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Another week, another trip to see a travelling extra-terrestrial salesperson and the inevitable disappointment that follows it. This time you’ll find Xur in the Rig area on Titan. Spawn in, head left, drop down to the lower platform, and he’s skulking in one of the little rooms.
Reminder: Xur’s main use these days is as a way for new players to catch up with exotics, but also bear in mind that the armor he sells come with a low stat roll—it’s actually the same roll as the copy you can pull from your collections tab once unlocked. You can also buy the exotic engram he offers, which costs 97 Legendary Shards and will contain a random exotic weapon or armor piece that your current character has not unlocked.
Note that if this is an armor piece, then it will have a good stat roll. Also note that if you’ve unlocked everything on that character, then it definitely will be an armor piece (as there’s no benefit to acquiring duplicate exotic weapons, given that they have identical stats). I usually roll the dice each week, hence the disappointment.
If you happen to be new to Destiny 2, check out our beginner’s guide to help get started.
Xur sells one specific armor piece for each class, at 23 Legendary Shards, and an exotic weapon for 29 Legendary shards. Xur is open for business from 8:00 am PST / 12:00 pm EST / 3:00 pm GMT, and leaves when the game resets on Tuesday. Here’s what he has this week.
Monte Carlo (auto rifle) — definitely buy
This sleek auto rifle is a returning exotic from Destiny 1, but had its perks punched up nicely for its arrival as part of the Shadowkeep loot pool. Designed to synergise with melee-centric builds, the signature perk reads: “Weapon damage reduces melee ability cooldown.” In practice, that means that as you hose enemies down your melee charges incredibly fast. I like to use it on Blade Barrage hunter, paired with a shotgun that also has the Swashbucker perk, to go all-in on toasty knives. Monte Carlo’s other main perk is Markov chain, which builds up stacks of damage (up to 5x) as you kill enemies.
Unlike the damage stacking perks used by legendary weapons, such as Kill Clip and Rampage, which were nerfed last year, the exotics escaped unscathed. Which is just as well, as auto rifles aren’t in an amazing spot right now, so Monte Carlo definitely needs that damage buff to make it viable. The biggest mark against Monte is the same one that hurts most other exotic primaries right now: it doesn’t have any kind of anti-champion capability (eg ‘anti-barrier’ or ‘unstoppable’), making it a poor choice in endgame activities such as 980 Nightfalls. Nonetheless, it’s a very cool and gorgeous looking weapon which should definitely be in your collection.
Verity’s Brow (Warlock helmet) — probably buy
Despite being outshone by Nezarec’s Sin, which is the go-to Exotic for Voidwalkers, Verity’s Brow is actually surprisingly good in the current sandbox when combined with armour 2.0 mods and those from the seasonal artifact. The build you’re looking to focus on here is all grenades, all the time. The helmet’s perk reads: “Energy weapon kills boost grenade recharge rate for you and nearby allies.” But here’s where it gets nutty. Pair the helmet with a chest piece that has the Breach Resonator mod, which generates grenade and melee energy when you use any weapon that has an anti-barrier mod, and you’re really cooking when it comes to uptime on your exploding pineapples. And if you really want to go all-in, look for an SMG that has the Demolitionist perk (I like the Every Waking Moment) for even more grenade energy. “You get a grenade, and you get a grenade, and you…”
Actium War Rig (Titan Chest) — definitely buy
This chest piece was buffed in a previous sandbox update so that it now automatically reloads machine guns as well as auto rifles. The way it works is that so long as you have one of those equipped, the armor will steadily feed ammo into the magazine. In the past, a lot of players paired it with the Sweet Business auto rifle so that they could make like Blain from Predator. These days I prefer to run it with Xenophage, which is essentially an anti-materiel rifle in machine gun’s clothing, and as such is incredibly slow to reload otherwise. Actium War Rig is far from the flashiest of exotics, but if you’re a spray and pray kind of titan (is there another kind?) that likes to lay on the trigger, then having that additional uptime on your automatic weapons is a worthwhile bonus.
Orpheus Rig (Hunter boots) — definitely buy
Since release these trousers have been the clear choice for void hunters, and despite having the amount of super energy that they can regen nerfed a while back, they remain peerless for PvE activities. When running the top tree subclass, your tether will grant a chunk of super energy depending on how many enemies it snags. Pre-nerf, that could mean the entire bar if you snagged a particularly juicy group of adds. Now you’re more likely to restore somewhere between a third and a half, but that’s still a great return. Also don’t sleep on the fact that, paired with the bottom-tree subclass, Orpheus Rig enables you to fire additional Shadowshot anchors during your super, making for even more damage to bosses and other big targets. Alongside Dragon’s Shadow and Celestial Nighthawk, Orpheus Rig is an absolutely top tier hunter exotic that you need in your locker.
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