Spent the week actually using the rifle in every activity of every sort trying to complete the catalyst, which ended up pitting me against a wide variety of enemies throughout the game - and after finally getting the catalyst done, it’s gone into the Vault. I got tired of using it, once I hit around 80% catalyst complete I went to the Grasp opening and did the rest (hive wizards covered below), I burnt out on it.
When you can land those 4 rapid precision hits to proc creeping attrition, it will really slow up or freeze a powerful enemy - but you run into two problems; those enemies move a lot (those overloads who short-teleport, those hive wizards who go all zig-zag, those other ones that do the spinning dodge, etc.) and for a lot of enemies you can kill then in less than 4 shots. Honestly it felt harder to proc this perk than, say, kinetic tremors on a scout just due to these problems. It’s also not really that good at popping shields, it takes like 3 or 4 shots to pop the Grasp orange hive wizard shield to just get to killing, and due to how they zig-zag you end up missing a lot of the precisions unless you’re super careful and sit on the roof and shoot real slow.
Is it a bad gun? nah, it’s fine - has great stability and does the damage of a 180 scout and is very easy to use. It’s not any sort of stat monster compared to other 180s, but you get the 40% red bar damage buff. Moving up the ladder to orange/yellow, it’s no better than any other 180 scout due to how hard getting that perk to proc is in real life and the catalyst is complete meh. It does fine in the Crucible, I got a fair number of Guardian kills in Iron Banner and it’s OK in Gambit but too slow for that type of match. I generated far less tangles (subclass fragment buff) on precision kills than I did when using Randy’s when running PvE activities.
Interestingly, it did do a good job against Savathun and 3x Ogres in the opening of Vow of Disciple (doing the first secret chest run), not as good as Wish-Ender but not bad; they just sort of sit there and are easy to shoot though - once I loaded up DSC to get the first secret chest, it was really hard to use against those boss Captains in each bubble and I had to switch off it or I’d die.
It’s pretty good in harder content, needs more hp on the enemies to get the gun to work properly, otherwise they die too quickly and it’s just a pretty mediocre 180 scout.
Loading in solo to the legend Nightmare Hunt that’s over by the ketchcrash on the right of the moon, the gun could not keep up with the hive (?) anti-barrier champ; the non-champ hive wizard with the really large health bar to the right of the barrier champ took a lot of shooting but could be taken down eventually while hiding in that broken tube, but I was unable to stun the barrier champ with an auto (age-old bond), switch to the scout and keep up with the champ’s ability to rebuild health going back and forth between the guns. I was rocking a stasis surge mod to try and help but it was just the wrong combo; had a better time just slowly pummeling him with age-old bond and trying to time my reloads with his regen shield. $0.02
I think it’s really good. Primary scout with chill clip that you never have to reload during waves of ads. And it’s really pretty, too. I want that glitter part as a shader.
I don’t really know what more people want. It’s unique and powerful for both ad clear and for GMs. And it’s Stasis. Need more Stasis.
…but it’s not chill clip - chill clip procs on 50%+ of a mag on the first shot and immediately takes effect and does not require a crit, as well as can be buffed by a fragment. Creeper requires 4 rapid precision hits on a 15 round magazine to proc (doesn’t have to be the same enemy) and has a timer based on that concept to getting it done. It’s not bad, but it’s not chill clip as an even apples to apples comparison. (edit: chill clip also has a 4m AoE when proc’d)
Preface: I don’t have the gun yet but I think I’ve got a good grasp on how it functions. Just not how it feels.
I think it’s just pretty niche right now and suffers because Stasis is in a bad spot with Warlock being the only viable endgame Stasis class IMO. I also think Bungie likes to undercook exotics in general now to avoid OP guns taking over the game. (remember OG Lorentz in PVP?) They said they were going to buff it so I guess we’ll see.
It feels amazing and is very solid in hard stuff. It definitely needs some buffs (which they’ve already confirmed are in the world), and there’s a lot they could do. They could provide more benefits to collecting the shard, such as a stacking damage boost, though this is risky as any shard can proc the gun. They could make it only require hits and not specifically precision hits. They could extend the timer for the hits. They could make the hits stack, meaning you can kill trash mobs and then land the slow on a bigger enemy (perhaps make manual reloads reset this).
This gun has crazy potential beyond what it is, which is an already solid gun with gold utility.
Thanks for the write up! What buff do you think Bungie could give it that would make you use it more? I haven’t used it much so I’m curious what others think
dream catalyst: Iceflare Bolts. the 4x rapid precision hits from creeping attrition generate bolt energy with a countdown timer (5s?); the next shot while timer is active which shatters a frozen enemy triggers the bolt, which can be chained ss long as the timer is active (maybe? too powerful?). timer refeshes on 4 more rapid precision hits, deactivates on reload. (spirit: it aligns with creeping attrition but can’t be too easy to use, and would pair with any stasis class like if you froze them with a grenade) - basically, a form of destabilizing/ incandescent/ voltshot/ hatching but stasis oriented.
I know they’ll never do this, but they could at least give the catalyst Headstone if nothing else. simple, probably easy to code in.
