There’s a cottage industry of buildcrafters in the Destiny community known for their sensational YouTube thumbnails that hype overpowered and broken builds that will guarantee you crush this weekend’s raid. I hate to admit it, but I’m a sucker for these kinds of videos. Even though they’re usually explaining the most obvious builds, and their choices don’t have nearly as much synergy and potential as they promise, I still love to see all of the interesting loadouts the community comes up with.
I myself am not a build master. I don’t have time to crunch the numbers like Fallout Plays or run experiments to find the maximum DPS potential for every weapon like Aztecross, but every once in a while, I do stumble upon something powerful that no one else is talking about. That’s right, YouTubers, today I’m the hype monster. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use weapon that feels totally broken right now, you need to dig out last season’s Void machine gun, Retrofit Escapade.
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It is not a new or exciting gun, but the stars have perfectly aligned this season to bring Retrofit up to the big leagues. I’ve had my eye on it ever since Bungie announced that machine guns would be getting a ten percent damage boost and larger ammo reserves this season. Machine guns have never been especially useful in high-level content due to their low DPS relative to rocket launchers and linear fusion rifles, but that buff, however minor it may seem, sets the stage for Retrofit’s moment in the sun.
Retrofit is a craftable weapon, so assuming you found all the necessary patterns last season, the perks you’re looking for are Fourth Time’s The Charm and Target Lock. Fourth Time will give you extra ammo in the chamber from reserves as you land critical hits, while Target Lock increases your damage overtime while you stay on the same target. Together, these perks allow you to deal heavy sustained damage to a single target that, depending on the length of the damage phase, can stand toe-to-toe with Heavy meta weapons like Cataclysm and Gjallarhorn. With an Extended Mag and Backup Mag mod, you’ll get almost 80 rounds in your magazine with an average damage boost of 35 percent.
If you need sustained precision damage, this is the easiest way to get it. A Void Weapon Surge mod will get you an extra ten percent damage on top of that just for picking up an Orb, which are now easier than ever to generate.
It goes deeper. This season’s Artifact features Volatile Flow, a mod that gives your Void weapons Volatile rounds anytime you pick up an Orb of Power. Machine guns like Retrofit are especially good at applying Volatile because of their high rate of fire. When active, Retrofit will cause rapid Volatile explosions on your target, and can also be used to quickly mow down hordes of enemies that will all explode when defeated. This is the best Heavy weapon for ad clear in the game, and yet it’s still able to deal massive boss damage.
You do need an Orb to activate Volatile Flow, but thanks to this season’s mod overhaul, that shouldn’t be a problem. With the removal of Wells and Cells, everyone is generating tons of Orbs right now to activate various functions of their build, so you can almost always find an Orb to pick up. Maintaining nearly 100 percent uptime on Volatile Flow isn’t a problem, which means Retrofit is always ready to shred.
It goes even deeper. The new Strand subclass has two Fragments that have incredible synergy with Retrofit. Thread of Ascent automatically reloads your equipped weapon when activating a grenade, which essentially gives Retrofit a bonus Demolitionist perk. Now when you do eventually run out of ammo, all you have to do is toss your grenade and keep firing. If you’re a hunter, you can do this twice thanks to the Widow’s Silk aspect. The more grenades you have, the more you can fire without reloading, so you’ll also want to use Thread of Generation, which provides grenade energy when you deal damage.
The amount of damage you deal doesn’t matter for this Fragment, rather, it gives you grenade energy every time you deal damage. And which weapon type dishes out damage the fastest? Machine guns. Retrofit is a Rapid-Fire Frame machine gun with a 900 RPM, putting it in a category of the fastest weapon archetypes in the game. With enough Discipline, you can easily generate another grenade charge by the time you need to reload anyway.
And yes, you can go even deeper. Titans can use Actium War Rig for even more ammo and higher damage. Warlock’s can use Nezarec’s Sin for even more ability energy from Void kills. Hunters can use Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk to keep the Volatile buff going, even when there aren’t Orbs around. It’s easy and viable to shape your entire build around this one weapon. Add on a Void Scavenger mod, Void Reserves, Heavy Ammo Finder, and you’ll never have to worry about finding more ammo.
It’s unbelievable how many elements come together this season to make Retrofit Escape a top-tier weapon. There are still situational weapons that will out-perform it, especially if the damage phase is short, but Retrofit is currently the most versatile workhorse Heavy weapon in Destiny 2. All that’s missing is a thumbnail of me making a funny face next to the silhouette of Retrofit with a big question mark over it. You NEED to try out this BUSTED gun BEFORE it’s too late!!
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