Everything You Need to Know About Destiny 2’s Newest Exotic – The Manticore

The Season of The Seraph has arrived and with it has come a whole host of new, lore-rich quests, questionable allies, ferocious enemies, and more importantly, weapons. Each season brings a new exotic comes to the game, with the Season of Plunder introducing the fusion rifle, Delicate Tomb. But The Season of The Seraph has brought to the hands of guardians a new submachine gun dubbed The Manticore.

This name is likely a mythological reference that will soon extend to Destiny 2’s larger theme, as we’ve already had allusions to Nephele, a cloud nymph. Even its lore, which describes a psychic battle between Queen Mara Sov and Hive God Xivu Arath has decidedly mythological leanings.

Everything You Need to Know About Destiny 2’s Newest Exotic – The Manticore

But in terms of its stats and attributes, The Manticore is a Void energy weapon with the Intrinsic Trait Soaring Fang. With Soaring Fang, when damage is dealt while grounded, The Manticore will charge Antigrav Repulsors. Dealing damage while airborne extends the length of the Antigrav Repulsors.

What does this mean? When using The Manticore, you’ll notice a bar on the left side of your screen that says Antigrav Repulsor. As you shoot and do damage on the ground, it will fill. But to actually use this resource, you’ll need to jump into the air and do damage. Doing so will allow you to stay afloat and even move through the air, so long as you’re doing damage. The amount of time you’re in the air is limited to an unseen cooldown as well as the amount of energy you have in the Antigrav Repulsor bar.

This ability allows you to gain cover you might not otherwise have had access to or net some cheeky kills in the Crucible.

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The Manticore’s perks are Arrowhead Brake, which greatly controls recoil and increases its handling speed, Ricochet Rounds, which increases stability and slightly increases range, Swooping Talons, which increases the damage dealt while airborne, and Fitted Stock, which increases stability, moderately controls recoil, and slightly decreases handling speed.

Like most submachine guns, its handling and aim assistance are high, and it has the potential output of 900 rounds per minute. But despite having a recoil direction of 100, its stability mid-range is perfectly manageable.

Will The Manticore become meta this season? Time will tell. But its intrinsic trait is a fun gimmick at the very least.