When it comes to boss damage in Destiny 2, a few weapon types come to mind in the era that Season of the Seraph is taking place in. One weapon type that won’t come to mind is machine guns, and yet Retrofit Escapade—Season of the Seraph’s craftable machine gun—has the potential to compete with linear fusion rifles and rocket launchers with ease.
That potential has only manifested thanks to two recent additions to Destiny 2: the Void 3.0 subclass rework and the new Target Lock perk. Void 3.0 has made Volatile Rounds an accessible feature of Void for every class of character, which can be used on Void weapons such as Retrofit Escapade for additional damage against targets. Target Lock is a damage perk introduced in Season of the Seraph that increases your damage against a single enemy the longer you maintain sustained fire upon them.
This is perfect for boss damage, where a lengthy window for dealing damage allows you to build stacks of Target Lock with ease that can be further enhanced through the bonus explosive damage of applied Volatile Rounds. Inevitably, Hunters will have the easiest time getting the most out of this weapon thanks to the Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk Exotic chest armor, but the god roll alone will still serve any Guardian well.
With Bungie already teasing that the Heavy weapon meta will be changing during Destiny 2’s Lightfall expansion and the previous linear fusion rifle dynasty may be on its way out, this is the perfect time to obtain a powerful machine gun option like this. If the weapon type ever shifts to the top of the PvE meta, Retrofit Escapade will be its first king.
Retrofit Escapade PvE god roll in Destiny 2
- Barrel: Smallbore
- Magazine: Extended Mag
- First perk: Fourth Time’s The Charm
- Second perk: Target Lock
Retrofit Escapade PvP god roll in Destiny 2
- Barrel: Corkscrew Rifling
- Magazine: Accurized Rounds
- First perk: Zen Moment
- Second perk: Tap The Trigger
Pairing Extended Mag, Fourth Time’s The Charm, and Target Lock together on a single roll makes for a build of Retrofit Escapade perfectly designed for any traditional boss damage phase featuring a critical hit location to unload all 98 rounds into. With Retrofit Escapade also being craftable, both Fourth Time’s The Charm and Target Lock can be made enhanced to further improve their capabilities.
Enhanced Target Lock is an especially potent perk to craft onto a weapon since it is one of the only damage perks in the game where its enhanced variation actually increases the efficacy of the damage boost itself as opposed to its duration or its ease of activation. It takes Target Lock’s range of damage boosts from 16.7 percent to 40 percent all the way up to 19 percent to 45 percent, which is surprisingly significant.
Machine guns can be a great workhorse choice for the Heavy slot in the Crucible as well, and Bungie was so kind as to place Zen Moment and Tap The Trigger within Retrofit Escapade’s perk pool to provide an ideal combination of utilities to make the weapon feel great whenever you get your hands on some Heavy ammo in a match.
These may seem like clear choices for the god roll, but Retrofit Escapade’s perk pool is an incredible collection of options that all have some place and utility within Destiny 2. If you don’t want to build the weapon for boss damage and instead approach a more traditional roll centered around ad clear, here are some of the great options available.
Guide to Retrofit Escapade’s god roll and best perks: Third column
Fourth Time’s The Charm
A perk not typically highly sought after on machine guns, here on Retrofit Escapade it finds a home thanks to the weapon’s unique capabilities of dishing out effective boss damage. With how large a magazine a machine gun has, Fourth Time’s The Charm’s need for only four precision hits to return two rounds to the magazine will be a requirement quickly and often met during a boss damage window. That’s ideal for such a scenario, but less ideal if you’re using this weapon for anything else.
Feeding Frenzy
Machine guns have a lengthy reload, and Feeding Frenzy is a perk that is perfect for mitigating some of that reload speed. Five rapid kills is a simple task to achieve with Retrofit Escapade as with any other machine gun, making the maximum bonus of 100 reload speed to the weapon one that you will consistently attain in enemy-dense encounters. It’s a great choice for a roll built for ad clear.
Field Prep
Field Prep is a bit of an underrated but excellent perk for machine guns, owing to how it both provides a significant boost to reload speed when crouched as well as an upgrade to the weapon’s ammo reserves. As Retrofit Escape is a 900 RPM Rapid-Fire Frame machine gun, it will tear through its reserves quickly too, making this a very tempting option to take.
Stats For All
Range, stability, handling, and reload speed are all stats that Retrofit Escapade benefits greatly from having high values, so Stats For All providing boosts to all of them with the simple act of quickly shooting three different targets makes it an easy recommendation. One For All is also on this weapon, which was built to synergize with this perk as well for use in dense PvE encounters.
Heating Up
Heating Up isn’t a bad perk but gets overshadowed by the more utilitarian options here. You won’t be reloading often enough with a machine gun to truly benefit from Heating Up’s bonuses to accuracy and stability, and whether it’s worth sacrificing perks that improve said reload speed to get those bonuses is not going to often be the case.
Zen Moment
A perk pretty much exclusively reserved for PvP, you should only explore this option when building out a Retrofit Escapade for the Crucible. Recoil reduction in PvE isn’t bad by any means but is not enough of a priority for Zen Moment to be worth taking over other great choices in this column.
Turnabout
This perk will be here for players who want a bit more survivability out of their machine gun, generating overshields whenever a combatant’s shield is broken with this weapon. It isn’t often that players will use a weapon like this in content that would demand overshields for survival, but the choice is there if any Guardian does so choose to take the path.
Guide to Retrofit Escapade’s god roll and best perks: Fourth column
Target Lock
A new kid on the block and already making waves, Target Lock has proven to be a great damage option on workhorse weapons when facing enemies with larger health bars. This can be your perk of choice if you’re building Retrofit Escapade specifically for use against bosses or Champions in high-level Nightfall Strikes. It’s also worth investing in Enhanced Target Lock if you have a crafted version of the weapon since the improvements to its effect are noticeable.
Rampage
Rampage is a perfect perk to accompany the likes of Feeding Frenzy in the third column, giving a potential 33 percent damage boost that is easy to maintain as long as there are targets in range to take down. Take this if you plan on using Retrofit Escapade for ad clear in activities such as Heist Battlegrounds or Dares of Eternity.
Frenzy
Frenzy offers a much smaller damage boost than other damage perks in this column, but Frenzy’s power has always been in how it combines its 15 percent damage increase with a big bump to reload speed and handling as well. This can be a good perk to take if your choice of perk in the third column does not significantly aid in the reload speed or uptime of Retrofit Escapade since it can alleviate some of the weapon’s base slowness while also enhancing its damage.
One For All
One For All has one of the biggest damage boosts on offer with a sizeable 35 percent increase available after shooting three different targets in rapid succession, an activation cost identical to Stats For All in the third column. Pairing these two together has always been a winning combination, and it’s no different on Retrofit Escapade.
Golden Tricorn
With Volatile Rounds being so potent on this weapon, most players will be using Retrofit Escapade in combination with the Void subclass and making Golden Tricorn a tempting choice of perk. A 10-second long 50 percent damage buff is on offer with this perk if you can pair a kill with the machine gun with a melee or grenade kill of the same energy type, which isn’t a bonus to scoff at if you can consistently activate it.
Tap The Trigger
As with Zen Moment in the third column, this perk will most likely only see use in PvP. The accuracy and stability improvements hold very little use compared to the damage perks other than in PvP-style scenarios where you’re short on Heavy ammo and need to make every bullet count.
Vorpal Weapon
Vorpal Weapon is an alternative to Target Lock for hitting big targets, but it has the least amount of bonus damage to offer on Heavy weapons. Vorpal Weapon on Primary guns may be a 20 percent damage bonus against boss enemies and vehicles, but on a Heavy gun like Retrofit Escapade, that bonus is only 10 percent. Target Lock simply outmatches it at the same game.
