I’ve Almost Completely Stopped Using Exotic Weapons And Armor In ‘Destiny 2’

Exotic items are more than just top-tier loot in Destiny 2. They’re strange, category-defying weapons and armor meant to change the way you play the game, at times impacting your strategic decisions as much as your class selection. Exotic reveals are some of the most exciting parts of a new expansion, and exotic quests have been some of the most involved, difficult and mysterious pursuits in the game. They had a low point last year when it became clear the entire concept had been nerfed, but Bungie brought them back with a vengeance. Which is kind of a shame, because I basically don’t use them anymore.

With every new exotic I also find myself falling into a familiar pattern of celebration, disenchantment and discarding. At first, it’s a blessing: some strange new weapon, high enough above my power level to raise it a point and crazy enough to let me play with wild new approaches to gameplay. Soon, though, my other items catch up. The new exotic is under-levelled but not terribly so, and so I hang on to it for a while and enjoy the perks. Eventually, however, it’s keeping my power level back, and I need that power level to keep pace with endgame activities. I could infuse it, but I’m not exactly made of masterwork cores, here. And on top of that, I’ll just have to keep on infusing it if I want to keep using it, which means that even doing so once is either a temporary fix or an expensive precedent. And so into my inventory it goes, where I imagine I might use it again soon. After a few days, it’s clear that’s not happening, and the vault is more than willing to oblige.

There are a few reasons for this: the first is the incredibly rare exotic drop rate, which means that I’m less likely to get a new exotic to replace the one I just stopped using. The second is the prohibitive infusion cost, which means that I’m always wary about bringing a new item up to speed and never all that happy about doing so. And the third is the relatively long time it takes to get to max power this time around: if the power cap were a little lower, I’d happily infuse an item as soon as I was high enough, knowing I wouldn’t have to do so again until the next power increase. As it stands, any infusion I make still has the specter of obsolescence hovering over it.

That means exotic weapons are just not a part of my Destiny 2 experience right now. Which feels like a real problem, because they’re meant to sort of stand at the center of a character build, transforming the way you play with a set of unique perks that you augment through other items. For a hot second, I was using Lunafaction Boots as a Path of Grace Warlock to turn my Well of Radiance into the ultimate support skill by removing reload times along with all of its other impressive boosts. That second ended, though, and nothing really came along to replace it.

Bungie has promised more sources for masterwork cores going forward, and it’s also promised to helpfully stop calling them masterwork cores. It’s also promised to increase the drop rates for exotic items. I’m not convinced that this is really going to help, because it doesn’t sound like we’re going to get the sort of meaningful increases that will allow me to start infusing willy-nilly again, which is sort of what I want to do here.

We’ll see how the new changes work when they hit the game later this month. Until then–and likely after–I’m going to continue playing a version of this game without its weirdest, most exciting items, and that means that it’s a less exciting game overall.

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Exotic items are more than just top-tier loot in Destiny 2. They’re strange, category-defying weapons and armor meant to change the way you play the game, at times impacting your strategic decisions as much as your class selection. Exotic reveals are some of the most exciting parts of a new expansion, and exotic quests have been some of the most involved, difficult and mysterious pursuits in the game. They had a low point last year when it became clear the entire concept had been nerfed, but Bungie brought them back with a vengeance. Which is kind of a shame, because I basically don’t use them anymore.

With every new exotic I also find myself falling into a familiar pattern of celebration, disenchantment and discarding. At first, it’s a blessing: some strange new weapon, high enough above my power level to raise it a point and crazy enough to let me play with wild new approaches to gameplay. Soon, though, my other items catch up. The new exotic is under-levelled but not terribly so, and so I hang on to it for a while and enjoy the perks. Eventually, however, it’s keeping my power level back, and I need that power level to keep pace with endgame activities. I could infuse it, but I’m not exactly made of masterwork cores, here. And on top of that, I’ll just have to keep on infusing it if I want to keep using it, which means that even doing so once is either a temporary fix or an expensive precedent. And so into my inventory it goes, where I imagine I might use it again soon. After a few days, it’s clear that’s not happening, and the vault is more than willing to oblige.

There are a few reasons for this: the first is the incredibly rare exotic drop rate, which means that I’m less likely to get a new exotic to replace the one I just stopped using. The second is the prohibitive infusion cost, which means that I’m always wary about bringing a new item up to speed and never all that happy about doing so. And the third is the relatively long time it takes to get to max power this time around: if the power cap were a little lower, I’d happily infuse an item as soon as I was high enough, knowing I wouldn’t have to do so again until the next power increase. As it stands, any infusion I make still has the specter of obsolescence hovering over it.

That means exotic weapons are just not a part of my Destiny 2 experience right now. Which feels like a real problem, because they’re meant to sort of stand at the center of a character build, transforming the way you play with a set of unique perks that you augment through other items. For a hot second, I was using Lunafaction Boots as a Path of Grace Warlock to turn my Well of Radiance into the ultimate support skill by removing reload times along with all of its other impressive boosts. That second ended, though, and nothing really came along to replace it.

Bungie has promised more sources for masterwork cores going forward, and it’s also promised to helpfully stop calling them masterwork cores. It’s also promised to increase the drop rates for exotic items. I’m not convinced that this is really going to help, because it doesn’t sound like we’re going to get the sort of meaningful increases that will allow me to start infusing willy-nilly again, which is sort of what I want to do here.

We’ll see how the new changes work when they hit the game later this month. Until then–and likely after–I’m going to continue playing a version of this game without its weirdest, most exciting items, and that means that it’s a less exciting game overall.