introduced (Vanguard, Crucible, Dead Orbit, Future War Cult, and New Monarchy). There are 4 main factions with sub-factions under them. The main tower factions include The Vanguard (Zavala), Vanguard Research (Ikora), The Crucible (Lord Shaxx), and the gunsmith (Banshee-44). the Planetary Factions are the NPC’s that can be found on each planet.

G

• Greens  – Uncommon Engrams that are called by their color.

I

• IB – Abbreviation for Iron Banner.

L

• LFG  – Looking For Group. The community has many established LFG websites to help solo guardians establish a team to complete some activities.

M

• Main – Your first or starting character. Some people will call this character their starter.
• Melting-point – Melting point is when the Titan Sunbreaker uses the shoulder charge (Hammer Strike) ability on a high-level enemy/boss to enable a damage buff. The increase in damage to the enemy is around +50%.
• Meta – Stands for Most Effective Tool Available, meaning players will adjust their builds in a way to better utilize the game type. Within Destiny PvP, the Meta changes when a nerf or new gun has been released.
• Middle Tree – The Middle cluster of abilities that are found within the skill tree.
• Mod(s) – Perks that can be added to weapons and armor. These additional perks allow for further customization and creation of stronger builds.
• Modifiers – Modifiers are added to Heroic Story Missions, Vanguard Strikes, and the Nightfall. These modifiers have three unique traits – Burn, Advantage and disadvantage.

N

• Nerf – Nerfing is when Bungie decides to stick it to the community, just kidding. Nerfing is when there is a reduction in the amount of damage an item may deal. Typically you will see weapons getting nerfed.
• NF – Abbreviation for Nightfall strikes.

O

• OP – Abbreviation for Over Powered. You will hear many people complain about balancing issues throughout the game. Many complaints will stem from something being Overpowered or OP.

P

• Purple(s) – Legendary engrams that are called by their color.
• Prime(s) – Shortened version of Prime Engrams.
• PvP – Player versus Player, is a common term that you will see in many MMO games that feature this type of game mode. In Destiny, this refers to The Crucible.
• PvE – Player versus the Environment. This is the game mode that has the player (yourself) going up against AI enemies within the game.

Q

• QP – Abbreviation for the Quick Play playlist under the Crucible game type.

R

• Res/Rez – When a fellow guardian is calling for a res, they are asking if you can resurrect them.
• Reset – This referes to the Daily and Weekly resets.
• RNG – Random Number Generator – Destiny heavily leverages RNG for the loot system. With RNG, all weapons and armor dropped are completely randomized. So if you hear someone groaning about their dumb luck with RNG, you’ll understand!
• Roaming Super – Roaming supers are Supers that stay active while moving. There are a total of 9 roaming supers currently available.
  • Hunter Supers
    • Golden Gun
    • Arc Strider
    • Spectral Blades
  • Titan Supers
    • Fist of Havoc
    • SunBreaker
    • Sentinel Shield
  • Warlock
    • Storm Trance
    • Dawn Blade
    • Nova Warp

S

• Starter – Your first or starting character. Some people will call this character their main.

T

• Trees – Trees are in reference to each Classes abilities. Look at Bottom, Mid, Top tree for more information.
• TTK – Time To Kill – This is the amount of time it takes for you to kill an enemy. You’ll hear or see this term thrown around when it comes to bosses and PvP.
• TWAB – This Week At Bungie – Is a short snippet that Bungie releases. Every week there will be highlights, hotfixes, changes, and upcoming events/information.

V

• ViDoc – Short for Video Documentary. Bungie will release a ViDoc for content releases. As of this writing, the latest ViDoc can be viewed.

W

• Weeklies – Weekly bounties that reset during the weekly reset.
• Wipe – Everyone in your fireteam needs to die. This will reset the current activity. You’ll hear this term a lot during Raids.

Y

• Yellow Bar – The term for enemies that have yellow health bars. These are enemies that are harder to defeat, and typically drop good loot.