Why don't primary exotics do elemental damage?

It wouldn't impact the crusible and elemental damage becomes an essential part of PvE beyond the normal raid end game. You get legendary primary raid weapons that do elemental damage rendering the sometimes lackluster primary exotics (thorn, bad juju) even more useless in PvE. If you've got a primary with elemental damage matching a skull on a weekly strike or nightfall, there is no reason to equip an exotic. If you have a primary matching the shield of though enemies in a particular mission with or without the epic modifier, there is no reason to equip an exotic primary.

Some have complained exotic primaries are under powered compared to exotic secondaries and exotic heavies. When you factor in the raid legendaries being objectively better in PvE there is no reason you should use your only exotic slot for an exotic primary in PvE and that's kind of dumb.

I am using Thorn and really enjoy using it. It's just the reload time that sucks.

@zevvion: It's really good looking, makes cool sounds and the damage over time is a cool feature. It's just not viable in a high lvl PvE context. You put 6 shots into hard enemies with Thorn and they don't even flinch. Then you have to reload for half an hour. I'm not even sure you can bring down a shank with the epic modifier using all 6 shots. By comparison, the raid scout rifle kills those things in 3-4 shots. It has 27 in the magazine if it's upgraded.

Really looking forward to the buff they're suppose to give thorn. Maybe it'll become great because it's really not right now.

It is kinda stupid that the exotics you get from exotic bounties feel way less powerful than legendary primary weapons and this is something Bungie said they will be addressing in a future update (specifically calling out Thorn and Bad Juju as weapons they are looking to buff up and telling people not to dismantle them). I too am disappointed by the lack of elemental primary weapons but apparently there is in fact a primary weapon that drops in the Vault of Glass raid that does deal elemental damage. This certainly opens up the possibility of having more elemental primary weapons being added in future expansions.

@probablytuna: I was talking about exotic primaries not having elemental damage. That lone fact makes them inferior to raid primaries In PvE and that's really dumb.

@pyrodactyl: Even so, regardless of the rarity of the weapons, having very few primaries that actually deal elemental is kinda crap. But yes, I do agree with you.

@probablytuna: I have primary Raid weapons that do elemental damage. They aren't that rare.

@zevvion: How many elemental primaries? And how many times have you done the raid?

@probablytuna: Two and once. Looking to do it as many times as possible though. But it's hard to set up and find the people.

That's RNG for you. Did it 4 or 5 time and I've picked up the scout rifle once. From what I can tell there's 3 primary with elemental damage: the raid scout rifle, the raid assault rifle and the vex mythoclass. So you picked up the 2 that don't require VoG hard mode in one run. That's super lucky.

Anyway, the point is, those weapons shouln't be objectivly better than primary exotics since yeah, they're pretty easy to get by comparison.

@pyrodactyl: Really? Didn't even realize how lucky I was with that stuff. I also picked up a Legendary Sniper that makes enemies explode when I headshot them, and a Legendary Machine Gun that is really powerful. A lot of Shards, probably like 6 in total. Got the shader also.

No armor unfortunately. Which is what I wanted. Need to reach level 30.

@pyrodactyl: Actually I've found that getting exotic weapons have been really easy (through exotic bounties). I've gotten three Invectives, three Pocket Infinity, and pretty much one of each of the available exotic bounties. I've only gotten a faction shotgun called The Crash the only weapon it dropped for me from the raid. It really is RNG I guess.

@zevvion: I was the opposite, I mostly got armour (gloves and boots for my Warlock) when I first did the raid.

I have done the raid 6 times and have 4 copies of the solar damage scout rifle. It's a pretty common drop.

Did it drop from the same boss/chest or does it drop randomly at every instance? Since not everyone is guaranteed an item you must be pretty lucky (or unlucky) to have it drop four times.

Vision of Confluence (fire scout rifle) and Atheon's Epilogue (void auto rifle) only drop from the final boss on normal. An arc hand cannon whose name is escaping me will drop from the templar on hard and the Vex Mythoclast (primary fire fusion rifle) drops from the final boss on hard.

Also, two of the three raid chests always drop ascendant materials while the one to the left in the labyrinth will drop unique class items and exotic weapons sometimes.

Hmm ok, thanks for clearing everything up. I kinda find it even more ridiculous that there are special weapons being classified as a primary (like Universal Remote and the Vex Mythoclast) than the fact that some legendary primaries have elemental while exotics don't.

@zevvion: If you've gotten 4 weapons, the shader, and shards all in only your first run, you must be the luckiest player on Destiny. I know people who have played the raid for weeks and don't even have one weapon yet. I have the raid scout, shotgun, sniper, and machine gun, raid chest piece, and shader. But I've beat it about 9 times (4 of the times were just to help others) on normal and once on hard. All I got for hard was shards, the legendary hard ship, and the achievement. (Joined towards the end). It's a lot more easy to get exotic weapons from exotic bounties than it is raid weapons. You only get two chances a week to get the raid weapons (normal and hard) but it's pretty easy to get exotic bounties. Just keep doing the bounties every day for vanguard and some for crucible and you'll get two to three exotic bounties a week. And you know you will get the weapon at the end. In the raid, it's all random.

@bigden67: Hm, I've done it 4 times now, only once did I only get Shards and a legendary shotgun. That was my worst run. I have 2 pieces of armor now, all weapons (except for Mythoclast and other Exotics obviously) and a shit ton of shards and energy.

@bigden67: Phss, you don't even know lucky! I've done the on normal Raid once, and just the final boss on Hardmode -- I was luckily invited into it (Thanks, Steve!) -- I got all the loot:

• Battlecage of Kabr
• Cowl of the Hezen Lords
• Prime Zealot Cuirass
• "Glass Minuet"
• "Aspect of Glass"
• Atheon's Epilogue
• Vision of Confluence
• and Vex Mythoclast

I didn't even know that wasn't the norm until reading this thread. I should probably retire from the game's loot grind while I'm ahead... just one more mission.