Game Breaker / Destiny 2

With each passing season, Destiny 2's metagame and sandbox gets altered ever so slightly, but you can be sure to always find something that's just so good, Bungie ends up rolling out nerfs at a later date.

---

Introduced in Season 1

• The Orpheus Rig Exotic Leg pieces for Hunter. They have an exotic perk that grants bonus Super Energy for every enemy tethered with a Shadowshot Arrow. When used correctly, they can give a Nightstalker and his/her team near infinite Super meter allowing a Trapper to continuously spam arrows as though they were a Pathfinder. Even when not used perfectly, they can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for a Super to come back up. In certain modes with high density enemy spawns like raids, they can generate a dozen orbs in one shot to replenish allied supers (even if allies take the kill if they are tethered you produce orbs), guaranteeing everyone being able to use their super repeatedly. The ability to disorient and suppress so many enemies at once ends up being a perk rather than the feature.
  • In Forsaken, the Exotic got nerfed so that enemies that are already tethered do not count towards your Super regeneration, making it impossible to spam the super and create infinite orbs for your teammates. In spite of that, the Orpheus Rig still remained a mainstay for several seasons. Penumbra tried to hamper it further by giving diminishing returns with each additional tethered enemy, but you were still able to regain your entire super with a large enough mob.
  • Season of the Worthy is where Orpheus Rig stopped being awesome, given it got nerfed to the point where you can only get up to around 50% of your Super back regardless of how many enemies get tethered.

• The "Attunement of Hunger" skill tree for the Voidwalker Warlock. When all four nodes of this Skill Tree are unlocked, the Warlock will be able to kill an enemy with a special melee attack, or consume their grenade, to instantly restore their Health to full and proc the "Devour" perk, causing all your kills to restore your health to max for the next nine seconds. This isn't too crazy on its own, but when combined with the "Insatiable" perk, which resets the timer on the Devour perk and grants bonus Grenade energy whenever you get a kill, basically turning the Warlock into a nigh-unkillable grenade-spamming murder machine as long as there are enough weak enemies around to feed them. This is exacerbated by the Nezarec's Sin Exotic Warlock Helmet, which reduces your grenade, melee, ability, and Super cooldowns by a small amount for all void damage kills. Yes, void damage, not just void ability. By pairing this helmet with Void Energy/Power weapons, a Hunger Voidwalker can attain terrifyingly short cooldowns and keep the Devour buff running even longer.

• The "Code of the Earthshaker" skill tree for the Striker Titan. It's the only Titan subclass that gets two grenade charges, gets the grenade charge refilled by damaging enemies with a sprinting Shoulder Charge with area effect damage, and the Pulse Grenades that the Striker gets are considered the best grenades in the game by far. Not broken enough for you yet? It gets even more broken with one piece of Exotic equipment:
  • An Insurmountable Skullfort is an Exotic Titan helm that enhances Arc-based melee attacks by triggering health regen and instantly re-proccing the melee sprint attack on a kill; the Striker just so happens to be an Arc-based subclass. Put all that together, and you can now clear out a horde of weak mooks with a single charge, recover some of the damage you might have taken while charging into them, throw two of the aforementioned best grenades from all the grenade energy you just got from the one charge, and still have another melee charge proc'd for the next set of weak mooks you can Shoulder Charge into for two more instant grenade charges!
  • With Patch 2.0, Seismic Strike is a One-Hit Kill in the Crucible, and if you're using Insumountable Skullfort, you get the melee charge back upon killing a Guardian, making it possible to use nothing but Seismic Strike in a match and come out on top. The exotic helmet also works with Code of the Missile, which offers an even deadlier melee option in the form of Ballistic Slam; with the Skullfort, you're essentially spamming a mini-Super at this point.

• A more general Titan example is the Rally Barricade. It's only half-height, the main gimmick being that crouching behind it instantly reloads your current weapon. This includes Power Weapons. Entire fireteams can exploit this to take down bosses without having to worry about lengthy reload times and just 'spewing bullets and rockets like no tomorrow. Then Warmind came and buffed both the Rally Barricade and the Warlock's Lunafaction Boots to no longer need to crouch to trigger the instant reload, creating an important PvE meta component that stuck around until Shadowkeep's patch undid said buff and relegated both pieces to highly increased reload, slashing off many DPS options in the process.

• The Sweet Business/Actium War Rig combo. The Sweet Business does everything well except for its awful reload time. The War Rig auto-loads a tenth of the active auto rifle's magazine back in every two seconds or so. Throw in a Rally Barricade, and you never have to worry about that reload time whatsoever. The only remaining problem is how quickly you will expend that meager 450-round Kinetic ammo reserve!
  • Sweet Business is one of the few Exotic weapons that enjoyed a large boost in the Crucible following the weapons slots changes one week before Forsaken's release, being able to achieve a time-to-kill faster than nearly any other Primary weapon when fully spun. Throw in the Titan's updated Rally Barricade, an Actium War Rig rolled with "Unflinching Auto Rifle Aim" (adds resistance to incoming flinch), and the Sweet Business's own Masterwork perk, "Serious Business" (which also adds flinch resistance when spun up), and you have a frightening lawnmower (or instant turret) that can clear an entire corridor of hapless Guardians.
  • Warmind upped Sweet Business's ammo capacity to 999, and Shadowkeep buffed the magazine size from 100 to 150, the latter of which had the side effect of allowing you to empty most of the weapon's reserves before you even reach 0 on the magazine counter. Unfortunately, by Season 9, Sweet Business became a victim of Power Creep by other weapon archetypes that can achieve faster TTKs without having to spin up the gun.

• Some Leviathan weapons would eventually form the backbone of the metagame across many seasons:
  • The handcannon, Midnight Coup, is the best representative for what you should look for in a Primary weapon. Balanced stats across the board, decent damage per shot that's elevated by its perks combo (Rampage ^note increases weapon damage after a kill; duration is extended with each subsequent kill with the weapon; stacks up to three charges and Outlaw ^note grants incredibly high reload speed after a precision kill), allowing you to keep the damage increase going while reloading blazingly fast. Later seasons would add other weapons in the same vein and some perks that achieve the same effect through different means (such as Feeding Frenzy ^note increased reload speed on par with Outlaw, but procs even without a precision kill and Swashbuckler ^note smaller damage increments than Rampage, but last longer without the need for Rampage mod; can instantly get to the max stack of 5x with a melee kill).
  • The pulse rifle, Inaugural Adress, has a similar perk combo as the Midnight Coup, except Rampage is replaced by Kill Clip (which buffs the weapon only upon reloading, but it's a larger increase than Rampage's gradual stacks), making it a dominant Crucible weapon for most of the metagame.
  • The sword, It Stared Back, rolls with the perks Relentless Strikes ^note regains sword ammo every other swing and Whirlwind Blade ^note increases damage with each consecutive hit, stacks up to 5x for a 30% increase, which synergize extremely well together when repeatedly slashing a single target, namely bosses. Very few sword perk combinations come close to surpassing this one in terms of sheer power.

Introduced in Season 2 - Curse of Osiris

• Not even one day into Curse of Osiris, players have noted that the second-ever Exotic Trace Rifle, the Prometheus Lens — on top of being the Mook Horror Show it was built to be — absolutely shreds Guardians in the Crucible, much faster than any other weapon short of Power-class. Indeed, mere fractions of seconds of exposure gets you killed, in contrast to the Coldheart which at least has a kill time on par with regular auto rifles. It's so overpowered that many likened it to Destiny's Vex Mythoclast at its prime. Also works as a literal example, as it turns out it was bugged. Because of holidays season, Bungie decided to nerf it to the ground one week later, with the promise to playtest it and apply a proper fix in January 2018. By the time Forsaken rolled around, the Lens became a Special Weapon; reliable thanks to refilling ammo from reserves upon a kill, but far from being the outright broken monstrosity it was during its introduction.

• On PC, "Titan Skating", which is achieved through binding the jump function to a macro (or the mouse's scroll wheel) and using a Titan's Catapult Lift, is considered by anyone worth their salt to be an essential asset for speedrun-level plays in PvE and blazingly fast flanks in PvP. By Titan skating, you can also abuse the aforementioned Shoulder Charge / Insurmountable Skullfort combo in the Crucible, as you'll be in the enemy's face before they can even react or even fathom how you got to them so quickly. This was patched out with the release of Joker's Wild.

Introduced in Season 3 - Warmind

• Despite having been present in the game since launch, the Synthoceps Titan Exotic arms came to prominence in Season 3 due to Bungie modifying the perk so that both melee and Super damage get significantly buffed when surrounded by 3 or more enemies. This allows for unexpected oneshot punches in the Crucible and a variety of Super-centric builds. Code of the Fire-Forged, for example, became a staple Super against Argos due to how the subclass' branch perks work together: Vulcan's Rage allows the hammers to deal additional damage through the clusters of explosions created after the initial impact, and is optimized by throwing from a fairly long distance, which is right up Argos' alley (unless you are precariously on top of it, you have to damage it from over 50 meters away). After the Synthoceps got buffed, this combination now deals total damage on par with a Gunslinger equipped with Celestial Nighthawk.

• This season finally adds unique perks to Leviathan raid armour pieces, giving you a serious advantage while on the Leviathan; one of the arms piece's options gives you a 20% damage increase from any source after killing an enemy with a punch, while the class item gives you 25% bonus elemental damage for your subclass's abilities, which also includes your Super's damage. You can stack these to make short work of most enemies in the raids, and it's even possible for a team of Gunslingers equipped with Celestial Nighthawks and both aforementioned armor pieces to down either Calus's or Argos's entire health pool in mere seconds.

• Right before Forsaken, Patch 2.0 elevated the Lunafaction Boots (present since launch, but impractical due to the need to step out of the rift constantly) to a PvE-oriented Warlock's must-have Exotic thanks to no longer needing to make any unnecessary movements to instantly reload your weapons. Because the boots' perk works with the Well of Radiance introduced in Forsaken (better explained in its proper Season 4 entry), you were almost always guaranteed a place in endgame fireteams if you rocked that combo, if only for making them unkillable while they melt any given boss. Just like the Rally Barricade, though, Shadowkeep heavily nerfed it by removing the instant reload, suppressing many DPS options in the process.

• As an example of combining many of the aforementioned gamebreakers, another damage-increasing/debuff combo became popular in the form of stacking a Sunbreaker's Hammer Strike with a teammate's Tractor Cannon, then going to town on any tough enemy you want dead with the Legendary IKELOS_SG_V1.0.1 shotgun obtained from Escalation Protocol, with additional damage input from a Warlock's Empowering Rift (which can further be abused with instant reload thanks to Lunafaction Boots). This combination usually makes short work of bosses who don't explicitly keep their distance from you.

• The Black Hammer in all its unnerfed Destiny 1 Year 1 glory comes back in this game as the Whisper of the Worm, being able to fire forever so long as you keep chaining precision hits, on top of dealing obscenely high damage on those precision hits (moreso once you complete its Masterwork objective, which increases the crit's modifier). All in all, it's usually the first answer to difficult bosses, especially as new content with higher power level requirements pile upon the base game. It's one of the few times the fandom has been genuinely ecstasic about a secret weapon's discovery, as the weapon is a throwback to Destiny's early months of hilariously broken PvE loadouts. It took until Joker's Wild for Bungie to turn the Whisper into the post-nerf Black Hammer (or The Taken King's Black Spindle) by making chained precision hits take from reserves instead of out of thin air, severely limiting its potency, especially in self imposed challenges like low-man raids. Because of the blanket nerf to sniper rifle damage in Season of the Warmind and the shift to highly mobile endgame bosses (or ones with a crit spot that's hard to hit), the Whisper (and by extension, the D.A.R.C.I.) fell behind in the DPS competition, and only got a new lease of life with Bungie's 30th anniversary update.

• D.A.R.C.I., having once been the laughing stock of Heavy weapons in Season 1, became a DPS juggernaut in Warmind due to Bungie buffing its crit modifier to a whopping 4.0x (as opposed to the Legendary snipers' maximum of 3.0x on 140 RPM, which the D.A.R.C.I. is part of). With the introduction of the aforementioned Whisper of the Worm, the great debate of damage-per-second versus total damage was triggered, with D.A.R.C.I. winning out on short DPS phases while the Whisper eventually takes over once the D.A.R.C.I. runs out of ammo. Being acquirable as early as your first Exotic world drop makes it less of a hassle to obtain than the Whisper's long and complex secret mission.

• With Patch 2.0, the Sleeper Simulant, once left in the dust upon the Whisper's discovery, has picked up some serious slack, with its headshot damage becoming the equivalent of five bodyshot bounces and gaining increased ammo reserves to compete with other Power weapons. It has become one of the best weapons to use in Gambit, if not the best, thanks to its incredibly long range and stopping power, as well as the fact that when you invade, the enemy team won't have as much time to focus on you as they would in the Crucible. Subsequent patches would degrade its aim assist to make it harder to proc Guardian kills, and its ricochet damage and ammo reserves got nerfed to prevent boss melt shenanigans like Argos, who was highly susceptible to receiving damage from both a direct hit and the ricochet at certain firing angles. Similarly to the Whisper and the D.A.R.C.I., the Sleeper got constantly shafted by its nerfs until took a turnaround during Bungie's 30th anniversary, where it got a serious enough buff to bring it back to the top of the DPS list.

• Ever since the weapon slot changes occurred shortly before Forsaken, the Telesto was noted to have retained its damage numbers from when it was still a Power weapon, swiftly killing Guardians with only 4 bolts connecting to the body. Consequently, it became one of the most prevalent, easy-to-use Exotics in the Crucible, and one of the few Fusion Rifles actually worth using in a meta that's unfavourable to them. Update 2.1.4 reduced its damage per bolt and consequently its viability in the Crucible, though it also got a damage increase in PvE as a consolation. Aside from that, it is a recurrent problem child when it comes to Good Bad Bugs, triggering all sorts of broken shenanigans since its bolts are coded as entities in the same vein as enemies.

Introduced in Forsaken / Season 4 - Season of the Outlaw

• The Attunement of Fission was hands down the most broken subclass in the Crucible until update 2.1.4; its Handheld Supernova allows you to oneshot any Guardian from full health, and that's just your grenade charge. Nova Warp lasts for an eternity and oneshots anyone within a very large blast radius, even trumping over other Supers due to Nova Warp's innate resilience. After Update 2.1.4, the Nova Warp's nerfed stats across the board made it a joke among supers until Bungie found a good middle ground midway through Season 6.

• Before their nerf in Season 5, the Ursa Furiosa gauntlets were one of the most broken Exotics in the Crucible due to a bug that miscalculated the amount of damage absorbed needed to regain your Sentinel Shield, which translated into soaking a couple of potshots and surviving until the super's end, only to get another super charge ready. You could theorically go on a massive spree with infinite supers, so long as enemy players aren't wise enough to not shoot you. After the nerf, they stopped being relevant for a while since you couldn't regain more than half of your Super even with spending the entire time blocking a lot of punishment. It then sprang back up when Grandmaster Ordeals arrived, as the Ursa Furiosa could now gain back up to a respectable 70% of the super energy back, and, when used together with your teammates' supers (usually a Well of Radiance with Phoenix Protocol or another Ursa Furiosa), you can easily gain the remaining energy back through Orbs of Power and thus take turns building an impenetrable shield against some of the toughest enemies in the game.

• Another Titan exotic armor piece, the One Eyed Mask helmet, lets you track enemies through walls and grants you full health, an overshield and increased damage upon killing whoever inflicted damage on you. The health and armor granted upon a kill in particular is cited by most to be an absolute game changer, allowing players to play aggressively in the Crucible and still come out on top. It took until Season 9 for Bungie to remove the overshield, after judging that the previous nerf (from full health regained to a simple health regeneration) wasn't enough. While it's still a potent Exotic, it's no longer the dominating force it was before all the nerfs.

• The second pinnacle Crucible weapon in the game, Luna's Howl, essentially standardized Year 2's time-to-kill table for Primary weapons with its blindingly fast 0.67 seconds TTK note and incredible ease at which you can activate the main perk, making it hard to recommend most energy Primaries over this one. On PC, there's much more leeway due to recoil not affecting keyboard and mouse players much (allowing them to wield stronger Primaries that are usually less stable), but on console, where recoil and aim assist are persistent elements, the Luna's Howl usually comes on top of energy weapon usage in the Crucible. It's the same story with its stronger variant, Not Forgotten (packing significantly more range than the Howl), though it's rarer due to the need to grind all the way to Legend rank in Competitive. It took until Season 7's launch for Bungie to controversially nerf the Handcannon pair by changing their archetype completely and making so the perk only affects body damage instead of precision damage, effectively making the perk mildly forgiving for Crucible and outright useless for PvE.

• On PC, the Ace of Spades is the number one Primary in the Crucible due to its massive Range stat of 86 (whereas most HCs fall in the 70s, placing the Ace firmly in Pulse Rifle range territory) and very manageable recoil when you play with a keyboard and mouse. Those two traits turn what is a fairly situational PvP gun on console into a menace in ranged confrontations, and the Firefly perk, which you can keep indefinitely until you use it all up, allows you to casually kill Guardians with two headshots. It's such a dominant gun on PC that the likes of Luna's Howl and Not Forgotten, or any other Primary for that matter, are usually shelved in favour of Energy Secondaries for better coverage. Its use eventually diminished by Shadowkeep, given that expansion's launch patch introduced a blanket nerf to hand cannon range and made 150 RPMs much more desirable than ever in PvP. With the adjustment of making 150 RPM handcannons becoming 140 RPM guns starting in Beyond Light, Bungie has given handcannons a range buff that increases range falloff up to 30 meters. This becomes significant with Ace of Spades because it's one of the biggest beneficiaries with the buff thanks to its already impressive range, meaning it has climbed quite closely back to the top of the charts, particularly in the Crucible, regaining a good chunk of its previous status from Forsaken.

• The Warlock solar Super Well of Radiance introduced in Forsaken is basically an overcharged Healing and Empowering Rift. What made it crazy was making any Guardian inside the circle functionally invincible in PvE by giving them an overshield and immediate healing when taking damage. The only thing able to kill a guardian inside is insta-kill mechanics, though PvP had many more options (sniper headshots, heavy weapons, destroying the sword, etc.). When combined with the Lunafaction Boots Exotic, the Guardian(s) inside gained Bottomless Magazines (pre-Shadowkeep) or faster reload (post-Shadowkeep). When combined with Phoenix Protocol exotic, kills while in the Well including allies are returned to the guardian as Super energy, letting them redeploy it almost immediately. It became a Raid staple for that reason, letting you one-phase every single boss in the game with the right amount of firepower.

• With shotguns being moved to the Special slot (thus shortening overall time-to-kill times in the Crucible with instant-kill weapons becoming the meta), a few of them stand out for being exceptionally good at what they do, which is a One-Hit Kill at the longest distance for a Short-Range Shotgun:
  • The Mindbender's Ambition, obtained from the "Hollowed Lair" Nightfall, is easily the most iconic Agressive Frame shotgun to grace the PvP scene since the D1 days of Felwinter's Lie and Matador 64, boasting very high range with the right barrel options and an excellent array of perks that drastically improve the way it handles (which is sorely needed in something as sluggish as this archetype). Because of the way Nightfall-specific loot works, you can easily nab one Mindbender's Ambition after 3 to 5 quick runs, and as the seasons go by, you'll always find people eager to farm the shotgun, such is its fearsome reputation in the Crucible. When Season 10 kicked around and nerfed the effects of range on shotguns, the Aggressive Frames were the least affected by such a change, and accordingly dominate other archetypes.
  • Dust Rock Blues, another easily farmable shotgun, fires faster than the Mindbender's Ambition and kills people in one hit at a slightly longer distance, albeit with less power per pellet. Up until Season 10 it fiercely competed with the above shotgun for the top position in a heated debate on kill range consistency. Season 7 added it to the Menagerie loot pool, which means you can even control the Masterworked stat while you farm the perfect roll.
  • Retold Tale, the Energy equivalent of Dust Rock Blues, is not as easily farmable on account of being a random drop from Dreaming City activities, but since it's a Void weapon, pairing it with Nezarec's Sin makes it a terrifying option for Warlocks.

Introduced in Black Armory / Season 5 - Season of the Forge

• With the nerf to the Sleeper Simulant in Gambit, players found an even more broken alternative for invading in the form of the Queenbreaker. The bullet magnetism on this linear fusion rifle's bolts is absurd, proc'ing a headshot even though you aren't actively aiming for the head. This effectively allows an invader to wipe the opposing team just by looking in their general direction. Bungie eventually revealed that the gun somehow disrespected the limits of its fellow Linear Fusion Rifles and had a ridiculous 200% more Aim Assist than intended, and it was fixed with the launch of Joker's Wild.

• For basic PvE content, Izanagi's Burden is one of the best weapons you could ask for, as its unique perk turns it into a Special weapon with the firepower of a Heavy weapon (moreso if you score precision shots, effectively outstripping any other weapon in single shot damage), giving it less constraint on ammo as it is more common than Heavy bricks. Honed Edge is also very effective in Gambit, oneshotting High Value Targets with a headshot once their shield is down; it's more situational in the Crucible due to the need to find special ammo while starting with only 2 rounds, but the threat becomes real once you've scavenged a few green bricks. Its DPS might fall short of the Whisper of the Worm, another PvE Game-Breaker, but it's still impressive for a Special weapon.
  • Once Shadowkeep came around and scrapped the instant reload on Rally Barricade and Lunafaction Boots, it became clear that the Burden, thanks to a combination of acquring its catalyst in Season 7 (thus granting it 20% extra damage on top of Honed Edge) and the ability to reload cancel, managed to grab the top spot for the best DPS weapon overall as every other option fell flat with the reload nerf. It took until Season 10, which saw a general nerf to sniper rifle damage, to rein it back to the other competitive DPS options, and even then it is still one of the top contenders, proving just how far ahead the Burden was during Seasons 8 and 9.

• Update 2.1.4 buffed the two default Striker branches by significantly reducing the Super energy drain from light attacks, and with the Trample ability from Code of the Juggernaut, you can go on an indefinite killing spree with the Fists of Havoc, so long as you keep killing enemies with shoulder charges. This turned what was a mediocre subclass branch into one of the best possible mob-clearing Supers in the game, until diminishing returns were introduced in a later patch.

• In the same update, the Attunement of Chaos' version of the Nova Bomb suddenly became one of the best single-use Supers due to its increased damage and improved tracking on the post-detonation seekers (which are nearly as deadly as the Nova Bomb itself when they pile up on a single target), decimating clusters of elite enemies and OHKO-ing some of the lesser bosses. Pair that improved Nova Bomb with the Skull of Dire Ahamkara (which refunds up to your entire super upon a big multikill), and you'll be spamming the Super every time you nuke a cluster of enemies. It took until Update 2.5.0.1 for the Skull to get nerfed to oblivion, making Seasons 5 and 6 a distant dream for Voidwalkers.

• The Mountaintop, Season 5's Crucible pinnacle reward, is hands down the best Special grenade launcher in the game by virtue to its projectile flying in a straight line and delivering very high damage per shot, capable of oneshotting Guardians outside of their Super on a direct hit and heavily damaging regular bosses. While the breachloading nature of the weapon holds its damage potential back, circumventing that problem with Lunafaction Boots or Rally Barricade turns it into a top tier Raid DPS monster, outdamaging even some heavy weapons. Shadowkeep's nerf to Lunafaction Boots and Rally Barricade predictably brushed aside the Mountaintop's viability as a DPS option, though it's still a competitive PvE choice and a menace in the Crucible. Beyond Light finally pulled the plug by not only sunsetting it (meaning it cannot be infused for any activity that's up to date with the highest power level cap), but also neutering its blast radius and damage.

• Ever since its introduction, you usually can't go wrong with the Anarchy Exotic grenade launcher as your heavy weapon, given the low effort required to make it constantly damage enemies even while you're not actively getting into position to shoot them. Just stick the target with two grenades and switch to a powerful special weapon like Mountaintop for reasonable DPS and high total damage. The amazing ammo reserves meant with a decent ammo finder you can almost use it as a primary weapon. It got a nerf several years later after reigning supreme that entire time, with a reserve ammo cap and reduced boss damage.

• The Last Word. An absurdly fast optimal TTK value that's supposedly offset by its low range... at least until Shadowkeep put a hard cap on HC range and made the Last Word one of the most used Exotics in the Crucible. Later patches reduced the damage from aiming down the sights, squarely forcing Guardians into the desired hipfire playstyle, and even then, it's nothing a steady hand (or a mouse and keyboard on PC) can't correct.

• Among the Forge weapons, none are more dominant than the Hammerhead machine gun, boasting sky-high range and stability even for a machine gun; both stats consequently allow it to accurately map people like it was a fast-firing scout rifle. It says something when the following seasons' nerfs to boss damage and damage falloff on machine guns do little to stop this monster in ranged engagements (as is often the case in Gambit invasions).

Introduced in Joker's Wild / Season 6 - Season of the Drifter

• By the of time Joker's Wild, it's become clear that the Spectral Blades Super is the most overpowered roaming Super in the Crucible, given that you are granted invisibility, the standard increased resilience for roaming supers, True Sight and a considerable amount of super uptime (which can be lengthened with the exotic chestpiece, Gwisin Vest). Unless your team gangs up on the Spectral Blades user or shuts it down with a oneshot weapon/ability, expect the kill feed to show your team getting picked off one by one as you're futilely shooting at the Nightstalker, who simply shrugs off incoming fire and constantly swipes their way to you, killing you in one hit with a very wonky hitbox range. Subsequent patches helped mitigate this by reducing the Super's innate resilience and its duration, on top of making light attacks cost more so that you can't just spam the Blades to travel around.

• The Recluse, Season 6's pinnacle Crucible reward. This SMG is normally tame by itself, but the moment you get a kill through any of your equipped weapons, it turns itself into one of most powerful mob-clearing Primaries in the game, owing to the Master of Arms perk being essentially Kill Clip with the refresh rate of Rampage, ramping up bodyshot damage to being just slightly lower than headshots (considering it's a 900 RPM weapon, this means it has the lowest TTK of all Primaries in the Crucible with the perk active, and melts elite PvE combatants with incredible ease). Feeding Frenzy is also a nice quick reload bonus to keep the carnage going. It took until Update 2.7.0 (Season of the Dawn) for the Master of Arms perk to get its disproportionate non-precision damage increase nerfed.

• Outbreak Perfected has two main perks, dealing damage produces a swarm of SIVA nanites that seeks out and attacks enemies and the rifle itself deals more damage when more SIVA nanites are attached to a target. The second effect stacks with any SIVA nanites produced by allies also using Outbreak Perfected, so coordinating fire on any boss becomes a Gathering Steam burn effect. Being a primary ammo weapon means that there are plenty of reserves (even moreso once primary weapons were given unlimited resources and primary ammo bricks removed), and makes the gun have the highest DPS of any primary ammo weapon and rival most special ammo weapons. In endgame content where ammo economy for encounters are a concern, Outbreak Perfected would return as the most viable option to keep the pain going even as you used up special and heavy weapons.

• Thorn, which predictably returns from the first game not long after the Last Word resurfaced at the end of the previous season. On top of statistically being an excellent 150 RPM Handcannon (the most balanced archetype out there), its main perk it tick damage that ensures that your opponent won't be able to recover their health for several seconds while you keep hounding them.

• This season introduced a couple of new weapon perks, namely One-Two Punch, which drastically increases melee damage for an instant upon hitting the target with every pellet of a shotgun shell. Couple that with Exotic armour pieces that amplify melee damage, such as the Synthoceps, the Liar's Handshake, the Wormgod Caress and Winter's Guile, and you'll turn your character into a crazy punching machine that would make Shaxx proud even if you're not necessarily using a Titan. In some extreme cases of damage stacking and debuffing, you can even demolish a number of raid bosses by yourself. It took until Season 19 for Bungie to finally nerf all of these melee-related perks so that you can't reliably dish out obscene amounts of damage with a single punch.

Introduced in Season 7 - Season of Opulence

• Update 2.5.0.1 absolutely busted the Lord of Wolves in Crucible by changing the Release the Wolves perk to activate on holding down the reload button, instead of on a kill. Even with an all-around damage decrease to the weapon note , it still allows players to easily sling ten rounds at a range beyond that of a normal shotgun. It can kill normal Guardians in one trigger pull, and can even knock Guardians out of their super in two trigger pulls. Attempts to nerf its range proved unsuccessful until Season 10, where the penalties to range and stability proved too much to all but the most precise mouse and keyboard users.
• The "Attunement of Flame" branch of Dawnblade has become one of the best roaming Supers in the Crucible following the nerf to Spectral Blades. Its ability to fire both tracking projectiles and increasing the duration on a kill means that a Warlock can easily wipe a team, travel to their spawn, and then kill them again. Season of the Dawn stealthily nerfed that branch while reworking the Burst Glide mechanics to improve aerial play on the "Attunement of the Sky" branch, meaning that the "Attunement of Flame" Daybreak can no longer reliably rush from one spawn to another.
• Revoker, the Crucible Pinnacle weapon of the season, is an aggressive-frame sniper rifle with low scope zoom and great ease of use thanks to Snapshot and its signature perk, Reversal of Fortune; the latter is essentially Mulligan with a guaranteed chance of ammo refund if you wait long enough between missed shots, allowing you to play very aggressively in PvP with this powerful long-range weapon. While sunsetting ruled it out of endgame PvP activities like Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris, it's still an oppressive weapon in the right hands. And with the removal of power levels in Iron Banner starting in Season of Plunder, Bungie anticipated the uptick in the use of the then-long-forgotten sniper by nerfing Reversal of Fortune by the time Lightfall launched, with the perk now necessitating two misses to refund one round.

Introduced in Shadowkeep / Season 8 - Season of the Undying

• The most effective countermeasure against Barrier Champions that doesn't necessitate a fireteam is pairing a weapon loaded with Anti-Barrier rounds and the Anarchy. Normally the Anarchy would simply apply damage like any other weapon until the Barrier Champion deploys its shield, but if you planted an Anarchy grenade next to them and then shoot them with your Anti-Barrier weapon, you can demolish their barrier faster than any other weapon in the game. This has been fixed away as of Season 10, making the Anarchy an unviable option against Barrier Champions.
• It might not seem like much on paper, but Divinity is a seriously effective tool for getting through high level PvE content. The weapon is an exotic Trace Rifle that does medicore damage, but applies a massive defensive debuff and creates a large crit spot to strike. Dominant strategies for raids now boil down to "Divinity laser it while everyone piles on the damage", since the debuff is a weighty 30% malus against all incoming damage.
• While it didn't initially start here, Xenophage eventually became one of the best Power weapons in the entire game. The gun is a weird hybrid of a sniper rifle, a grenade launcher and a machine gun of all things, firing extremely powerful "pyrotoxin" rounds at a steady 120 RPM. While this may seem clunky and ineffective, the gun actually combines the best parts of all three of these types of weapons into one powerful piece of work- it has a fairly large effective range thanks to Rangefinder, its rounds explode for a small area of effect damage, and it can hold a solid number of rounds in the chamber thanks to being a machine gun. With the nerf to sniper rifles and grenade launchers in Season 12, as well as a healthy number of buffs to the weapon throughout Shadowkeep's life cycle, Xenophage shot to the top of the DPS rankings once people discovered how well it synergizes with Divinity, and becomes a menace in long range engagements like Gambit invasions. Then Season 15 came and effectively killed its DPS ability due to the nerf to its fire rate ^note Going from 120 RPM to 90 RPM is too big of a nerf to compensate for the 10% damage increase post-patch, and it took until Season 17 for Bungie to revert the fire rate back to 120 RPM.

Introduced in Season 9 - Season of the Dawn

• The Dawn mod "Powerful Friends", which has the secondary perk of giving you a flat +20 Mobility as long as you equip an Arc-exclusive mod alongside it. While it has limited use on Titans and Warlocks other than the standard increased movement speed, Season 9 reworked the stats around so that the Hunters' Dodge ability is now tied to the Mobility stat, meaning that with enough "Powerful Friends" stacks, you can achieve 100 Mobility while investing your armour stats in any stat other than Mobility (and potentially even reach 100 on a couple of other stats). Season of Arrivals saw it nerfed to where you can only equip the mod once, with duplicates cancelling the extra 20 mobility altogether.
• Another Dawn mod, "Heavy Handed", has a secondary perk which adds extra ammo to your shotgun, fusion rifle or sidearm reserves upon killing an enemy while surrounded by 3 or more enemies, meaning that in crowded situations, you will usually never run out of ammo until you cleaned the entire room.

Introduced in Season 10 - Season of the Worthy

• This season's buff to auto rifle damage across all archetypes was for the most part well received, though there are a couple of outliers that work a little too well. The 600 RPM auto rifles became a desirable archetype overnight due to the plethora of available options going for them along with an excellent TTK value post-buff, with Exotics like SUROS Regime and Hardlight enjoying a lot of focus due to their intrinsic perks. Hardlight in particular got the most attention due to the previous season's fix on the obnoxious screen shake (which made the supposed 100 Stability with the catalyst completely irrelevant up uptil that point) and the lack of damage falloff, turning it into a lethal Primary weapon that can map people at ranges it has no business dealing with. Beyond Light then nerfed the 600 RPM auto rifles back to where they aren't outcompeting other weapons.
• The Mindbender's Ambition finally meets its Kinetic counterpart in the form of the Trials of Osiris shotgun, Astral Horizon, with the key difference being that it can roll with Quickdraw and Opening Shot on separate perk columns, granting it highly improved handling on top of a better consistency on your first shot, which is almost always a deciding factor when playing with a shotgun.
• With Bungie's fix at the beginning of this season, the Antaeus Wards Exotic leg armour for the Titan skyrocketed to the top tier of Crucible Exotics since it now completely blocks the chip damage that once held it in check, effectively granting you invincibility for the half second that you deploy the Reflective Vents while sliding.
• With talks of sunsetting weapons on the horizon, Bungie couldn't have picked a better time to release a secret ritual weapon in the form of Felwinter's Lie, the infamous shotgun that terrorized the days of D1's House of Wolves metagame. A modified Aggressive Frame shotgun whose pellet spread is tighter and more consistent than its regular brethren, the Lie only falls short of a god-rolled Mindbender's Ambition with maximum range, but since it boasts a static set of excellent perks, you will not need to farm for it.
• Of the Warmind Cell perks, combining Global Reach ^note Increases the blast radius for the Warmind Cell's detonation with Rage of the Warmind ^note Increases the damage of the Warmind Cell's explosion and changes its element to Solar allows you to produce extremely powerful Warmind Cells that can easily clear entire rooms no matter the difficulty, leaving only the toughest opponents alive after the detonation. The mods were initially overlooked due to the more direct nature of the Charged with Light combat mods and most of the Seventh Seraph weapons being stuck in non-optimal archetypes, but the Warmind Cells could still live on without those weapons thanks to Wrath of Rasputin, which lets any Solar splash damage kill produce a Warmind Cell; this includes a lineup of excellent Exotic weapons like Sunshot, Two-Tailed Fox, One Thousand Voices, Xenophage and Eyes of Tomorrow, on top of most Solar subclass abilities. Eventually, Bungie decided that an optimized Warmind Cell build was making PvE content too easy, so they nerfed its destructive power in Season of the Lost.

Introduced in Season 11 - Season of Arrivals

• Umbral Engrams introduce the sword Falling Guillotine. On this sword, the usual sword heavy attack, an upward slash, is replaced with a spinning attack that does high damage, partly due to a bug that allows it to hit more times than intended similarly to Tractor Cannon. Combine that with the general buff to swords last season, as well as the fact that it can roll with Relentless Strikes and Whirlwind Blade and/or Surrounded, and you have an insanely powerful boss-melting weapon.
• The seasonal exotic, Witherhoard, is easily one of the most aggravating grenade launchers to fight against in Control-type Crucible matches, and with good reason; the pools of Taken energy it leaves behind are fairly large and long-lasting, making for a good area denial tool, and if an opponent gets directly hit by the projectile, they'll get stuck by its damage ticks and quickly die from them, something only supers like Ward of Dawn and Well of Radiance can simultaneously outresist, outheal and outlast. It received a lot of comparisons as a special ammo version of Anarchy, but even as Anarchy was nerfed Witherhoard remained shockingly useful and in many ways easier to use.

Introduced in Beyond Light / Season 12 - Season of the Hunt

• On the surface, The Lament is a poor-man's version of Falling Guillotine. It's another strong sword, but takes up an exotic slot, causing many to question whether or not the weapon is worth using over Falling Guillotine (which is not an exotic). The answer? Yes. The three major factors behind the weapon are its disgustingly strong "Banshee's Wail" mechanic, its barrier bursting capabilities, and its potent lifesteal effect. By holding the guard button with the sword equipped, it will rev up and start dealing huge amounts of damage for every swing. Even better, slicing enemies with Banshee's Wail causes it to gain increasingly powerful stacks, which can then be cashed out for a brutal overhead swing that does even more damage than the Guillotine's spin. These special slices even penetrate through shields and automatically bypass barriers too, making it an effective Nightfall/endgame content weapon. And the lifesteal is just the icing on the cake, as it can keep you decently healthy while you chip away at more powerful foes. Overall, The Lament is a straight upgrade to Falling Guillotine in many ways and has already shot to the top of the damage charts.
• The Eyes of Tomorrow exotic rocket rauncher, randomly acquired from the final boss of the Deep Stone Crypt raid. Take the Wardcliff Coil's multi-hit volley mechanism and damage output, then add Two-Tailed Fox's incredible velocity and Truth's aggressive homing, before topping it off with the ability to track several targets at your leisure; this results in the unequivocally strongest rocket rauncher in the game, period. Better yet, killing clusters of enemies boosts the next shot's damage, turning this monstrosity into a juggernaut that can compete with other top-tier heavy weapons, the aforementioned Lament included. There's a reason fans have been clamoring it to be the Gjallarhorn 2.0, even though its perks and mechanisms are wildly different, and raid bosses apply a severe damage penalty to it.
• The Hunter stasis perk Shatterdive proved to be one of the most controversial aspects of the Stasis subclass, particularly in PvP. While in air you can trigger an immediate dive to the ground that makes a stasis area of effect damage, while also shattering nearby crystals and frozen enemies. The shattered crystals themselves can easily kill enemy players, but with the right build you can chain throwing a stasis wall grenade, shatterdive to kill and enemy, shards regenerate your grenade and you can do it all again near instantly. Combined with Hunter dodges being able to produce slow effects, you basically had a Hunter that was bouncing all over the map and can easily team wipe. The Radiant Dance Machines exotic legs produced a related problem, as the aggressive dodging nature of the gear made the stasis slowing bursts impossible to counter. Bungie had to patch Shatterdive to give it a cooldown.

Introduced in Season 13 - Season of the Chosen

• The Cuirass of the Falling Star exotic chestpiece doubles the Code of Missile's Thundercrash damage, turning the flashy-but-impractical super into something that rivals a Celestial Nighthawk Golden Gun and easily melts bosses if enough Titans wearing the Cuirass collide with them. Combined with an overshield that triggers on completion, it puts the "headbutt the enemy" Titans in a good position to follow up with a close range weapon for additional chunk damage.
• Although you need a fair amount of practice to master its perks, Ticuu's Divination is uncontestably the best PvE-oriented bow in the game once you have its catalyst. Hip-firing it sends out a trio of arrows that aggressively home in on targets and tag them with a minor burn, and firing while aiming down the sights turns all of the burns into explosions. Constantly cycling between hip-firing and aiming down the sights is the key to making the best out of Causality Arrows, and you get to deal impressive damage for a primary weapon without resorting to the stronger secondaries and heavies. The two-stage burn and explode can also be triggered with allies using the same weapon, making it shockingly good at mob clear on even top tier content. Its introductory season also had the artifact mod Overload Bow, effectively neutering Overload Champions and blowing them up nonstop. Finally, it's a Solar energy weapon with explosive damage, making it work with Warmind Cell mods to create even bigger explosions.
• Salvager's Salvo takes up the mantle of The Mountaintop post-sunsetting, proving that Ritual weapons can become absolute monsters even without unique perks. Chain Reaction alone allows you to clear trash mobs like nobody's business without the perk being overkill like it is on rocket launchers or having impractical activation requirements like the Loaded Question's Reservoir Burst, and Ambitious Assassin allows you to double down on the bombardment after a single kill. This season also re-adjusted breach-loading grenade launchers so that the projectile explodes upon hitting a Guardian, so the Salvo becomes just as dangerous as The Mountaintop was in the Crucible despite not firing in a straight line, moreso if your opponents make the mistake of grouping together.
• The Dead Man's Tale is a one-of-a-kind 120 RPM scout rifle whose damage increases the more precision hits you chain, resulting in two-headshot kills in the Crucible if your aim is good enough and you keep the Cranial Spike buff going. Acquiring its catalyst massively improves the gun while hip-firing; it ramps up its fire rate and removes the accuracy penalty, granting the gun a really high skill ceiling that not only allows you to spam-fire one of the strongest primaries in the game, but also creates opportunities for long-distance no-scope kills. Having random rolls just like the previous season's Hawkmoon also ensures that you'll be searching for your ideal Dead Man's Tale for a while.
• While it wasn't anything too special before this season, the Heir Apparent received a catalyst that dramatically increases its overshield's resistance, turning the once easily-destroyed gimmick into a PvP juggernaut that can tank headshots and supers that would kill a Guardian many times over, as well as have enough ammo to last for several kills. Really, the only way to stop someone wielding this catalyst-enhanced exotic, short of concentrating most of your team's firepower on the overshield or using burst-type supers, is to freeze them with Stasis, another gamebreaking mechanic. As such, it wasn't surprising when Bungie addressed the issue by announcing a nerf for it in July 2021.

Introduced in Season 14 - Season of the Splicer

• The artifact mod Breach and Clear is by far the most valuable one on the final unlockable column, and is well worth the colossal 9 energy cost to apply it on your class item. It debuffs bosses and Champions alike with a single hit from a grenade launcher, and can keep the debuff applied if you use a grenade launcher with Damage Over Time like Anarchy. This, on top of Unstoppable Grenade Launcher working on any grenade launcher, easily spells doom for Unstoppable Champions during this season.
• Another final column artifact mod, Warmind's Decree, doesn't trail far behind, allowing any Void splash damage to cumulatively create a Warmind Cell. This adds some extra PvE lethality to established Void builds like Contraverse Hold grenade spammers and the like, but also top tier weapons like Deathbringer (which received a very potent catalyst this season), Null Composure (the seasonal pursuit weapon, which can roll with Reservoir Burst) and other Void-based grenade launchers and rocket launchers.
• The newly-introduced seasonal kinetic grenade launcher Ignition Code is shaping up to be an even more bonkers version of The Mountaintop because of one perk: Slideshot, which reloads the weapon everytime you slide. This means that you will never have to actually wait for the reload animation and just keep spamming your slide, throwing off opponents in the Crucible while you bombard them nonstop with very powerful projectiles.
• Sniper rifles faced a downward spiral in usage ever since the myriad of nerfs, be it PvE damage or aim assist inside the Crucible. However, Cloudstrike spells doom for any cluster of targets, as a precision kill (or repeated precision hits) generates a lightning bolt that's more powerful than the bullet itself. This makes it particularly dangerous in the Crucible, as a single headshot can potentially oneshot everyone standing next to the victim, and this scenario often happens in objective-focused modes.

Introduced in Season 15 - Season of the Lost

• In a similar manner to the previous season's Breach and Clear mod, this season features Particle Deconstruction, which builds up your damage buff up to a powerful 40% after 5 hits with Fusion Rifles and Linear Fusion Rifles. Most notably, Fusion Rifles that hit multiple times in very quick succession like One Thousand Voices ^note every tick of contact damage before the series of explosions counts as a hit and Vex Mythoclast ^note fully automatic fire by default, on top of being significantly buffed in damage and other stats this season get the most out of the mod, decimating bosses in record time with little setup.
• The Radiant Dance Machines Hunter boots make their return from D1, and their perk allows one to dodge several times in quick succession when near enemies. That's where things can be abused; by adding helmet or class item mods that let you gain melee / grenade / Super energy like Dynamo ^note Gains a bit of Super energy when using the dodge ability near enemies, Outreach or Bomber, you'll find yourself spamming your abilities like no other class can. Things got so out of hand that Bungie disabled the boots for Crucible and Gambit until they deploy a patch for it and Wormgod Caress (which got disabled for an entirely different reason).
• The overhaul for the Lucky Pants Hunter boots turns any fast-firing Handcannon into a powerhouse for boss damage, particularly with the likes of Crimson, The Last Word, Malfeasance and Eriana's Vow. As long as you can keep chaining precision shots, your damage-per-second ratio will shoot through the roof, made even better by Primary weapons having infinite ammo given this season's changes to ammo economy.
• If you have been getting murdered in the Crucible this season by some Linear Fusion Rifle even though they're mostly relegated to the heavy weapon slot, odds are that your Guardian's head got popped off by the Lorentz Driver. On top of possessing crazy aim assist only surpassed by the once-bugged Queenbreaker, killing someone with a headshot creates a Corralling Vacuum that quickly leads to a secondary explosion that heavily damages anyone caught in it, making it unwise to group up against this monstrosity. Originally, whoever got marked by the Lagrangian System perk was visible to the user through walls, though this has been mercifully removed from PvP. And if you've been lucky enough to collect all three telemetries to activate the Lagrangian Sight's second effect, you'll be able to kill opposing Guardians with a single bodyshot, and said bodyshot can turn into an EM Anomaly explosion if you have the catalyst.
• The celebration event for Bungie's 30th anniversary comes with two incredibly powerful Exotic weapons:
  • Gjallarhorn makes its return from D1, and its Wolfpack Rounds are stronger than ever; so powerful, in fact, that whoever doesn't have the Gjallarhorn can simply equip a Legendary rocket launcher and stand next to a Gjallarhorn user to temporarily gain Wolfpack Rounds themselves. The catalyst gives it an additional rocket in the magazine (essentially bringing it to the top of the DPS chart), but also creates an additional missile out of its victims, making it even more deadly against clusters of targets. By Season 19, however, the nerfs applied to its damage output relegated it into a support weapon to enable Wolfpack Rounds on your allies' stronger legendary rocket launchers.
  • The other Exotic is the Forerunner, the famous Halo: Combat Evolved Magnum in all but name. As a sidearm that uses special ammo (the only real downside to this juggernaut), the Forerunner has an absurdly quick TTK of 0.60 seconds with three headshots in PvP, and delivers death at ranges pulse rifles and scout rifles normally compete at. The scope, just like the game it originated from, is completely clean, allowing for quick precision aiming at the tip of a hat.

Introduced in The Witch Queen / Season 16 - Season of the Risen

• The Void 3.0 rework has made this subclass element really shine and leave the other non-Stasis elements in its dust. For Hunters, the Moebius Quiver variant of Shadowshot was given an incredible buff. Both versions can suppress (lowers target's damage output) and weaken (increases damage dealt to the target) targets. Moebius Quiver, combined with Orpheus Rigs, lets you launch three volleys of hard-hitting shadow arrows that will eviscerate even the baddest of bosses and make it difficult for them to fight as effectively while the rest of your team massacres them. It's to the point that some say it outpaces Celestial Nighthawk paired with Golden Gun. Move over, Gunslingers - Nightstalkers are taking the stage now.
• With the new Glaive weapon archetype comes a particular artifact mod Suppressing Glaive, which prevents enemies from using abilities and blinds them for ten seconds. Both the melee and ranged attacks activate this effect, making the Glaive into a powerful tool against the new Lucent Hive. Hotfix 4.0.0.5 nerfed Suppressing Glaive by making it cost 10% of the Glaive's stored energy to proc, preventing you from continuously stunning an opponent with just melee hits.
• Suppression Mastery, another artifact mod, will increase the duration of any suppression effects, allowing your Glaive to trap even the toughest of enemies (besides Bosses) in endless stun-locks.
• Psychohack, the Origin Trait of the Throne World weapon set (including the Enigma Glaive), lowers a target's damage output for a short duration with sustained damage from the weapon. This has great synergy with any of the myriad of Suppression capabilities introduced with the Void subclass rework, making quick work of difficult enemies.
• The advent of craftable weapons opens up the potential for perk combinations that greatly synergize with each other on archetypes that otherwise look benign.
  • The Likely Suspect Throne World fusion rifle is making the rounds in the Crucible due to how well Firmly Planted and Successful Warm-Up both work on its rapid-fire frame. You have the augmented consistency of the former perk to help you nail a kill that then gives you a short time window to kill another enemy with a shot that comes out absurdly quick if you specced your Likely Suspect into having the shortest charge time possible, and you can lengthen the latter perk's duration by simply going on a killing spree.
  • Thoughtless, obtained from the PsiOps Battlegrounds, is uncontestably the best-in-slot Legendary kinetic sniper rifle for PvE short of Izanagi's Burden (an Exotic) thanks to select perks: Enhanced Overflow (which can boost your magazine capacity up to a whopping 17 rounds after picking up an ammo brick if you specced your base magazine to the maximum of 7) and either Focused Fury (practical for solo content) or Firing Line (preferred in fireteams). It's also a Stasis weapon, making Stasis Elemental Wells builds viable on it.
• One For All was a pretty great perk introduced in the past, where damaging three separate enemies gives a short-term damage boost, essentially being an on-demand Rampage or Kill Clip. This expansion brings a new version of that perk to the table: Stats For All. It has the exact same activation requirements, but instead of damage, it boosts stability, handling, reload speed and range. The best part is that Stats can roll in combination with One. The conclusion: your weapon becomes deadly accurate at longer ranges and much speedier to reload and handle once you let loose on a crowd. One such weapon this combo can roll on is the new Sweet Sorrow Auto Rifle, and with it being a Rapid-Fire Frame, it makes for a hard-hitting bullet hose that can tear apart crowds and do decently against tougher baddies. In general, weapons that quickly damage multiple targets in a short time benefit greatly from this dream team of perks.
• Funnelweb is looking up to be Recluse 2.0 thanks to a combination of really good perks and its Origin Trait, Veist Stinger, which randomly refunds ammo to the magazine upon hitting a target. Because primary weapons have infinite reserves, you can simply run Subsistence and Frenzy together to create the ultimate ad-clearing SMG, made even better with the seasonal mod Volatile Flow (where picking up a Void Elemental Well grant your Void weapons the temporary ability to spray your enemies with the Volatile debuff, potentially causing a chain reaction of explosions).
  • Side note: the Void Fragment Echo of Instability provides the same Volatile Rounds effect for 10 seconds when the user gets a kill with a Void grenade, allowing those who enjoy causing a cascade of void explosions to keep having their fun.
• While it was available in Trials loot pools since Season 15, Reed's Regret has been upgraded this season with the option to choose between three Origin perks, one of which is the fabled Veist Stinger. Combine that with Triple Tap or Clown Cartridge and you'll be able to keep damaging bosses for a very long time before reloading.
• Forbearance easily eclipses Salvager's Salvo in terms of ad-clearing potential, similarly rolling Ambitious Assassin and Chain Reaction in the third and fourth column respectively, but being a Wave-Frame grenade launcher that grants you far better crowd control capability, especially if the mobs move in a single file or you keep them stuck in a tight corridor. It can also be crafted, though that comes with the extra hassle of playing Vow of the Dsciple and pray that you get enough Forbearances with Deepsight Resonance.
• With the buff to Bait And Switch to a whopping 35% damage increase upon activation, Cataclysmic instantly shot up to the top of the list for boss damage. Like Forebearance, you must find enough copies with Deepsight Resonance to craft it, but once that's out of the way, you've got yourself a heavy weapon that outdamages most Exotics in the slot if used right.

Introduced in Season 17 - Season of the Haunted

• Solar 3.0 was introduced here, and boy does it match up to Void 3.0. On top of every class having access to healing grenades, the new subsets of abilities make customizing even better than before.
  • Warlocks gain the Incinerator Snap melee, which lets loose a spread of explosive pellets in front of the player using it. Combined with the right exotic, this makes clearing a room full of enemies a snap. Touch of Flame improves your equipped grenade's potency, and with the right exotic piece (think Starfire Protocol with a boosted Fusion Grenade that now explodes twice), all bets are off when dealing damage with a subclass that's not traditionally about raw damage. Ever wanted to embody Roy Mustang from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood? Here you go!
  • Titans gain a new uppercut that can be comboed into a ground pound, one that's very lethal to anything that's not called a Champion or boss. Their Sunspots now grant health regen, and you can be outright unkillable if you maximize your Resilience stat. Ember of Torches turns your Throwing Hammer into a renewable source of Radiant buff and health regeneration, so long as you pick it up after hitting an enemy with it. More generally, Burning Maul and Hammer of Sol gain a new lease on life with Solar Scorches and Ignitions, where every blow applies Scorch and can apply more damage long term, finally allowing them to better compete with other Supers. For the first time in Destiny's history, Titans can confidentially consider themselves proper RPG tanks.
  • Hunters gain a new dodge that allows them to buff the damage of themselves and their allies, as well as a new throwing knife that buffs their own damage when they land a headshot with it. The Knock 'Em Down Hunter aspect turns Blade Barrage, long reviled for its low damage against bosses, one of the most powerful single-use Supers in the game on par with a Thundercrash boosted by Cuirass of the Falling Star, as long as you use Star Eater Scales and the aforementioned aspect; Shards of Galanor is also a good alternative in case you want to use the Super more often in light of the general nerf to ability cooldowns midway through Season 15.
• Stormchaser, acquired from the Duality dungeon, is the first ever Aggressive Frame linear fusion rifle, firing in bursts of 3 shots while consuming only one round in the magazine, granting it significantly higher total damage than other linear fusion rifles; higher than even Reed's Regret and Cataclysmic (which was the best Linear at the end of Season 16 due to the huge damage buff to Bait And Switch). This also has the side effect of obliterating a Guardian in the Crucible with only one burst of bodyshots. The only downsides are its slow reload and angry recoil, but even that can be remedied by rolling Rapid Hit on the third column or Frenzy on the fourth. Season of Plunder nerfed the Stormchaser by fixing a bug that allowed it to fire faster than intended (you could charge up another shot before the volley of three was fully discharged), bringing it slightly below par with other top DPS options, but still powerful enough to be interchangeable with other weapons.
• One of the new perks for this season is Incandescent, where any kill with the weapon causes the target to explode and apply Scorch stacks to nearby enemies. Powerful Combatants (yellow-bar enemies) and enemy Guardians produce a bigger explosion. It's essentially an even better Dragonfly that's far easier to proc, given that it works on both body shots and precision hits, and can Scorch crowds with ease. It has the Necessary Drawback of being limited only to Solar Energy and Power weapons and not having a dedicated mod for it, but luckily a majority of this season's weapons are Solar-aligned. The best part is that this perk can also be enhanced on crafted weapons, resulting in longer lasting Scorches to bring even more fire to the table.
• Loreley Splendor is a Titan exotic helm designed for the Solar 3.0 upgrade. When you deploy a barricade or your health goes critical you immediately drop a Sunspot at your location, Sunspots give you Sol Invictus which instigates health restoration and increases ability regeneration. This is a self-sustaining ability^note Initially your health going critical was a free sunspot, making it impossibly useful, Bungie then tied it into your barricade ability energy for some limitation, with the right build your barricade will regenerate within seconds of Sol Invictus timing out. Combined with a general improvement to the Resilience perk across the game (going from 10 percent at 100 points to 40 percent) this made Titans near unkillable. It is entirely possible to be AFK in a patrol area and never die from attacking enemies because Loreley Splendor is an automatic ability.
• Riptide is a prized choice among fusion rifle enthusiasts, as it is a Stasis weapon capable of rolling Chill Clip, allowing it to freeze any enemy short of bosses with just two bursts. This also includes Champions, and if played correctly, you can freeze Barrier Champions before they even put up their shield. Because Riptide is a rapid-fire frame fusion rifle, expect the two bursts necessary to freeze a target to come out very quickly; quicker than even the first fusion rifle to feature Chill Clip, Deliverance (exclusive to the Vow of the Disciple raid, but craftable). Its archetype also makes it a very good DPS option. Season 19 added the option to focus Crucible engrams into weapons when talking to Shaxx, with Riptide being one of the focuses. Season 20 further ups the ante by granting slowing stacks and shatter damage intrinsic Overload and Unstoppable damage respectively, meaning that with a reliable source of Radiance (itself buffed to give all weapons anti-Barrier Champion capabilities while active), Riptide can stun any Champion type in the game without the seasonal artifact.

Introduced in Season 18 - Season of Plunder

• The Arcstrider's new Super variant, Gathering Storm, is right up there with the previous season's Blade Barrage when coupled with Knock 'Em Down, throwing the Arc Staff so that it sticks to a target and deals heavy damage with each jolt that comes out of it until it dissipates. The area of effect in which the jolts can spread is also deceptively huge. For players who were tired of the Arc Staff's mediocre damage output and long cooldown, Gathering Storm is a blessing for those who simply want a powerful single-use Super to fall back on.
• Heart of Inmost Light was always a strong Exotic regardless of subclass, but this season kicked it up a notch with Arc 3.0. The Touch of Thunder aspect improves the Titan's Arc grenades' effect, and with the new Thrusters class ability having a far shorter cooldown than the Barricades, you can belt out supercharged grenades and melee abilities more frequently than ever. Add combat style mods that accelerate grenade regeneration, and you've got yourself a recipe for spamming incredibly potent and long-lasting Storm Grenades that can even decimate Rhulk's health. The Storm Grenades have been nerfed by the start of the following season, but the Exotic's gameplay loop still remains potent.
• This season adds more craftable foundry weapons as a continuation of the crafting tutorial, and one of them is the Taipan-FR4. With the right perks and the fact that linear fusion rifles occupy a high spot in boss damage contests, it's essentially a Void version of Reed's Regret without the hassle of playing Trials of Osiris, making it a Disc-One Nuke that's easily accessible for newbies to the game.
• Hunters receive Gyrfalcon's Hauberk, an exotic chest piece that grants bonus damage after emerging from being invisible, which Hunter's have in spades after Void 3.0, allowing you to go invisible to avoid damage, then counterattack with greater force. As an added perk if you defeat an enemy with a finisher it gives you and allies an optional overshield you can deploy using your class ability.
• Arc weapons have a new perk called Voltshot, an Arc counterpart to the Solar Incandescent weapon perk. After killing an enemy and reloading, shooting an enemy will make them Jolt, causing Chain Lightning effects and blinding nearby enemies. Oddly enough because of the reliance on reloading the fast speed of the sidearm makes it an optimal choice, making them very effective crowd clearers.
• One of the new Exotics is a Warlock helmet called Fallen Sunstar. It's focused on Ionic Traces, namely making them move faster towards yourself, and increasing the amount of energy you get back on pickup. Nearby allies also get ability energy when you pick up an Ionic Trace. It pairs insanely well with Arc weapons, specifically the new Exotic Fusion Rifle for this season, Delicate Tomb. With it being able to spawn Ionic Traces on every other kill, pairing these two exotics together means all cooldowns except for your Super are almost entirely nullified. You'll be firing off abilities nonstop, blasting your surroundings with the power of a thunder god with no end in sight. Add in the Spark of Discharge fragment (arc weapon kills may spawn Ionic Traces) for even more fun!
• Update 6.2.5.3 introduced a mini-event that ended with a staggering buff to Telesto, this time completely intentional. Now, the gun's projectiles detonate instantly on contact with an enemy, and break into explosive fragments that deal half the weapon's damage, leading to an average 50% damage buff if aimed at a target's feet. In PvE, the gun now cuts through hordes and bosses like butter when aimed right to concentrate or spread out the explosions as needed, and in PvP, Telesto's unlimited range and the new instant detonations allows players to score a One-Hit KO from over sixty meters, a feat only meant for guns that are balanced out by high zoom and low flinch resistance.

Introduced in Season 19 - Season of the Seraph

• Target Lock is a great perk that was introduced here. It has a simple premise - keep shooting the enemy long enough for your damage to steadily increase up to five times. The stacks immediately go away if you miss even once. As long as you can keep every bullet on target, you can easily whittle down an opponent's health just by being very accurate. It pairs insanely well with perks that increase ammo efficiency like Triple Tap or Reconstruction, and accuracy and stability boosts like Perpetual Motion, and more than a few Primary weapons can roll with it, letting them get in on the fun. Target Lock also lets Primary weapons be kind of viable against higher tier enemies in case your Special and Heavy are dry, so you can still provide some good DPS instead of being left ineffectual during damage phases on bosses. Couple it with the big bubble made by Divinity and it's astoundingly easy to maintain the damage stacks as long as your buddy keeps the bubble up.
• Gyrfalcon's Hauberk got a rework at the start of the season: when coming out of invisibility, all the player's equipped Void weapons gained Volatile Rounds. And this effect has no cooldown, meaning it could be used in near-endless conjunction with Stylish Executioner. This one change turned any Void Hunter wearing the chestpiece into a machine capable of putting a Cycle of Hurting on any red-bar enemies unlucky enough to be in the same room as them.
• Prolonged Engagement is making the rounds as a Stasis counterpart to Funnelweb, and with good reason. Not only does it have Veist Stinger as one of its possible origin traits, but it can also roll the new perk Target Lock on the fourth column, which grants up to 40% extra damage when damaging a target nonstop. Since SMGs are essentially bullet hoses, you'll be procc'ing Target Lock a lot. The only downside is that, being a playlist weapon, its perk pool is ridiculously huge, though you'll have much better luck finding a good roll once you have over two Vanguard reputation resets.
• The seasonal machine gun, Retrofit Escapade, is one of the major beneficiaries for the aforementioned buff to Gyrfalcon's Hauberk, as it is a 900 RPM Void machine gun in a season where the entire weapon class got a buff to boss damage. Coupling Fourth Time's The Charm with Target Lock means that you will be keeping the latter perk's maximum damage output for a very long time if you manage to consistently score critical hits on a boss, and with further combat style mods and the Volatile Rounds mechanic from Void subclasses (easily procc'ed by, again, Gyrfalcon's Hauberk), it can easily outpace linear fusion rifles in DPS checks. It is to be noted, however, that Retrofit Escapade mostly owes its edge to the absurd frequency at which Volatile Rounds procs due to the machine gun's fire rate, and can sometimes prove to be detrimental if the nonstop detonations cause the target to bug out and move far away from you in response as is the case with mobile bosses like Belmon, Transcendant Mind and Akelous, the Siren's Current. Sure enough, Hotfix 6.3.0.4 reduced the cadence at which Volatile Rounds triggered, bringing Retrofit Escapade down to where it's still a top machine gun for boss damage, but not too broken for DPS strategies.
• Judgement of Kelgorath is the first Aggressive-frame glaive available for all classes^note The Warlock-exclusive Edge of Intent has a similar Impact rating, but it's an exotic whose single perk cannot be changed, and it does not disappoint in perk selection. In addition to its projectiles hitting harder than other glaives, it's the first weapon to feature Close to Melee, which greatly buffs^note 30%, which is comparable to Surrounded your glaive melee damage after a single kill with the projectile. Not only can you extend the buff indefintely by constantly melee-ing your foes, but this season sticks true to Bungie's promise of gaining more Exotic armour pieces that can interact with glaives; the Warlock's Winter Guile and the Titan's Worm God's Caress can stack up melee damage to obscenely high numbers for a short duration, while the Titan's Synthoceps is a lesser, but more consistent option. If Close to Melee is not your style, then Unstoppable Force is an excellent alternative; despite the perk's damage boost being nerfed this season from 30% to 20%, Judgement of Kelgorath's default projectile damage is so high that the nerfed perk is all it needs to turn into a oneshot weapon in the Crucible, made better by the fixes to glaive projectile hit registration that made the weapon class fairly inconsistent prior to this season.
• IKELOS_SMG_V1.0.3 stands out from the revamped Warmind weapons, as the origin trait Rasputin's Arsenal greatly helps offset the weapon class's pitiful magazine size, and it can simultaneously roll Voltshot and still play nice with Warmind Cell builds.
• Out of the updated Deep Stone Crypt weapons, Posterity is an outlier due to its newfound ability to roll Voltshot in the third perk column while still being able to roll damage perks like Rampage and Frenzy in the fourth. Because enemies killed with the jolt caused by Voltshot count as weapon kills, you'll be constantly proc'ing Rampage stacks with as low as a single bullet that applies jolt and devastates clusters of targets. In some scenarios, it even outclasses the aforementioned IKELOS_SMG_V1.0.3 as a Voltshot machine due to having naturally higher reload speed, range and impact.
• Season of the Seraph introduced Solo Operative, a new class item mod that gave the player a permanent 15% damage boost while it was equpped, and the only requirement to activate it was to have no one in your fireteam. For Solo Dungeons, Lost Sectors, Grandmasters, or other activities, this mod was a mainstay.
• Another fantastic artifact mod was Weakened Clear, an updated version of Breach and Clear from Season of the Splicer that reduced the energy cost from 9 down to 5, making it signifigantly easier to fit into builds.

Introduced in Lightfall / Season 20 - Season of Defiance

• Quicksilver Storm in its base form is an auto rifle that includes the Neomuna perk of firing a micro-rocket while doing sustained damage to a target, making it decent at both DPS and crowd clear for an auto rifle. But it also has a Secondary Fire with a grenade that also does reasonable damage for its archetype. The catalyst, though, gives it strand and feeds into strand builds, which only amplifies how dangerous it can be between micro-rockets, tangles and grenades all attacking the enemies.
• Winterbite is the first of its kind two-fold, a heavy exotic glaive that is also stasis attuned. Its' projectile attack fires a stasis ball that can freeze all enemies in a small room as it moves, but the melee abilities are the most curious. It does proportionally more damage with the melee attack for being a heavy weapon, but so long as it has ammo in the clip it will chill, freeze and shatter enemies while attacking. This makes it have more than reasonable damage compared to other heavy exotics but glaive melee attacks don't consume ammo, making it deal equal damage with a full clip and reserves as it does with only one shot left.
• With the Contest Mode for Root of Nightmares completed in less than three hours, added fragments to the Light subclasses, and the ammo eating health bars of the newly adjusted game difficulty, the slowly growing awareness of Starfire Protocol is reaching critical mass. Passively gaining two charges of Fusion Grenades (which are amplified by the most commonly run Warlock Aspect, Touch of Flame), regaining grenade energy when damaging enemies while Empowered, and recovering Empowering Rift energy completely upon grenade kill combine perfectly with already top tier quickswap weapon damage strategies involving guns like Witherhoard and Auto-loading Holster or Demolitionist rocket launchers. Simply swap through all your guns in sequence, mashing grenade the whole way, and you'll never see a natural reload among all the explosions. Any boss that doesn't have a DPS phase executed from very far away will simply melt. Fragments and the seasonal artifact means this is an incredible add clear build as well, giving heal on grenade kill and infinite fuel for the new armor charge system via Firesprite generation, on top of the cascade of explosions everywhere. You won't even miss your Healing Rift!
  • It was so broken that Bungie finally got around to nerfing it in Season 21, bringing an end to its reign of terror.
• The Root of Nightmares legendary shotgun Nessa's Oblation became notable for one particular perk combination that pushes it into a category that is typically reserved for Ritual or Pinnacle weapons. That combination is Destabilizing Rounds and Repulsor Brace. Repulsor Brace is several seasons old but is a void-based perk that provides an overshield when the weapon is used to defeat an enemy affected by a void debuff (weakened, suppressed, volatile). Destabilizing Rounds is new to Lightfall but upon defeating an enemy, nearby enemies will become volatile. By itself it chains quite well against low to mid-tier enemies, but with the right void build allows players to jump into the middle of a swarm and remain alive through expansive splash damage and recharging an overshield.
• The Trials of Osiris Submachine Gun The Immortal became the PvP weapon due to being the first SMG that can roll with Target Lock, which activates through simply landing the first few shots on a target. This bumped the time-to-kill down a solid .25 seconds from the previous record holder, and is able to do so without a secondary activation trigger like getting a kill or reloading.
• Kinetic Tremors is quickly making the rounds as a must-have perk. Its premise is simple - shoot the target for a short time before kinetic shockwaves start surging around them, damaging them and nearby enemies for a few seconds. While weaker enemies will fall before it kicks in, it really shines against beefier enemies like orange bars and champions, who will last far longer and give ample time for the perk's effect to trigger. It gives kinetic weapons far more damage potential and lets them compete better with all other elemental weapons, as those had been buffed with the subclass synergy reworks of the previous year. Being for primary ammo weapons also ensures you can have an easier time with beefier enemies when your special and heavy ammo are depleted and your abilities are still recharging. If it rolls in combination with Shoot to Loot (shooting special/heavy bricks will instantly warp the ammo into reserves), it gets some utility as well, letting it immediately grab any ammo the enemy drops on death if they die to the shockwaves. So far, it can only roll on three weapons, but its potency cannot be denied.
• Among the new Strand abilities was a rework of the champion system where subclass perks are able to counter champion enemies in particular ways, alleviating the previous need to cater your loadout to the exact mods needed that are provided by the seasonal artifact. One such effect was that suspending an Unstoppable Champion would stun them and is based directly in the game advisory notes. But suspending targets applies to all champions, and is capable of countering the Barrier Champion recharge shield by interrupting the animation. While not stunned (meaning the trigger that makes them more vulnerable to damage) Barrier Champions in general are not as tanky and being able to counter two champions with one ability was invaluable, and that's not including other perks that extend the length of suspended targets and increased damage to suspended targets. Bungie had to make a more passive nerf to suspension mechanics to alleviate this exploit, reducing the length of time champions specifically are suspended by half.

Introduced in Season 21 - Season of the Deep

• Cold Comfort from the "Ghosts of the Deep" dungeon is an Aggresive Frame Stasis Rocket Launcher that comes with the trait Restoration Ritual, which automatically reloads the gun and prepares an emergency reload for the next time it runs out of ammo when you revive an ally or finish a combatent. It can also roll with the perk "Envious Assassin", which can overflow the mag up to 3 if you get kills with other weapons before drawing it. This essentially means that a user can get 4 back-to-back rockets with just one perk, plus the trait.
• Cenotaph Mask is a Warlock helmet that works with trace rifles, if you sustain fire on a target they become marked and if the marked target is killed it spawns special ammo for you and heavy ammo for your allies. This is one of the few exotics that impact ammo drops (the Aeon arms have one perk option but require coordination between players to all wear the same) and seemingly tailor-made for Grandmaster Nightfalls, while allowing a lot of flexibility on which trace rifle you want to use and which subclass to play. But the big thing is it works in PvP as well, a coordinated crucible team can have one player with Cenotaph Mask and a trace rifle and have continuous heavy ammo against the enemy team.
• Ever wanted a discount Gjallarhorn and save your exotic slot for something else? Meet the reissued Apex Predator from the updated Last Wish raid this season. It can roll with Reconstruction to get two rockets in the mag, and Bait and Switch for a major damage boost if you're good at weapon swapping. Explosive Light is also a good pick for those who want more consistency without needing to constantly switch weapons. It's even better if a teammate has Gjallarhorn, because then you can get that launcher's benefits AND keep an exotic of your choice. Season of the Witch ended up making it immensely stronger with the buff to Bipod, where the damage cut isn't nearly as punishing while still retaining the boost to mag size and reserves. Say hello to a 4-shot launcher that automatically replenishes itself over time if you have ammo! The best part is that it has a crafting pattern, which means you can get both perks enhanced, so it refills faster and the cuts to blast radius and reload speed are dampened further, making it feel like a slightly less powerful Gjallarhorn. It went from one of the worst launchers in the game to one of the absolute best!

Introduced in Season 22 - Season of the Witch

• Weavewalk, the Warlock Strand aspect, allows a Warlock to enter the Weave, reducing damage taken by a full 90%. In PvP, using this ability means surviving nearly everything shy of a Super, giving the Warlock a way out of a bad situation, with nothing the opponent can do about it. Oh, and they also generate Threadlings while they're using the ability.
• Banner of War, the Titan Strand aspect, activates whenever the Titan gets a melee, finisher or Sword kill: a Strand banner forms on their back and begins pulsing, granting healing and a melee damage buff to everyone in it's range. More kills increase the frequency of the pulses, with x4 being the max and allied kills contribute to a near infinite upkeep. Combined with Woven Mail, Banner of War makes the Titan near-invincible as long as it's active and is basically a roaming Well of Radiance.
• Briarbinds, the exotic Warlock gauntlets, allow the Warlock to pick up their Void Soul after deploying it, allowing them to keep the chain of Void Soul debuffs going without the hassle (or cooldown) of casting a new rift every time. If that wasn't enough, the Void Soul also lasts longer and becomes more powerful as it kills more and more enemies.
• Warden's Law was a unique Hand Cannon that fired two round bursts with each trigger pull, introduced in Forsaken. It returns this season as a Nightfall drop, and it became beloved almost immediately. On top of rolling with old favorites like Fourth Time's the Charm, Vorpal Weapon, and Frenzy, its third column also has the new Enlightened Action perk, which boosts reload speed and handling just by dealing damage. Already strong by itself, this gun becomes even more powerful as a main weapon with its amazing perk pool.
• Abyss Defiant returns in the reprised Crota's End raid, and its potential rolls are really powerful. In particular, one combination synergizes extremely well with Solar Cure and Scorching - Heal Clip / Incandescent. You'll incinerate crowds and burn away anything that looks at you funny while constantly keeping you and your allies topped off on health. Kill Clip also works in place of Incandescent for a general damage boost and works in all modes if you're not one for Scorch. In addition, its Origin Trait, Cursed Thrall (melee kills result in explosions on weapon kills for a short time) gives it even more incredible enemy-clearing potential, wiping away tons of weak enemies and softening up tougher targets.
• A new Strand Fusion Rifle arrives this season in the form of Nox Perennial V. Envious Assassin gives a bigger mag to work with, and it can be complimented with either Controlled Burst for regular damage buffs as long as you're accurate, or Hatchling for those who like making Threadlings after wasting crowds. And as it's a Cassoid weapon, it also comes with the Wild Card Origin Trait, which gives it a chance to unleash Strand-element projectiles that burst out of a target upon kill. It's essentially a slightly weaker Telesto with a different element and less active, but still destructive munitions.
• Ever wanted a weapon like The Messenger but either can't or won't do Trials? Psi Hermetic V says hi. As a world drop, it will take time to get a roll you want, but its combos are many and good. The third column gets Elemental Capacitor, Outlaw, Enlightened Action, and Moving Target. The fourth column is stacked with Frenzy, Kill Clip, Perpetual Motion, and Golden Tricorn. All this, on top of being Stasis, and also having Cassoid's Origin Trait for something extra on every other kill.

Introduced in Season 23 - Season of the Wish

• Dragon's Breath returns with a beastly facelift. It steadily gains stacks of fuel, up to a max of five, and uses up all stacks upon firing. The rocket sticks to targets or surfaces and starts spraying Scorching napalm around it, and Ignitions give back some fuel stacks, alongside the launcher automatically reloading upon reaching max stacks. This baby makes Ignitions very easy to pull off, as it can not only trigger multiple Ignitions on one target, the napalm it spreads can cause nearby enemies to eventually explode as well, allowing for something like a "fire and forget" playstyle. On top of that, its catalyst not only speeds up the rate of fuel stack gain, but also causes kills to produce Firesprites, allowing for some grenade regen upon pickup. You really will burn the world with this monster.
• This season comes with a serious competitor to Taipan-4fr in the form of Doomed Petitioner. It's an Aggressive Linear Fusion Rifle, which means 3-shot bursts, alongside being Void element. On top of that, it comes with some absolutely crazy perks. Envious Assassin and Reconstruction are perfect for boosting the mag size, and with how Precision Instrument works - constantly damaging the target maintains a major precision damage boost which is easy to do - alongside the buff it got, makes it perform better in both solo and group play than Taipan does. It does have somewhat worse ammo economy due to its origin trait requiring a teammate to die or you to reach critical health, but it's still an absolute beast and finally dethrones Taipan as the king of LFR damage.
• What was originally a "Charged with Light" armor mod before the Lightfall armor redesigns, Argent Ordnance returns as an artifact mod for the season. The mod still gives rockets the "Godslayer" perk that drains armor charge for boosted damage with each rocket launcher shot, similar to the "Charged with Light" design, but unlike before this is stackable with all other subclass and armor mod damage boosting options including Radiance and Solar Weapon Surge^note Bonuses from subclass, armor mods, weapon perks and artifact perks won't stack individually but will take the best from each category. Since Argent Ordnance is an artifact mod instead of armor mod, this frees up a lot of options within the character build. What was once a solid 20% damage bonus can now reach 50%.
• Warlord's Ruin gives a very unique and instantly adored Sidearm in the form of Indebted Kindness. It's an Arc element Sidearm using Special ammo, with the Rocket-Assisted Frame. In short, it's a rocket-firing Sidearm. It has decent fire rate and reload speed, and monstrous damage. It also can roll with both Beacon Rounds (adds homing the rockets, dealing damage extends duration) and either Surrounded or Voltshot. And while it normally can only benefit from Arc-related effects, it can also roll with Permeability (changes the element to match your subclass on class ability cast), letting it cash in on all other elements. It will handily rip apart tough enemies while annihilating weaker ones with shot after shot, making it a valuable asset to anyone's arsenal.
• A number of exotic armors were reworked, especially those that were Overshadowed by Awesome on arrival or had become outdated by the evolving meta.
  • Once a solar Hunter staple, Celestial Nighthawk had become nerfed due to restrictions to the base Golden Gun damage and was always limited to being a single purpose exotic that modifies the super and provide no benefit to moment-to-moment gameplay. Nighthawk was then upgraded to where precision kills can boost super regeneration, creating a passive effect similar to other super-regenerating exotics. Add in the artifact perks of the season heavily favor solar abilities, with Golden Gun benefitting from Kinetic Surge mods and Radiance, and in lower end content can reach the 999,999 damage numbers once again.
  • Precious Scars suffered from Crippling Overspecialization from the start, providing an overshield after reviving or being revived and sustaining that overshield for a length of time. The one piece of content it made most sense was Trials of Osiris but the benefits required the fireteam to be in a bad position, which made it not a popular choice there either. With the changes this season in addition to its' regular effect it now would give a burst of healing and restoration to both the user and team members when getting weapon kills that match the player subclass. This instantly put it near the top of Titan exotics, even overshadowing Lorelei Splendor Helm. It is also not subclass specific, meaning you can grant restoration to yourself even with a Strand build and Banner of War making you almost literally unkillable.
• The Wish-Keeper, once fully fitted with a catalyst of your choice and tuned to your liking, proves to be a bonafide champion slayer. It's similar to Verglas Curve in the sense of building up charges upon kills... and precision hits, making it easy to rack up a full bar for a Snareweaver trap. Once placed, the trap is a perfect counter to not only Unstoppables (due to Suspend being Anti-Unstoppable), but can also force Barriers from getting their shield up, and pin Overloads down for a second so they're not constantly running around, opening them up to an Anti-Overload attack. Whether you focus on Vorpal Weapon to make sure Champions go down, or Hatchling to spread Threadlings around easily, rest assured that this bow will seize the day for you in endgame content.
• The "Into The Light" content release provides a ton of returning weapons with newer perks, a new game mode and some returning exotic missions that had been removed in sunsetting.
  • With the advent of Onslaught, a Hold the Line style activity, numerous weapons, strategies and loadouts were previously considered B-tier when applied to more progression and Storming the Castle type missions but became significantly more valuable in an enemy dense, tighter environment battle. Players quickly devised the perfect ways to withstand the... onslaught:
    • Revenant Hunters with Renewal Grasps are great candidates for the Support Party Member. Stasis inherently slows, then freezes enemies solid, hampering their attempts to move, which is undoubtedly helpful in an activity that involves protecting a device against hordes. Building around the Grasps lets a Revenant deploy lots of Duskfield Grenades to not only hamstring enemies' movement, but also steadily freeze and break them apart, and also form large Stasis crystals to shatter. The field not only lowers enemy damage, but also reduces player damage taken, serving a twofold role - weakening enemies' damage output, and also assisting with damage resistance in hectic situations. It's almost like a very low-key version of the Ward of Dawn for Revenants.
    • Stasis Crystals in general are extremely useful. As long as you don't break them immediately, they're perfect for temporarily blocking off pathways to the ADU. Enemies will temporarily try to break through to no effect, before giving up and taking another path, letting you funnel them into choke points. As such, finding ways to make tons of crystals at once, like the Verglas Curve, is a big boon. Behemoth Titans can also join in on creating tons of crystals to block off access to the ADU and stop enemies in their tracks.
    • Wave Frame grenade launchers are king in this mode. The wave can rush through multiple enemies as it passes, either softening multiple tough guys or wasting tons of mooks in one go. While they'll falter against bosses, they're still great against crowds. In particular, the BRAVE version of Forbearance has gained quite a monstrous makeover. In place of Souldrinker (restores health based on amount of hits before reloading), it has Indomitability (kills give grenade energy for Light subclasses and melee energy for Darkness subclasses). While it's only a paltry 5% by itself, the weapon can roll with both Demolitionist (kills give grenade energy, throwing a grenade instantly loads the weapon) and Wellspring (gain ability energy split amongst all three abilities) at once. The result is a weapon that can rapidly recharge your abilities as soon as it tears through groups, and let you chuck grenades like no tomorrow! If paired with the Spark of Beacons fragment (Arc special weapon kills while Amplified cause a Blinding explosion), it also gains some utility by temporarily turning off enemy attacks and slowing them down!
  • Hammerhead returns with an equally amazing facelift. On top of the aforementioned Indomitability, it has both Rampage and Destabilizing Rounds in the third column, and Target Lock and Killing Tally in the fourth. In short, it can roll two damage perks at once. You absolutely will enjoy hammering foes with this thing!
  • The Mountaintop also comes packing with a killer combo - Overflow (pick up special ammo to double magazine size) or Demolitionist and Recombination (elemental weapon kills give up to ten stacks of damage boosting for the next shot). Kill a few regular foes, then whip out Mountaintop to erase the next big enemy that's unfortunate enough to get in your way. Even if it's not a one-shot, it will still do serious damage, enough to soften them up for a follow-up shot.
  • Whisper of the Worm was once the most broken of heavy weapons, able to continually fire so long as you hit precision shots, until years of Power Creep saw it be outclassed by even special snipers^note In particular, the damage over time effect of Anarchy made DPS phases shift towards tagging an enemy with Anarchy bolts and then switching to a Sniper to have multiple sources of weapon damage at the same time. Truncated single-shot damage to Whisper of the Worm made it unable to compete in that meta. The craftable version has enhanceable stats and allows some custom perk tuning to be usable in more variety of playstyles. One of which fixes its biggest problem, its small reserves and a perk that's inconsistent at best and useless at worst, with one change - replacing Mulligan (chance to return a missed shot to the mag) with Field Prep (more reserve ammo, crouch to increase reload speed and handling). This simple change gives Whisper a much needed shot in the arm, letting it have much more ammo to work with and also making it handle and reload faster, in the event you miss your shots at least there's much less downtime between reloads.