Fractethyst God Roll: New Stasis Shotgun

Season of the Lost brought with it a new batch of unique weapons and Fractethyst is probably the most impactful of the bunch. If you’re looking for a solid, consistent shotgun that’s going to put in work, then you need to be on the look out for one of these god rolls for Fractethyst.

Fractethyst Stasis Shotgun

Fractethyst is the new legendary shotgun that was added during Season of the Lost. It’s also the only shotgun in the game that deals Stasis damage. This is a precision frame shotgun (65rpm) which puts it in the same archetype and effective range as shotguns like Retold Tale and Compass Rose. There are some phenomenal perks on this weapon which make for some very interesting and powerful god rolls.

Fractethyst Stasis Shotgun PvE God Roll

Fractethyst has some pretty solid base stats so our primary focus is picking weapon perks that maximize its lethality. And as with all shotguns, we’ll do what we can to increase its range to push its effective range further out and tighten the pellet spread inside of that range as well.

• First Column: Smallbore – Dual strength barrel. Increase range and stability.
• Second Column: Accurized Rounds – The weapon can fire longer distances. Increases range.
• Third Column: Lead From Gold – Picking up Heavy ammo also grants ammo to this weapon.
• Fourth Column: Thresh – Killing combatants with this weapon generates a small amount of Super energy.
• Masterwork: Range – Increases this weapon’s range.
• Weapon Mod: Major Spec – Deals extra damage against powerful enemies.

Lead From Gold vs. Ensemble

There aren’t very many solid PvE perks in this column and even if there were, Lead From Gold would still be one of my top choices. Getting special ammo when you pick up heavy is flat out amazing and can legitimately be a life saver.

I did some quick testing on a couple weapons of mine that rolled with Lead From Gold:

• Frozen Orbit sniper rifle: 1x heavy brick gave me 5 rounds of special ammo
• Martyr’s Retribution grenade launcher: 1x heavy brick gave me 6 rounds of special ammo

That may not sound like a lot of ammo, but the ammo finder armor mod got a significant buff in Season 15. You’ll now have a higher chance of getting a heavy brick to drop if you get kills with your primary weapon, and that drop rate is enhanced further if you’re using an exotic primary.

You can get an absurd amount of heavy ammo to drop if you equip double finders for your heavy of choice and use an exotic primary weapon. The image below was snapped after a full round of Altar of Sorrow. There were 18 heavy bricks on the ground after the round was over and that doesn’t include the ~6 that were picked up while fighting the waves.

Each one of those heavy bricks is 5 – 6 rounds of special ammo when you run Lead With Gold.

This is far more useful than a smidgen of extra handling and reload speed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Ensemble is a good perk, but it’s reliant on you being hip to hip with your teammates. You can do that on some encounters, but on others, you don’t want to be anywhere near your teammates. This ends up being a wasted perk that doesn’t provide any benefit to you.

Bluntly, this perk is getting a lot of hype and mentions in other guides, on YouTube, and on Twitch right now mainly because it’s new. Is it good? Sure, but it is severely lacking in utility and uptime.

Thresh vs. Adagio

This perk choice probably comes as a surprise. You’re probably thinking “Adagio is a damage perk. Why wouldn’t we use it?!”

Well, Adagio’s damage buff only works out to be roughly an 8% buff. That’s not bad generally speaking, but Adagio also slows down your weapon’s firing speed. slowing down the firing speed as well, this makes Adagio’s “buff” a net DPS decrease.

(3016 – 2779) / 2779 = 0.08489 or roughly 8%

The math on Adagio’s damage buff.

That’s not that much of a damage buff to begin with and sacrificing firing rate is not enough of a payoff for that small of a buff.

Adagio as a weapon perk is much better for something like Wolftone Draw where it increases damage by 20%. If Fractethyst saw the same damage buff, I’d 100% recommend it, but it doesn’t so I’m not.

Thresh, on the other hand, gives a huge amount of super energy per kill. As Aztecross found during his testing, Thresh takes 1.5 – 2 seconds off your Super cooldown per kill.

Editor’s note: On further testing Adagio is giving a 25% damage buff which makes it the best weapon perk in the fourth column by far. Not sure what happened during the first round of testing. Could have been bugged. But take Adagio over Thresh. We’ll get this section updated soon.

Fractethyst Stasis Shotgun PvP God Roll

Fractethyst is going to open up weapon load outs quite a bit. The Kinetic slot has been a wasteland for special weapons. Guardians that use energy primary weapons are going to get a lot of mileage out of this shotgun and will want to farm their PvP god roll ASAP.

• First Column: Smallbore – Dual strength barrel. Increase range and stability.
  • Honorable Mention: Full Choke – Tightened barrel. Reduces projectile spread when ADS at the expense of precision damage.
• Second Column: Accurized Rounds – The weapon can fire longer distances. Increases range.
• Third Column: Slideshot – Sliding partially reloads this weapon’s magazine and temporarily boosts range and stability.
  • Honorable Mention: Quickdraw –
• Fourth Column: Opening Shot – Improves accuracy and range on the opening shot of an attack.
• Masterwork: Range – Increases this weapon’s range.
• Weapon Mod: Adept Icarus – Improves accuracy while airborne and slightly increases weapon range.

Full Choke vs. Smallbore

There’s a bit of a debate on which weapon perk is better for shotguns. Full Choke requires you to be ADS to be able to tighten the spread of your pellets. That means that if you aren’t ADS with your shotgun, you’ll have the normal wide pellet spread.

There’s no such requirement for smallbore. The stat bonuses are active the moment you select the weapon perk and completely independent from any action on the player’s part. You’ll get the full benefit of both the range and stability bonus whether you’re ADS’ing or hip firing.

Slideshot vs. Quickdraw

I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Quickdraw is overrated. This is especially true after the nerf and the latest changes to sliding. While the sliding changes weren’t nearly as bad as everyone thought, they have made shotguns a little less reliable. However, Slideshot counterbalances those tweaks by boosting range and stability which. in my opinion, makes it a must have perk on all shotguns.

But wait! There’s more! The real benefit of Slideshot is that you reload a shell into the mag each time you proc it while sliding. Shotguns typically have a low reload stat and using a shotgun reloader mod takes up valuable space on your Gauntlets. Using slideshot lets you negate reloading by slamming a new shell in the mag each time you slide.

The range bonus from slideshot and opening shot can give Fractethyst max range which will help you get your OHK’s from a greater distance than what other Guardians are capable of.