Destiny 101: Item stats and how they relate to your abilities

Ok, so this one is mostly for the people who didn't play the Beta. Basically you have three abilities. They are known as your melee, grenade, and your super. Melee and grenade are obvious and supers are the abilities that everyone always talks about, and that you see in the videos. The "resource" to "fuel" for all three abilities is just a cool down. There is no mana or anything like that that needs to be managed. The three main stats that you see will be intellect, strength, and discipline. Each of these stats has it's own direct effect on speeding up the cool down of 1 of your abilities. The below information will be available on your character screen by hovering over the applicable stat: Strength - Speeds up the cool down of your melee ability (you can melee while on cool down, just won't get the increased damage or extra effects of the ability) Discipline - Speeds up the cool down of your grenade Intellect - Speeds up the cool down of your special ability Your special ability will fill up slowly over time (called "super charged" once it's full), however there are a few things you can do to nudge it along faster. The most blatant one being the orbs of light that tend to show up mostly when another player gets kills with their super ability. You'll be notified of they by text in the lower left portion of your screen that says "'so and so' generated # orbs of light". You also fill it up by getting kills and maybe a few other action that I not totally aware of. Getting a kill with a "critical hit" (normally a head shot) fills it up a little faster then just a normal kill. I'm not sure whether intellect increases the amount that these actions fill the bar or if it just increases the normal slow "as time passes by" portion of the recharge. On your character screen you will be able to see the total amount of each stat that is currently equip to your character. If you hover over each stat you will have the tool tip pop up and you will see at the bottom of that tool tip a section that says "Current Effect: ##%" This is how much your ability is being cooled down. Once you go over 100% your just wasting stats if you equip anymore of that particular stat. No, at 100% doesn't mean that you'll just be able to spam that ability. It brings it down to the fastest cool down time possible for that ability via stats, which I think is 20 or 30 seconds for the grenade and melee, and I'm not sure if anyone knows how much it effects the super. (Intellect wasn't in the Beta to my knowledge, which is why I don't have more specific information) Keep in mind you may also have skills or "focus" (this is in your subclass menu) that will allow you to burn off some extra time off of a given cool down, but it normally has something to do with getting a kill with another ability/headshot etc. This is different for every class, and I don't know enough about EACH class to go into detail about every one. Read the tool tips. I trust in your intelligence. Very situational, but it'll spell it out for you. That is the quick and dirty for those three stats. Beyond that you have the defense rating. I don't have specific information but as with any item with defense rating I assume it allows you to take more bullets before you die. [b]Important Edit[/b]: I forgot to mention that as your character levels up, you'll need more and more of a given stat to reach the 100% effect. ----------------------------------Below is how you get past the "level cap" of 20--------------------------------------- Once you reach the "max lvl" of 20, you will actually be able to level up past that. The only way to do this is by equipping pieces of armor that have a stat called "light" on it. Each level has a certain amount of light that you need to have equipped to reach, and if you unequip that item you can lose your levels, possibly bringing you all the way back down to 20 if you unequip all of your items with a light stat. So in order to get into the raids you are going to need light to be equip to your guardian. How much? I have no clue, we'll find that out soon enough though I hope. So basically: Light - Increases character level P.S. - I would make another post explaining the Radar cause it's a pain in the ass and I hate it, but it's honestly a lot easier if you just look up a youtube video explaining it. Me typing everything out to explain it would probably just do more to confuse you. If your curious at all how the radar works (it's simple and a pain at the same time) please go look it up. This goes double for anyone interested in PvP.