Let's not bury the lede: The Witch Queen is getting a gun that shoots Hive worms. This is not the first time Destiny 2 has experimented with grenade launchers that shoot something other than grenades—The Colony and its mechanical spiders say hello—but it is the most gribbly. Parasite is just one of a number of new Exotic weapons introduced in a new trailer that rounds up some of the Exotic equipment we'll be chasing when The Witch Queen expansion launches on February 22.
The worm launcher features increasing damage according to the trailer teaser, so perhaps it works a bit like Full Court, but gross and organic.
And yes, other weapons are also revealed I guess. Grand Overture is the Season 16 exotic; a slug launcher with a full-auto missile barrage. There's also Osteo Striga—what if Thorn, but an SMG?—which, as a Warlock main, I desperately hope will pair with the Necrotic Grip gloves.
We also see a selection of Exotic glaives, the new weapon type arriving in the expansion. There's a different one for each class. Titan glaives place a protective bubble; Warlock ones spawn a healing turret and the Hunters get some chain lightning. Fun!
Finally, it's armour. The Titan Horfrost-Z chest swaps your barricade for a wall of Stasis crystals. The Osmiomancy gloves give Warlocks an extra Coldsnap grenade with enhanced tracking—an ability that the trailer shows off in Crucible of all places, despite Bungie nerfing the efficacy of the class's freezing options in PvP because of, in their words, the "large emotional toll", and also because, yes, it was hot nonsense to play against. For Hunters, the Blight Ranger helmet causes projectiles reflected by middle-tree Arc Staff to do increased damage.
And look, those last three paragraphs were a lot of information about guns and armour pieces that don't shoot a big worm at your foes, but there's some good stuff here that will likely be catnip for buildcrafters. With Stasis in particular, Bungie landed on a system that integrates well into your existing kit—weapons, mods and Exotic perks. With Light classes transferring over to that system in stages across the course of the next year, even more theorycrafting is now on the table. A healing turret glaive might be a novelty now, but what about the future, after Solar subclasses—where Warlock healing options live—are reworked? So yes, I'm excited about the worms, but secretly the real juice here is in the combinations and interactions that will emerge after The Witch Queen's release.
- Where is Xur: Find Destiny 2's exotics dealer is this week.
- Destiny 2: The Witch Queen review: The best expansion yet.
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