Destiny 2 Season of Arrivals Has Exotic Weapons Worthy Of The Title

If you’re familiar with the Destiny franchise, you are surely familiar with its Exotic items. Weapons and pieces of Armor that provide incredible and unique advantages to their bearers. Some of these items, like Destiny 2’s Wardcliffe Coil or Destiny 1’s Gjallarhorn, are powerful and unique weapons that are instantly recognizable. Others, like the Jade Rabbit or Vigilance Wing, seem to barely make a significant difference. This is the difference between Exotics, but things look like they’re changing direction.

In the Season of Arrivals, players have been introduced now to two exotic weapons: The Witherhoard and the Ruinous Effigy. Both of these guns are unlike any other than have been seen in the game, with incredibly unique perks that make them a blast to play with. The Witherhoard is available to all players through the Season Pass, while the Ruinous Effigy is a Season Pass exclusive item unlocked through a brief quest.

The Witherhoard, the easier to unlock of the two weapons, is a Primary Grenade Launcher with two unique abilities. When fired at the ground, the Witherhoard grenade spawns a pool of dark energy, which damages enemies over time. When fired directly into an opponent, however, they are hit with a Damage over Time effect, and if they die while under the effect of the Witherhoard grenade, their corpse spawns this same pool of damage. 

Witherhoard made headlines near the start of the season because of a glitch that allowed it to kill bosses faster than any other legitimate method by far. And while this was quickly patched out, the weapon is still popular to find in PvE and PvP content. In Zone based game modes or missions, the pool it spawns is a great defense, as it generally fills most zones that you need to capture or plates you need to stand on. 

Ruinous Effigy, on the other hand, is an exciting new release that is absolutely wild. It is a Trace Rifle, a type of weapon reserved exclusively for Exotics, that fires a beam of void light at an enemy. What the weapon does to living enemies is irrelevant, though, the real power is what it does to the dead. When killing an enemy with Ruinous Effigy, their bodies collapse into a Orb of Void Energy. Then, you can pick up this Orb and use it as a weapon. The Orb itself functions similarly to an Orb you would pick up in the world, such as a Bloom from the Contact Public Event. 

The Orb itself has three attacks: A general light attack which does some damage to enemies, a heavy dunking attack which destroys the Orb and deals a large amount of damage to a wide area, and an AoE Guard. The Guard blocks incoming damage while also generating a large field of persistent suppression damage around you that heals the wielder kills.

Ruinous Effigy is hands down the most unique Exotic weapon Bungie has ever created. Sure, there are guns like Wardcliffe Coil or The Colony, which take a standard weapon archetype and change it into something unique, but they still function like their respective weapons: Wardcliffe Coil still fires rockets, The Colony still fires grenades, regardless of their unique effect. Ruinous Effigy gives you a whole new weapon to work with.

There are weapons in the game which don’t feel “Exotic.” They have perks that are unique, but only in the literal sense of the word: No other gun has this perk. Does that mean the Perk is powerful or fun to play with? No. If Ruinous Effigy and Witherhoard are examples of what it means to be an Exotic in the future, then the future will be bright.

Tyler Krasnai
Editor, NoobFeed
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