The Better Devils Hand Cannon is back in Destiny 2, baby. One of the first weapons I fell in love with, and something that has sadly been gone for a while, is returning in The Final Shape, and it is better than ever.
The new version of Better Devils is a Strand weapon, an Adaptive Frame and 140 RPM beast, and an easily controllable recoil pattern, with little deviation in either direction as standard.
How to get Better Devils
To get your hands on Better Devils, all you need to do is get into the Crucible. It can drop as a random reward, win or lose. You can also buy random rolls of it for one Crucible Engram from Shaxx at the Tower. This weapon can be Enhanced, so once you get that roll you love, you can get to work leveling it up to be the best version it can be.
Possible Perk Pool
The Better Devils can have the following perks:
- Perk 1: Air Trigger, Demolitionist, Enlightened Action, Moving Target, Perfect Float, Perpetual Motion, Pugilist, Rangefinder, Reconstruction, Rapid Hit, Slickdraw, Slice
- Perk 2: Adrenaline Junkie, Deconstruct, Elemental Capacitor, Explosive Payload, Frenzy, Gutshot Straight, Hatchling, Kill Clip, One For All, Opening Shot, Swashbuckler, Zen Moment.
- Origin Trait
- One Quiet Moment – Grants increased reload speed and handling when out of combat. Swords gain faster movement speed.
- Nadir Focus – Sustained fire increases accuracy and range. Increases lunge distance for Swords, and projectile velocity for Launchers.
The highlight here is Nadir Focus. You should take this no matter what you are doing, as the increase to accuracy and range is hugely helpful.
Better Devils PvE God Roll
The Strand God
The best perks for PvE for a Strand-focused build on Better Devils are:
- Barrel – Fluted or Smallbore, or Hammer-Forged for Max Range
- Magazine – Flared Magwell – increased stability and improved reload speed.
- Perk 1 – Slice – Casting your class ability allows this weapon to sever targets on hit for a brief duration, up to a maximum number of targets.
- Perk 2 – Hatchling – Precision final blows or rapidly defeating targets with this weapon spawns a Threadling at the target’s location. Improves handling.
- Masterwork – Your choice to counter whatever you feel needs a little bump.
There are a lot of good Hand Cannons in Destiny 2 right now, and that is before we even get into the Exotics. This can definitely fill a spot for Stand fans who need something to back them up. The Slice and Hatchling combo is great, and will nicely back up any Strand build across Hunters, Warlocks, and Titanss.
The Grenade Addict
- Barrel – Fluted or Smallbore, or Hammer-Forged for Max Range
- Magazine – Flared Magwell – increased stability and improved reload speed.
- Perk 1 – Demolitionist – Kills with this weapon generate grenade energy. Activating your grenade ability reloads this weapon from reserves.
- Perk 2 – Adrenaline Junkie – This weapon gains increased damage and handling from final blows with grenades or this weapon.
- Masterwork – Your choice to counter whatever you feel needs a little bump.
This will keep grenade energy flowing, while also giving you increased damage and easy reloads just for using them. The introduction of new, powerful Prismatic grenades is really making me feel that you cannot possibly get enough grenade energy regeneration in some builds right now.
Better Devils PvP God Roll
Honestly, these are not the best for PvP, but that is really down to the weapon rather than the perk pool. It’s just likely that you will get outworked by something with a faster fire rate, and that flinch will throw your aim off with this.
- Barrel – Fluted Barrel
- Magazine – Accurized Rounds
- Perk 1 – Moving Target – Increased movement speed and target acquisition when moving while aiming down sights.
- Perk 2 – Explosive Payload – Projectiles create an area-of-effect detonation on impact. Improves reload.
- Masterwork – Range or Reload
Movement in Crucible is constant, so Moving Target will give you a very useful buff just for playing. Explosive Payload will result in part of your damage output no longer being reduced by range-based falloff, which is a great help in plinking gunfights across the map.
There are, of course, great variants you can run. Perpetual Motion and Zen Moment are a solid combo. Frankly, there are enough good perks on this thing to be able to get some kind of build that is going to suit your needs pretty easily just by spending some Crucible Engrams.
