For a little while now, Destiny 2 has assigned Origin Traits to its many, many weapons. These represent the identity of a collection of guns, whether they’re produced by a single foundry on Earth or come from a seasonal source. Some of these Origin Traits are extremely useful, some are situational, and some are downright terrible. Here’s a look at every Origin Trait in Destiny 2 right now.
The Best Origin Traits in Destiny 2
Field-Tested
Defeating targets or dealing damage with this weapon gradually increases range, stability, handling, and reload speed. Swords gain increased charge rate and guard resistance.
Field-Tested is fantastic. You don’t even have to fully defeat a target to get the boost from it, meaning that simply damaging enemies gives you a free bonus to most of your stats. A really solid Origin Trait that can benefit you even in high-level activities and PVP.
Nanotech Tracer Rockets
Landing multiple hits turns your next shot into a homing micro-rocket.
It’s free damage! Sure, it’s not a huge amount of damage, but all you have to do to proc it is shoot things. What more do you want?
Alacrity
Gain increased reload, stability, aim assist, and range when you are the last living member of your fireteam or running solo.
God, this is good. It won’t help you much in fireteam activities, but for things like running solo Lost Sectors, it’s hard to beat. Also great for clutching Trials when you’re the last surviving player on your team.
Runneth Over
Reloading near allies overflows the magazine.
Easy to proc — assuming you’re running in a fireteam — straightforward, and exceptionally useful, Runneth Over is an incredibly powerful all-around Origin Trait.
Souldrinker
Gain health based on the number of hits before reloading.
Unlike some other healing-oriented Destiny 2 Origin Traits, Souldrinker actually feels impactful. It also triggers on hits, rather than kills, meaning that on weapons like Cataclysmic, it can actually help keep you alive while damaging bosses.
Stunning Recovery
Stunning a Champion partially refills your magazine, triggers health regeneration, and improves recovery for a short duration.
If you’re running Nightfalls, you’re going to be stunning Champions a lot. Stunning Recovery helps you kill them faster and helps keep you alive while you’re doing so, making it a great alternative perk on Nightfall weapons that would otherwise have something lousy like Vanguard Vindication.
Veist Stinger
Damaging an enemy with this weapon has a small chance to reload the magazine and increase movement speed while aiming down sights. Bows receive faster draw speed and swords receive faster charge rate while this perk is active.
Hate reloading? With Veist Stinger, you don’t have to nearly as often. Works beautifully on large-magazine, high rate-of-fire weapons like Krait and Funnelweb, but is also a nice bonus on the boss-killing Taipan-4fr. Even after the nerf, it’s still quite powerful.
Extrovert
Final blows while near multiple combatants or near Nightmares restores health.
Another great survivability Origin Trait, Extrovert can help you absorb damage in situations with a lot of lower-level enemies around. The Nightmare aspect of it might not be terribly relevant in most situations, but they do show up in Lost Sectors as well as Season of the Haunted and Shadowkeep content.
Omolon Fluid Dynamics
This weapon has increased reload speed and stability for the top half of the magazine.
If you reload a lot, Omolon Fluid Dynamics is a fantastic Origin Trait. It essentially combines the Compulsive Reloader and Dynamic Sway Reduction perks into a single trait, making it a versatile and useful bonus to most weapon types.
Suros Synergy
Reloading grants this weapon bonus handling and reduces incoming flinch for a short time.
You’re probably doing a lot of reloading anyway, so Suros Synergy is going to proc on a pretty regular basis. Maybe not quite as impactful as Omolon Fluid Dynamics or Veist Stinger, Suros Synergy is still a reliable Origin Trait.
Land Tank
Final blows with this weapon grant increased Resilience and additional damage resistance from combatants.
5% damage resistance on a kill might not seem like much, but it stacks up to three times and can be refreshed, which is pretty sweet.
Noble Deeds
Gain charges by assisting your allies via revives, healing, overshields, and subclass buffs. Consume charges by defeating foes. While charged, this weapon is granted bonus handling, reload speed, and sword charge rate.
A great Origin Trait for any build that focuses on buffing allies. If you’re already giving out overshields, heals, and so on, then you’re essentially getting free buffs to handling and reload speed.
Dawning Surprise
Rapidly defeating targets awards a Dawning gift. Defeated powerful targets count as more than one.
Bungie really needs to rewrite some of these Origin Traits, because Dawning Surprise is actually great. The “Dawning gift” it spawns looks like an engram, but actually gives you energy for all of your abilities as well as a healing effect.
Rasputin’s Arsenal
Breaking a target’s shield partially reloads this weapon’s magazine.
You get half of your magazine back when you break a shield, which is a nice effect. Now that Match Game is out of the picture, this is a lot more generally useful.
Middling Origin Traits in Destiny 2
Ambush
Improves range, handling, and damage against combatants during the opening moments of an engagement.
Ambush is basically the opposite of Frenzy in Origin Trait form. It gives you a solid damage buff of about 10% in PVE for a couple of seconds after not dealing or receiving damage for five seconds, which is nothing to scoff at. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last very long and is useless in any prolonged engagement.
Bray Inheritance
Dealing damage regenerates a small amount of ability energy.
On paper Bray Inheritance sounds great, but the amount of ability energy you gain is so low that it’s rarely impactful. That said, it can be useful on weapons with perks like Incandescent and Voltshot.
Tex Balanced Stock
Damaging targets while firing from the hip increases handling, reload speed, and movement speed while aiming down sights.
Tex Balanced Stock is far from terrible, but its effect just isn’t that impactful. It also requires you to swap between hip firing and ADS, which can be a little tricky to get used to.
Harmonic Resonance
Equipping multiple weapons from this set grants this weapon increased reload speed and handling. It also deals increased damage versus Tormentors, Lucent Hive, and Guardians using their Supers.
Harmonic Resonance is… fine. It requires you to use multiple Root of Nightmares weapons to fully reap its benefits, which is kind of annoying. The boost against Tormentors and Lucent Hive is nice, but extremely situational — the damage buff against players using Supers is more potent, but still requires multiple weapons to get the full effect.
Hot Swap
Switching to this weapon while you are damaged strongly increases its handling for a short duration. Swords gain increased charge speed, guard resistance, and guard endurance instead.
The Bungie 30th Anniversary weapons were already so good that I assume this Origin Trait was selected so as not to make guns like the BXR-55 Battler any better. It’s fine, and can help you swap weapons in clutch situations, but it’s nothing spectacular.
Classy Contender
Final blows with this weapon grant class ability energy.
Simple and generally useful, though the amount of energy it provides is pretty low and it’s only available on a single weapon as of this writing — The Title, from the Guardian Games.
Right Hook
Dealing melee damage gives this weapon increased target acquisition and range for a short period of time. Dealing melee damage again extends the effect.
Right Hook isn’t a total game-changer, but it benefits from being on a set of weapons that can roll a bunch of melee-focused perks like Swashbucker and Pugilist.
Search Party
This weapon is granted faster aim down sights speed and movement speed while aiming down sights when no allies are near.
Kind of just a worse version of Alacrity.
To Excess
Final blows with this weapon while your Super is full grant a bonus to Strength and Discipline for a moderate duration.
To Excess isn’t as powerful as Extrovert, which also debuted in Season of the Haunted, but if you have reason to hold onto your Super — say, if you’re a Hunter who’s using Star-Eater Scales — then it can give you a nice little bonus to your melee and grenade recharge rates.
Hakke Breach Armaments
This weapon deals increased damage against vehicles, turrets, barricades, and Stasis crystals.
It’s not as generally useful as the other foundry Origin Traits in Destiny 2, but Hakke Breach Armaments can be effective in certain circumstances. In Trials, it can help you break through Titan Barricades, and if you’re running a Stasis build then the increased damage to Stasis crystals may help you pop them in a single hit, depending on the weapon.
The Worst Origin Traits in Destiny 2
Dream Work
Once per reload, assists or assisted final blows partially refill the weapon from reserves, potentially overflowing the magazine.
When it was first introduced, Dream Work was unreal. It let players essentially get Overflow on any weapon they were using, as long as they tagged an enemy with a Dream Work gun then let an ally finish them off. After the rework, it’s just a more situational Overflow.
One Quiet Moment
Grants increased reload speed when out of combat.
Pretty useless — who really needs a boost to reload speed when you’re out of combat? It’s fine for reloading after an engagement in Crucible but there are much better Traits.
Gun and Run
Rapidly defeating targets with this weapon grants bonus sprint speed. Guardians, powerful combatants, and high-value targets grant this bonus quicker.
Much more useful than the old Destiny 2 Gambit Origin Trait, but still not terribly impactful — especially in a post-Arc 3.0 world where Guardians are often hitting max speed from that anyway.
Psychohack
Sustained damage from this weapon lowers the target’s damage output for a short duration.
The damage reduction Psychohack inflicts is barely noticeable. It could be useful as a kind of mini-Suppress effect if it was stronger, but as it is, it’s one of the worst Origin Traits in Destiny 2.
Skulking Wolf
While at low health, Guardian final blows with this weapon grant enhanced radar and remove you from opposing radar.
Extremely situational even in Crucible, Skulking Wolf has a little more utility since its rework but is still a pretty lousy Origin Trait.
Vanguard’s Vindication
Final blows with this weapon grant a small amount of health.
It’s a miniscule amount of health, and there are much better healing Origin Traits in the game. At least weapons that roll with Vanguard’s Vindication often have another Origin Trait available to them.
Bitterspite
While this weapon is equipped, taking damage accelerates its next reload.
There are much more reliable Origin Traits that buff reloading in Destiny 2. Bitterspite has a pretty disappointing effect that keeps down some of the weapons from Duality that could otherwise benefit from traits with broader utility.
