So a while ago I ran some tests, because RNGJesus blessed me with some twindrops. All Tests were made with a 28 Hunter in a 28 Weekly Heroic Strike. I used an unupgraded Suros (260 Att) and a fully upgraded (300) and measured the Damage against Level 28 Fallen Ultras Also a 260/300 legendary PulseRifle (Strange Suspect). What I found: The SUROS260 dealt 72 Body- and 180 Critdamage The SUROS300 dealt 118 Body- and 294 Critdamage The Strange Suspect 260 dealt 3x59 Body and 3x88 Critdamage The Strange Suspect 300 dealt 3x77 Body and 3x115 Critdamage What I conclude: Every Legendary/Exotic has 5 AttackUpgrades distributed over its Evolution The SUROS has two passiv Attackrate buffs 1.Focused Fire (which slows down the firerate) 2.Suros Regime (Bottom half deals Bonus Damage), which I avoided to trigger The Difference in PerBulletDamage between a Suros260 and a Suros300 is a whooping 63%, which is not the DPS that it gets (because of the Slowed Firerate) The Strange Suspect has fully upgraded +30% dps compared to its unupgraded Counterpart. In general that means: every Attackupgrade will give a legendary weapon about 6% DPS buff. I suppose that Buff is not dependend on the Weapon type and not dependend on the rarity. If someone has tested otherwise, please correct me. 30% seems a lot on paper, but in reality it just means: if some enemy took 5 bullets to take out after a legendary/exotic has been upgraded it will take now 4 bullets. For all weapons that already do massive overkill on minions (HandCannons, Launchers, Snipers) it will change absolutely nothing. OHKs will still be OHKs. Hardly a matter of death or life. Most Exotics in their current 300 Evolution can easily handle the new 30-Nightfall/Heroics and even the new Crota-Raid on normal [b]They are not useless in any way and you should feel no pressure to upgrade them at all[/b] (unless you are a numberjunkie like me) There is a small set of situations where reseting an exotic will be useful: 1.For Teams that do Speedruns. 2.For anyone doing the new Hard Raid regularly. 3.For anyone who wants to compete at the highest Level in IB These special groups will gladly do the Regrind to save 30 seconds on a Boss, or up their kd in IB +.1. But even for those it is only useful to upgrade a maximum of 3 Exotics (each for every weapon type, bc options). So relax, Bungie is not forcing you to do anything, they are presenting options, and you as a conscious being are invited to make decisions, that will cater to your playstyle. [b]EDIT 1: [/b] Post Crota DLC I had the Chance to test a 300 vs a 331 Hawkmoon and a 300 Thorn against a 331 Thorn. While the increase in Damage between a 260 weapon to a 300 was 30%, the damage increase between 300/331 is only 14 % (In the case of the Thorn it was 19% but the reason is that the Thorn got buffed between Vanilla Destiny and Crota) This makes sense, otherwise we would have a powercreep, after the second DLC every weapon would make 90% more damage in comparison to their vanilla state, when leveled up. So the plan seems to cut the damage increase in half with every DLC and then start fresh with Comet. I expect something around 7-8% Damage increase with HoW.