The definitive Destiny 2 Season 1-23 and expansion tier list. 

I remember when this game first launched 7 years ago and Datto made his initial review, he recalled the EXACT same concern of him telling TimTheTatMan that the best way to level up was with public events... And him saying that same story today when reviewing season 1 just hit me with nostalgia. Never change, Datto.

Season of Plunder (aka pirate season) being placed in the High C tier is a glorious pun that I don't think enough people realize or appreciate

Screw season and expansion tier lists, I wanna see a Lore book tier list.

Curse of Osiris location we couldn’t even use our sparrows. I knew right then it was gonna suck

I started in Arrivals and honestly it was the best for me. It had the most content, plus it was the last season before everything got sunset *EDIT:* Since people aren't understanding, I started playing D2 in Season of Arrivals as it was on the xbox gamepass at the time. I had the experience to play every single piece of now sunset content. All the old DLC, all the old content. I do miss the exotic missions, and campaign missions on Titan. And honestly Curse of Osiris wasn't bad; especially fighting Panoptes. The one strike that had the giant cyclops was good too. Hell, getting to enjoy Black Armoury was great too, still have some of my BA weapons in the vault. The menagerie was the best activity to play, Gambit had Reckoning and Gambit Prime (I miss prime) and most importantly I had the option to get Bad Juju and Sagira's Shell legitimately through their associated quests. All in all, as a player who started on the Gamepass; I had a LOT of content to enjoy

Splicer was one of the greatest seasons. I will die on this hill.

Season of the Splicer in B tier is a travesty

Season 10 was a tough season, but one of my favorite story beats of all time was finding out Lord Felwinter's true origin, so that was definitely points for me

Season of the Worthy just made me so sad, I played so much during Season of Dawn, guns were cool and had some nice perks and then Worthy had Warmind Cells but locked behind trash guns imo... Not to mention the sheer server instability still gives makes me shiver in terror.. It did have a really cool aesthetic though, I guess it has that

Arrivals should be at least A-tier

Came across this video after The Final Shape. I can confidently say that it's S+ expansion.

HELL YEAH!! Getting more Mithrax was amazing. I enjoyed being painted a picture of the monster that shakes off the rot of death and calls itself “Saint”

Seraph below Dawn is just a crime but I agree with most of the rest.

I think Black Armory should be A and I get that the activity wasn't anything crazy and it was very bare bones but we had Scourge, Niobe labs, some of the most iconic legendary weapons ever and also some of the most iconic exotics ever. Izanagi's, Le monarque, Anarchy, Jotunn, Last word. I personally also liked the difficulty in the day one volundr forge, though I understand that I am in the minority. It was marketed as an extension to the endgame so I was expecting that difficulty to be honest.

Splicer was the season that got me back into the grind. And I honestly enjoyed it for once in D2.

You know what I really appreciate about this tier list? The tier distribution. I’ve seen so many lists on various topics where people absolute over saturate S and F (s especially) to the point where the entire tier means nothing. This having basic bell curve shape with only a couple very notable entires at the top and bottom actually makes it feel like a useful tier list to refer back to.

The way I see Forsaken as a season is the Dreaming City and its content, which was very good. My reasoning, it had a 36 week narrative, 3 repeatable story missions, a new location and a public event.... sounds like a season to me

season of arrivals is when i truly woke up to the inner workings of the game and gained a much deeper understanding of what i was playing. that season was the best season of my life on this game. what a time that was... wish i could catch those feelings again.

Arrivals is easily my favorite season. I have so many hours spent on the game that summer. The game was in such a good state with things like farmable raids and etc.

I'll say this about Dares of Eternity, it remains the only other casual PVE activity that you can do with more than 3 people besides Gambit lol

I personally loved the Beyond Light expansion. Maybe it’s just my love of snow but it was super fun, got to learn more about the fallen and the exos

The story for splicer was one of the best destiny has ever told, the content was probably on par or slightly below season of the chosen, but the story elevated it so much.

Defiance being that high is crazy, season of Amanda dying and killing cabal

seraph had one of the best story lines for a season easy S

Season arrivals was really good, the tension of the pyramids showing up, the activity was fairly fun, umbral engrams made the loot chase fun. We got gnawing hunger this season in its best form. We also got all raids for farmable loot so it was the biggest mass raiding in the community ever

Plunder was incredibly fun. The energy was very high seas swashbuckling adventures, and having our third and final Light 3.0 class brought the balancing act home nicely. 41:44

The Final Shape ended up being S Tier tbh.

Season of the Chosen will always be my favourite.

Did you know: In Destiny 1 we actually got a raid for House of Wolves, it was the Skolas run of Prison of Elders, this was because upon completion if you had not already completed a raid you would unlock the raid achievement.

59:06 the only good thing about the entire Shadowkeep “expansion” Was the final cutscene where we talked to our mirror selves. The final mission was neat with the flashback enemies and nightmare fights inside the pyramid ship. That’s it though. I totally agree with Datto that we didn’t get true great expansions/campaigns until we got Witch Queen. Before then campaigns were always full of busy work… with just as many patrol zone activities as actual missions. Witch Queen campaign was really amazing for many reasons but mainly because we had a great story we pushed through mission after mission until the end… without constant breaks to do random open world stuff. Lightfall Campaign had some shortcomings story wise. It should not have focused on gaining Strand as 90% of the campaign… however even Lightfall compared to old campaigns were much better because we still had unique fun, challenging (on legend) missions that were all actual story missions and wasn’t full of busy work. From the info we have about Final Shape… it looks like Bungie took all the feedback regarding old campaigns and especially the issues with Lightfall to create a great final campaign. For example… we are fully unlocking the Prismatic Subclass during the first mission (versus just before the final mission in Lightfall). We start with a strong prismatic kit with a good variety of options to experiment with and enjoy throughout the campaign, versus only really enjoying post campaign. We do unlock more options to add to our Prismatic subclassses exploring the Pale Heart and as campaign mission rewards… but when looking at the chart we were shown we start off with a truly large portion of fragments, aspects, supers, abilities to mix and match and unlock the smaller remainder as we go through the campaign. I believe this choice has to have been as a result of the huge backlash Bungie got for focusing so heavily on unlocking Stand during the Lightfall… instead of on the actual story (conflict/enemies) like they did properly in Witch Queen. I really do have high hopes for the Final Shape campaign as a result!

This tier list proves D2 isn’t bad now. People just are tired of it and look for an excuse to complain. Personally still love it

Glad to see some respect put on The Taken King. I know a lot of people argue it's nowhere near Forsaken, which I disagree with. Maybe I can get on board with "Forsaken is better", but it's still close for me. Both expansions dropped at a time where Bungie's back was against the wall and they had to prove to players that Destiny was still worth sticking with. And they both did, but I think it mattered even more for TTK. If TTK did not knock it out of the park the way it did, we never would've even made it to Forsaken. I genuinely think the franchise was doomed if TTK didn't perform. I'm sure you could argue it was the same case with Forsaken too, again I just personally felt the stakes were higher with TTK. The Final Shape is in a very similar situation as those two expansion were, where Bungie needs to prove with it that this game is still worth playing and that they're not done yet. I know sentiment is extremely low right now and faith in Bungie is borderline non-existent, but I do think TFS will be at least A tier when it's all said and done. I think the problem is that for many people, that will be too low.

Season of Plunder was a great story. Seeing Mythrax duke it out with Erasmus was a banger. But the activities I fondly remember actually dozing off at my desk during the activities, especially when forced to do either 5 regular or one master ship stealing activities.

seeing this has reminded me of all the strikes we lost from this game and made me sad. Running master strikes during shadowkeep like Garden world was peak destiny 2 for me. I had just bought my first real PC for gaming and switched over from console gaming. I had joined a discord that now is the place i go to to speak to people who are now my closest friends on a daily basis. I've even traveled interstate to meet the ones who lived in the same country as me. all from playing D2 shadowkeep in 2019/2020

im sure the discussion around this video will be civil thanks datto for the opinion

That seraph final cutscene moment was just so good that it immediately gets an extra rating tier for me. It belongs in s tier

I’m very high and I’m watching this as I’m waking up, thank you Datto for all your years of content, I’ve only ever met you in game (patrol zone) once but I’ve been watching your videos since dark below, you are one of the main reasons I still love destiny. Thank you

I would like to express my gratitude for this community. Me like many other, this game has meant so much. We are nearing the end. I would like to say ggs and thanks for the memories!

I didn't play Opulence until after Shadowkeep, so I didn't get to rip the chest multiple times in the Menagerie before it was patched, but I still found it to be the best seasonal activity for years.

As someone who plays both PvE and PvP, Season of the Lost was one of the best times to play Destiny. 30th Anniversary elevated it too.

My order since beyond light. S tier: 13, 14, 19. A tier: 15, 22, 23. B tier: 17, 20 C tier: 12, 16 D tier: nothing F tier: 18, 21 My argument for why 14 is S tier - Breach and clear and warmind cells were heavily supported as it was the last season for pre-nerf anarchy and warmind cells, it was the season where wells of light (if anyone remembers those) became decent, VoG was brought back and was very good, the splicer weapons were incredible, and the vex network aesthetic was great.

"It's probably not going to be up here" It was definitely up here

lost my virginity in Season of the Chosen so it must be my favorite by default

13:18 - Gambit should’ve been Destiny 2’s REAL Endgame/Esport focused if the Community gave it a chance & Bungie put more effort into it. Change my mind.

Season 10 might've introduced some cool things, but it stumbled every step of the way. Still remember the morale being at its lowest when, after getting so many snippets of Felwinter's story being built up to get his shotgun returning from D1, we got the door slammed on our face quite literally. Still remember the memes of that door with a raid boss health bar lmao.

Gonna be honest & a bit controversial, but looking back at it Season of the Drifter wasn’t that bad. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t amazing, but outside of Reckoning it wasn’t that bad. The season’s biggest problem was definitely it putting all its motes in 1 Gambit shaped basket.

I think the lack of star power in the current season is the fact that we get so many awoken seasons. Or they’re just in it too much.

As a viewer from the future, imo, TFS was the best expansion literally ever.

Regarding the Forsaken campaign hot take: People forget that the MAJORITY of the campaign involved Barron Hunts that you did one time and then never again. Barron Hunts were glorified Adventures. The story of Forsaken was good but the campaign itself is ok

The Menagerie was the greatest thing Destiny 2 added. Season of Opulence was GOATED.

Shadowkeep was 100% better than Lightfall, here's why: Shadowkeep had an objectively good Raid and Race, especially compared to Root of Nightmares. It also had the best Raid Exotic in Destiny History (Divinity was a requirement for world first races for the following 3 years) Shadowkeep had a dungeon included It also brought the moon back from D1, which was something a lot of players had been begging for (for some reason). Shadowkeep also added Champions which the game desperately needed back then. It also added the artifact system, as well as reworking the entire mod/armor system (Armor 2.0 was the name I believe). It started the current seasonal model which remained largely unchanged for 5 years (for better or worse) The story wasn't good, but it was the beginning of the "coherent story" Bungie promised us with the Light and Dark Saga. Shadowkeep was also made exclusively by Bungie after the Activision split. They did pretty good considering the new budget/staff limitations. Lightfall on the other hand was near the end of the saga and followed Witch Queen, their best Expansion release ever in terms of sales. There was ZERO reason for them to mess Lightfall up that badly (Obviously a management issue and not the devs faults).

Spire is so incredibly good, when you said "has one of the best encounters in the game" i genuinely don't know for sure which one you are talking about. Incredible raid

Think you nailed the final shape placement ;)

I think I’m biased when it comes to to the beyond light year. I came back from a 2 year destiny break so everything was fresh but I also think weapon sunsetting also played a role. It made me excited for every single weapon that came out every season compared to now.

Playing the Taken King for the first time was easily the best Destiny experience I’ve ever had.

Hello, man from the future looking back, I would give Final Shape an overall high A+

I got to rank 7 in season 10. Season 11 brought me back into the game.

Having been on the fringes of D2 when it was younger (played the base game and expansions, but not enough money for seasons) and not part of the community at large, it's really nice to heard others opinions on what the older seasons were vs what i expected them to be from the marketing Forge, Slicer, and Dawn are two seasons I wish i was around for, they sound so cool in retrospect

season of the undying/shadowkeep should honestly be way higher. Season of the undying was basically free since it was included in shadowkeep for $35, it introduced armor 3.0 which is easily one of the best additions to the game, legend and master strikes, and it made all the annual pass content free.

Y’know, it is quite interesting. As badly received as Lightfall was, the seasons for that year were actually pretty solid, aside from maybe Defiance. And as well received as Witch Queen was, its seasons were thought of as pretty mediocre aside from Seraph (I will defend Haunted to my dying breath however).

I didn’t play at all during Witch Queen for a variety of reasons and came back for Lightfall, and honestly I’m glad of it because I’ve been able to enjoy all of these really good seasons without feeling burnt out.

I would put The Taken King campaign over Forsaken. The Taken King involved so much more of the world of Destiny compared to the Forsaken, which was basically just players running around the Tangled Shore where as in the Taken King we were going to The Cosmodrome, Mars and the Dreadnaught and including all of the Vanguard, Amanda Holiday and Eris with some cheeky involvement with the Reef and the constant back and forth we were doing with Oryx.

For me personally, season 11 was S tier specifically for the memories of spending hours a day playing with all my friends, bullshitting all day running around doing all the events on Titan and what not. And we all had a loving affinity to Falling Guillotine that season, we almost never took that weapon off just spin to win basically everything. I miss having that much fun. I miss playing Destiny with my friends lol

Future viewer here :3. Final Shape good. Like really really good. Could be A+ or S-

S11 was hype. I still remember slaying out with witherhoard, ikelos smg, and falling guillotine

Watching this post Final Shape release, it gets A++. Personally better than Witch Queen and Forsaken (yeah yeah) but not as good as Taken King.

I started play in the beta of the 1st game and played D1 religiously, when D2 beta came out I played and I played D2 religiously until warmind... and ever since then I was on and off. I only experienced like an 8th of what D2 went through, and I regret that but life is life. I had other things on my plate.

Putting the best season (splicer) in b is fucking crazy

9:06 Black Armory was actually called Season of the Forge at a time. Then Season of the Drifter was Joker's Wild, and Opulence was Penumbra. Bungie changed the way they named seasons in between Black Armory and Season of the Drifter.

good takes I mostly agree and props to the editor for adding year / length of season was a nice touch

Lost, Arrivals, and Splicer in B tier is heinous, some of the absolute best seasons in the game. “Definitive” my ass

season of the haunted will be the best season for armor ornaments of all ... those red skulls are DOPE ! especialy at hunter witch cowboy clock from Spire dungeon , gives vibes of Ghost Rider :)) i still missing Colosseum :( .. that arena activity was really fun

Would love to see the updated ranking from Datto

throwback to whatever season had the glitch where we could do two fireteams in a raid. that shit was bundles of fun, probably the most fun ive had in a videogame like ever

opulence and dawn my favorite 2 seasons. so many memories with one of my best friends growing up. we drifted apart and i miss him but genuinely some of the best times i had playing the game.

7:30 Season the the Outlaw was the one that came out with Forsaken. You could say they were one in the same at the time.

Hot take: This year has been the best seasons ever. Best seasonal content, dungeons, sandbox, gameplay. Top tier game as much as people will hate my opinion. I think you really have to dissect the experience for the last 7 years. Reallllly deep dive into the pros and cons and get rid of biases.

The thing about Warmind is they started bettering the sandbox by a lot. They buffed a lot of exotic weapons, mostly bringing graviton lance, sunshot, and risk runner closer to where they are today. They also buffed exotics, my favorite example is sunbracers. Sunbracers used to be better grenade and melee kill gives you grenade. They decreased ability cooldowns, increased super charge rate and ability damage. When we were limited to 2 primaries, it was nice to finally be able to use ability builds which weren't viable before due to long cooldowns and low damage.

Season 19 is always rated very highly mainly for the story elements it used. Building up Rasputin and then losing him was very similar to what happened with Cayde in Forsaken. The raw emotion in the scene of Rasputin dying was very well done and strong. Then in comparison in the following season with Amanda dying the stakes were so low we never even knew why the cabal were kidnapping civilians and Amanda died when she didn't even need to story wise.

i played season of opulence and i never bugged it, still one of my favorite seasons to this day if not THE top.

6:45 Warminds end of the season switch right before Forsaken launched was actually my most fun time. I loved the recent weapon change at the time. However I didn’t like forsaken weapons when they launched so that is why the little window right before is my favorite

Season of The Wish is really high for me, amazing weapons, the coil is one of the best seasonal activities we’ve ever had and a fun place to test out new builds, the storyline was probably the weakest part but still pretty decent. If we’re counting into the light as well from the looks of the content coming out this may be an S tier season even tho it’s gonna be one of the longest seasons ever.

Joined midway thru the Season of the Splicer. For the longest time thought that it was the best season. Then the Seraph hit me like a ducking train. Imho to this day the best season they released (albeit counting only my limited experience with D2) with great loot (both legendaries and exotics), story, and an awesome transition to the next expansion.

I remember Season of the forge because they expected you to be at light level to participate at all, i straight up dropped the game having come back with the intention of playing lol.

Traumatized Reckoner here with my Hot Gambit Take: Gambit Prime and its respective armor sets were a GREAT idea hampered by several major issues: #1, THE GRIND / Reckoning and overall game imbalance issues. Grinding out the sets was EXCRUCIATING and overly complex, endemic of the same kind of 'we need to wring every minute of game time from our playerbase' that brought us other such brilliant concepts like Synthweave/plate/cord and other pointlessly long/unfun grinds, AND it was compounded by a downright unfair level of difficulty in order to try and balance out Guardians' out of control power creep at that time. #2, The armor sets were a stepping stone to the armor mod system / Armor 2.0, which was not implemented until later that year. Having FOUR distinct sets of armor for each role was a ridiculous decision that may have been an unavoidable hurdle because given the proximity between Gambit Prime and Armor 2.0's releases, they must've already been conceptualizing / thinking of the Armor Mod system but I'm sure delaying Gambit Prime wasn't an option. On the other side, they never took the opportunity to go back and 'fix' the system by making a single set of Gambit Prime armor that was easy to obtain, and easy to swap between roles/sets by just changing an intrinsic armor mod. Perhaps because player engagement was already starting to falter? But also-- #3, they stopped meaningfully adding to the mode. What was initially pitched as a third pillar to core Destiny gameplay started to get less and less support pretty quickly. Sure they put some cool weapons in there, but that doesn't matter much when you're running around in the same arenas, against the same bosses, with an unchanging meta, against other players who cook the Primeval in 45 seconds. I firmly believe that there is another timeline not far from the one we're in where Gambit Prime became the default Gambit experience, brought together the polarized Crucible / PvE communities, had a broader range of arenas and enemies, and most importantly, helped evolve the passive set bonus aspects of Destiny's perpetually shallow armor experience across the whole of the game. Weapons have come so far in Destiny's tenure, but I've been rocking the same armor sets for YEARS now with no real incentive / urge to get new shit other than to unlock it for transmog. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Seraph and Splicer hit spectacularly. I’m heavily biased because I’m cowboy and Rasputin-pilled. Mithrax and Saint shined in splicer.

I started on Season 20 and I don't regret anything

Realistic expectations aside, if TFS isn't the best expansion in Destiny history, or at least comparable to Forsaken/TTK, I don't have faith that Bungie is committed to delivering a good product. TFS is the final expansion in their 10-year saga, we have had over a year of blatant filler content, and Bungie had been cutting corners for years preceding Lightfall. They have accumulated plenty of resources/time to deliver an exemplary expansion, so if it isn't S-tier, what have they been doing for the past 5 years? Not to mention, Bungie has literally said that they are aiming for it to be as high-quality as Forsaken and TTK, so if they don't deliver to at least that level, they might as well be putting Destiny out to pasture.

Man I love Destiny, the amount of memories I have playing this game over the years is insane. Easily 7k+ hours in D1, without even really playing Rise of Iron at all, but only around 2k in D2 because I just couldn't enjoy it as much. That isn't to say that the game is bad, its had its ups and downs. It's just the sheer amount of Destiny that I've played has definitely caused me to grow tired of it after a while. I will more than likely be playing The Final Shape. I want closure to this 10 year journey we've been on. But beyond that, I feel like the game will need to change quite a bit, an evolution if you will, to get me to continue playing. It'll be emotional, as I'm sure can be said for most of us here, to see it end. I'm not gonna say I'm disinterested to see where they go after TFS. As I said, there will need to be big changes for me to continue playing, but if those things do happen, and the over arching story after TFS is good, I could see myself dabbling from time to time.

I stopped playing after D2 launch and didn’t get back into until shadowkeep (steam launch). I had fun but had issues with the game still. During season of arrivals though, the spark came while running all of the content that was getting put away for BL. While the season didn’t have the best content in it, it was the most enjoyable time for me in D2.

The first two years was the transition period from a micro expansion dlc format to an overall solid main and 4 storyline experience format. Between labs and the absolutely solid raids as the base is already solid. Menagerie is an outlier since all of the weapons are solid to this day and austringer is my second or third most used pvp weapon to this day. Imo there's no bad seasonal story and the activities are less about the activity and more about the loot.

Pretty sure Cartesian coordinate came out in season of the chosen and I’m still using that thing in like 75% of my load outs. Absolute monster

His defenses of Curse of Osiris are nullified by the simple fact that it was $60.

Love the new mix of content

Season of Seraph is an easy S tier. Remember, community sentiment was really down because of Season of the Plunder. Yet it a managed to 180 the sentiment with awesome weapons, a cool seasonal activity, exotic mission and literally the best seasonal ending in destiny of all time with the Traveler going to space. The hype for Lightfall after that was unbelievable IMO

i'm with chat, Season 14 was peak storytelling, gameplay, and gear. The aesthetic for the seasonal activity was also a+ (and they ended up copy pasting it for half of lightfall)

i really enjoyed the joke Datto made when he said lets compare the campaigns, some top tier comedy there, you know, because *WE CAN'T FUCKING GO AND PLAY THEM TO COMPARE THEM*.

Arrivals probably my favourite because it still had older content like Zero Hour and Whisper, which i had alot of fun grinding. Aesthetically, Dawn was amazing.

splicer is easily an S-teir; VoG, the total tower overhaul with the vex simulation, the amount of activities added, and the lore significance

Never in my life I think that I would hear Datto say "Sir D" EVER.