Ultimate Estela - Complete Build Guide

[hardy nebula]

Hello! I figured with my return to Destiny Rising, I'd start posting some of my own Lightbearer builds that I have used to maximize endgame content since the very first day of launch. To start, I chose Estela, as the build I use is extremely simple and has a relatively easy to understand gameplay loop. Please note that all gameplay is done on PC, and this build may not reach its maximum potential on touch-screen controls.

Estela's main gameplay loop consists of getting weapon kills to accumulate Corruption, and using said Corruption to enhance her summons. The more Corruption accumulated, the more powerful her summons will be. Thus, the gameplay loop is extremely simple. Enhance her weapon damage to ensure you can get as many stacks of Corruption as quickly as possible, and enhance her Illusions (her summons) so that they can extract the most from their uptime.

To get the most out of our summons, I have chosen Abundant Planetesimal in the first slot. This grants us health restoration each time we either cast our summon or use Estella's Misfortune caster. For our second slot, we will use Binging Planetesimal. This restores a large portion of our health whenever our signature abilities do damage, and since her summons are classified as signature abilities, these grant us a significant amount of health relatively easily. In the third slot, I have chosen Bellicose Pact as it simply increases the amount of damage our summons deal by a signifcant amount, which is pretty self explanatory. In the fourth and final slot, I have chosen Bellicose Planetesimal, as it grants us a large weapon damage boost for casting signature abilities. This allows us to collect more stacks of Corruption faster immediately after casting our first summon, making it easier to call in yet another one.

If these artifacts are used right, this combination alone should already boost your summons' output signficantly, but it gets even better thanks to Estella's weapons and upgrades. To put it simply, the artifacts I have chosen are:
I. Abundant Planetesimal - Health restoration on ability cast for free healing simply from using summons.
II. Binging Planetesimal - Health restoration on ability damage for constant healing uptime thanks to summons.
III. Bellicose Pact - Summons do increased damage, enhancing Binging Planetesimal even further as well as significantly boosting the summons themselves.
IV. Bellicose Planetesimal - Weapons do increased damage after casting abilities, allowing us to replenish Corruption for even more summons and keep the buffs looping.

The main way to keep our factory of summons working is via weapon damage, so the weapons in this build are focused on pure damage potential. For our primary, we will be using the Ultimatum Pulse Rifle as it is one of, if not the best option in its slot. For the first trait, we will be going with Fraternity; this increases the damage by 35% if all fireteam members are alive, including in solo missions! Considering death is pretty rare for most people, especially in higher-end content, this is basically a free weapon buff. For our second perk, we will be going with Glutton. At maximum effectiveness, it increases the weapon damage by 50% as long as you keep getting kills with this weapon. That means more damage, which means more Corruption, which means more summons, and in turn higher damage. That keeps our loop going forever. Your power weapon is ultimately up to personal choice, but the common pick is the void exotic machine gun Gallows, simply because it's pretty dang good.

Overall, the loop should be pretty simple by now. Everything chosen is meant to work passively so that you are able to simply focus on spamming summons and doing weapon damage, and all of the buffs and insane power boosts are applied retroactively simply by playing as you normally would. Of course, this is simply my own build, so feel free to make any changes you'd like to either suit your own playstyle or to change the way your buffs are cycling. Ultimately, the end result should be the same: an endless output of T3 summons and an insane amount of weapon damage.

[little badger]

Ngl estella is very squishy so running a dr focused artifact in either 1 or 2 slot is preferable

[harsh imp]

Thank You for your hard work on this guide, I really like this character.