Exotics. They do some pretty cool stuff. Some of them anyway. And then there are the ones that not a lot
of people use and that's because they've been power crept completely out of the game. Today, I'd like to highlight 5 of those exotics,
discuss how they got power crept out of the game and if there's a way back for them. Originally, I was going to make 2 videos,
one about exotics that got power crept out of the game and one about exotics with cool
functions that I didn't wanna use. As I did more research, I came to realize
that the venn diagram of those things had a significant amount of overlap. So, for the purposes of this video, I'll give
a quick definition of power creep. Power creep is when something is put into
the game that is stronger than everything else, usually in an attempt to entice players. For example, let's say you have a thing that
does 100 damage and that's the most damage you can do with this thing. Bungie introduces something that deals 105
damage because they wanna give you a new, stronger thing to play with. It has power creeped past the thing that does
100 damage. Now imagine this goes on for years, that's
power creep in as short of an example as I can give. We're gonna start with a much less egregious
exotic, one that I might get some pushback on, and that is Felwinter's Helm, released
in Season 10. This is a helm that I felt had a lot of potential
when it first released and still probably does, but it just never got widespread use
in the game. I realize that the weaken effect is stronger
than void's weaken effect and that it's used in some speed run stuff, but otherwise, I
have not seen this being utilized by basically anyone in any sort of general use case. The ability works like this: you kill a target
with a powered melee or finisher and that creates an explosion that applies weakness
to targets around the target killed, with more powerful targets increasing the size
of the explosion and the duration of the effect. It also disorients targets for a very brief
time. So, in lower level content, it is easy to
see why this effect isn't the most popular: weakening low level targets is more or less
a waste of time because anything in seasonal content or easier activity just immediately
dies to everything. Mid level content is where this has a bit
more effectiveness as the weakening effect actually has value. However, weaken is an effect that is usually
a bit more targetted towards big enemies and less so on trash mobs, unless you're in the
highest difficulty content. So, trying to kill a weak enemy to get a debuff
on a big target is a little cumbersome when you could just focus your efforts on weakening
a big target directly. Weakness also loses a lot of value in higher
end content because there's a very high chance you are going to be using Divinity, which
has more or less ruined any concept of trying to use weakness in high end content: why bother
using this exotic and put yourself in a position to die when you can just do it better from
farther away? It's almost like this exotic was power crept
on before it even came out. And now, with the revamped Void subclass,
we have much more access to weakness than previous, including Child of the Old Gods,
which is incredibly popular, reliable, although not as strong in effect. Finally, when it comes to exotic selection,
there are simply more reliable exotics depending on your subclass when it comes to buildcrafting:
Contraverse Hold, Phoenix Protocol, Crown of Tempest and Osmoimancy Gloves to name one
for each individual subclass. I tried two builds for Felwinter's Helm in
a solo Master Lost Sector, one revolving around spam finishers and the other utilizing Celestial
Fire and stacking melee buffs. In higher end content such as Master Lost
Sectors, I prefered the finisher build because of Void's Echo of Obscurity to allow me to
ping pong back and forth between targets safely. Celestial Fire's damage and range were a roadblock
to consistency unless I was point blank range, which can't always happen. The easier the content gets though, the easier
machine gunning Celestial Fire melees becomes and you don't need the invisibility effects
of Void since you're not likely to be in any real danger. I think this holds true for group content
as well, the harder the group content, the more you may want to push towards finishers
with Void vs. Celestial Fire melee spam. Overall though, Felwinter's Helm is an exotic
from a time before the subclass changes and I think has just been power crept out of relevance,
not that it had that much to begin with. Again, I know this helm has been used as recently
as this season, but that's for solo Duality Caiatl one phase speedrunning. Going out on a limb here and saying the majority
of y'all are not doing that. Outside of very niche and specific use cases,
this is an exotic that had to contend against Divinity in end game group content and now
has to contend with Child of the Old Gods. The weaken effect isn't as strong, but Child
offers way more convenience. Titans, let's go to you, I promise these next
few exotics aren't going to take as long to discuss. Initially, I had Khepri's Horn on the list,
but I don't think it's been power crept so much as it's just not very good. Mask of the Quiet One however, I don't think
has ever had relevance in the game's history, being a launch exotic, Season 1. Receiving damage gives you ability energy
and kills while you are critical will heal you. Which, if I just read it that way, sounds
like a pretty good passive exotic, what's not to like? Well, the ability regeneration can be hard
to notice in the heat of battle. Sure, when you're staring directly at it,
it's easy to see how much energy you're getting and it's definitely not NOTHING, but considering
the multitude of weays we are able to get ability energy back, the effect is not really
that important. It's much better in lower end content vs.
higher end as well, since you can actually take a lot of hits and can proc the effect
much more often vs. Master content. The healing effect is not terrible, I'll give
it that. When you're critical, you heal your health
on kill. It is an instant effect, it's not a restoration
or anything like that, which means it's not suseptible to being hit immediately after. But then we take a look at something like
Loreley's, which, especially in Season 17, is just so much better in every way. It procs automatically, it gives you heal
over time that is not interrupted and it spawns a Sunspot which happens to give you ability
energy at the same time. I know it consumes your class ability, but
most of the time, you can get that back very quickly. Can you use Mask of the Quiet One on any subclass,
yes, of course. But ultimately, it's main problem is that
it just doesn't really lead people into any sort of a build. It simply exists on you passively in the background,
it doesn't progress you towards some sort of ability combo or anything like that. It is boring to equip considering the plethora
of tools we have today to make us do really cool stuff and was power crept many times
over by many things. In PvE, we are trending very hard towards
subclass specific exotics and this doesn't enhance anything. If it is to be revamped, it needs to actually
lead towards something. Vesper of Radius is an exotic that I've always
wanted to be relevant in some way, but it's just never had the strength that I thought
it needed to be good in the past. Casting rift creates an arc shockwave around
targets and being surrounded gives you rift energy. Rift knockback is a thing that I've always
thought was pretty cool. Vesper of Radius came out in Season 2, Curse
of Osiris, which was a very different game compared to today. It is a prime example of something that has
been literally power crept out of relevance by something else that does the exact same
thing, but better, and that is Frostpulse, a Stasis fragment. Frostpulse freezes targets around you when
you cast your Rift. Now, if you wanted to combine them, it's actually
pretty fun freezing and then exploding a bunch of enemies surrounding you. The arc damage portion ended up dealing more
damage than I remembered doing as well. This footage is from the legendary campaign,
which is 15 levels under and I was still killing orange bar targets... sometimes. The last time I tested this, I'm pretty sure
this got a dreg on the EDZ to half health, so this was a pleasant surprise. The energy regen is quite noticeable when
you are surrounded, but there are definitely safer ways to regenerate your class ability
energy. But this is obviously not something that should
be used offensively in anything remotely difficult, what I'm doing right now isn't really the
smartest way to be killing things. It is supposed to be a defensive based exotic
for when you get swarmed. There's no problem with that, but there hasn't
been a need to equip defensive exotics recently thanks to our firepower, defense through offense
has been Destiny's M.O. (modus operandi, today I learned) for a while
now. Most of the meta exotics today are offensive
in nature, maybe save for Ursa Furiosa, but that defense directly leads to more offense
for your team. After going back and actually playing with
Vesper of Radius and seeing that its damage has been dramatically increased, I don't think
much actually needs to be done to it other than maybe integrating it into Arc 3.0. But the fact of the matter is: you can get
Frostpulse, which provides a very similar effect, which also works with your Stasis
fragments, while allowing you to run a different exotic. Until we have more situations where playing
defense is actually important beyond standing behind cover, this will continue stay in the
background. Next, we have Sealed Ahamkara Grasps, an exotic
that's been around since D1 and came back in Season 3. Dealing melee damage reloads your currently
equipped weapon. You also gain a large benefit to airborne
effectiveness for all weapons for 5 seconds after dealing melee damage, which, while nice,
feels almost irrelevant to the success of the exotic. This is an exotic that technically has been
power crept on, but has also had to live in a world where Hunters have had Celestial Nighthawk,
Raiden Flux, Orpheus Rig, and Stompees, which, I will remind you, are all exotics that LAUNCHED
IN SEASON 1. These gloves on the other hand give you Grave
Robber. But, with the void and solar subclass revamps,
these have a bit more of a chance nowadays. With Void 3.0, you can combo this with Stylish
Executioner since void's melee is a smoke bomb and is otherwise just a knife stab. Stab for weakness, shotgun something to death,
invisi, stab, gun reloads, etc. On SOLAR 3.0, that's where you can make a
bit more happen thanks to Knock 'em Down. Knifes are ranged, so you don't need to right
next to a target in order to proc a reload for Sealed Ahamkara. Plus, if you kill something, you then get
your melee back for another reload, although Sealed Ahamkara does have an internal cooldown
of a few seconds, so you're not able to spam the reload effect that quickly. If you're fighting a boss, the boss isn't
gonna die to your melee, which makes it good for a reload or two before running out of
steam. Viable? Sure. Have I seen them? Not really. But, the thing that has power crept this exotic
out of the way is not another exotic, not an aspect, but a fragment from Stasis, Whisper
of Impetus, which reloads all of your weapons when you hit with a Stasis melee, which is
also ranged. Stasis is pretty good considering the Supreme
Wellmaker, Font of Might DPS strategy, with Reed's Regret still being one of the best
DPS options in the game for raid bosses. And again, this is a fragment. I was pleasantly surprised with Sealed Ahamkara
and the new Solar 3.0 layout though, there may be a shred of life still in these things. Hunters, I'm hitting you again, Khepri's Sting. When you have full melee energy, if you punch
something, you cast Smoke Bomb and you gain Truesight. Also, your smoke bombs deal increased damage. I hesitate to say that this exotic is completely
worthless, because technically speaking, it's not. I hesitated to put this on my list because
initially, it felt like a PvP kind of exotic, but, it does technically fit the description
of an exotic that was power crept out of the game. I know what you're thinking and yes, the whole
wallhacks situation is still very much alive with Khepri's and smoke bomb. I don't know anyone who is doing it, but it
is alive. You equip Khepri's, you use Trapper's Ambush
to divebomb, exploding the smoke bomb and bam, there are your wallhacks for 3 seconds. This used to be longer, but Bungie has really
toned down the wallhack stuff. And as far as I can tell, this is the only
utility they have in the entire game. Every other method of trying to get truesight
from these gloves is basically worthless. And you're also really only using 1 of the
3 parts of the exotic, this exotic might as well read: use Trapper's Ambush to gain 3
seconds of truesight. When it comes to the PvE side of the game,
these have been power crept out of existence by Trapper's Ambush, not that they were ever
relevant there to begin with. Trapper's Ambush does a sweet dive bomb thing,
it feels like the AoE effect is bigger, it makes you invisible, unlike Khepri's Sting
on its own, it also makes your teammates invisible and if you combine it with Stylish Executioner,
there's your truesight, not that truesight is worth that much in PvE, but Stylish leads
into comboing the rest of the Hunter kit. Also, you need to mess with your keybinds
if you're someone who changed their melee functionality because you need to use an uncharged
melee while you have a melee charge. If you're set to use your charged melee no
matter what, you need to go back to the original functionality of melee attacks. The only reason Khepri's Sting is allowed
to exist in some capacity is because of the 3 seconds of truesight that you can get from
it in PvP, that is it. 33% of the exotic in Crucible and Trials,
that's the only place it's good. And people are still using nerfed Stompees
anyway. It has no ornaments either, that's how close
it is to being able to be deleted from the game. No one has had the ability to even spend money
on this. What could you even do to make Khepri's Sting
relevant? I think you need to completely rebuild the
perk from the ground up, whatever that entails. Obviously you want to try to keep it melee
focused, but Stylish Executioner exists, which does a pretty good job of the whole "meleeing
stuff while invisible," shtick. Maybe you make it enhance Stylish, maybe want
to include some sort of poison effect on there as well, but... I dunno, this is one where it's been power
crept SO hard that there's no enhancing the effect or anything, you just need to redo
the perk entirely. There are definitely more exotics that have
been power crept out of the game and more exotics that need a dramatic amount of buffs. I'm gonna start working on a power creep video
at some point soon, but these were just some exotics that I think need some love along
with many, many others that maybe haven't been power crept, but just simply have no
good use in the game today. We've taken some of the biggest jumps in power
over the past few months so, gonna be interesting to see how the game ends up handling this
over the next year or so. That's all for me, thanks for watching, I'll
see you next time.
