Today marks three weeks since Destiny 2: Shadowkeep came out, and with it, Bungie’s new philosophy about its non-pinnacle pinnacle weapons, which they’re now calling “ritual” weapons. And in those last three weeks, I’ve gotten them all.
The idea was that since pinnacle weapons like Mountaintop and Recluse kept breaking the game with their powerful, unique perks, and are balance nightmares to this day, Bungie wanted to tone things down. There is still a chase for these new weapons, and yet they’re curated rolls. They use perks that already exist, but you can choose between four options instead of a flat two appearing, and sometimes they do things like put perks on weapons they’re not normally on, or put weapon archetypes in slots they don’t normally go in. Nothing as wild as the unique legendary perks of the old pinnacles, but worth getting all the same? Maybe? Well, here’s my take after having them all, along with some thoughts on the respective grinds.
Edgewise (Vanguard Machine Gun)
The Vanguard’s strike pinnacles have been pretty decent most times, from Loaded Question to Wendigo. This time around, Edgewise was a new MG that is the rapid fire-but-not-super-accurate type that I believe is like that MG we got from the Dawning way back when.
This is probably the easiest grind of them all. All you need are MG kills, solar kills and points in Nightfalls. MG kills are easy considering how much ammo you get to mob clear, and if you run out, you can equip the new artifact heavy finisher mod to get you more. Solar kills are just…solar kills. To kill two birds with one stone, use the solar MG from Menagerie, Fix Odds. The points from Nightfalls are not hard. I ran just a handful of like 920 Nightfalls and haven’t even done a 950 or above yet. You really do not need that many points.
The gun itself is just outclassed by most other weapons in the slot. The default rolls is feeding frenzy/rampage, which is like the curated Hammerhead, but obviously Hammerhead is still kind of best in class. The one unique perk is that you can put demolitionist on instead of rampage, so you can be running triple demolitionist weapons for your insta-cooldown grenade builds. But that’s super niche and probably not worth giving up the slot over a better MG or something for boss burning like a spike launcher. Overall, I’ve used Edgewise the least out of the three of these.
Exit Strategy (Gambit Submachine Gun)
SMGs are very strong in the current meta right now, so a Gambit SMG pinnacle seems good, and the last time we had a pinnacle SMG it was Recluse so…
But Exit Strategy is no Recluse, and frankly, I think it’s just outclassed by too many other SMGs. To unlock it, you need multikills in Gambit with SMGs which is absurdly easy. You also need 125 total medals, which is far, far easier than the Randy’s medal grind (more on that later). Getting “points” probably takes the longest as that’s just getting kills and depositing motes and killing Taken and what not. But this grind wasn’t too bad. It was better than Hush.
I just don’t think Exit Strategy stacks up to other options. I hate Surrounded as a perk as I don’t think it procs nearly enough and for it to be remotely worthwhile you need the mod for it. Swashbuckler is better, and good for certain melee builds, but ultimately I prefer Trackless Waste and Pillager and Huckleberry as SMGs in this slot, and the two new SMGs, the moon and Vex ones, feel better than this. And of course Recluse still exists, so as long as that’s as strong as it is, there’s little reason to use another SMG except for fun.
Randy’s Throwing Knife (Crucible Scout Rifle)
So, we’re kind of 0 for 2 in this new system. Can Randy’s redeem us? Yes, yes it can.
Let me be clear, the quest for this is terrible. It’s so bad I actually wrote an entire article about it yesterday. The easiest part for it is the glory gains, considering how easy it is to get glory now, but the scout kills, which require last hits (hard) and multikills (harder) to make significant progress is very rough. But the worst part is the “kills and medals” bit, where almost nothing counts toward making noticeable progress unless you get hyper specific medals like kills in one life with one weapon type. I can play 5 Iron Banner games and make 1% progress. Or I can run around with Erentil in Rumble getting Cold Fusion medal double kills and get 6-8% a game. The progression here is very broken and annoying unless you know the “cheat” around it.
The good news is that Randy’s is worth it. It’s worth it despite how awful this quest is, which is really saying something. It’s a rapid fire scout in the primary slot, think Black Scorpion but better, and it rolls with Rapid Hit and Zen Moment. Slap a Counterbalance mod on there and it’s just a TTK laser beam. Absolutely wild, and it feels great to use in PvP. The other options are kill clip and snapshot sights which are also good, but you want the stability. In PvE it’s just so-so, meaning we don’t have another Recluse on our hands, but trust me, you are going to see everyone using this in PvP soon enough, for better or worse, as it feels great and kills so, so fast.
In the end, I think this concept needs work, as two of these weapons really didn’t feel worth it at all, but Randy’s was probably worth all three grinds, frankly. And you need all three for the Undying title, so if you want that, you better get comfortable with all these activities. Enjoy.
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