Destiny: Weapon Slots and Available Weapons

Destiny offers a wide variety of weapons that fill one of three slots. The three slots available for weapon equips are Primary, Special, and Heavy. Each weapon has its own focus, as such, it allows for custom playstyles. Just remember, each individual weapon will have its variations. While the type has its theme, the individual weapons might differ greatly.

Primary Weapons:

So far I’ve encountered four primary weapon types: Hand Canon, Scout Rifle, Pulse Rifle, and Auto Rifle.

Hand Canon: These heavy powered handguns have the highest damage capacity of a single shot. Unfortunately, Hand Canons sacrifice fire rate, accuracy, magazine capacity and ammo capacity. The reason I say this gun type has low accuracy although you can still pick off enemies from far off is there is no sight, and the LED aim light is very hard to see. This gun works well for frontline Titans.

Auto Rifle: This is the opposite end of the spectrum. This gun has the highest average fire rate, magazine capacity, and ammo capacity. The recoil effect of the Auto Rifle affects the accuracy, but not as badly as that of the Hand Canon.

Scout Rifle: This is the most balanced primary weapon. It has above average range, accuracy, and damage. This is the perfect gun for a Hunter going down the gunslinger path. This gun sacrifices magazine capacity and total ammo capacity.

Pulse Rifle: This gun is about halfway between a Scout Rifle and an Auto Rifle. From what I’ve seen on the Pulse Guns I’ve had, each shot fires three times at about the rate of a Scout Rifle equivalent. It has less damage than the Scout Rifle and more accuracy than the Auto Rifle.

Special Weapons:

So far I only know of three weapons in this category: Shotgun, Sniper Rifle and Fusion Rifle.

Sniper Rifle: The range is higher than the Scout Rifle, while the damage is higher than the Hand Canon. The downside to the Sniper Rifle is the low magazine and ammo capacity. They are worse than that of the Hand Canon.

Fusion Rifle: This is basically a charged energy gun. This weapon has a charge time when firing, as well as a large recoil. If it connects it does heavy damage, but it’s not very effective against mobile or close range targets.

Shotgun: What this gun lacks in accuracy it makes up for with a large scatter radius. It’s best used in close proximity to insure all hits count. A full hit is decently powerful, but each individual hit is about on par with a single bullet of a Pulse Rifle. Frontline Titans have the potential to make the best use of this weapon allowing for Hunters and Warlocks to keep their distance.

Heavy Weapons:

I’ve only come across two heavy weapons so far: Rocket Launcher and Machine Gun.

Machine Gun: While you don’t have the ammo capacity of the Auto Rifle, the magazine Capacity is greater. This gun is great for sustained damage when you find an opening, assuming you can keep it on target. It’s very hard to aim to to the high fire rate and low stability.

 Rocket Launcher: By far the most destructive weapon I’ve run across. This weapon has a very low ammo capacity, but makes up for it with heavy explosion damage. To put into comparison, my Rocket Launcher does about 5 times the damage of my Hand Canon on my Titan, this is only calculating a single hit. With the blast damage, one shot does the work of several shots from other guns.

That wraps it up for known weapon types that I’ve seen so far in Destiny. If I run across another, I’ll be sure to add it in.