Season of the Wish is upon us in Destiny 2! With it comes a slew of new weapons to collect, but this time around it also means a whole heaping of reissued guns as well. One of those sets are some of the Season of the Undying, Vex-themed guns. Naturally that means everyone is itching to get their hands on the new best possible (non-sunset) roll. But early on it can be really hard to know what will perform the best. In this guide, we tell you how to obtain Optative and make some early god roll recommendations for the reissued Destiny 2 Hand Cannon.
We’ve teamed up with 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! With his extensive knowledge and experience studying weapons in depth for thousands of hours and keeping a close eye on the meta at all times at every level, he’s more than qualified to make these selections.
How to Obtain
Optative is available via Season of the Wish activities. You can specifically focus for it at the Spirit of Riven for four Wish Engrams and 3,000 Glimmer (assuming you've had one drop already) or you can instead opt for a random Undying weapon engram and hope its Optative for the reduced price of two Wish engrams and 3,000 Glimmer.
About Optative
Optative is a Legendary Void Hand Cannon of the Precision Frame archetype. This means it has a predictably vertical recoil pattern and fires relatively quickly with high accuracy.
It sports the Nano-Munitions Origin Trait which makes it so that being near allies slowly builds up a partial emergency ammo refill for the next time it runs out of ammo. The amount of emergency ammo increases with time spent near allies. Definitely something that's not optimal for solo players.
The weapon was originally sunset when Beyond Light launched which means it's been a few years since it's been viable in higher Power activities.
Optative PVE God Roll
Our recommended PVE god roll for this reissued Void Hand Cannon is below. Overall Optative is just an all right PVE weapon that seems somewhat lacking compared to other Hand Cannons. Attrition Orbs could help, but we doubt it.
Repulsor Brace is good with Void synergies, but at that point why not just run the IKELOS Hand Cannon instead?
Best PVE Perks by Column Number
- Fluted Barrel
- Extended Mag (with a reload perk only) or Tactical Mag
- Rapid Hit or Keep Away or Repulsor Brace (with void synergies)
- Golden Tricorn or Kill Clip
Optative PVP God Roll
When it comes to PVP, everything is pretty straightforward with your main selection being in the fourth column. Golden Tricorn is essentially the same as Kill Clip for an optimal time-to-kill (TTK), but Kill Clip is more forgiving if you can manage to fit in a reload. Tricorn is better for when you need to take down two people and don't have cover to reload.
Best PVP Perks by Column Number
- Smallbore or Fluted Barrel (that Handling is atrocious)
- Accurized Rounds or Steady Rounds to buff the AE even further
- Keep Away (or Rapid Hit)
- Kill Clip or Golden Tricorn
