Shake, Rattle & Roll

from what i remember off the top of my head wizards - solar praetorians - void captains - arc there can also be modifiers on a strike which boost the damage of certain weapons e.g. solar burn = more burn damage typically though using the correct gun for the shield will be more effective than the burn damage, or taking down the shield then switching to a burn damage gun would be great. it's good to keep a collection of each type. boosting stats can help quite a bit, if you have the choice between two pieces of armour and one boosts your favourite stat then choose that one. i have 100% discipline with a sunsinger, which means my grenades cool down really quick. the quick cool down and extra grenade i get means i just about always have one available to use. if i was using void walker i would try get 100% intelligence so i could shoot off my super more often.

Sorry - I said Ikora Rey because I'm a warlock, whichever vanguard mentor is for your class (one of the three peeps around the table in the tower!)

Once you start running nightfall strikes and the raid you will get possible legendary/exotics as completion rewards or in chests. At this stage commit to maxing out the vanilla weekly strikes for vanguard coins (100 per week limit) and getting at least level 2 vanguard rep form strikes/bounties, as you can buy legendary clothing from Ikora Rey and then break it down for ascendant shards to level your existing legendary/exotic equipped items (clothes) which will help you level up your light level. Higher light levels mean you don't get one shotted on the raid! You won't need weapons so much once you have a couple in each category/element type, and the raid weapons are the best legendaries. You'll also get possible legendary/exotic weapons from levelling the cryptarch too, by decoding those engrams from each strike, so buying a gun becomes less of an issue. It boosts the ascendant shard collection quicker than doing a daily public event on it's own and hoping for the odd ascendant shard drop (although you should still do one gold tier event each day anyway.) That and do the daily challenge on the hardest level to get 2 ascendant materials - I've been able to solo most of them, be patient and engage from a distance. That helped me jump from 27 to 28 quite quickly once I twigged. Also do the Nightfall ASAP each week as the experience buff then lasts a whole week for anything else (raids/strikes etc) anything to help level up quickly, especially exotic weapons as they take ages. Also you can turn in bounties to collect experience on weapons that you don't use, so if you have a maxed out gun you can use that for the mission, then equip something else to get the exp on that instead from turning in the bounty. You probably knew all this anyway.... lol!

Lol you weren't alone in not realising about the colour of the shields in relation to weapon type