The Eremite is the new Legendary Solar High-Impact fusion rifle from Season of the Witch and despite it not being in the limelight much, it quietly became one of the best PVE options for boss DPS and general play. And while it’s not so good that you should start your DPS phase with a special ammo weapon, it’s probably the best Legendary option you have to dump all your reserves in a longer damage phase. Let’s go over why!
This article is part of a weekly series of deep dive weapon breakdowns from Stardust, one of the people behind Clarity - D2 Research, a Destiny 2 project which provides highly trusted explanations of perks, mods, and more for websites like Destiny Item Manager (DIM), Light.gg, Foundry, and more!
How to get The Eremite in Destiny 2
The best way to get Brya’s Love is by simply participating in the seasonal activities. So if you want to get it crafted quickly, get your Witch’s Keys ready and jump right into Altars of Summoning or Savathun’s Spire. Completing either of these activities will reward you with seasonal weapons which will have a chance to come with Deepsight Resonance.
If you’re up for the challenge and want to speed up the process, the Empowered Rewards Minor Arcana at the Lectern of Divination will allow you to get a guaranteed Deepsight Resonant weapon when opening the Witch’s Chest at the end of a Legend difficulty Savathun’s Spire.
For a more passive method of grinding for your seasonal weapons, you just have to complete activities across the system which will provide you with a steady stream of Witch’s Engrams that you’ll be able to focus into weapons at the Ritual Table.
Unassuming but excellent
What makes The Eremite special unlike many of the weapons I previously covered in this series is simply a single perk combination that takes it from just another fusion rifle to the best one around, albeit by a close margin. For PVE, this combination is Envious Assassin alongside Controlled or Reservoir Burst.
The star of the show is as you might expect Envious Assassin as it allows you to pretty much cram your entire reserves into your magazine by getting kills with your other weapons. Doing so allows you to essentially keep Reservoir Burst active for about two thirds of your shots and also removes any need to reload your weapon.
So without further ado, let’s look at our first recommendation for the endgame PVE crowd!
Multi-purpose PVE God Roll
- Fluted Barrel
- Enhanced Battery or Accelerated Coils
- Envious Assassin
- Reservoir Burst or Controlled Burst
- Charge Time Masterwork (Enhanced Intrinsic)
The choice between Reservoir Burst and Controlled Burst will largely depend on your specific use case. Reservoir Burst is generally the better choice when you’re not just saving your ammo to dump it into a boss later on in the activity but instead to help with other enemies as well. Its 25% damage buff and the explosion on kills will handily outperform Controlled Burst — especially if the enemy dies in one burst as Controlled Burst isn’t helping you at all in that case.
The use case for Controlled Burst is pretty much just answering the following question: “Do I need to dump most of my overflowed mag into a single target?” If the answer is yes, then Controlled Burst will be the perk for you. If not, then back to Reservoir Burst you go.
As a final note, don’t forget that Charge Time Masterworks no longer affect damage on fusion rifles (Accelerated Coils still does) so there is pretty much no reason not to run them nowadays unless you particularly need to boost up another stat.
Solar synergy God Roll
- Fluted Barrel
- Accelerated Coils or Projection Fuse
- Heal Clip
- Golden Tricorn
- Reload Speed Masterwork (Enhanced Intrinsic)
With this roll, we’re really just trying to lean into the synergies the gun can have with Solar subclasses for when you’re in the thick of the combat alongside your teammates all the time. The benefit of Heal Clip will be naturally to just keep you alive, but it can also trigger the Ember of Benevolence fragment if you also heal your allies with it which will significantly speed up the regeneration speed of your abilities.
Golden tricorn on the other hand will leech off you chaining Solar ability kills relatively frequently to keep its 50% damage buff going for as long as you need it. This roll is probably best when combined with the Throwing Hammer of Sunbreaker Titans or with the Knife Trick of Gunslinger Hunters as those abilities have a lot of loopability — especially the former.
Although I don’t see this as a very realistic option in the endgame outside of maybe running it with the aforementioned Sunbreaker Titan “bonk hammer” build, I feel that it could prove quite useful if you move together with your team.
Probably not a PVP fusion rifle
Despite its strong showing on the PVE side of the game, The Eremite definitely falls short on the PVP side. Its lack of PVP-oriented options in the third and fourth columns unfortunately mark it as an average at best option.
It’s missing an upfront consistency perk in the third column like Under Pressure or Firmly Planted (or even Slideways really) and the same goes for the lack of Backup Plan in the fourth column. And before you ask, yes, Backup Plan is actually good on High-Impacts. Try it out if you don’t believe me!
With that said, let’s take a look at the roll I would personally recommend:
- Smallbore (or Extended Barrel if you don’t mind the Handling penalty)
- Projection Fuse or Accelerated Coils
- Offhand Strike
- Golden Tricorn (or Elemental Capacitor when on Arc, Void, or Stasis subclasses)
- Charge Time or Range Masterwork (Enhanced Intrinsic)
This roll is I would say a relatively safe bet but relies pretty heavily on you being able to snag that first kill to take advantage of its perks. So if you’re not as confident in doing that, I would generally recommend opting for Elemental Capacitor and using it with one of the mentioned subclasses.
But overall I would say that if you have any other High-Impact fusion rifle with a decent Offhand Strike roll, I’d just use that over The Eremite — especially if you have a Wizened Rebuke with Offhand AND Backup Plan. But even if you have one, I still have one more thing that you might want try out on Eremite which is actually Slickdraw (but please enhance it)!
While Slickdraw is generally a pretty bad perk, the trade-off in Aim Assist (specifically Auto Aim so it doesn’t affect reticle stickiness but I don’t want to get into that topic here) is somewhat worth it to significantly improve the gun’s Handling in this case. You can also pair it with Extended Mag as its Handling penalty will be completely negated. And while it’s certainly not for me, many of my friends — mainly those using controllers — had quite a bit of fun using it.
So if you want to give that a shot, kit your Eremite out with these perks and take it for a drive:
- Extended Barrel
- Projection Fuse
- Slickdraw (Enhanced)
- Golden Tricorn (or Elemental Capacitor when on Void or Stasis subclasses)
- Range or Charge Time Masterwork (Enhanced Intrinsic)
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