Highlights
- Destiny 2's The Final Shape will conclude the Light and Darkness saga after 10 years, but the game will continue with more content in the form of episodes released every four months.
- Builds in Destiny 2's Lightfall era involve equipping up to three weapons, five pieces of armor, and customizing with mods, aspects, fragments, and seasonal mods.
- Many exotic weapon and damage type combos are still missing in Destiny 2, especially for hand cannons and pulse rifles, but Bungie may add them in future releases.
Destiny 2's The Final Shape is only a few months away now, and while it will be the conclusion of the Light and Darkness saga that's been the core part of the game for around 10 years, Bungie's looter-shooter is going nowhere after that, and instead, it's going to have more content. This is in the form of episodes rather than the seasons players have grown accustomed to, with releases happening every four months instead of three, but allegedly being bigger and better. With Destiny 2's focus on buildcrafting, something that prompted Bungie to rework all Light subclasses to be on par with Stasis first and Strand later, there are still many Exotic weapon and damage type combos that should be added to increase players' options.
The way builds in Destiny 2's Lightfall era work is that players can equip up to three weapons and five pieces of armor, with only one Exotic allowed per category, and plenty of mods to choose from to further customize what a character can do. Similarly, subclasses with their powerful Aspects and Fragments now play a bigger role than ever when it comes to builds, and so do seasonal mods in Destiny 2, which can determine which weapons are effective against Champions and what a Guardian can achieve in battle. Exotics are a core component of all this, but many combinations of weapon types and elemental damage are still missing.
All Weapon Type and Element Combos Missing From Destiny 2
Not counting differences such as the split between grenade launchers having single-shot variants in the Kinetic slot and drum-load variants in the Power slot, or the fact that fusion rifles and linear fusion rifle have their own stats and slots, there are 16 weapon families in the game. Destiny 2's Strand is the most recent addition when it comes to damage types, and the current selection of Exotics is lacking combos as follows:
- Auto rifles: Stasis
- Bows: Strand
- Fusion rifles: Stasis, Strand - although The Final Shape's pre-order Exotic Tessellation can become Stasis or Strand (as well as Arc, Solar, and Void) based on the equipped subclass
- Glaives: Strand
- Grenade launchers: Strand
- Hand cannons: Arc, Stasis, Strand, Void
- Machine guns: Stasis, Strand
- Pulse rifles: Arc, Solar, Stasis, Strand
- Rocket launchers: Stasis, Strand
- Scout rifles: Strand, Void
- Shotguns: Strand
- Sidearms: Void
- Sniper rifles: Stasis, Strand, Void - although Borealis can become Void (as well as Arc and Solar) by changing its elemental damage type
- SMGs: Stasis, Strand
- Swords: Stasis, Strand
- Trace Rifle: N/A
As it stands, the weapon types with the least amount of elemental damage options are hand cannons and pulse rifles, both lacking a total of four combos. This can seem especially strange in the case of hand cannons considering that there are many Exotic ones, but most of them deal Kinetic damage. With the recent hand cannon buff in Destiny 2, seeing more elemental options for them would be great. In a similar way, pulse rifles don't have vast representation in the game when it comes to Exotics, and new ones could shake things up.
Strand is the element that's lacking the most among Exotic weapons, but that's natural considering it's the newest. Trace rifles are the only weapon type with representation from all elements, and that's thanks to Destiny 2's Navigator Exotic from Ghosts of the Deep, which added a Strand weapon for this class and completed every possible option. There are still many combinations missing, though, with the total being 29. If Bungie keeps on adding two Exotic weapons per major release starting in Season 23, and assuming each new one adds an unused combo, combing through the list could take a total of one season and 14 episodes, totaling many more years of releases.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
