Xur. Destiny’s travelling weekend Exotic trader, Victorian plumbing enthusiast, and last known, truly fluent hamster interpreter (100% in all 17 dialects), is back. This week he’s in the Tower, over on the balcony near the Speaker. Somehow instinctively knowing that the white masked deceiever’s days are numbered, Xur is almost starting to feel sorry for him. To pre-emptively miss him, even. Almost. I mean he still thinks he’s a dick, mind…
But anyway! What’s Xur selling this week? Well it’s good news for Warlocks, less-great news for everyone else. Hunters might do quite well actually, depending on their preferences, but really Warlocks, this is your week.
• Peregrine Greaves (Exotic Titan boots) – 13 Strange Coins
• Celestial Nighthawk (Exotic Hunter helmet) – 13SC
• Heart of the Praxic Fire (Exotic Warlock chest armour) – 13SC
• Monte Carlo (Exotic auto rifle) – 23SC
• Legacy Engram (body armour engram) – 31SC
• Monte Carlo and Royal Flush (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
• Red Death and Steel Witch (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25SD
• Exotic Shard - 7SC
• Three of Coins – 7SC
• Glass Needle – 3SC
The Titans’ Peregrine Greaves are one of those classic ‘this perk sounds quirky and fun but oh hang on I’ll rarely ever actually use it’ Exotics. Double damage on an airborne shoulder charge is great if your whole game is built around airborne shoulder charges, but it almost definitely isn’t. As for Hunters, they come off somewhat better with the Celestial Nighthawk, though its powers come with a definite trade-off that you’ll need to appraise for yourself. Converting all of your Golden Gun shots to a single round that does six-times the normal damage (and overpenetrates targets to hit multiples if lined up), on paper it does provide a 100% damage increase based on pure maths, making it a brutally hard hitter against bosses. But at the same time, you’re one and done. Clearly, the Nighthawk is designed for PvE rather than PvP, but its desirability is going to come entirely down to your personal preference. One massive shot, or several to spread the damage around. The choice is yours.
Warlocks though, have an undeniably great line-up today, and it’s not just about the armour. Because today, weird space-magic sisters and brothers, Xur is selling two bits of kit that fit together to make one hell of a Sunsinger build. Heart of the Praxic Fire, you see, adds a fat increase to the duration of your Radiance super. All well and good, but combine it with the Monte Carlo auto rifle (also on sale this week), and you have a formidable build indeed. Monte Carlo, you see, will partly refill your melee gauge with every kill, and has a very high chance of completely resetting its cooldown for each enemy dropped.
What this means is that you are now free to push all of your aptitude points into grenades and super regeneration, as you pretty much get melee for free. Thus, you’ll get to trigger Radiance far more frequently, will have a great super duration as standard (given that base Radiance length is calculated from your grenade rating), and get the buff from the Praxic fire on top of that. 12 – 15 grenades on one Radiance is far from impossible, and even better, if you equip Flame Shield to your near omni-present melee (meaning an overshield on every special melee hit), you’ll be doubly resilient at the same time. Congratulations. You now have the premium Sunsinger tank build. Just pop Radiance, run up and slap the first enemy you see (if indeed you aren’t already overshielded thanks to Monte), then charge in and blow up everything, using your auto rifle to re-top your shield if needs be.
Otherwise, Red Death is also brilliant, though in more general terms than class-specific. Every kill with it will refill your health and speed up your reload, and it comes with Unflinching (which makes it easier to aim under fire) and High Calibre Rounds (which stagger targets far more easily). It is the honey badger of auto rifles, basically. Do buy it if you do not already have one.
As ever, Xur will be around until 2am PT / 10am UK on Sunday, at which point he’ll be away for another week.
