Destiny 2’s Season of the Chosen is officially live, so grab your weapon of choice and get ready to face the Cabal horde. Revolving around stopping Emperor Calus’ daughter Caiatl from uniting the Cabal, players will need to take down various champions that are vying for a seat on her War Counsel. But who cares about all that, we’re here for the loot. Following this season’s release, a bunch of new weapons were introduced into the world loot pool, some of which are tied to core activities. One of these weapons is The Swarm, which is a slow-firing, heavy-hitting machine gun that can tear through most red and orange bar mobs. Here’s how to get this weapon and what the god rolls for PVE and PVP are.
How to Get The Swarm
The Swarm is tied specifically to the Nightfall playlist. Every week, one of three weapons will be available for players to grind. Their order never changes, so you can expect The Swarm to appear every three weeks. So if you see The Palindrome dropping, known that The Swarm will be next week’s Nightfall gun. Additionally, the difficulty you play the Nightfall on will determine the firearm’s drop rate. For example, you will have a much, much harder time grinding for The Swarm at 1230 Power than the 1300 or 1330 Power Nightfalls. Also, while both Legend and Master state the Nightfall weapon is Common, it still drops far more frequently at 1330. If you have a chance, I strongly suggest only grinding the Legend and Master versions of this Nightfall, as this will give you a more consistent offering of The Swarm.
The Swarm God Rolls
The Swarm PVE God Roll
- Fluted Barrel
- Tactical Mag
- Surplus
- One For All or Dragonfly
Before we get into it, I want to make it clear that the roll we are listing is not for damaging bosses. Machine guns are not in a great spot for single target damage, as there are far more consistent options available to players. If you do insist on using it for bosses then you’ll want Vorpal Weapon in the final column. Instead, we will be focusing on a build that can deal with most non-boss mobs, along with some Champions depending on the difficulty. This is a weapon you use to swiftly clear a room, not just stand there and little a health bar down to zero.
With that in mind, our first two perks are Fluted Barrel and Tactical Mag. The former will give us a boost to stability and handling, allowing for great control over this machine gun’s kick. Range is rarely an issue with this weapon, so you shouldn’t need Hammer-Forged Rifling for PVE. Tactical Mag is also the ideal magazine perk since it increases our ammo and gives us a small boost to reload speed. There’s no Auto-Loading Holster perk available, so we will want to minimize our time spent changing magazines.
To help with this, we will also be rocking Surplus which is a terrific, versatile perk that works with most builds and subclasses. While you won’t always get the maximum benefit, it can still really help you out in a tricky situation. As for our final perk, it comes down to what you want. If you’re looking for raw damage then One For All is your best option. However, I actually like Dragonfly for this gun. The slow-firing design makes it much easier to headshot enemies, allowing you to maximize damage with minimal ammo spent. Plus, blowing up enemies is just so damn satisfying.
The Swarm PVP God Roll
- Hammer-Forged Rifling or Corkscrew Rifling
- Accurized Rounds
- Dynamic Sway Reduction
- Tap the Trigger
Like most machine guns, we will solely be focusing on increasing The Swarm’s stability and range for PVP. Since you’ll only have a few bullets in the magazine, it’s critical you make the most of them. To that end, Accurized Rounds and Hammer-Forged Rifling will give us a much-needed boost to range, letting you duel against those using popular weapons like Dead Man’s Tale or 120 RPM hand cannons. We will also be combining Dynamic Sway Reduction and Tap the Trigger, giving us terrific stability whenever we pull the trigger. An argument can be made for Killing Wind, but with such a low ammo count we cannot rely on it to consistently trigger. This perk combination isn’t flashy at all, but it will make the gun more manageable and easy to use in chaotic battles.
