Trace Rifles

[tepid oak]

What are trace rifles good for?

[steady lily]

steady, consistent damage over time that shotguns, sniper rifles, or grenade launchers - for instance, would not as efficiently do.

[shy sage]

ammo efficient too

[tepid oak]

are they best as an add clearing tool?

[steady lily]

Yes

[tepid oak]

what rolls should I get if I want to bring a trace rifle in an endgame content like GM's?

[inner crow]

They're great for light shows.

[frozen yarrow]

Pretty much the same perks you would want on a primary. Depends on the gun, but usually damage + utility perks like field prep, stats for all, shoot to loot, or perpetual motion.

Very preference based

[steady lily]

for gms or nightfalls in general fourth times a charm or triple tap is terrific for longest time damaging without reloading. most trace rifles have adaptive munitions to sustain damage without worrying about sheild type.

and you can obviously build around exotic trace rifles, which all have that effective, efficient damage output, but with more powerful perks, too.

[maiden flame]

Trace rifles are effectively high magazine capacity smgs that have the engagement range of a scout rifle and run on special ammo

The main good ones are retraced path with subsistence/incan and hollow denial with lead from gold/dragonfly or repulsor brace

Path of Least Resistance from Seraph isn’t great since Voltshot requires reloading and it has bad first column perks

And Acasias Dejection from Root of Nightmares is just kind of objectively worse than Retraced Path due to bad first column perks

[shy sage]

doesnt reconstruction make up for it ?

actually i can see demo being infinitely better lol

[maiden flame]

It doesn’t get demo incan they’re both 4th slot

But reconstruction is really bad on primaries compared to either subsistence or adaptive munitions

[shy sage]

mb just realised, would you instead want something like feeding frenzy? lead from gold on that

[maiden flame]

Rewind is okay but you’re usually not mag-dumping a trace given it’s massive mag size

[maiden flame]

Feeding frenzy is also great on retraced but it doesn’t get LFG sadly

[shy sage]

very true

[maiden flame]

Hollow denial is the best trace overall but you really want incan with solar 3.0

Mainly because of how much it fills your melee back up, which is essential on sunbracers if you don’t get enough grenade kills

[shy sage]

ive been using acasia with recon and incan this entire time didnt realise how useless it was hahaha, im gonna craft me a retraced and see how that feels

and i agree

[maiden flame]

Specifically it’s because of jank with scorch

Scorch and ignitions, unlike jolt or volatile explosions, credits whatever inflicted it whenever it gets a kill

That’s why triggering an ignition with incinerator snap procs sunbracers, the ignition is considered a melee kill

This also applies to incandescent guns

[shy sage]

oh thats very interesting

never knew that actually

[maiden flame]

My Calus minitool has something like 35k kills on it, most of those are because of enemies that died from scorch

[shy sage]

damnn my calus is similar as in like one of my higher kill count weapons

recently got the dgn smg tho with demo + incan look forward to trying that

[maiden flame]

Because incandescent scorch counts as weapon kills, it activates perks such as subsistence on retraced

If you kill one or two enemies, and then enemies nearby die of the incandescent-inflicted scorch, it will refill your magazine to an insane degree

[shy sage]

thats crazy af

[maiden flame]

It’s just some intricacies of scorch and the way it interacts with weapons

[shy sage]

ill 100% try it out today once i get my wep lvled

[maiden flame]

It works the same on the new dungeon smg, actually, scorch kills from that give back grenade energy

Mind you it’s not that scorch is counted as weapon kills like how you can use tether to level weapons, it’s just that scorch “remembers” what inflicted it and credits that as the killer

[shy sage]

this new information making me think of all sorts of synergies

[maiden flame]

And because of that one fragment that gives melee energy on scorched enemy kills, incandescent functions as a better version of pugilist

[shy sage]

damn

[maiden flame]

It only really matters on Solar subclasses, but that’s basically 50% of all warlocks in endgame activities so…

[shy sage]

feels hahaha sucks that warlock are so limited in terms of variety

[high quiver]

Trace rifle with frenzy is good or decent compared to better perks?

[maiden flame]

Which one?

Retraced?

[high quiver]

Yes

I have frenzy on that

[maiden flame]

It’s in the 4th column, you’d really rather have incandescent there but it’s still decently usable

[shy sage]

do you mean feeding ?