Let's be honest here. For the most part no one uses exotic weapons primaries outside of pvp for anything that doesn't requires a quick shield take down or a burn for a certain element. I myself only use them in PVP and the Strike playlists.
Sadly, when you get into the later stages of Destiny, this winds up making a lot of exotic primaries useless. For example, whenever I got into a solar burn nightfall, I am not looking at my bad juju, Monte Carlo, or Hawkmoon, I go straight for either my abyss defiant or VoC.
Wouldn't these exotics be more sought after if they actually offered an element to go with them?
I know the argument against this is "But then Raid legendaries would become useless" and that isn't necessarily true. Some people prefer one type of a gun to another, and even then there are different builds within in each class of weaponry and people have different preferences there as well.
"But what about Raid Exotics?" They still have their niche and place as well, as it is the only primary fusion rifle you can get is the Vex Mythoclast which makes it more unique than others. Nechrochasm is the only Auto-rifle in the game that gets a firefly perk at all as well.
Neither the raid legendaries or exotics would lost their place among the other weapons just because everyone has a preference to what weapons they wish to use.
Edit: Great to see a lot of positive feed back on here. Seems everyone is in agreement (for the majority) that every exotic primary should have an element to them.
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I think adding kinetic burn to nightfalls and weeklys would remedy this problem. Then exotic primaries would be much more sought after and being inclined to use kinetic damage would encourage players to choose from a wider range of primary legendary weapons as well. Instead of "solar burn, better break out my VoC" or "Arc burn Omnigul again? Let me grab my Fang." I'd like to hear "Sweet, kinetic burn. I can choose between the other 80% of my primary inventory now." Plus if the element of your special and heavy weapons didn't matter due to kinetic burn, primary exotics would be even MORE sought after.