Fighting Lion is an exotic grenade launcher in Destiny 2 that’s also an energy weapon. Its design is based on an interesting idea that is actually rather horrible in practice, as you can see in the video above by Patrick “Holtzmann” Casey.
Here’s the deal: Fighting Lion is supposed to knock out the shield of any enemy it hits, and then it’s instantly reloaded if you kill that enemy within the next few seconds. That’s pretty cool, right?
This system introduces the incentive to change the rhythm of combat by flipping back and forth between weapons. Used correctly against multiple shielded enemies, Fighting Lion should always have a grenade in the chamber.
So far, so good!
But it doesn’t do enough damage to actually remove a shield in one hit, and neither does the splash damage. Which means you fire a grenade and either wait for the gun to reload — which negates the entire point of a weapon that’s supposed to reload on its own — or switch to something else to worry about finishing off the enemy’s shield and its life bar quick enough to get the insta-reload perk.
It’s not fun, it’s not helpful ... it’s just annoying. Fighting Lion was designed to change how you approach certain situations, and more guns should aspire to that goal, but it feels like it was nerfed before it was even released.
If you find one in your travels, congratulations on the infusion you’re about to perform.
