Xur, Destiny’s travelling weekend Exotic trainer, balloon flight enthusiast, and strong believer in the restorative power of just putting your feet up and eating a big, shitload of cheese from time to time, is back. This week he’s over in the Tower Hangar, and he is selling this lot:
• No Backup Plans (Exotic Titan gauntlets) – 13 Strange Coins
• Skyburners Annex (Exotic Hunter helmet) – 13SC
• Hawkmoon (Exotic hand cannon) – 23SC
• Legacy Engram (Chest armour engram) – 31 Strange Coins
• Exotic Shard - 7SC
• Three of Coins – 7SC
• Glass Needle – 3SC
What’s good? Warlocks get possibly the best bit of armour this week, the Apotheosis Veil seeming slightly innocuous on paper but actually being a beast in practice. Recharging your health, grenades and melee upon activating your Nova Bomb, Radiance, or Stormtrance, it pretty much negates all risks involved in using Warlock supers. Sick of getting shot down as you try to use your stand-out ability to make a comeback under heavy fire? Be sick no longer. The Apotheosis Veil will turn every super into an apocalyptic, tide-turning event, whatever you’re up against.
The Titans’ No Backup Plans are pretty great too, though you’ll need to be a shotgunner to get the best out of them. But if you are, you’ll find that your kills with boomsticks trigger an extended-length Force Barrer every time, leading to a huge amount of scope for increased rushdown tactics. Combine it with the War Machine and Relentless perks from the Defender class tree, and the respective faster reload and further increased Barrier duration will make for a hell of a lot of aggressive momentum. As for Hunters? The Skyburners Annex is a support Exotic, and alas a fairly unspectacular one at that. It simply grants the chance to generate Orbs on Heavy weapon kills, and gives more Super energy on PvE kills, with extra from Heavy takedowns.
In terms of weapons, Hawkmoon is on sale this week, but unfortunately, while fun, it’s not the guaranteed, dead-cert buy it used to be. With Luck in the Chamber and Holding Aces, it effectively offers three chances for bonus damage in every mag, but with the damage buff nerfed from the gun’s original configuration, no longer stands as the brutal Crucible and PvE killer it used to.
As ever, Xur will be around until 10am UK / 2am PT on Sunday, at which point he’ll raise anchor and sail away to the stars once again, severely scratching the paint on several parked Guardian ships in the process. He’s shit at close-range driving manoeuvres.
