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The Intro

How often do you chuckle with delight while playing Destiny 2? It’s a game, after all! Are you sick of the meta? Are you ready to find a truly lethal gun, that inspires joy?

Then Don’t Be Afraid to Dream Bigger, Darling, & Pick Up Fighting Lion!

Part 1: The Gun

Fighting Lion is primarily designed to blint enemies.

blint (verb): to body shot and quickly swap to a primary to secure the kill.

The Combo Direct hit, swap to kinetic to finish, FL is reloaded and you’re good to go.

Firing The Lion

• Tap to Fire. NEVER, EVER DO THIS.

• Hold to Fire, Release to Detonate

  • There is no proximity detonation. It has to be a direct hit to get maximum damage.
  • Unless you get a direct hit, you will need to manually detonate the grenade.
  • This can be used to explode rounds in doorways to block pushes or trap enemies.

• Damage

  • 128 Splash and 22 for direct hit. That’s 150 damage, so you’ll need almost nothing to clean it up.
  • Splash damage is a large area and will tag multiple enemies. This makes it strong for objective modes and against teams who bunch up.
  • Point blank shots (typically against enemies) will damage you just as much as them, and likely get you killed.
• General advice:
  • Be mobile! Strafe & Jump! You don’t need to keep your target in your reticule after the round is off, so there’s less penalty for movement.
  • Peek fire! Blind Fire! After you have enough time with the gun, you’ll learn when to release to explode without even seeing your target. The damage number popping up will tell you if you were successful, where the enemy is and (because it’s splash damage) will tell you how many enemies are there.
  • Bounce around corners. Even over/around shields. No one can hide from Fighting Lion, lol.
  • Hip fire! ADSing doesn’t really offer much and if you get used to hip firing, you’ll be able to use that same skill with other weapons like The Last Word or sidearms, etc.

Part 2: Getting Kills

Fighting Lion does the same damage regardless of distance, but your preferred engagement distance will dictate your playstyle. A Fighting Lion loadout is primarily defined by the engagement distance of your Kinetic. That said, regardless of your loadout, it’s important to know how to use the Lion at every distance.

Melee Range

Treat it like a shotgun, follow up with melee. Melees will finish the fight. Subclass trees that have healing melees are a natural fit for this, as are melee exotics. Just don’t fire the Lion point blank or you’ll injure yourself.

It is very important to note that the Lion takes 15m or 0.5 seconds to arm before manual detonation is possible. That means: if you miss your direct body hit in CQC, you cannot manually detonate to get the splash damage.

Close Range

Aggressive sidearm/SMG play is a natural fit for FL. Utilizing sliding or vertical space, it’s very easy to clean up kills.

Medium Range

Hand cannons are crispy and have good range and versatility. They’re the signature pairing with FL. Hand cannons also allow for more cautious use and I prefer them in Comp/Trials where deaths are more costly. For most hand cannons, a single headshot will put down an enemy directly hit by a Lion.

Long Range

Pair with a sniper, focus on team shooting, using to deter pushes, shoot long range to maybe even double-tap someone who won’t retreat.

Practice, practice, practice.

Lion has a high skill floor, but you got this!

Keep working at it. It won’t happen right way, but come back when you’re ready to take the next step!

One day, will know your Lion well enough to shoot long-range and blind:

You will never be bored with Fighting Lion.

The best weapon, skill, loadout is any weapon that you haven’t mastered yet. And Fighting Lion has no skill ceiling. There’s always more to learn and more to try.

credit: Edward Tufte