The holidays are right around the corner, and Destiny 2 has a ton of new loot to chase in celebration of the season via its annual Dawning event. Last year, the Stay Frosty Pulse Rifle was one of the event’s hottest additions, and its 2023 incarnation might be even better.
It can be hard for a Lightweight Frame Pulse Rifle to stand out when the range advantage of its competition tends to outweigh any benefits that the archetype’s mobility benefits provide. That’s what makes Stay Frosty so good—perks like Encore, Killing Wind, and Tunnel Vision all present pathways toward making up that range deficit. Case in point, I still use the Encore and Kill Clip roll I obtained from last year’s festivities to this day in the Crucible. With the right ingredients added to the pot, Stay Frosty transforms into a monster.
Its lack of being craftable will be a hit to its potential, but Stay Frosty is still well worth investing some time into The Dawning for. Here are our recommendations on the gun’s PvP and PvE god rolls, as well as what the best perks are to look out for.
What is the Stay Frosty god roll in Destiny 2’s The Dawning event?
Stay Frosty PvP god roll
- Barrel: Arrowhead Brake
- Magazine: Accurized Rounds
- First perk: Encore
- Second perk: Kill Clip
- Masterwork: Range
Stay Frosty has a lot of potential in PvP if you build it right, and nothing feels better than Encore and Kill Clip with Arrowhead Brake. There are plenty of fun alternative god rolls here as well, but what makes Encore and Kill Clip stand out is the consistency.
Sure, both perks do require you to get at least one kill to get the ball rolling—that can leave you at a disadvantage at the start of fights, considering the fact Lightweight Frame Pulse Rifles aren’t exactly a hot commodity at the moment in the meta. But even after one headshot kill, Stay Frosty is immediately pumped full of a 25 percent damage buff, 10 extra range and 16 more points in stability, pushing its falloff distance out an extra meter before factoring in the 0.7 second reduction in its time-to-kill.
This is all before we factor in Encore’s hidden buffs to the weapon’s accuracy, which, from my experience, is one of the most noticeable components of this build. Lightweight Frames trade off a lot of the precision that other Pulse Rifle archetypes have for their mobility, but Encore reins in its more unstable recoil direction to make follow-up fights after the first kill a breeze. When the gun’s time-to-kill can range anywhere from 0.53 seconds to 1.2 seconds depending on the amount of headshots hit with Kill Clip active, a perk making those headshots easier to hit is a game-changer.
This is by no means the only way to build out a Stay Frosty god roll though. There’s plenty of value to be found in a dueling perk like Headseeker or a niche counter to overshields and Woven Mail in Under-Over for those that want the gun to fulfill a specific role. Under-Over especially is a perk that’s more prominently recommendable this year than it was in 2022 due to the shifts in the sandbox, with the 20 percent damage bonus against Woven Mail in particular an almost necessary pickup for more competitive lobbies.
Stay Frosty PvE god roll
- Barrel: Smallbore
- Magazine: Tactical Mag
- First perk: Enlightened Action or Killing Wind
- Second perk: Desperado or Headstone
- Masterwork: Stability
Stay Frosty doesn’t have a lot of standout perks for a PvE god roll, but Enlightened Action and Desperado have some fantastic synergy for dealing with dense groups of minor combatants. However, many players may want to gravitate toward Headstone in the fourth column instead, leaning deeper into the weapon’s Stasis attribute.
Pulse Rifles struggle a lot in comparison to weapons such as SMGs in PvE, which is why a perk like Desperado can be so pivotal to giving a gun like Stay Frosty any real impact in the upper echelons of content. Kill Clip and Collective Action can provide similar benefits through a raw damage buff, but whether or not you opt to take these perks instead is entirely down to personal preference.
It’s unfortunate, ultimately, that both Collective Action and Headstone reside in the fourth column, as a roll that could feature both of them might well have been a Stasis-focused god roll in and of itself. Instead, players should look to pair a Headstone roll with a utility perk such as Enlightened Action or Encore. Encore in particular has some great synergy here, as both it and Headstone hinge on precision final blows in order to proc, allowing you to reap the benefits of both simultaneously.
