With the vorpal nerf on heavies tomorrow. Is it still #1 on rockets? Or is there something more viable?

Lasting impression is basically a situation where youll do ~20% of a rockets damage on hit and then deal 100% damage to the target after 3 additional seconds have past whereas an unbuffed rocket immediately deals 100% of its damage so you end up doing the same damage besides the little bit initially. Its good if you need the extra time to follow it up with burst damage from something else to 1-2 an enemy but otherwise I dont see the point of it. If you use all your ammo then you can technically do more damage overall than perks like frenzy or vorpal but i feel like you just dont deal that extra damage alot of the time and it can very quickly become a detriment.

If you use it on a raid boss then your dps will likely decrease as your damage is always behind and waiting to go off (ie lets say you deal damage over say 10 seconds with a non lasting impression rocket then youd still need to wait 13seconds for that final rocket to go off if it had li) unless you atleast swap to something else midway through as the damage will be done while you use whatever else (like anarchy or witherhoard). The issue with damage always being behind is that bosses have immune phases, if we go back to a rocket with 7 rounds and 7 impact but only 6 explode youll deal (7 x 0.2) + (6 x 1) = 7.4 unbuffed rockets worth of damage which is a 6% damage increase which is lower than vorpal and somwtimes cluster

So if you want to use only a rocket for raid boss damage youd generally want to avoid li if you can in favour of a better damage perk.

If you can proc frenzy thats great and will be like having a prenerf vorpal rocket except when procced you also get a pretty big reload boost. Worth mentioning you can proc it just by taking damage and/or using another weapon for anyone wondering.

Explosive light rockets dont roll with autoloading holster nor do they even roll with overflow or clown. Autoloading is great as if you pair it with something decent you will do quite a bit more than anything without it (including an explosive light rocket) and overflow/clown because, well, reloading less = dps increase.

That means for raid boss dps vorpal will be king unless you want to just use the rocket (explosive) or feel like you can easily proc frenzy.

Vorpal will remain best for burst damage (unless you can proc frenzy) as it can roll with overflow although a clown royal entry is another great and more consistent 2 rockets just without a damage perk.

/r/DestinyTheGame Thread