Merciless is one of the oldest Exotic weapons in Destiny 2, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a major community talking point in Season of the Seraph after buffs from Bungie turned it into one of the most potent options for boss damage in the game.
Those buffs are a fairly big deal, removing many of the roadblocks that prevented Merciless from fulfilling the boss DPS role it was originally built for. The heavily decreased charge time it develops on successive hits now no longer resets when you get a kill or reload, meaning you can continuously apply rapid damage with the weapon with no need to ramp it up again every few seconds. Instead, it now works on a five-second timer, one that refreshes every time you land a hit, which you’ll be doing a lot on a boss.
As testing by the content creator Aztecross proved, this in combination with its other Exotic Trait Impetus—which increases the weapon’s damage when reloading after a kill—has turned Merciless into one of the best weapons in the game for dealing damage to big targets as long as those targets are close enough.
How to get Merciless in Destiny 2
Merciless has a number of avenues for acquisition, but it’s a difficult weapon to reliably farm for. This is because it’s an Exotic world drop, which means it needs to be randomly acquired during gameplay or as a reward at the end of certain activities. Your best bet for finding Merciless is to farm high level Nightfall strikes, which regularly award Exotic Engrams as a reward upon completion with a Platinum rank.
If your luck isn’t allowing you to strike gold though, the alternative avenue is Xûr. Xûr is something of an Exotic black market vendor that appears somewhere in Destiny 2 every weekend. His location changes, as does his stock, but what is always guaranteed is that he will sell Exotic Engrams for Legendary Shards and he will have one random Exotic weapon on offer as well. Merciless is one of the potential Exotic weapons he could feature, so check in with him regularly if world drops aren’t your friend.
How to get the Merciless Catalyst in Destiny 2
If you want to maximize Merciless’s potential, you’ll need the weapon’s Catalyst. The Merciless Catalyst increases both the weapon’s range and stability by 36, which improves the distance of its damage falloff and makes it easier to land all of the fusion rifle’s bolts onto your target. The base range of Merciless won’t cut it when facing off against the majority of boss enemies in Destiny 2, which means the Catalyst is almost a requirement.
You can find the Merciless Catalyst as a random drop at the end of Nightfall Strikes. A number of other Exotic Catalysts, such as the one for Cloudstrike, are also part of this reward pool. That does mean you might have to grind a bit to earn it if you get unlucky, but it will be well worth the time invested.
Once you have the Catalyst, 500 kills with Merciless is the requirement to slot it and activate its benefits. It’s recommended that you farm for those kills in encounters such as the opening area for the Grasp of Avarice dungeon where it’s quick and easy to get such a large amount of final blows that could otherwise be tedious to obtain.
