For those of you who are lucky enough to pick one up during the Nightfall this week, use this guide to determine how to best use this weapon.
Does Not Bow is only available from the The Shadow Thief Strike as a random drop.
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Overview
- Pros – High Range. Above average Aim Assist.
- Cons – Below average Stability. Low Reload Speed and Mag Size.
- Time-to-Kill: 0.93s (8 crit shots)
- Rate of Fire: 77
- Impact: 28 (25 damage per crit shot, 20 damage per body shot)
- Range: 33
- Stability: 39
- Reload Speed: 59
- Mag Size: 22
- Aim Assist: 65
Recommended Perks:
- Column 1 – Red Dot-OAS, Red Dot-ORES, Red Dot-ORS1, SureShot IS
- Column 2 – Rangefinder, Crowd Control, Spray and Pray, Persistence
- Column 3 – Perfect Balance, Rifled Barrel, Injection Mold, Fitted Stock, Hand Loaded
- Column 4 – Hidden Hand, Third Eye, Life Support, Counterbalance, Glass Half Full, Grenadier, Army of One
Unfortunately, this weapon is in the much maligned high impact auto rifle class, which means it generally isn’t competitive in the Crucible. However, if you happen to get a great roll, you can always hold onto it in the hopes that the archetype will be buffed in a future balance patch.
As far as sights go, it’s mostly user preference, but I think that Red Dot-OAS is the best all round sight for auto rifles, due to the boosts to stability and aim assist. I also like ORES for better stability, ORS1 for the increased zoom magnification factor (which means damage fall off starts at longer distances), or SureShot to provide a boost to AA. For the most part, the optics don’t really matter.
Column 2 doesn’t have a lot of great options, with Rangefinder being the only real ‘must-have’ perk. Crowd Control can also be useful in some situations where you’re engaging multiple targets simultaneously, and Spray and Pray will actually help a decent amount considering the mag size is only 22. Conversely, with such a small mag size, Persistence probably won’t have enough time to really be effective, but it’s still generally a better option than most of the other perks in this column.
Trying to get either more stability, or maxed range, is the name of the game in the third column. Perfect Balance is probably the best overall perk, but Rifled Barrel can also help a lot. If you can manage it, try to avoid decreasing the range stat by too much, since ARs need as much as possible to prevent the damage drop off from taking a toll. Injection Mold is only above Fitted Stock because its stability boost is a little higher, and it also increases handling speed, which is a nice bonus to have on a primary weapon.
In the last column, Hidden Hand, Third Eye, and Life Support are all tier-1 perks, if you can handle the sideways sway of the recoil. If you can’t then Counterbalance becomes a necessity. If you’re not lucky enough to get any of those, Glass Half Full can assist with mitigating the damage fall off by providing 1 extra damage to the bottom half of the mag. Grenadier and Army of one are decent passive bonuses, too.