I’m starting up a new little awards show here where I go through the year of Destiny 2, make up categories and give out internet trophies that mean nothing. Here are The Destinies, focused on the best and worst of Destiny 2 in 2025.
Best Exotic Weapon – Praxic Blade
I mean, if you’re going to do a Star Wars expansion, best to not make its lightsaber suck, right? Besides being built into the seasonal artifact and armor perks, the infinite ammo, high damage, elemental effect applying superweapon has no real comparison point in the game right now, and using another special or another exotic often feels like a handicap.
Best Legendary Weapon – Mint Retrograde
Rocket sidearms took the game by storm when they arrived, and here we are with rocket pulse rifles, which did the same in 2025. Mint Retrograde was and still is everything from a serious DPS dealer in raids and dungeons to casual mob clearing with Chain Reaction. We got a new arc rocket pulse with Renegades so now people are using…double rocket pulse. But Mint remains the OG.
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Best Build – Buddy Warlock
The change to make Warlock “buddies” count as grenades blew this kind of build wide open, given that you can now do things like a Getaway Artist build that instantly amplifies you and jolts everything you look at. Scaling up grenade stat buffs all the buddies, and you are free to just run around doing as much or as little as you want as they kill everything.
Most “How Did This Pass QA” Build – Nothing Manacles Warlock
I don’t know if I would call this “broken,” but with the level of mob density has reached in activities like Lawless Frontier, using 98% of weapons often seems pointless when a build like this, in which a scatter grenade can clear a few dozen enemies in a room, exists in the current state of the game. It’s legitimately hilarious.
Best Subclass – Prismatic
There are just too many tools in this toolkit. Whenever a subclass is buffed in some way, it almost always filters back to X or Y being inserted into the much more flexible Prismatic class rather than just doing a straight elemental class build. That has only been amplified as of late by things like say, that buddy build above, and many more past that. All three of my classes have been running Prismatic this whole season.
Worst Subclass – Stasis
Not to say it’s useless, but it has been neglected for a long time now, and most recently, got its ability to stun Unstoppable champions with shatter taken away because of one poorly balanced weapon perk. Stasis may always have its place, but it’s just lagging so far behind most of the time.
Best New Character – Lodi
I don’t know who I thought this random guy with glasses was going to be when he was first previewed in Edge of Fate, but he’s a fascinating, endearing character that also happens to have some of the finest voicework in the game, thanks to actor Brian Villalobos. I’d say Bael is second place here, almost by default, but he’s a touch too whiny for me.
Best Moment – Dead III
The Edge of Fate had its problems, but it also had a “holy shit” campaign moment that I had not felt since I rounded the corner and saw the pyramid for the first time under the moon in Shadowkeep. Here, we finally see a physical form of one of the Nine, III, the form being a corpse sprawling across space. It of course had major plot implications, but that first visual, wow.
Worst Moment – Ash and Iron Launch
Yes, the mid-season update as a whole, but also just how it was introduced, with a truly bizarre “Vex invade the Tower” mission that made no sense in the context of the game (where did everyone go? Why is no one talking about this?) and things did not get any better when we moved into the “story” of the actual activities of the expansion. This update launch was probably the low point of the year, in all honesty, and when many tapped out entirely.
Worst Game Addition – The Portal
The Portal may have been fine on its own as a centralized place to find activities, but basing the entire game around it, its modifiers, and its power grind made players lose hope about the future of the game if this is what it was going to be during the 5.5 months of dead time between expansions.
Best Game Addition – Universal Exotic Ornaments
Small victories when you can get them. Forget Tier 5 loot, give me universal exotic armor ornaments, which can now apply any exotic look for a slot across any exotic, making fashion much easier to work with and increasing the value of any ornaments you do shell out for dramatically.
Worst Destination Power – Matterspark
The idea of designing a certain power for a certain map and nowhere else isn’t great, but it doesn’t help when it’s impossibly lame. Matterspark was the most “this does not feel like Destiny at all” gameplay component I can remember in the game, even if it could be tactically useful when super upgraded. Just awful all around.
Best Destination Power – Strand Pike
The overall point here is that the Renegades destination powers are as good as the Edge of Fate ones were bad. I mean, the majority of them are very fun, and people may be surprised I didn’t pick the AT-ST or drop pod, but man, the Strand Pike is crazy. Maxed out, it has a long lifespan, solid health, multiple charges, and it does wild damage even on max levels, shredding rooms and bosses faster than anything else could. It can even suspend AI and Invader AT-STs with a button press. I love it.
Worst Decision – Portal 450 Power Grind
In terms of actual gameplay asks, Bungie deciding that The Portal should serve as a gateway to an absolutely tedious grind to 450 power and all-Tier 5 loot was one of the most brutal things ever put in the game. I don’t know a single person who did the soul-crushing grind to 450 in the first half of Edge of Fate and said others should do it. It was so bad that Bungie had to change essentially everything and break their entire loop to make sure that kind of grind didn’t happen again.
Best Decision – Renegades Portal Sidelining
That played into this, where The Portal has taken a backseat to well, pretty much everything else in the game now. You can grind for power and loot in Renegades Lawless Frontier activities. You can grind for power, different loot and materials in new Vanguard Alerts. There is little, if any, reason to play content in The Portal at all now, meaning you can farm pretty much whatever you want and get the best loot in the game, not even touching it at all.
That’s all folks, see you next year! I’d like to thank Tex Mechanica for sponsoring this event.
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