Destiny 2 – Celestial Nighthawk Hunter PVE Build

Today I’m looking at another Hunter PVE build, this time with Celestial Nighthawk and Way of the Sharpshooter. The plan here is to get our super back as much as possible, and unleash a single golden gunshot to cause maximum DPS with our Hunters. The following is a Celestial Nighthawk Hunter PVE Build in Destiny 2.

Hunter’s are great in PVP, but sometimes you want to run around the planets either in Nightfalls, Strikes, raids or Seasonal Activities and cause the maximum amount of damage to burn down that boss as fast as possible. In this build, we’re going to be using a combination of Exotic Weapons, armour, mods and weapon perks to cause maximum DPS as well as get back our super as fast as possible so we can do it all over again.

Let’s have a look at the build in a little more detail.

Exotic Armour – Celestial Nighthawk

The main focus for this build will be Celestial Nighthawk. This is an exotic helmet for Hunters and the perks include.

Hawkeye Hack – Modifies Golden Gun to fire a single high-damage shot. Enemies eliminated by the shot explode and grant you Super energy.

Plasteel Reinforcement Mod – Increased resilience.

What we want here with Celestial Nighthawk is to use Hackeye Hack to optimise our DPS in that single high-damage shot. If you get the kill then you’ll get some super energy back, and we’re going to be using a collection of mods & weapons to get our super back faster so we can use the single golden gun shot as much as possible.

Subclass – Way of the Sharpshooter

We’re going to be pairing up Celestial Nighthawk with Way of the Sharpshooter (bottom-tree gunslinger). There are few perks on the tree here that will come in handy.

Knife-Juggler – Throw a knife from a distance. Precision knife kills with this Melee Ability immediately recharge it.

Practice Makes Perfect – Enter a trance with each precision hit, reducing the cooldown of your Super.

Line ‘Em Up – Precision hits with Golden Gun increase its damage and extend its duration.

Crowd-Pleaser – Enables precision damage with Golden Gun. Precision hits with Golden Gun generate Orbs of Light.

Practice Makes Perfect is good because it reduces the cooldown of your Super, which we want because the aim here is to get your super as much as possible. Crowd Pleaser enables precision damage from golden Gun and Line ‘Em Up is good because we get that damage increase for maximum DPS.

The aim here with our exotic and subclass pairing is to maximise the DPS. Celestial Nighthawk combines all our Golden Gun shots into one mega shot, then Line ‘Em Up increases the damage and Crowd Please enables that precision damage. Next up, we’re going to have a look at some weapons and mods to try and help us get our super back as fast possible so we can do as much damage as possible.

Weapons

First up I’m using Bad Juju.

Bad Juju – Exotic / Kinetic / Pulse Rifle

String of Curses – Kills refill the magazine, increase damage for a short duration, and grant Super energy based on the strength of String of Curses. Fires full-auto.

Hip-Fire Grip – Increases accuracy, stability, and precision hit targeting when firing from the hip.

What we want to do is proc String of Curses as much as possible to help us get our Super back. Pairing up with this I’m using Demolitionist weapons. In the energy slot I’m using an Ikelos SMG and Berenger’s Memory in the power weapon slot. Demolitionist is helping get my grenade ability back, which I’ll be using in combination with mods to get more super energy back. The Ikelos SMG is great because it shoots Seraph rounds, which has the chance to create Warmind Cells for even more damage.

Mods

First up I’m using Ashes to Assets, where get I get super energy back based on grenade kills. This works great with demolitionist weapons, as using those weapons to take out smaller ads, and then killing a bunch of red or maybe a yellow bar with the grenade grants a nice chunk of super energy. This combined with Bad Juju and that String of Curses perk should help you get super energy back nice and quickly so we can fire off more golden gun shots.

Next up I’m boosting up Intellect, again, this helps get that super energy back quicker. I’m also using Charged with Light, in particular Taking Charge to get that Charged with Light stack, pairing that up with High-energy Fire for that increase in damage.

The final mods I’m using are Warmind Cell focused, to again increase the potency of the build when you’re out there in the field shooting loads of enemies. We’re going to be using Burning Cells, where destroying a Warmind Cell creates a burst of Solar energy that causes enemies to burn for several seconds. This is going to pair nicely with our Solar Subclass. We’re also going to be using Global Reach where Warmind Cells you create affect and damage targets at a greater distance.

Gameplay

• Run around and get kills with demolitionist weapons to build up grenade energy
• Create some warmind cells and blow them up
• Throw grenades and get super energy through ashes to assets
• Build up more super energy with Bad Juju
• Unleash that mega single shot golden gun using celestial nighthawk
• Maximise the damage with Crowd Pleaser and Line ‘Em Up from Way of the Sharpshooter
• Rinse and repeat the process

Let me know down in the comments what you think of the build and if you have any improvements do let me know.

That’s it for this guide for a Celestial Nighthawk Hunter PVE Build in Destiny 2. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out the Shadowkeep Guide or check out the YouTube Channel.