The Acosmic is the latest Legendary weapon to make its way into Destiny 2 with Season 23’s iteration of the Festival of the Lost Halloween event. It’s a Void rapid-fire frame grenade launcher with some very interesting perk combinations but even bigger issues — issues so large that most will get more use out of the vault space they didn’t spend on this gun. Let’s go over why!
How to Get Acosmic in Destiny 2
You can get Acosmic as a random reward from the chest at the end of Haunted Lost Sector activities as well as from Eerie Engrams for the duration of the event. If you can rise to the challenge, Legend Haunted Lost Sectors provide more chances for a drop and guarantee you an Eerie Engram as the reward for every completion.
Hocus Focusing also provides a more targeted way for you to hunt down your ideal rolls by allowing you to focus your Eerie Engrams into specific weapons in exchange for some Glimmer and Candy.
Why you probably don’t want to grind for Acosmic
While Acosmic has one of the more interesting perk pools that we have seen on grenade launchers in recent years, the most notable thing about it is its ability to make players question the reason for its existence.
Despite the enticing perk combos on offer like Field Prep with Explosive Light, the closer you look at the weapon, the more it starts to fall apart. So let’s break that down.
First (and certainly least), its origin traits are completely useless. Search Party is redundant because you seldom Aim Down Sights with a grenade launcher, especially when you’re away from your teammates. Nadir Focus is similarly an odd choice as it starts increasing your projectile velocity as you fire the gun which means the grenades will follow a different arc almost every shot. A true gut punch for muscle memory.
Perks Mentioned:
- Search Party: This weapon is granted faster aim down sights speed and movement speed while aiming down sights when no allies are near.
- Nadir Focus: Sustained fire increases accuracy and range. Increases lunge distance for Swords, and projectile velocity for Launchers.
All the right perks with the wrong pairings
It would be unfair of me to recommend against using this weapon just based on its origin traits so let’s dig further. In the last column, the only perks with good utility are Explosive Light, Cascade Point, and Destabilizing Rounds. The former two are DPS-oriented while the last one is more focused on add-clear.
And this is where the problems start piling up. Explosive Light is an excellent damage perk but will only buff six of your shots out of the maximum of 23 you can have at one time — unless, of course, you’re picking up more Orbs of Power during a DPS phase but I wouldn’t count on that.
The situation gets even worse because compared to rapid-fire grenade launchers like Acosmic, adaptive frames not only have higher DPS and total damage, but they even benefit more from Explosive Light. This is due to their lower reserves (18 max) translating to a higher portion of your shots being able to benefit from the damage buff — 33% of your shots compared to the 26% for rapid-fires.
Not to mention that its direct competitor, Regnant from Season of the Risen, can even get enhanced perks for an extra Explosive Light charge — bringing the portion of buffed shots up from 33% to 39% of your total reserves.
While Acosmic has one of the more interesting perk pools that we have seen on grenade launchers in recent years, the most notable thing about it is its ability to make players question the reason for its existence.
Next on the chopping block is Cascade Point which is also an excellent perk if you’re focusing on maximizing DPS for a short damage phase. However, the biggest downfall of this perk is the lack of an auto-reload perk in the 3rd column like Auto-Loading Holster or a strong overflow option like Envious Assassin.
This instantly tanks its viability by a significant margin as Cascade Point is best used when you’re performing more complex damage rotations that rely on not having to reload the gun. And just to add insult to injury, the Swarm of the Raven grenade launcher has the exact combo of Auto-Loading Holster with Cascade Point and it can be much more reliably target-farmed when Iron Banner is around.
Finally, we can turn our attention to Destabilizing Rounds. And I think it’s honestly quite decent especially when combined with Impulse Amplifier. (I know Loose Change might be a tempting pick over it, but it actually isn’t. Its Reload Speed bump is virtually identical to that of Impulse Amplifier with it being tied to debuffing a target and without any of the other benefits.) It’s a fun combo for goofing around in low-end content but that’s unfortunately about it.
But as you might have expected, this isn’t anything unique either. Swarm of the Raven has this exact roll as well so if you have that, you can officially ignore this gun entirely. And that’s not even mentioning that Regnant can roll with Repulsor Brace in the 3rd column instead which, when paired with Destabilizing Rounds, is just so much fun.
Mentioned Perks:
- Cascade Point: Final blows or sustained precision hits with another weapon increase this weapon's rate of fire for a short duration.
- Explosive Light: Picking up an Orb of Power increases the next projectile's blast radius and damage.
- Destabilizing Rounds: Final blows cause nearby targets to become volatile.
The grenade launcher for those who don’t have one
As you might have noticed, many of the points in the previous section revolved around already having access to a solid grenade launcher with the same utility. But if you don’t own Season of the Risen or aren’t that into Iron Banner, there is still a bit of value in this gun for you.
Casual PVE God Roll
While I’d generally recommend against using this gun for anything DPS-related, you can still extract a bit of casual PVE fun out of it. Here’s the roll I’d recommend for that use case:
- Quick Launch or Hard Launch
- Spike Grenades
- Impulse Amplifier
- Destabilizing Rounds
- Handling, Reload Speed, or Blast Radius Masterwork
It certainly won’t blow you away in any capacity, but it has a fun little gameplay loop with the potential to chain quite a few explosions together due to Destabilizing Rounds making enemies volatile.
DPS PVE God Roll
If you want an absolute last resort DPS grenade launcher in anticipation of their future buff, here’s what I would go with. But I can assure you that your time will be better spent getting a Swarm of the Raven from Iron Banner or any other decent grenade launcher around. With that said, here it is:
- Hard Launch
- Spike Grenades
- Clown Cartridge
- Cascade Point
- Handling or Reload Masterwork
What about the PVP roll?
Not with this gun. I can maybe let slide some barely passable rolls for low-level PVE activities but for PVP, rapid-fire grenade launchers in general have no place in there. Any adaptive-frame grenade launcher will serve you significantly better so please don’t even bother with Acosmic for that use case. I’m saying this for your sake. Stay as far away from PVP with this as you can.
