Top 10 Artifact Perks from Destiny 2's Season of Defiance

I’ll be honest, Guardian. When Lightfall dropped back in 2023, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the artifact rework. It suddenly felt like a passive skill tree you could respec anytime, not the socketable mods we’d grown used to. But once Season of Defiance kicked in? Man, those perks absolutely warped the meta. Even now in 2026, I still think back to some of those passives and how they shaped entire playstyles. Today I’m taking a trip down memory lane to break down the ten absolute best artifact perks from that season – the ones that made Void weapons eat champions for breakfast and turned Firebolt Grenades into mini nuclear bombs.

🔟 Anti-Champion Perks

I used to run Legend Nightfalls and forget my barrier mod more times than I care to admit. Anti-champion perks were the glue holding endgame PvE together. They turned your guns into shield-piercing, staggering, disrupting machines. Even outside champion content, anti-barrier rounds let me laugh at Phalanx shields and Hobgoblin immune phases. Unstoppable and overload rounds completely shut down enemy abilities. Without these, raids and GM Nightfalls weren’t just harder – they were borderline impossible.

9️⃣ Prismatic Transfer

This was one of those sneaky perks that looked modest but punched way above its weight. Casting your super gave allies with a different subclass a 20% weapon damage buff for ten seconds. I can’t count how many dungeon boss melts my fireteam pulled off by chaining this with a Well of Radiance and a Thundercrash. The buff didn’t stack with Radiant, but it stacked with empowering effects – and in encounters where standing in a well wasn’t feasible, Prismatic Transfer was the secret sauce.

8️⃣ Rain of Firebolts

Two Firebolt Grenades. That’s all you need to know. I abused this on my Solar Warlock for PvE add clear and for extra Surplus triggers in PvP. But the real magic happened when you combined it with Flare Up – suddenly those double grenades guaranteed an Ignition. Pair it with Dawn Chorus and you had a build that could rival any meta Dawnblade setup. Ridiculously fun.

7️⃣ Solar Surge

Collecting Firesprites gave me Armor Charge stacks, which meant free energy for Kickstarts and Font mods. It was basically old Elemental Shards on steroids. I remember watching my cooldowns plummet just by running over the battlefield. Any Solar subclass could turn into a ability-spamming machine with this – and it’s one of the few artifact perks that really rewarded constant movement and aggression.

6️⃣ Authorized Mods

Okay, I’m cheating a bit by lumping the whole second column here, but Authorized Mods: Solar/Strand/Void/Grenades were absolute game-changers. Slashing armor mod costs to one energy point meant I could finally hit double and triple 100 stat builds without sacrificing combat style mods. The flexibility this gave in buildcrafting was unmatched. Cheaper mods = more stats = more carnage. Simple math.

5️⃣ Untangler

Suspend was (and honestly still is) the best crowd-control keyword in Destiny 2. Untangler turned Tangles into floating suspension bombs when detonated by a Strand weapon. I made it my personal mission to never shoot another Tangle without this perk active. Unstoppable champions? Suspended. Overloads teleporting? Suspended. Tormentors? Locked down completely. If you ran Strand without this, you were doing it wrong.

4️⃣ Void Weapon Channeling

With a Void subclass equipped, Void weapon kills gave a ramping damage buff based on charged abilities. At max stacks it hit as hard as Radiant or Weapons of Light – and it stacked with empowering effects. I ran this with my Void Titan, and my funnelweb became an absolute laser. The best part? It didn’t require a specific exotic or super; just the right subclass and a good Void gun. Even now I miss that passive.

3️⃣ Flare Up

This single perk made Firebolt Grenades meta overnight. Inflicting x80 Scorch on a direct hit plus spawning a Firesprite turned every throw into a guaranteed Ignition. Paired with other Firesprite mods, my grenade cooldowns evaporated and the battlefield was constantly exploding. Solar builds finally had a grenade that could rival fusion or healing grenades – and I loved every blazing second of it.

2️⃣ Bricks From Beyond

Heavy ammo for days. Defeating a major or boss with a Void weapon had a stupidly high chance of spawning a heavy brick for the whole fireteam. No cooldown. No catch. My group ran triple Machine Guns in GMs just because we could. Combine this with Heavy Ammo Finder and you never ran dry. It changed the ammo economy so drastically that Bungie later designed entire seasonal mods around its idea.

1️⃣ Volatile Flow

I saved the best for last. Picking up an Orb of Power gave your Void weapons Volatile Rounds for 15 seconds. This effectively meant every bullet tagged enemies with an explosion-on-sustained-damage effect. In PvE it was like having permanent Dragonfly without needing kills. Even in PvP, a well-timed orb turned my SMG into a team-wiper. Didn’t matter if you used Void subclass or not – Volatile Flow pushed every Void weapon into S-tier. It was so strong that when Season of Defiance ended, the whole community begged for its return. Even today, the essence of that perk lives on in certain exotic interactions, but nothing quite matched the sheer chaos of those 15-second windows.

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So there you have it, Guardians – the ten artifact perks that defined Season of Defiance. Looking back from 2026, it’s clear these mods didn’t just shape a season; they changed how we think about subclass synergy and buildcrafting. Some effects got toned down, others inspired permanent fragments, but the memory of melting champions with Volatile Flow or suspending entire rooms with a single Tangle? That’s legendary. If you ever get the chance to revisit these through a reprised season or a special event, don’t sleep on them. They’re still as fun as I remember.