Destiny 2's Lightfall expansion brought an all-new way of discerning how proficient our fellow Guardians are with the Guardian Ranks number that now sits next to your display name in-game. One of the requirements to get into Rank 7 is to stun Champions. Of course, the longer the game continues to exist, the more activities you can find them in, but what about just wanting to farm the stuns and kills to get a jump start?
Rank 7 of Guardian Ranks isn't the only reason you might need to stun Champions. One of the Seasonal Challenges that's found its way into the rotation almost every season since they were introduced is to Stun 50 Champions. Today, we're going to help you find the best method for how to Farm Barrier Champions in Destiny 2 so that you can earn some XP, Bright Dust, and even bragging rights.
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How to Stun Barrier Champions
In order to Farm Barrier Champions, you need to know how it works. Barrier Champions, as the name would suggest, will generate nearly impenetrable barriers after they've taken enough damage. Before they do this, they will attack you relentlessly, and even after activating their barriers, they'll continue to lay into you until you've Stunned them.
To combat this shielded state, players have a few options. Each Season, a new weapon type rotates into being an Anti-Barrier weapon type. This Season, Pulse Rifles are Anti-Barrier. As long as you have the Perk unlocked in your artifact, you can stun Barrier Champions with any equipt Pulse Rifle.
Some weapons that have intrinsic Anti-Barrier functionality are:
- Eriana’s Vow
- The Lament
- Wish-Ender
- Arbalest
You also have the inherent ability to Stun Champions depending on what Subclass you're running! These traits are:
- Solar Radiance
- Void Volatile Rounds
- Strand Unraveling Rounds
These are great ways to deal with Barrier Champions and free up your loadout if you're out and about raiding or running GMs, but we're here to farm Barrier Champions, so let's look at how to deal with that.
How to Farm Barrier Champions in Destiny 2
Barrier Champions are located in several activities throughout the Destiny 2 experience. These are some of my personal go-to's and how to make sure your time working through them is as optimized as possible. The most important thing to remember is to NOT kill the Champion. Stunning the same champion multiple times counts towards your totals, so you're fine to just let it heal itself back up!
Legend and Master Lost Sectors
Legend and Master Lost Sectors rotate daily, so make sure you're heading to the right destination first and foremost. Once there, you can check to see which Champions are on offer that day. The Champions in each Lost Sector don't change, but there are typically only two types in each Lost Sector.
If today is a Barrier Champion featured day, then great! I recommend loading into it with Arbalest since it is an intrinsically Anti-Barrier weapon, and if you have the Catalyst, you refill your ammo on shield breaks! Go into the Lost Sector, find your Champion, work it down until it's ready for a stun, and then rinse and repeat!
If you get a little overzealous and accidentally kill the Champion before you get all of the Stuns that you need, no worries! Pull out your Ghost, quit the activity, and go back in. Legend and Master Lost Sectors do not feature checkpoints and typically have Champions fairly near the beginning of the activity, so you should get the Stuns you need quickly here!
Nightfalls
If Legend or Master Lost Sectors aren't your jam and you want to work on farming the Nightfall weapon each week at the same time, Nightfalls feature plenty of Champions! Every Nightfall difficulty features Champions now, but I recommend trying to go in at Legend to avoid loading in with random players. if your teammates get the Stuns, they do not count.
Again, I'd recommend going in with Arbalest just to make sure you have something that will get the job done quickly. Nightfalls also don't feature Checkpoints like Raids do, so you're good to load in, Stun and/or kill the first Champion you see, leave, and come back as often as you want to!
There are other places you can find them, such as the first encounter of the Root of Nightmares Raid, Empire Hunts, and Defiant Battlegrounds, but getting to those and working on Farming them requires just a little too much work.
These are the best ways to Farm Barrier Champions in Destiny 2! Make sure you go check out the Raid and Dungeon rotation for the rest of Season so that you know where to get some extra Pinnacle drops!