All the best DPS weapons in Destiny 2: Anarchy, Xenophage, more

DPS, or Damage Per Second, is one of the most important aspects of a weapon when trying to decide on a loadout for an endgame piece of content. If a Fireteam has a suboptimal damage loadout it can be a source of endless frustration when there simply isn't enough damage present to finish the encounter.

To make sure you are fully prepared to shred through bosses as quickly as possible here are some must have weapons.

Note that all the below damage tests were done on the Nightmare Ogre in the K1 Revelation Lost Sector on the Moon.

The Lament

In terms of burst DPS, The Lament is the absolute reigning champ at the present time. To take full advantage of this sword’s ludicrous damage there is a certain combo that needs to be done. Rev the blade up and then light attack three times to stack the ‘Banshee’s Wail’ buff up to x9, which will further increase damage. Follow up these three light attacks with a heavy attack for a huge damage spike.

When done correctly this short combo has a burst DPS value of almost 80k. This is a base DPS too so mods like Lucent Blade, which gives a 35% bonus to Sword damage when consuming a Charge of Light, will drastically increase this number. When most other Heavy weapons, including the former champ Falling Guillotine, hover around the 30-50k you can instantly see why The Lament is a great choice for shredding through stationary bosses such as Atraks-1 in the Deep Stone Crypt raid.

Cloudstrike

Sniper Rifles have been somewhat out of the DPS limelight since their PvE damage was nerfed in Season of the Worthy. Thankfully, a new Exotic Sniper called ‘Cloudstrike’ has been introduced with Beyond Light and it gives The Lament a run for its money.

When rapidly hitting three precision hits, Cloudstrike summons an electrical storm at the point of impact, dealing extra damage. When the weapon was first released it was believed by many that it would need to be three separate precision hits so that the lightning storm would only activate on the 3rd, and 6th round in the magazine. This is not the case.

To explain it simply, hits 1, 2 and 3 will activate a lightning storm, hits 2, 3 and 4 will activate another, hits 3, 4, and 5 for another and so on. Essentially if you are constantly hitting precision hits, the lightning storm will activate each time on rounds 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 instead of only rounds 3 and 6 like originally thought.

As each lightning storm does approximately 1.6x the damage of an individual bullet, the fact that there are 5 activations of this storm in each magazine obviously sky rockets the DPS.

If you are able to consistently hit crits, or use Divinity to create an easy to hit crit spot, Cloudstrike is able to achieve a burst DPS of almost 60k. The fact that this can almost match The Lament while only being a Special weapon means it's certainly something to consider.

Here is our guide on how to get Cloudstrike.

Slug Shotguns

Slug Shotguns are somewhat of an underrated DPS option and it was only recently with the World’s First Deep Stone Crypt completion that they have been discovered by a larger portion of the community.

For those of you unaware, during the World’s First race many teams were struggling to achieve enough DPS on the final boss Taniks in order to complete the encounter. Team Luminous had the smart idea to equip a Kinetic and Energy Slug Shotgun, with the Special Finisher mod for ammo, and they were soon able to take down Taniks.

Slug Shotguns such as First In Last Out, Bonechiller and Heritage are able to be used to great effect when what you need is some great short ranged DPS. In terms of perks, Assault Mag, Auto-Loading Holster and Vorpal Weapon is considered the ‘god roll’ for First In Last Out while perks like Reconstruction and Dual Loader work well on the others. Remember to equip a Boss Spec mod for extra damage.

A First In Last Out with the above roll and the Boss Spec mod will deal a touch over 40k DPS. If you combine First In Last Out with Heritage and hot swap between them while firing, this can lead to a DPS combo of over 55k.

Bonechiller can be acquired through Variks on Europa by completing the Europa Shotgun Weapon quest. These weapon quests are unlocked by completing the Sabotage quests.

First In Last Out is a part of the World loot pool and so can be acquired through Vendor engrams and Legendary drops.

Heritage can be acquired in the Deep Stone Crypt raid, specifically from the Atraks-1 encounter or the final chest.

Anarchy

The Scourge of the Past Exotic Grenade Launcher isn't a great DPS option in itself but since it has a ‘fire and forget’ type of function that deals damage over time, it is a great addition to any DPS build.

Anarchy fires electric rounds that stick onto surfaces. Once two or more are placed an electric field will be activated between the rounds. This electric field stays active for a short time and constantly deals damage to any enemies inside.

This means you are able to stick two rounds to a boss to create this field around them and are then able to switch to another weapon to deal damage on top of the damage that Anarchy will deal passively.

Anarchy only does a bit less than 15k DPS itself but is excellent for rounding out any kind of loadout focusing on Special weapon damage. For example Anarchy works great with a Slug Shotgun like First In Last Out leading to an easy to achieve 45-55k DPS range.

Since Anarchy is a reward from a vaulted raid it can only be acquired through the Monuments to Lost Lights Exotic Archive. This will set you back and Exotic Cipher, 150k Glimmer, 240 Spoils of Conquest, and 2 Ascendant Shards. Spoils of Conquest are a new currency that can be earned from completing raid encounters.

Xenophage

Xenophage makes this list as a kind of runner up in a way. This Exotic Machine Gun might not have the highest DPS with it only achieving 30k, but what it lacks in damage it makes up for in consistency.

With the other options on this list you either need to be up in the enemies face or need to reliably hit precision hits. If neither of those things happen the DPS is either zero or substantially reduced. With Xenophage you don't have to worry about range or hitting precision hits as each round is a small, localised explosion that is unable to crit.

This means that the max damage available from Xenophage is extremely easy to achieve and frankly quite hard to mess up. For a lot of people a consistent 30k DPS sounds a lot more pleasing than missing shots with the Cloudstrike and ending up with sub 10k DPS.

Check out our guide on how to get Xenophage.