This is our Destiny 2 Collective Obligation guide. Since the pulse rifles got that 20% increased damage against red and orange bar enemies, players have been looking for a good Exotic to use in most content. And Collective Obligation is on the list of many players for its unique set of advantages coupled with the Void artifact perks for this season.
Collective Obligation is a 390 RPM pulse rifle. This puts it in line with adaptive frame pulse rifles. It was first introduced into the game with the release of The Witch Queen DLC.
How to Get the Collective Obligation
Depending on how you look at it, obtaining the Collective Obligation isn’t as simple as picking up the odd exotic quest. It requires you to get a bunch of buddies and take on the Vow of the Disciple Raid.
To complicate matters a little more, there is no guarantee to get the exotic pulse rifle. Like many recent exotics in recent memory, The Collective Obligation is a chance drop after defeating Rhulk and opening the final raid chest. Count your lucky stars if you get the weapon without having to repeat the raid dozens of times. (Yes, we’ve all been there at some point in our Destiny careers.)
Collective Obligation Weapon Perks & Intrinsic Trait
1st Column mod: Arrowhead Brake. Lightly vented barrel. Greatly controls recoil and increases handling speed. This perk is solely responsible for giving this weapon its 100 recoil direction. Do keep in mind that your effective range suffers slightly but it’s well worth the trade-off.
2nd Column mod: Flared Magwell. Optimized for fast reloading. Slightly increases stability and greatly increases reload speed. A bit of a weird perk considering you aren’t even thinking about reloading 99% of the time. But we suppose it served a completely different purpose as a close-to-mid-range battler when it first came out.
3rd Column trait: Umbral Sustenance. This weapon’s magazine is automatically reloaded when you gain Devour, a Void overshield, or become invisible. Hunters fragments and Gyrfalcon’s Halberk truly make this Trait stand out, giving your weapon the impression of a non-stop shooting machine.
4th Column mod: Hand-Laid Stock. This weapon is optimized for recoil control. Increases stability. This stock gives the weapon its 70 Stability which generally helps with consistency.
Intrinsic Trait: This weapon leeches Void debuffs when damaging targets that are suppressed, weakened, or volatile. Once charged, hold the reload button to swap firing modes. In this mode, damage from this weapon applies the same Void debuffs that were leeched.
Destiny 2 Collective Obligation Synergies
Out of all three classes, Hunters with Gyrfalcon’s Halberk equipped are the ones that are in a position to get the most out of Collective Obligation. The following bits of information will allow you to apply all three debuffs for your gun to leech from enemies.
With this build, it is possible to use Markman’s dodge to automatically reload your held weapon (which is usually Collective Obligation.) You’ll also want to use Suppressor Grenades with this build to apply Suppress to affected enemies.
As for your aspects, you’ll want to go with Vanishing Step and Stylish Executioner. You don’t really need them but equipping both will allow you to equip four Fragments at once. Vanishing Step in particular is necessary to activate Gyrfalcon’s skills. The same goes for Stylish Executioner but it comes into play during combat.
During Season 20, the Volatile Flow artifact mod gives your weapons Volatile Rounds. Post Season 20, you’ll be leaning on Gyrfalcon’s to ensure that you have Volatile after exiting invis.
The following Fragments are recommended for this build:
- Echo of Cessation. Defeating volatile targets creates a Void Breach.
- Echo of Harvest. Defeating weakened targets with precision final blows creates an Orb of Power and a Void Breach.
- Echo of Starvation. Picking up a Void Breach or an Orb of Power grants Devour.
- Echo of Undermining. Your void grenades weaken targets.
The tactic here is to throw your grenade to get out of Invis. This will cause your weapon to get Volatile Rounds from Gyrfalcon’s. The grenade will cause Weaken and Suppress. To put it simply, you can have all three debuffs on the field with one well-placed grenade.
And this is where Collective Obligation comes in. Through its Void Leech trait, the weapon can leech the applied debuffs when damaging targets that are suppressed, weakened, or volatile. (You can look at the three circles on the side of the scope to see which debuffs you currently have.)
Once you swap firing modes, Collective Obligation now allows the leeched debuffs all at once to targets for 15 seconds straight. Near the end of those 15 seconds, you can damage a red bar so that the enemy has all three debuffs. When the gun swaps modes, damage that red bar to instantly regain all debuffs again.
Rinse and repeat to keep the debuffs active for as long as you have Collective Obligation active.
For Warlocks, you make this build work too with Nezarec’s Sin Exotic Helmet and Pocket Singularity to make targets Volatile while pushing them away.
And that’s all we’ve got for this Collective Obligation Destiny 2 guide. From what we can tell, it’s well worth the hassle of taking down Rhulk and the frightening final boss that is RNG. Good luck and have fun out there, Guardians!
Check out this video by Youtuber Aztecross where he shows us an updated version of his Gyrfalcon’s build with Collective Obligation.