Destiny 2 Witch Queen All Exotic Weapons Ranked

#4 The Manticore

The Manticore is quite a unique exotic. This Void Submachine Gun has the Soaring Fangs and Swooping Talons Exotic Perks. Soaring Fangs allow the user to charge the weapon’s anti-gravity repulsors whenever the user deals damage to targets while on the ground.

This charge can then be used to hover in the air, granting the user increased damage while hovering. In essence, this weapon grants users the experience of playing a Heat Rises Warlock, without actually playing a Heat Rises Warlock. This also grants the user some interesting movement options and allows you to save yourself during some of those tricky jumping puzzles Destiny 2’s dungeons are known for.

While this exotic is definitely fun to use, its usefulness can be a bit limited in PvE activities.  Hovering in the air is just not a great idea in higher-end content like Grand Master Nightfalls since the enemies literally have aim bot and hit with the force of 1000 suns.

Your best strategy in content like this is to keep moving and peak in and out of cover. This weapon basically requires you to remain out in the open to land your shots and it doesn’t have very much range so you’ll be right in the danger zone for a lot of enemies.

This weapon functions much better in PvP content since hovering in the air can throw your opponents off by a lot and you can take off angles that no one will be expecting. Smgs are also much better in PvP than PvE anyway.

The weapon’s Catalyst does grant the user damage resistance while hovering but that doesn’t really change the fundamental flaws the weapon has in PvE. It does make it even stronger in PvP. Overall, the weapon’s damage is fine but its perk just isn’t worth running in a PvE setting over the other options on this list.

#3 Delicate Tomb

This Exotic Arc Fusion Rifle hits crazy hard and provides some really useful resource generation. The Exotic Perk Traitor’s Vessel makes this weapon fire its shots in a wide horizontal spread while firing from the hip. This is pretty unique for a fusion rifle since most fusion rifles fire in a vertical spread, so you may need to take some time to adjust to this change. The benefit of this is the weapon’s ability to and body shots against bosses and Champions more easily than traditional fusion rifles.

One of my favorite things about this weapon is how its Exotic Perk makes every 5 or so red bar enemy kills with this weapon spawn an Ionic Trace. Mini bosses and Champions killed with this weapon are also guaranteed to spawn an Ionic Trace.

This weapon’s second Exotic Perk; Tempest Cascade makes the weapon’s next shot Jolt targets after picking up an Ionic Trace. Once the Catalyst has been obtained for this weapon, collecting an Ionic Trace will partially reload this weapon from its reserves. This makes the weapon a solid mob-clearing weapon and having your mag reloaded is always a nice touch in my book.

This is a fairly strong Exotic weapon for any Ionic Trace-focused Arc build. Builds like Arc Warlock and Arc Titan generate plenty of Ionic Traces, so this weapon will constantly have ammo available to use, so long as you continue to generate and collect special ammo bricks.

A great tip I like to use is making Ionic Traces generated by this weapon into Armor Charge with armor mods, while I’m at it, I buff my weapon’s damage with an Arc Surge mod or two. Another thing helping this weapon’s performance is its ability to Jolt targets pretty much on demand. Jolt can stun certain Champions and it’s also a great tool for killing/damaging red bar enemies that are grouped up with one another.

#2 Grand Overture

I feel this Exotic Arc Machine Gun was overlooked for quite some time by the Destiny 2 community. While it may not look like much on the surface, this thing absolutely shreds red bars, Champions, and Bosses with little to no effort. I feel the weapon’s strength lies in its Exotic Perk; Omega Strike.

The perk allows the weapon to stockpile powerful missiles whenever you land hits with the weapon’s slug rounds. You can then press the alternate fire key at any time to fire off all the stored missiles in a single volley. It feels really satisfying to do, and building up those missiles doesn’t take very long at all.

One of the craziest quirks of this weapon is the ability to build up missiles on Immune targets, to you can stack missiles on a boss just before it enters its damage phase by attacking its immune body, then unload a max volley of missiles on it for crazy high damage. And I do mean crazy high.

This weapon takes massive chunks out of Raid Bosses and benefits from other weapon buffs like Well of Radiance and Weapon Surges. Another great thing about this weapon is its mob-clearing utility. Machine guns are the go-to heavy weapon type for most players when it comes to mob clearing due to their ammo efficiency. If you’re tired of running Thunderlord as your Exotic heavy I highly recommend this as a substitute.

#1 Trespasser

Here we have a fantastic example of a hidden gem weapon. In my opinion, most Sidearms are pretty mediocre in Destiny 2, and for a long time, Trespasser was no different. But, in recent seasons Sidearms got a pretty substantial buff and Trespasser became quite the sleeper hit. This weapon’s main gimmick comes from its two exotic perks Unrepentant and Be the Danger.

Unrepentant grants this weapon a stronger initial burst after getting a kill and reloading. The second perk; Be the Danger reloads the weapon if you get a kill from Unrepentant and loads another Unrepentant round in the chamber. This can loop infinitely so long as you’re getting kills with that initial bust.

This weapon’s damage is surprisingly high for a Sidearm, especially with the Unrepentant burst, so activating the effect multiple times is actually pretty easy when going against red-bar enemies. This makes Trespasser one of my go-to mob-clearing weapons under Arc Surge environments or whenever we have Anti-Barrier Sidearms as a seasonal mod.

But we still aren’t done, this weapon is also an absolute demon in the Crusible, capable of wiping entire teams solo. If you love Sidearms or never really gave them a chance, I highly recommend trying this one out in your next Arc build. You won’t be disappointed.