There are a lot of powerful Exotics in Destiny 2 for each class. On the flipside, there are also some real stinkers. These Exotics simply don’t do enough in most situations to make them viable picks for your sole Exotic slot. While they might have some edge case uses, most players will want to avoid them unless they happen to receive a buff in the future.
In compiling this list, we tried to be fair to each of Destiny 2‘s classes, so we picked a few of the worst Exotics from each one. There are lousy Exotics for Hunters, Warlocks, and Titans, and you’ll see some of each of those here.
10. Blight Ranger — Destiny 2 Worst Exotics
Attacks you redirect with your Arc Staff deal massively increased damage and generate Orbs of Power for your allies. Guarding with your Arc Staff does not consume extra Super energy.
“Massively increased damage,” huh? Blight Ranger in fact does not do much of anything, giving only a small boost to deflected shots with your Arc Staff. There are much better Exotics to use as an Arcstrider, and at the moment, Blight Ranger is useful only for its sweet aesthetic.
9. Sealed Ahamkara Grasps
Dealing melee damage reloads your currently equipped weapon. Provides a large benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of all weapons for 5 seconds after dealing melee damage.
Frankly, who cares? You can reload your weapon as a Hunter by dodging, or just by, you know, reloading your weapon. The boost to airborne effectiveness was a bandaid to make Sealed Ahamkara Grasps more attractive, but the improvement just isn’t that impressive or useful. Another Hunter Exotic whose purpose is merely to look cool.
8. Wings of Sacred Dawn
When Dawnblade is equipped, aiming weapons while you’re midair suspends you there for a short time, improving airborne accuracy, reducing incoming flinch, and granting damage resistance. Weapon hits extend this effect’s duration. Provides a large benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of all weapons.
One of the most unique-looking Warlock Exotics in Destiny 2 and also one of the least useful. Wings of Sacred Dawn effectively makes you a sitting duck, hovering motionless in the air for enemies and opposing Guardians to pick off at their leisure. There’s just no situation in which floating with this Exotic is going to give you a significant advantage, considering that Dawnblades already have so many options for aerial combat.
7. Mask of the Quiet One — Destiny 2 Worst Exotics
Grants ability energy when you’re damaged. When critically wounded, regain maximum health on kills.
New Titan players may see Mask of the Quiet One and believe it’s a great Exotic. Regaining maximum health on kills sounds great, right? Just like the Devour ability! Except when this Exotic says “health,” it means that little sliver of red on your health bar after all of your shields are gone. There’s almost no situation where healing that amount of damage is going to be enough to keep you alive.
6. Promethium Spur
Defeating combatants or Guardians while Daybreak is active creates a healing and empowering rift at their location. While standing in any rift, Solar weapon final blows grant Rift energy. When your Rift energy is full, final blows consume your Rift energy and create a healing and empowering rift at the target’s location.
These Warlock Exotic boots sounds kind of cool. But the problems start with Daybreak, a super that’s only really useful in PVP. Spawning rifts at Daybreak kill locations isn’t as useful as you’d think, and Promethium Spur’s secondary abilities are extremely situational. Why would you want to spawn a rift at the location of an enemy you’ve just defeated when you have to be standing in a rift to benefit from it? If you want to build into a healing Dawnblade fantasy, go with Boots of the Assembler.
5. Ophidia Spathe
Grants two knives per charge.
While Ophidia Spathe used to have its strengths, it lost pretty much all of them thanks to the Solar 3.0 rework, which refunds Hunter throwing knives on kills. You could possibly use it if you aren’t running Knock ‘Em Down, but why wouldn’t you be?
4. Icefall Mantle — Destiny 2 Worst Exotics
Replaces your Barricade ability with a personal overshield. When you activate your Barricade, you create a burst around yourself that slows combatants. While you have the overshield, you are slowed and Barricade does not recharge.
Replacing your Barricade with an overshield seems like a good deal, except that Icefall Mantle slows you way down, which marks you for death in both PVE and PVP. If you want to play around with Overshields, use the Sentinel subclass — you can have your Barricade and the personal overshields that way.
3. Chromatic Fire
Precision final blows with your Kinetic weapon create an explosion in the element of your subclass.
Chromatic Fire doesn’t sound too bad, but when you consider that you’re giving up your Exotic slot to essentially get a Dragonfly ability on your Kinetic weapons, it isn’t great. Once upon a time it had some utility in letting you generate Warmind Cells, but post-nerfs those aren’t nearly as useful as they used to be. And come Lightfall, Warmind Cells are leaving the game entirely. Until it receives some kind of rework, Chromatic Fire is one of the most useless Warlock exotics in Destiny 2, both in PVE and PVP.
2. Mk. 44 Stand Asides
Grants an overshield when you’re sprinting at full health with Seismic Strike, Hammer Strike, or Shield Bash equipped and charged. Hits with these abilities recharge a portion of your melee energy.
It only works with shoulder charge abilities and the overshield it provides is nothing to write home about. Useless, useless, useless. There are many better Titan Exotics than this, some of which provide similar effects with greater potency.
1. Oathkeeper — Destiny 2 Worst Exotics
Bow charges can be held indefinitely. Provides a moderate benefit to the airborne effectiveness stat of Bows.
Yes, it has some synergy with Le Monarque and can help you hold a lane with a bow in PVP. Still — when would you ever pick Oathkeeper over any of the other Exotics a Hunter could wear in Destiny 2? It’s a joke of an Exotic and has been for years. Maybe one day it’ll receive a buff, but until then, it’s quite possibly the worst armor Exotic in the game.
