Any Destiny 2 player can tell you that Exotic Weapons and Exotic Armor will absolutely change how you play the game. Tons of Exotic Weapons will have effects and firing styles that are utterly different from any other weapon in the game, while Exotic Armor pieces provide buffs and passive effects that can massively impact how you build your character.
If you’re new to Destiny 2, you might not realize just how significant Exotic items can be compared to your standard and legendary gear. If you find, buy, or craft any of these Exotics, you’re bound to either experience a totally different style of shooter, or quickly become grossly overpowered compared to your fellow players.
10 Sweet Business
No matter what class you are, Sweet Business is easily going to be a new favorite primary weapon for your character. This great auto rifle is essentially a small minigun, ramping up the firing rate and dealing absurd damage that grows as you continue to fire it. To make it even better, this gun manages to auto-reload when picking up Primary Ammo, making it often able to fire hundreds of bullets before reloading.
After spending some time with this gun, you’ll find that it blows nearly every other SMG and long-range rifle out of the water, and you’ll be remarkably surprised at its accuracy and handling as you use it further. With some closer-range and explosive side weapons like Grenade Launchers and Shotguns, you’ll have an unbeatable build set for any strike or raid.
9 Hard Light
When it comes to finishing bounties and grinding for experience, it can be relatively annoying to swap between different builds all the time. Many will involve using certain forms of Arc, Void, or Solar damage, meaning you’ll have to swap your sub-class or weapons constantly through a single strike or public event.
Alternately, if you happen to come across Hard Light, you’ll have a single Auto Rifle that can swap between damage types any time. This makes your grinding ridiculously easier, and will cut the amount of time you spend in the menus of the game by an absurd amount.
8 Sanguine Alchemy
If you want to become invincible as a Titan while playing your Warlock, Sanguine Alchemy will provide you with an alarming amount of invincibility while you play. This chest piece will pause the expiration timer on your rifts, meaning you can functionally have an infinite amount of healing or stat boosts while mowing down foes.
This makes your experience far less mobile, as you can just set down a rift and set up camp with a heavy weapon while the enemies come to you. It turns a fast-paced action game into what feels more like a point-and-click shooter thanks to the alarming amount of support your rifts can usually grant you.
7 ST0MP-EE5
Many pairs of boots and pants in Destiny 2 will be relatively small in their effects, but the ST0MP-EE5 for energetic Hunters does the reverse of the wonderful Warlock gear of Sanguine Alchemy by making you ridiculously more agile. These give you a huge boost to your sprint speed, but also gives your double jump far greater lift and speed to give you more aerial options.
Those who enjoy diving around the map at high speeds like a classic PC shooter game will absolutely adore this upgrade. Once you spend a bit of time getting comfortable with the upgrade, you’ll also quickly realize that any other character feels alarmingly sluggish and clunky.
6 Armamentarium
When you first look at the Titan chest piece Armamentarium, you might think it’s a poor way to give someone two grenades. It adds an additional charge, but their timers are stacked on top of each other, so it’s not that often you’ll have two in the chamber every time.
However, what this means is you can gain charge towards your next grenade while the first one is ready. This results in you not feeling like you need to use your grenade immediately upon it charging up, and gives you an astonishingly faster rate of grenade tossing than you would with any other item.
5 Peregrine Greaves
If you want the aerial action of the ST0MP-EE5, but happen to be rolling with a Titan instead of a Hunter, you might want to give the Peregrine Greaves a try. They won’t change the speed of your jump and movement, but it instead lets you use airborne shoulder charges for much more damage, meaning you can more easily leap around the battlefield punching enemies from above and in mid-air.
This gives a huge edge over many other melee-based Destiny 2 items, as most others simply expect you to run on the ground between different foes. This adds a third dimension to your first-person punching, and can give you an entirely different melee experience if you’re tired of staying grounded with your heavy Titan.
4 The Chaperone
There are all sorts of weapon mods that aim to give Shotguns a tighter burst of bullets. These guns are almost impossible to use at long-range, making them utterly useless for most classes that can’t handle getting punched by larger foes.
The Chaperone completely ignores this rule, being a long-distance shotgun that fires extremely rapidly, making it seem more like a classic war rifle than a proper modern shotgun. It’s a menace in PVP, but even PVE players will surely appreciate how high the damage is, even with its small shotgun-style magazine.
3 Black Talon
Speaking of weapons that break the rules of usual limitations and archetypes, the Black Talon breaks all the rules of swords being close-range weapons. Alongside quick melee slashes, this sword is capable of throwing energy surges at great distances, giving you access to both close and long-range attacks with this Power Weapon.
This sword blows nearly every other out of the water, particularly thanks to its stylish design that makes it a great fit for any kind of fashionable build. That said, the fact that it plays as well as it looks is a huge plus for this remarkable rare Exotic.
2 Coldheart
One of the most classic and powerful Exotics to ever touch Destiny 2 is the pre-order bonus of Coldheart, a Trace Rifle that fires a consistent beam of freezing energy that increases based on the amount of time it damages a single opponent.
This makes it an incredible tool against bosses, but its steady beam of energy also makes it incredibly easy to use compared to other weapons with slower and more variant bullets. It’s the true definition of a point-and-click gun, as all you’ll have to do is hold your mouse down over any enemy to evaporate it out of existence.
1 Ticcu’s Divination
Released in the recent Season of the Chosen, Ticcu’s Divination is a spectacular Exotic Bow that you don’t need to put any effort into finding. This bow will explode enemies who have enough arrows in them, and will also home on enemies in hip-fire mode to help ensure your accuracy and triggering of the earlier ability.
This is easily one of the best weapons in the game right now, and is absurdly powerful for those who don’t have another Exotic early in the game. It gives an amazing taste of what Exotics are capable of, and upgrading its power level through the game will keep it as a great tool in nearly any game mode.
