Fighting Lion
"I call it the Zhang Fei. It hits almost as hard as I do." --Wei Ning
Type: Grenade Launcher
Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy
Element: Arc | Solar | Void
Perk: Delayed Gratification - Grenade projectiles will bounce off surfaces. Hold to fire and release to detonate.
Trait: Thin the Herd - Direct hits with this weapon do more damage to shielded enemy combatants. Rapid kills against grenade-damaged enemies will refill the magazine.
Masterworked Trait: Chimera - After this weapon fires, equipped Kinetic and Power weapons gain a brief period of increased handling and precision damage.
Ornaments: Jade Countenance, Lupus Visage, Prideglass
Origin & Description: Here’s the epic tale of Fighting Lion’s origin: once upon a time another Guardian beat the famous Titan Wei Ning in the Crucible by killing her with long-range weapons before she could close the distance and punch them to death in person. Wei Ning went home, complained to her partner Eriana-3, and then made Fighting Lion so she could punch people to death from far away, too. The end.
Fighting Lion works the same way that Titans do: it hits things and bounces off. And by “bounce” I mean hella bounce. A Fighting Lion grenade will start off sailing in whatever direction you pointed it, but after encountering any solid surface it feels free to experiment, find itself, chart its own course in life - at least until you release the trigger, at which point it goes kablam in a spectacular way. This is a blessing and a curse. It makes Fighting Lion super hard to learn, since it’s about as far from “apply directly to the enemy’s forehead” as you can get, but with practice players can bounce Fighting Lion grenades around corners and into the middle of crowds, or send them sailing across the battlefield and use the trigger release to detonate them right in the appropriate bad guy’s face. Plus Fighting Lion is just fun. Sending grenades careening randomly around the room is fun. Guardians, amirite?
Fighting Lion was added before the weapon slot changes in Forsaken separated slot from ammo type. When it was first created it lived in the Heavy slot; its intended playstyle involved hitting a target with a Fighting Lion round, then switching to a kinetic/energy weapon to finish them off. That’s why the trait references rapid kills against enemies damaged with it, and why the masterworked trait adds bonuses to your other weapons after firing this one. But when Forsaken shuffled things around, Fighting Lion ended up being more interesting for its slot and ammo type than for any synergy with other equipped weapons. See, Fighting Lion is one of the few grenade launchers not in the Heavy slot (it now lives in Energy) and the only one to use the abundant, standard Primary ammo instead of the scarcer Special ammo. And it’s guaranteed to cause enemies to drop Primary ammo on death, not that this is really needed since Primary ammo is about as rare as grass on a golf course. So while Fighting Lion’s reserves can only hold 16 shots, it has more or less infinite ammo, and with the catalyst its reload speed drops significantly.
Fighting Lion’s ornaments are mostly just cool looks. The Lupus Visage ornament is specifically tied to the Iron Banner event and changes the lion to a wolf, sigil of Iron Banner leader Lord Saladin Forge. The other two are just neat. I like to rock Prideglass myself.
Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum
[ Ace of Spades | Ager's Scepter | Anarchy | Arbalest | Bad Juju | Bastion | Black Talon | Borealis | Cerberus+1 | The Chaperone | Cloudstrike | Coldheart | Collective Obligation | The Colony | Crimson | Cryosthesia 77K | DARCI | Dead Man's Tale | Deathbringer | Dead Messenger | Devil's Ruin | Divinity | Duality | Edge of Action/Concurrence/Intent | Eriana’s Vow | Eyes of Tomorrow | Fighting Lion | The Fourth Horseman | Forerunner | Gjallarhorn | Grand Overture | Graviton Lance | Hard Light | Hawkmoon | Heartshadow | Heir Apparent | The Huckleberry | Izanagi’s Burden | The Jade Rabbit | Jötunn | The Lament | The Last Word | Legend of Acrius | Leviathan’s Breath | Lord of Wolves | Lorentz Driver | Lumina | Malfeasance | Merciless | MIDA Multi-Tool | Le Monarque | Monte Carlo | No Time to Explain | One Thousand Voices | Osteo Striga | Outbreak Perfected | Parasite | Polaris Lance | Prometheus Lens | The Prospector | Queenbreaker | Rat King | Riskrunner | Ruinous Effigy | Salvation's Grip | Skyburner’s Oath | Sleeper Simulant | Sturm | Sunshot | SUROS Regime | Sweet Business | Symmetry | Tarrabah | Telesto | Thorn | Thunderlord | Ticuu's Divination | Tommy's Matchbook | Tractor Cannon | Traveler's Chosen | Trespasser | Trinity Ghoul | Truth | Two-Tailed Fox | Vex Mythoclast | Vigilance Wing | The Wardcliff Coil | Wavesplitter | Whisper of the Worm | Wish-Ender | Witherhoard | Worldline Zero | Xenophage ]
