Bungie's buff to the Hunter Foetracer helmet in Destiny 2's Season of the Witch means the armor piece has quickly risen from one of Hunters' most underutilized Exotics to one of the best in the game. As players experiment with aspects, fragments, perks, traits, and build customization, they've found numerous ways to make the Foetracer even more powerful.
Bungie buffed Foetracer to grant it the Relentless Tracker Exotic perk. When wearing the helmet, damaging a powerful combatant or Guardian with an ability grants a massive 25% temporary damage bonus for weapons that match the Guardian's subclass. That ability damage to a major, boss, or player target gives four stacks of subclass-matching weapon surge, and highlights the target for 10 seconds. Additionally, when you defeat that target with a weapon matching the damage type of your subclass, you'll score an elemental pickup. These elemental pickups include Firesprites, Ionic Traces, Stasis Shards, Strand Tangles, and Void Breaches, depending on your chosen subclass.
The Foetracer works with every subclass, but due to some specific aspects and fragments, it's especially powerful with the Solar subclass. If you're looking for a killer Hunter build to dominate PVE, we have everything you need below. Here, we've focused on a build highlighting ad-killing, but Gsxrclyde's Foretracer build video contains two versions of this build, including a DPS-focused approach.
Foetracer Hunter Build
Build Overview
- Class: Gunslinger
- Super: Blade Barrage: Vault into the air and unleash a volley of Solar-charged explosive knives.
- Grenade: Healing grenade: Creates an Orb of benevolent Solar Light, granting restoration to allies when picked up.
- Melee: Knife Trick: Throw a fan of flaming knives that scorch targets on hit.
- Class ability: Gambler's Dodge: Dodge to perform a tumble and avoid enemy attacks, dodging near enemies fully recharges melee ability.
Aspects & Fragments
- Aspects:
- On Your Mark: Precision final blows grant you and nearby allies increased weapon handling and reload speed for a short duration. Stacks 3 times, and activating your class ability immediately grants maximum stacks of On Your Mark.
- Knock 'Em Down: When the player has Blade Barrage equipped, the Super launches more projectiles. And, while Radiant, equipped throwing knife final blows fully refund melee energy.
- Fragments:
- Ember of Mercy: When you revive an ally, you and other nearby allies gain restoration, plus picking up a Firesprite grants restoration. (Also grants +10 Resilience.)
- Restoration means you continuously regenerate health and shields over time, and this cannot be interrupted by taking damage.
- Ember of Beams: Solar Super projectiles have stronger target acquisition. (and grants +10 Intellect)
- Ember of Ashes: You apply more scorch stacks to targets.
- Ember of Empyrean: Solar weapon or ability final blows extend the duration of Restoration and Radiant effects applied to you. (Also includes -10 Resilience.)
- Ember of Torches: Powered melee attacks against combatants make you and nearby allies Radiant. (Also includes -10 Discipline.)
- Radiant grants a 25% bonus weapon damage increase.
- Ember of Mercy: When you revive an ally, you and other nearby allies gain restoration, plus picking up a Firesprite grants restoration. (Also grants +10 Resilience.)
Armor & Armor Mods
- Exotic armor:
- Foetracer: Damaging a powerful combatant or Guardian with an ability grants a temporary weapon damage bonus for weapons damage that matches your subclass element. Defeating the target with a weapon matching your subclass damage type will create an elemental pickup.
- Armor mods:
- Harmonic Siphon, Dynamo, Hands-On, Focusing Strike, Impact Induction, Heavy Handed, Innervation, Recuperation, Solar Scavenger, Bomber, Powerful Attraction
- Artifact perk:
- Monochromatic Maestro: Dealing elemental ability damage increases matching weapon damage, and elemental weapon damage increases matching ability damage (10% for 5 seconds).
Weapon Selection
- Weapons: This can contain any mix of your favorite Solar weapons of choice, but we recommend the following:
- Sunshot: Fires explosive rounds and highlights targets that take damage from Sunshot, plus those killed with Sunshot explode in Solar energy.
- You can also try it with the Lament Exotic sword. With this weapon, you can rev the blade for shield-piercing effects and gain stacks, wherein stacks increase damage and damage resistance of heavy attacks. Plus, damaging a combatant heals the wielder.
At the outset, since you're using a Solar build and Solar weapons, you get the 25% damage buff from Foetracer and the 10% damage buff increase from Monochomatic Maestro as these two sources stack. Foetracer drops Firesprites that will activate Radiant due to Ember of Mercy. On Your Mark makes you and your allies' weapon damage and ready speed even more powerful.
Ember of Torches means you gain Radiant with each powered melee attack, as do your nearby allies. Knock 'Em Down refunds your melee when you get melee final blows while Radiant, meaning you can keep cycling your melees. Your melee, Knife Trick, also Scorches targets, resulting in a damage over time debuff. Ember of Ashes buffs Knife Trick and damage for weapons with Incandescent, thereby increasing the number of Scorch stacks from 30 to 40. If an enemy gets 100 stacks of Scorch, it will Ignite.
So, now you have melees that grant Scorch, let you become Radiant, and refund melee energy when you get final blows while Radiant. Ember of Empyrean extends both Restoration and Radiant with Solar weapon or ability final blows, and you should be getting a lot of final blows with both. Ember of Ashes lets you apply more Scorch stacks to targets (which is also helpful when using weapons with Incandescent, which also activates Scorch). With Solar Scavenger, your weapons should also gain extra reserves as you pick up ammo.
Since your weapons match your subclass, you also get Orbs of Power from multikills. You'll also get them from powered melee final blows due to Heavy Handed. Powerful Attraction brings them to you, and with Recuperation, those Orbs grant you health. With Innervation, these Orbs will also reduce your melee cooldown. The other listed mods are added extras that accelerate your ability regeneration. In particular, Hands-On grants bonus Super energy on melee kills, and since you should be getting a lot of melee kills with this build, you will find you can regenerate your Super ability very quickly.
Regarding your choice of weapons, you only want to use Solar weapons with this build. Sunshot is a good option because of the game's recent hand cannon buff, though a hand cannon like Trust with Incandescent can be helpful here, too. You can even make more of it if you have a primary weapon with the Osmosis trait, which will cause the weapon to adopt your subclass whenever you use a grenade.
In sum, you're constantly Radiant, which means your melee should almost always be powered. You're also Scorching enemies with both weapons and abilities. The Foetracer and Monochromatic Maestro combination means you're dealing additional damage with your Solar weapons and generating tons of Orbs with Harmonic Siphon — which you can pick up to replenish your health and keep you fighting. With your healing grenades, you're also buffing your teammates by granting them Restoration.
The result is a combination that makes it easy to cycle abilities and buffs, making it an ultimate ad-clearing Hunter build.
