Welcome back Guardians to this weekly edition of “What in the universe has Xûr brought to the tower for us?” Xûr is located on the west side of the tower at the very far railing which overlooks the city below. His inventory is comprised of some pretty nifty items that are from year one updated items and year two armor. As always, the following is my opinion based on playing with these exotics already.
For all the Titans who still love being a Sunbreaker despite the balancing Bungie has done to the class then Xûr has brought you some cool gauntlets for the price of 13 Strange Coins. These Sunbreaker gauntlets are none other than the “Immolation Fists”. What makes these gauntlets so special is the engrained ability called Accelerant. This basically unlocks and automatically gives you the “Explosive Pyre” node which enables the ability to cause your targets who die by your hammer to explode violently chaining further solar damage to nearby enemies. With that node automatically selected, this allows you to choose something else within that tree which are two powerful techniques when combined with Explosive Pyre. First is the “Flameseeker” which adds the ability to allow your hammers to alter their flight path to help seek out enemies. Although that was nerfed hard, it still helps when you’re a little off your initial toss to help kill an enemy or two. The other one, my personal favorite to select with these gauntlets equipped, is called “Fleetfire”. Imagine Explosive Pyre going off and chaining as you tossed your last hammer. Now combine all that fire damage into a three-time stackable buff increasing your agility and reload speed?!?! You will almost feel unstoppable with how fast you’re moving and reloading your weapons. As side bonuses, these gauntlets allow you to melee faster, gain bonus melee energy on grenade hits, and come with hand cannon and fusion rifle loader traits.
Overall Opinion: If you are looking for something to heat up your Sunbreaker game then these are the gauntlets for you. The flexibility the gloves allow you to have is unmatchable for this specific sub-class so far. The only thing I don’t really care for on these gloves is the “loader” roll which can always be changed with the use of the Glass Needles. Once you use those though, you sacrifice the full intellect roll it currently comes with, so choose wisely Guardians.
For the Hunter this week, we have a year one leg armor remake item which doesn’t have a specific subclass tied to it. This allows you to use these boots no matter what your favorite Hunter type is. Your hunter looks like a futuristic go-go dancer once you equip them, but I’m sure that is why they called them the “Radiant Dance Machines.” The built in perk these boots bring to the fight is called “The Dance”, which allows you to move more quickly while aiming your weapons. What makes these boots wearable by any class is the last selectable column that provides the Double-Down perk (Increased Agility for 5 seconds after an Arc, Solar, and Void double kill) for all three subclasses. The other benefit to these boots Xûr is selling is the stat roll on them being intellect and discipline. With that being said, I would use some Glass Needles to reroll the ammo type (fusion and machine gun ammo) into something else I use more often.
Overall Opinion: I would say if you have the extra 13 Strange Coins lying around, feel free to buy and test them out to have some fun. Although I would stay away from them if I am looking to cause some pain in the PvP side of the house since there are some far more powerful exotics to help out your objective with that.
Warlock class has a year two helmet called “THE STAG” which looks like it could almost be a cousin of The Ram. The perk built into this helmet is properly named “Doe or Die”. This perk allows your Super once per life to charge faster when your teammates are dead. Additionally it also has the chance to respawn you with an overshield. This Warlock helmet just screams “use me in elimination or skirmish PvP modes” by combining its primary perk with Ashes to Assets and Better Already. The only downside about using these in PvP is the fact that your antlers (an extra foot and a half) help give away your position to enemies before you can even see them.
Overall Opinion: Seems to be a double edged sword. Could be extremely powerful armor piece but also can get you shot in the face faster than any other helmet out there. Choose your battles wisely Guardians, the roll that comes with this helmet is practically set up for PvP already. Spend the 13 Strange Coins if you wish, but I would personally use a different exotic for PvP that allows more flexibility and doesn’t require your teammates to be dead.
The weapon being sold this week is the “SUROS Regime” which is a year two remake of the previously powerful auto rifle. What makes this gun so dangerous is combining the Focused Fire and Suros Legacy perks. Focused fire increases your gun’s range at the cost of the rate of fire, but there is a little extra bonus damage sent out since it fires slower. Now combine that perk with the bottom half of each magazine dealing bonus damage and giving you a chance to gain health back?! This makes the Suro’s extremely powerful if you decide to burn through the first 16-17 rounds before shooting your target. After that you can either select Hammer forged to increase range or lightweight to give yourself extra agility.
Overall Opinion: If used properly this gun can be extremely deadly. Only thing is you have to make sure you hit your targets or you will be out of health and out of bullets in no time. Combine these with an auto rifle reloader gauntlets to reduce the reload time greatly which will help out in the long run. If you have the extra strange coins, buy it for the cost of 23.
Xûr is additionally selling the special weapons legacy engram for all the grimoire hunters out there who have yet to collect all the year 1 exotics. If you want to try your luck to complete your special weapons engrams grimoire, then it will cost you 31 Strange Coins per engram. I bought 4 of these and was finally able to get my Dreg’s Promise sidearm. As hesitant as I initially was to spend 31 Strange Coins, I am happy I did since I didn’t have any other use for them at this point in time.
As always Xûr is selling two Sparrow drives this week which includes the Emerald Coil (Green contrail) and Stealth Drive (Red contrail). Each will cost you 23 strange coins. If you are low on Heavy ammo synthesis, three of them will cost you one strange coin. The two other consumables you can purchase from Xûr every week are the “Three of Coins” at 5 for the cost of 7 strange coins, and the Glass Needles at 3 for the cost of 3 strange coins 3 motes of light and 1 exotic shard.
Third row always offers for you to trade in 2 strange coins per mote of light. I would always advise against this unless you are tired of stocking up strange coins and want the motes to level up your gear or faction reputations. Although, motes of light are very easy to attain. If you have spare strange coins lying around you can always stock up again on Three of Coins, Glass needles, heavy ammo synthesis, or motes of light. The choice is yours Guardian. Just like the rest of you, I am extremely looking forward to the start of Crimson Days as well as the Crimson Double PvP event. Hope to see some of your Guardians out there on the PS4 side of the house. – Happy Xûr Day Guardians!