Destiny 2 Power Level Caps Guide - Power Limits for Season 11 & 12

Since its launch, Destiny 2 has always had a moving Power Cap, your maximum Power level and goal for the season. Eventually Bungie split these into a soft cap, for casual players, and a hard cap, for the most dedicated Destiny veterans. It’s always been pretty straightforward, but with the addition of both weapon and armor sunsetting, it’s more important than ever. This guide will explain and list both Destiny 2 Power Level Caps and Power Limits for weapons and armor.

Hard Cap vs Soft Cap

Time for a quick explainer! Soft Cap is the value through which basic rare and legendary drops can level you up. In short, you can get here just by playing various activities and completing certain weekly bounties. Powerful and Pinnacle drops will help speed this process up. Once you hit Hard Cap, only Pinnacle gear will drop above your current Power level. If you want to hit Hard Cap by the end of the season you’ll need to be completing endgame activities such as Raids, Trials, Iron Banner, and the other weekly activities which reward Pinnacle gear.

Destiny 2 Power Level Caps Chart

Here’s the history of Destiny 2’s Power Level caps. Thanks to the new sunsetting system, we now know the Power Levels for the next three seasons. This is because weapons and armor have Power Limits equal which are set to the Power Levels three seasons after their own.

Destiny 2 Power Limit Chart

Now that’s not to be confused with Power Limits which are just being implemented. Those look similar for recent seasons, but for weapons and armor of the past, they’re capped across the board. If you have any gear in your inventory right now, this is what their caps are based on what season it is from.

For example, if this system was in place back in Season of the Forge, weapons like Hammerhead would have been capped at 960, and be limited after Season of the Undying. Even though Season of Dawn would have let you Guardian go higher, those weapons would have been stuck down at 960.

Because this process is retrospective, however, Bungie has simply decided to cap all “old” content at 1060, making it too low for endgame activities once Beyond Light comes out.

In short, your Guardian has a Power Level Cap and your weapons and gear have a Power Limit. When gear first releases, they’ll have a much higher Power Limit than you can hit with your Power Level. That’s because Bungie wants all gear to be good for a total of one year: one season when they first release, and then three subsequent seasons.

It’s worth noting that even if a weapon has hit the Power Limit and is no longer good for endgame activity, it’s still useful elsewhere. Some game modes like Crucible don’t have Power Levels enabled, so it doesn’t matter which weapons you use. In addition, many base PVE experiences are at 750 Power Level so just about anything can be used. This is because of Destiny’s Power system which only cares about the first 20 levels around the enemies.

Say your Power Level is 1260, for example, and the enemies are down at 750. You get a bonus for being 20 levels above them and that’s it. There are no further buffs to your Guardian as a result. The opposite is also true. If you’re 50 levels under an enemy, you only suffer from penalties as if you’re 20 levels under.

Hopefully that helps clear things up! It can seem kind of confusing, but we promise that it’ll get easier to understand as you play and experience more passing seasons.