Quit your job, because to get anything over 300 is going to take your full attention and you will not have time for work

Strikes. Grind them until you cry. Then grasshopper, and only then, will you be ready to raid.

Heroic strikes

What I did was run the dailies until I hit about 280, then I started doing a bunch of strikes until I hit about 295-300. Then raid.

[quote]Hey all. Just got my first Guardian to 40. Time to start getting end game gear. What's the best way to start grinding that out?[/quote] Well, to get ur light level up, i'd Recommend going to the dreadnaut patroll and go to the hall of souls with a fireteam and do court of oryx and bring with you a bunch of runes, (you get reciprocal runes from killing taken bosses when you're on patrol) the rare items that drop in the court of oryx are higher than blues that drop anywhere else, or, at least they have the chance to be. After ur light lvl is higher, u can do heroic strikes and nightfalls. After doing some of those u can do the raid. Probably around light 295. Try to get black spindle and touch of malice, they'll help you in the raid. You need 6 ppl total for the raid so you'll either have to grab some friends, or use a teambuilder website to get all 6. Be sure to watch a youtube vid on how to do the raid, there's also a vid on how to get touch of malice and black spindle. Once you hit light 300, go to xur and buy a whole mess of 3 of coin. With the 3 of coin you get a chance of getting an exotic engram from killing an ultra. What is an ultra you ask? An ultra is basically any enemy that is "the boss" and is usually six times bigger than a normal enemy. The most effective way to use 3 of coins, that i've found, is to use them on the bosses that are at the end of heroic strikes. Excluding the psion flayer strike and omnigul. These don't count as ultras. I usually use between 1-3 of the 3 of coins, it is a stackable effect, so you can use more if you wish, but then you'd be wasting them practically. Okaaaay.... So, after you get an exotic engram, go to the cryptarch, but before decoding ANY engrams, make sure the gear that gives you the most light is all equipped. If your light level is 300 or above, there is a chance that an exotic will be a 310. Because you can only equip one exotic at a time, you can infuse your weaker gear with the exotics to boost your light level. As you can already tell, it's a grind. But you are probably already familiar with that. :P After doing the raid a bunch of times you can do the hard raid and that should get you the endgame gear you're looking for. Make sure you complete quests given to you and story missions as well, some of them give you legendaries and exotics. Hope this helps

Ok

Probably special events. Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, Nightfall *shudders*, Crimson Doubles, Raids. End-game gear requires end-game activities. The learning curve is sharp, but with enough patience it'll happen. Your biggest adversary will be your availability above all else, since these events require a large chunk of your day, sometimes taking hours.

Congratulations ^^

Finish the "story", finish the as many quests as you can. Do strikes, and get to around 270-275, then do court of oryx and IB ( you get guaranteed 310 and 310+ gear in Iron Banner) until your 295-300. Then do normal raid, and eventually hard raid/trials.

Finish up your quests for decent rewards, then strike playlist. Once you're in the 290 light level range with a decent sniper rifle you'll be able to tackle the normal mode raid.

Do every single story mission you can. They reward gear at the end of questlines. There is also a mission that has you run 5 strikes then 5 heroic strikes then complete the nightfall. You'll get hear through the strikes and the nightfall and at the end you're rewarded a 300 special weapon.