Trials of Osiris is taking place on Multiplex this weekend in Destiny 2, and with the longer sightlines, scout rifles have been thrust into the spotlight. That spotlight has led some players to unearth an otherwise unacknowledged monster in the current sandbox—Fang of Ir Yût, from Crota’s End.
“If you feel like you’re getting deleted this weekend in Trials of Osiris by a Fang of Ir Yût scout rifle, you probably are,” said Destiny 2 content creator illPhysics. It’s not a particularly popular weapon. Not only would it require a lot of Crota’s End runs to acquire the pattern for it, but scout rifles have long been overlooked in the Crucible. But as shown in illPhysics’ post, a player using Fang of Ir Yût with Enhanced Precision Instrument has a shockingly quick optimal time-to-kill of 0.7 seconds against any opponent with T9 Resilience or lower.
There are other weapons capable of similar efficacy, but the crucial difference is that Fang of Ir Yût is a Rapid-Fire Frame scout rifle. Not only can it kill fast, but it can kill from long range as well. It didn’t take long for other players to begin testing out the gun for themselves with the roll, which only made the gravity of the situation more glaring. “Something should not four tap this fast from fucking narnia,” wrote content creator MattGoesBuck, with a clip showing just how handily the scout rifle could dispatch its victims at a distance. “This is going to be a bad meta.”
Fortunately for Destiny 2 fans, not a lot of players are going to have this weapon. It’s already a tall order to grind out a raid weapon’s pattern, and if you’re a Guardian who spends the majority of their time in PvP, the whole idea of committing time to such an endeavor isn’t appealing. But it isn’t the only scout rifle capable of catching opponents off guard like this, and its contemporaries are far easier to get.
The discussion around Fang of Ir Yût has expanded outward to include other underrated picks like Hung Jury SR4 and Randy’s Throwing Knife with Box Breathing, which requires a small amount of setup but can hit the same devastating 0.7-second time-to-kill bar. Even the season nine Exotic Symmetry received some spotlight on social media, with Bungie’s associate weapons designer Mercules chiming in about there being a reason for why he has 10,000 kills in the Crucible with it.
The more worrying news for anyone concerned by the prospect of a scout rifle meta in the sandbox is that Destiny 2 is yet to receive Update 7.3.6. In the patch, Bungie is simultaneously nerfing Precision Frame auto rifles and buffing the base damage of Rapid-Fire Frame scout rifles by two percent. It isn’t a large increase on paper, but considering how strong Rapid-Fire Frames like Fang of Ir Yût already appear to be with the right perks equipped, the last thing they need is another buff.
The strength of these weapons will inevitably ebb and flow depending on the size of the currently active maps. When it comes to a map like Cauldron, taking a scout rifle over The Summoner or Igneous Hammer is most likely a death sentence. But it’s clear these guns aren’t to be taken lightly, and you should probably check your vault to see if there’s a god roll Fang of Ir Yût in there that’s been collecting cobwebs.
