These are the best Grenade Launchers in Destiny 2 – and by extension the best Add-clear weapons in Destiny 2. GLs have been dominating the META since Season of Arrivals – that’s longer than most of you have been playing. I’ve been around the PvE scene since then, so when I tell you that these weapons are all S-tier, I’m not exaggerating.
If you’re a PvE player, make sure you’ve got at least a handful of these in your Vault. If not, you’ve got a lot of farming to do.
Witherhoard
Element: Kinetic
Source: Monument to Lost Light
Best For: PvE
Witherhoard is my most used weapon in Destiny 2, and I’m going to assume many of you are the same. This Kinetic GL rocked the META when it was introduced – so much so that things have never been the same. Witherhoard has constantly been an S-tier pick in all activities since Season of Arrivals and is still at the top of the charts in Lightfall.
Firing a shot with Witherhoard will spawn a pool of Taken Blight where the shot lands. This Taken Blight deals incredible tick damage, and that synergizes perfectly with Auto-Loading Holster added by the Catalyst. You can fire a Witherhoard shot, switch to your heavy, and get the benefit of the tick damage and your DPS weapon’s damage – and that’s not even mentioning how good it is at killing Adds.
Parasite
Element: Solar
Source: Witch Queen Exotic Mission
Best For: Burst DPS
Parasite is the best burst DPS in Destiny 2 – and that’s a hill I’ll die on. For those unaware, getting kills with other weapons will cause Parasite to start building a buff called Worm’s Hunger. This buff maxes out at x20 and increases your damage with each stack – consuming all your stacks every time you fire the weapon. Losing the stacks means Parasite is terrible for long DPS, but is a single-shot monster.
I can’t think of many other weapons that can one-shot a Champion upwards of Master difficulty, but Parasite can. You can bring it into Lost Sectors, Raids, GMs, it doesn’t matter. If you need to hit something really hard really quick, there is no better option than this heavy Grenade Launcher.
Forbearance
Element: Arc
Source: Vow of the Disciple Raid
Best For: Add-clear
Was there ever any doubt that this would make the top three? While I do think there’s a genuine argument for this being in the first spot on this list, I think Witherhoard offers more overall utility and value. That being said, Forbearance may just be the single best Add-clear special weapon in all of Destiny 2.
It’s a Wave Frame GL, and it rolls with Chain Reaction. So, you get the increased damage radius from the Wave Frame shot, and everything killed by the wave will explode while triggering Chain Reaction. You can shoot one grenade on the ground across a room, and everything in the room will go boom. This GL is so good, it’s worth finding a Vow of the Disciple LFG for it alone.
Salvager’s Salvo
Element: Arc
Source: Monument to Lost Light
Best For: Add-clear
Pinnacle weapons have been fairly hit or miss over the years. Out of all those hits, none has had such a long-lasting impact on the META as Salvager’s Salvo. This Arc GL came with intrinsic Ambitious Assassin/Chain Reaction. Keep in mind that this was during a pre-subclass 3.0 sandbox, too – so it had no Voltshot or Incandescent to contend with.
While it may have been power crept by those aforementioned perks, there’s no denying Salvager’s Silo is still one of the best Grenade Launchers in Destiny 2 to this day. If you’re ever running an activity with a lot of Arc shields – like Harpies, this should be your go-to Add-clear choice. It can hang with the best of them despite having no subclass synergy, and that’s a testament to how powerful it is.
Harsh Language
Element: Void
Source: World loot pool
Best For: Add-clear
Forbearance has the benefit of being a Wave Frame with Chain Reaction. Harsh Language is a play on that, except you’ve got Destabilizing Rounds instead. If you don’t know what this new Lightfall perk does, it causes enemies near final blows to become Volatile. As we’ve already established, a perk like this on a Wave Frame is an instant recipe for one of the best Grenade Launchers in Destiny 2.
You don’t have the immediate gratification of Chain Reaction, but Volatile is a far superior form of Add-clear. Two shots from this thing will wipe rooms out, and it synergizes will all of your Void 3.0 goodness. If you’ve been struggling to let your Forbearance go, consider trying to swap to this and ease that pain.
Prodigal Return
Element: Arc
Source: Defiant Battlegrounds
Best For: Add-clear
Prodigal Return is a new GL added with Season of Defiance and Lightfall. Unlike its Arc predecessors, it doesn’t roll Chain Reaction. Instead, it rolls something far more interesting – Voltshot. As you might expect, Voltshot fits perfectly on a GL, given that you need to reload to proc Voltshot, and you reload after every shot with a launcher anyways.
The result is simply a whole lot of Jolted enemies, and rooms of dead red bars. Whether or not it’s better than Chain Reaction is up to you – it comes with Arc 3.0 synergy, but arguably at the cost of some Add-clear depending on how strong you think Voltshot is. Either way, this is one to craft before Season of Defiance leaves us.
Regnant
Element: Void
Source: Season of Defiance Activities
Best For: Boss DPS
Once upon a time, back in Season 19, everybody was clamoring over themselves to get a god roll Wendigo going into Lightfall. Most people assumed we’d be in a heavy Grenade Launcher META, and Wendigo has Auto-Loading Holster and Explosive Light – making it the best of the archetype. That is, until Lightfall dropped, and Regnant dropped with it.
Who needs Auto-Loading when you’ve got Envious Assassin? This was a new perk that overflowed the weapon’s magazine when you got kills with other weapons. It’s a mix of Auto-Loading and Clown Cartridge, and Regnant rolled it with Explosive Light. So, you can load up 10+ nades in your drum, and empty that entire mag with Explosive Light damage. It’s some of the best DPS in the game right now.
Wendigo GL3
Element: Arc
Source: Nightfalls
Best For: Boss DPS
Speaking of Wendigo – it gets slotted in directly under Regnant because it’s simply a slightly worse version of that Grenade Launcher. Both GLs offer the incredible damage added by Explosive Light, but Envious Assassin is simply better than Auto-Loading Holster.
Despite that, you can still expect to see plenty of these out in the wild. They may not be 100% optimal, but the Wendigo still outputs META damage, especially when you combine its Auto-Loading with something like Izanagi’s Burden – a strategy that Regnant can’t pull off nearly as seamlessly.
Ignition Code
Element: Kinetic
Source: Dares of Eternity
Best For: High-end PvE
Up until now, we’ve only really talked about Add-clear and DPS GLs. Ignition Code is the first entry on this list to break that mold. Rather than being broken in everyday activities, Ignition Code is a utility pick that is bad in most situations, but S-tier in Master and Grandmaster content.
Why? Ignition Code is one of a few Kinetic GLs that rolls with Disorienting Grenades. This perk turns your nades into suppression machines – one explosion will blind an entire room of Adds for a few seconds, and that’s invaluable in high-level content. What’s more, it also rolls Slideshot, so you can literally run, slide, and shoot your way through a GM, if you want to.
Anarchy
Element: Arc
Source: Monument to Lost Light
Best For: PvE
Anarchy’s day in the sun may be long past, but I still think it’s usable enough to justify a low spot on this list. It can’t compete with the best Grenade Launchers in Destiny 2, especially as an Exotic, but I do think there are use cases in which it shines.
In particular, Anarchy offers tick damage similar to Witherhoard, meaning Warlocks will be able to regen their Fusion Grenades from it. It also deals Arc damage and can take advantage of Surge modifiers, and synergizes incredibly well when GLs have Champion mods. Anarchy isn’t king of the hill anymore, but don’t be afraid to take it out of your Vault every now and again.
Fighting Lion
Element: Void
Source: Exotic Engrams
Best For: PvE and PvP
People are seriously sleeping on Fighting Lion – especially now that we have such easy access to Volatile Rounds. In both PvE and PvP, having a Void Grenade Launcher with infinite ammo is incredible. This thing single-handedly got me through the Crucible for the Witherhoard Catalyst. In PvE, it’s a staple of my Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk build.
There’s nothing fancy or elegant about this GLs effectiveness. It has infinite ammo, meaning infinite explosions. Throw Volatile on top of that for even more explosions, and everything dies any time you fire a shot from this thing. Don’t believe me? Run it for yourself and tell me I’m wrong.
Wilderflight is odd. I’m giving it the final spot on this list as a commemoration for it being a proof of concept, rather than a world-beating GL in its own right. It’s a Double Fire Grenade Launcher, meaning it fires two grenades at one, per shot. It’s the only one of its kind, and that’s notable.
Wilderflight doesn’t have any insane Add-clear perks to fully take advantage of that, but there are some interesting rolls that are worth playing around with. Get a feel for how Double Fire launchers play – with any luck we’ll see some more examples of this frame type in the future, because it has the potential to be great.
Conclusion
That’s it for what I consider to be the 12 best Grenade Launchers in Destiny 2 as of the year of Lightfall. GLs are dominating the PvE META, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. If you take PvE even the slightest bit seriously, you’ll want a handful of these sitting in your Vault ready to go whenever you need them.
