Ghost Protocol — Graviton Forfeit (Void Hunter · PvP)

Anchor: Graviton Forfeit · Subclass: Nightstalker · Role: Invis flank / duel-reset — Crucible & Trials Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Built 2026-06-27 · PvP (6v6 + Trials/Comp)

Invisibility isn't damage resistance — it's deleting your radar blip. The enemy team can't shoot, trade, or rotate onto a Guardian they can't see and don't know is there. Ghost Protocol turns that into a job: dodge off radar, cut a wide angle, and arrive on a flank the enemy already wrote off. Losing the 1v1? Dodge, vanish, break their lock, re-peek from a new angle with your dodge and smoke already half back. And in Trials it does the single most valuable thing an exotic can do — it lets you walk onto a downed teammate and rez them while the other team stares at an empty killcam. This is an information and positioning exotic, not a damage one.

Loadout

Slot	Pick	Why
Super	Spectral Blades	On-demand invisibility super — the escape button and the 1vX closer. It's another invis source that feeds the whole identity: pop it to reposition unseen, peel a stack one at a time, or hard-disengage a lost fight. (Swap Shadowshot: Deadfall for Trials zoning — tether a push or lock down a revive attempt; suppress kills enemy supers/abilities.)
Class ability	Gambler's Dodge	This is the invis button — Vanishing Step makes the dodge itself the vanish. Gambler's refunds Snare Bomb near an enemy, keeping your second invis source (the smoke) online for the next flank. (Marksman's Dodge is the pure duel-reset variant: dodge → invis and a full reload, so you re-peek with a topped mag — take it if you'd rather reset than re-smoke.)
Movement	Triple Jump	Air control to cut the wide angle and re-position between dodges. Lets you take an off-angle a grounded player can't follow into.
Melee	Snare Bomb (Smoke Bomb)	Weakens on hit (the elemental debuff Stylish needs) and turns you — and nearby allies, team-invis by default in 9.7.0 — invisible. Your second on-demand invis source and a team revive/peel tool.
Grenade	Vortex Grenade	Lingering area denial for chokes and revives; with Echo of Undermining it weakens, so a kill on a target standing in it procs Stylish → invis. (Prefer Suppressor Grenade to hard-deny an enemy super/ability in a duel — a strong Trials pick.)
Aspect 1	Stylish Executioner	Defeating any elementally-debuffed target → invisibility + Truesight (wallhack-grade target info). After the execution your next melee while invis weakens. Every flank kill on a snared/volatile target re-vanishes you for the next one. _[+2 Aspect Energy Capacity]_
Aspect 2	Vanishing Step	Dodging makes you invisible. On-demand invis with no kill required — the reset button that works even when you're losing. The kill-independent invis is why this build still functions in Trials, where kills are scarce. _[+2 Aspect Energy Capacity]_

Exotic — Graviton Forfeit (Helmet) [PvP value: invis uptime + regen while invis]

Vanishing Shadow: Increases the duration of any invisibility effects. When you gain invisibility, your grenade, melee and class abilities recharge faster. At maximum stacks, you gain a Void Overshield as well.

Three payloads, all of them about staying gone and coming back armed:

• Longer invis (+2 seconds). Clarity: Void Invisibility lasts 2 seconds longer. In a 6–9 second Crucible vanish that's a huge relative bump — it's the difference between the enemy's radar blip clearing in time for you to re-peek vs. them still hunting your last-known. Echo of Persistence stacks +40% on top, so a single dodge buys a genuinely long off-radar window — enough to cut a full flank angle, or to cover an entire Trials revive channel.
• Faster ability regen while invisible. Entering invis grants 1 stack of Vanishing Shadow (lasts 7s, and the timer is frozen while you stay invisible); it builds to 3 stacks, but extra stacks only arrive after you exit and re-enter invis. Per-stack base-regen boost (Clarity, 1|2|3 stacks): - Class ability: 67% | 133% | 200% — your dodge (= your invis button) comes back faster the more you use it. - Grenade: 166% | 333% | 500% and Melee: 166% | 333% | 500% — Snare Bomb and your nade re-arm fast off a flank, so the next vanish is already loading while you're still cloaked.
• Void Overshield at max stacks. Reaching Vanishing Shadow x3 (or gaining invis while already at x3) grants a 15 HP Void Overshield for 7s — 10s with Echo of Persistence. Fifteen extra effective HP when you emerge from a flank is a real edge in the first-shot trade: you win re-peeks you'd otherwise lose by a single bullet.

Note the wording — "increases the duration of any invisibility effects." Spectral Blades, Snare/team-smoke, Vanishing Step dodge, and Obscurity finishers all get the +2s and feed the Vanishing Shadow stacks. The exotic doesn't care how you went invisible, only that you did, which is why a build with four invis sources runs it at full value.

Weapons (the loadout)

No champions in Crucible — pick for the flank entry and the re-peek, not for stuns.

• Primary — the dueling gun. A 120 RPM Hand Cannon is the canonical flank weapon: two-tap headshot range, rewards the clean angle you bought with invis. _(example: any high-range 120 HC.)_ Prefer a Void HC with Destabilizing Rounds — volatile spread is an elemental debuff, so your HC kills proc Stylish → invis without needing the smoke, closing the loop on gunplay alone. A 340 Aggressive Pulse is the mid-range alternative for flanks that open at distance. _(examples flagged — roll to taste.)_
• Special — the entry tool. Two valid flavours: a Shotgun for the aggressive invis-ape (approach off-radar, close the gap unseen, one-shot before the trade exists), or a Sniper for the off-angle pick (vanish, reposition to a fresh lane, head-click someone who lost track of you). Shotgun suits 6v6 chaos; sniper suits Trials lane control.
• Heavy is map/mode flavour in 6v6 (rocket/sword/LMG for a cloaked pick) and rarely in play in 3v3 Trials — don't build around it.
• Element is free except for the Destabilizing-HC synergy above. The exotic buffs no weapons; it only cares that you keep generating invis, so weapon choice answers the map, not the subclass.

Stats (PvP)

Class → Health → Weapons.

• Class is the priority because the dodge is the invis button (Vanishing Step) and the reset button. Lower dodge cooldown = more flanks, more resets, more team-revive cover. Vanishing Shadow's own +67→200% class-regen-while-invis compounds this — push Class high (toward ~100) so the dodge is rarely down.
• Health second: effective HP + shield-recharge — you want to survive the re-peek and the trade you chose to take. Pairs with the 15 HP Vanishing-Shadow overshield and Echo of Leeching's regen-on-melee-kill for a genuine reset sustain floor.
• Weapons third: handling / reload / ready speed for the peek-and-duel. (Its first-100 damage bonus is PvE-only — in Crucible Weapons is purely a feel stat, which is why it's the dump here.)

Archetypes: lean Specialist (Class) and Bulwark (Health) pieces; one Gunner (Weapons) or just fill with Class/Health font mods. Two Class-leaning pieces + one Health piece is the target spread.

How to duel (the neutral game)

• Vanish to break radar, not to tank damage. The win condition is the enemy not knowing where you are. Dodge (Vanishing Step) at a corner, cut wide, and arrive on an angle they've already cleared. Truesight (from a Stylish kill) shows you exactly where the next target is while you're cloaked — you spend zero time exposed while repositioning.
• Reset the duel you're losing. Down a fight? Dodge → invis → break line of sight. Your blip vanishes, the enemy loses the lock, and you heal / reload (Marksman variant) / re-smoke during the off-radar window. Graviton's +2s and the class-regen-while-invis mean your dodge is already coming back — re-peek from a different angle or fully disengage. You decide whether the fight continues.
• 1vX — isolate, don't brawl. Invis lets you peel a stack one Guardian at a time. Kill one (Stylish re-vanishes you), reset off radar, reposition with Truesight tracking the rest, take the next 1v1 on your terms. Spectral Blades is the panic-delete if they collapse on you.
• Safe Trials revives — the headline. Teammate down? Go invis (dodge / Snare smoke / Obscurity finisher) and walk onto the plate. Invisibility hides you through the entire rez channel, and Persistence + Graviton's +2s are tuned to cover it. A contested revive that's suicide on any other exotic is routine here. Snare Bomb also turns nearby allies invisible (team-invis, 9.7.0) — vanish your rezzer and the body.
• Re-arm in the dark. While cloaked, Grenade/Melee regen runs 166–500% — so every flank kill hands you a near-instant Snare Bomb back for the next vanish. The loop pays for itself as long as you keep finding debuffed kills.

6v6 vs Trials

6v6 (Control / Clash / Iron Banner). Chaos means constant debuffed kills, so the Stylish kill→invis loop self-sustains and you flank aggressively off the shotgun/HC. The seasonal artifact perks are live in Crucible — lean the Void column for anything that refunds class/melee energy, boosts radar/target intel, or improves Void weapon handling, to tighten the dodge→smoke→re-vanish cadence (skip every champion mod — they do nothing here). Run the loudest entry weapon the map allows; you'll have the orbs/kills to keep Truesight and the overshield rolling.

Trials (3v3 elimination, no respawn). The math flips: kills are scarce and there's no second chance, so the kill-dependent invis (Stylish) is unreliable — lean on Vanishing Step, the dodge-invis that needs nothing but a cooldown. Two jobs dominate: (a) revives — invis-rezzing a teammate is frequently the round-winning play and this build is the best in the game at it; and (b) disengaging lost duels to keep the numbers even instead of trading into a 2v3. Tighten toward survival: Marksman's Dodge for the reset-reload, Suppressor Grenade to deny a clutch enemy super, Deadfall to lock a revive or a final push. Don't chase the flank kill — chase the numbers advantage your invisibility protects.

Notes

• Slot & class verified: Graviton Forfeit is a Hunter Helmet, Void/Nightstalker (manifest `docs/encyclopedia/exotics.md`). Vanishing Shadow text is verbatim from the manifest; the numbers (+2s invis, 67/133/200% class & 166/333/500% grenade/melee regen, 15 HP / 7s→10s overshield, 3-stack cap) are the Clarity community values — the Clarity entry carries no separate PvP/PvE split, so these apply in Crucible as written (`scripts/clarity_lookup.py "Graviton Forfeit"`).
• Fragment numbers (Clarity): Echo of Persistence — Invisibility +40% (Overshield/Devour +50%); Echo of Obscurity — finisher invis 5s / 7s with Persistence; Echo of Dilation — radar 6→12 sectors while crouched, crouch speed floored at 4 m/s; Echo of Leeching — melee final blows start health regen for you + nearby allies (no public % — confirm in-game).
• Base Crucible invis duration (before the +2s and +40%) isn't a manifest/Clarity number — the relative uplift is what matters; confirm the absolute window in-game if you're timing revive channels to the second.
• Artifact availability in Trials: confirm whether the season's artifact perks are active in 3v3 Trials before relying on any — the build is deliberately artifact-independent (everything load-bearing comes from the exotic + aspects + fragments), so it doesn't matter either way. No formal artifact loadout is prescribed for a PvP build.
• Fragment swaps: for an orb/Devour lean, trade Leeching+Obscurity for Echo of Starvation (Orb/Breach pickup → Devour, full heal-on-kill for resets) + Echo of Harvest (weakened kills → Orb + Breach to feed it) — but Crucible orb economy is slow, so this is weaker than in PvE. Echo of Vigilance (defeat while shields depleted → Void overshield) is a strong clutch-survival swap if you find yourself winning duels at low HP. Echo of Undermining is worth slotting if you commit to the Vortex-weaken → Stylish line as a reliable invis source.
• Dodge choice is the real fork: Gambler's (re-smoke) vs Marksman's (reset-reload). Marksman's is arguably the better pure duel-reset; Gambler's keeps your second invis source online. Pick per how often you actually flank with the smoke.
• All aspect, fragment and exotic text verified against the 9.7.0 manifest encyclopedia (`docs/encyclopedia/{aspects,fragments,exotics}.md`); no numbers invented.