So, in raids there’s really two kinds of encounter you need to prepare for

The DPS Encounter

For when you need to hit one thing very very hard. Often for a short time window. These encounters usually have some mechanics where you are required to solve some puzzles in order to get to the stage where you can damage the boss, but they all ultimately require you to do large numbers of damage to a single enemy often over multiple ‘phases’. For this you want weapons capable of dealing large amounts of damage in a small amount of time. With very few exceptions the weapon that can do that for you is in your ‘heavy’ weapon slot.

At the moment, the most accessible heavy weapons are as follows

Rocket Launchers

• Gjallarhorn (Solar, Exotic) – Got from completing the Grasp of Avarice Dungeon
• Royal Entry (Void, Legendary) – Vanguard strikes have a chance to give you this. You can also focus it with Zavala
• The Hothead (Arc, Legendary) – Nightfall reward
• Bump In The Night (Stasis, Legendary) – This is an old seasonal reward from last year, but Banshee sometimes sells it
• Sleeper Simulant (Solar, Exotic) – You have to buy this from the Monument to Lost Lights, but it somehow escaped the BRUTAL Linear Fusion Rifle nerf, making it still reasonably viable for DPS, despite a small mag

Perks are largely unimportant here for your first raid, but rocket perks like ‘Clown Cartridge’ and ‘Overflow’ are great, as are ‘Explosive Light’ or other damage increasing perks.

Other Options

• Thunderlord (Arc, Exotic) – Everyone gets this one for free. The catalyst makes it a serious DPS contender, and it’s not great without it.
• Retrofit Escapade (Void, Legendary) – Sometimes sold by Banshee. Was a craftable weapon last season.
• Two Tailed Fox (Void and Solar, Exotic) – If this has the catalyst it’s super tough right now, but otherwise not great due to slow rate of fire
• Grand Overture (Arc, Exotic) – You need to buy this from the Monument to Lost Lights. Catalyst is easy to obtain and it hits hard.
• Xenophage (Solar, Exotic) – A machine gun that hits like a cannon. You can get this from one of the Shadowkeep quests.
• Taipan 4FR (Void, Legendary) – A shadow of the DPS monster it was last season, but still viable if you have none of the above

The other type of encounter you’re likely to run into is…

The Ad-Clear Encounter

This is all about killing lots of enemies fast. Usually these enemies are not particularly beefy so it’s about weapons with the ability to cause a lot of destruction to a lot of enemies in a very short window of time. This is much more flexible compared to DPS encounters, but generally speaking here’s some great options for ad clear.

• Wave Frame Grenade Launchers. There’s a great world drop this season called the ‘Harsh Language’ that both hits hard, but can also roll with the perk ‘Destabilising Rounds’ which makes things EXPLODE when they get hit with void rounds. Huge ad clear potential here! You also have options like the Dead Messenger from the Monument to Lost Lights, which is a grenade launcher on steroids.
• Trace Rifles. A big laser that goes brr and can be swept across multiple enemies causing them to die nice and quick.
• Glaives. A weapon that lets you really get up close and personal and on a melee streak to tear through enemies. If you ever run into anything big and chunky, you can always shoot it with the charged shot.
• Abilities + Exotics. There’s too many combinations to list here, but you can pair exotics with abilities to turn you into an ad clearing machine. Sunbracers infinite solar grenades. Skullforts endless melees. You can essentially forget the weapons and just tear through with your bare hands.

That brings us to our final bit of info.

Armour

It genuinely doesn’t really matter for your first raid what armour you have and what exotic armour you choose. If you have something you like, then just use that. I’ve known hunters who never take the St0mp-EE5 off, and still have a great first raid.

What is important though, is your armour stats. One stat specifically, and that’s ‘resilience’. You want to get that number as close to a perfect 100 as you possibly can, through a combination of armour and mods. You can use tools like https://d2armorpicker.com/ to make that job easier. Just tell it what you want and it’ll look at all the armour in your vault and pick the best combo for you.

And that’s it! That’s all you need. And if you haven’t managed to get some stuff from the list, you should still raid anyway. A lot of the really good weapons are rewards for completing raid encounters, so the only way to get em is to raid!

Eyes up, Guardian.