I am technically on vacation right now and as a result I am getting around to making my Friday post much later than normal.  I am not sure how much this matters given that I am not one of the 4 am youtube crew that posts the news the moment Xur shows up.  This week I think we can officially confirm that Xur likely only has one spawn place per planet, because much like Nessus last week…  he is in the same location as before on Titan.  This means he is inside a little hut in The Rig sections of Titan, just a short distance from the drop zone.  You will potentially wind your way past some high value targets, so make sure you keep an eye open for either a weirdly named Captain or a pair of Servitors as you move to where Xur is.  The fallen will not go into the room he is located in, but they will absolutely hang out at the door and shoot you so you might need to do a little clean up on the way in as well.  Without further delay lets get into what Papa Xur brought us today.

For those who played either the Console or PC betas, Sweet Business was the weapon handed to titans in Shaxx’s armory during the homecoming mission.  I decided then that I didn’t much care for it, but we will get into that a bit later.  This represented the only Exotic weapon I had yet to see in Destiny 2 that was not tied to a quest.  I am still technically missing the Rat King and the raid Shotty but I purchased Sweet Business for literally no reason other than to get the collection unlock.  Sweet Business seems to be one of those “your mileage may vary” weapons because I personally do not like it at all.  However it has a legion of fans that love to use it.  My issue is really a two part problem, firstly it takes awhile for this weapon to ramp up to maximum output.  Secondly 99 seems like a lot of bullets until you are firing these out at the maximum RPM after the ramp up time and then it feels like you have next to no ammo reserves.  This is miserable to use in the crucible because you effectively need to treat it as though it were a fusion rifle and predict the target coming into your field of view and make sure you are firing ahead of time.  The huge benefit of this weapon though is that it causes a massive amount of flinch in targets due to the High-Caliber rounds, and in most cases you can kill the target before they ever recover and deal damage to you.  It is certainly fun to play with but seems like a gimmick and I tend to prefer more reliable weapons in my kinetic slot.

The Doom Fang Pauldrons are both a week one repeat and available through the main story quest when you finish Titan.  That said they are really amazing arms if you prefer maining the Sentinel sub class on your titan.  The exotic perk Horns of Doom makes it so that shield bashes during your super reset the cooldown of your melee charge, allowing you to throw your shield yet again.  This allows you to get a nice rhythm of throw, bash, throw, bash, etc until you run out of super energy.  This also stacks nicely with Code of the Aggressor that gives you a second shield throw out of the gate, however it only gives you one free throw instead of one each time you get a new melee charge.  Well worth picking up if you chose another option during that main story quest or even if your old one is woefully low light.

The Raiden Flux is yet another week one repeat but a similarly sub class defining one.  From what I understand this is the defacto exotic for Arcstriders in part because the Exotic perk allows you to extend the duration of your super.  I personally prefer playing Gunslinger because of the utility of throwing knives, but I know a ton of people who like the acrobatics of the energy staff/spear class.  There isn’t a whole lot more that I can really say about this item other than if you don’t already have it you should probably go ahead and pick it up.  I will likely never stop using my Knucklehead Radar because I like 100% uptime on my tracking…  but this is seemingly a great option for that one specific sub class.  I’ve shifted towards preferring to use more generic non-class specific exotics, but I will always be missing out on some nifty intrinsic perks that come with matching the right item to the right class.

Do you like the punch things a lot?  If so Winter’s Guile may be for you because the exotic Warlord’s Sigil perk causes melee kills to increase your next melee attack.  This perk stacks up to 5 times and you have roughly 2-3 seconds between kills to keep the chain going.  So in situations where you are getting swarmed you are going to be able to punch your way out of trouble, especially with devour active.  I’ve heard reports of players punching tier 1 enemies for 3000 damage with a full 5 stack, so these can dish out silly amounts of damage.  It almost makes me a little jealous that this is a Warlock item and not a Titan item.  The negative side of this…  is that they are SUPER situationally useful.  How many times are you really in a situation where you have mobs stacked in a fashion that you can really hit one every two seconds?  To make matters worse Warlocks have the slowest movement ability, which means you are going to have to rely on the very hard to use blink if you want to do any sort of gap closing.  Titan skating between various mobs in the same room seems doable…  Warlock blinking is a much more challenging proposal.  If you are up to the challenge then by all means grab these and punch some baddies.

For Destiny 1 players, this week Xur is located at the Tower in the Vanguard area on the right side.  I am not sure if anyone cares about this but it sorta makes me feel better that I at least do.  Waiting on Xur to show up was always a magical thing and seeing how much stuff the old school version carries…  makes me hope they give the updated version something other than a handful of repeat Exotics.  Lets get into the goods…

• Legacy Primary Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
• Immolation Fists – Titan Arms – 13 Strange Coins
• Graviton Forfeit – Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
• Transversive Steps – Warlock Boots – 13 Strange Coins
• Super Good Advice – Heavy Machinegun – 17 Strange Coins
• Invective and Storms Reproach Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
• Suros Regime and Basilisk’s Glory Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust