Dead Man’s Tale Catalyst (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Friday, February 26, 2021, 10:29 (1155 days ago) @ Cody Miller

What implications does this have for PvP? Sounds like Icarus on steroids.

It’s nice for PvP, but not crazy OP or anything. It’s more like the catalyst helps make up for the weapon’s worst weakness; it’s too slow to be much good at close range. It’s default rate of fire is 120RPM, and it typically requires 3 shots to get a kill (3 crits in most cases, 2 crits + 1 body against low resilience guardians). That puts its TTK at 1 second, which is decent but nothing crazy.

The catalyst boosts the hipfire RPM to 150RPM, or roughly 0.8 second TTK, which is more competitive with the faster TTK weapons in the sandbox. But it’s worth mentioning that this gun’s real PvP strength is as a mid-long range teamshot weapon. It has great handling, and some of the best target acquisition in the game. It makes it great for countering snipers or locking down sight lines that are just a bit too pong for hand cannons or pulse rifles.

But all of that is without getting into the gun’s main exotic perk; chaining quick crit hits applies a buff to the gun which stacks up to x5. With each stack, you increase the gun’s damage and reload speed. The damage boost is significant enough to be meaningful in PvP. At x5, you can potentially 2-shot kill low resilience guardians. So again, in teamshot scenarios where you have 1 or 2 guardians using Dead Man’s Tale (along with a friendly sniper, or some other Scout Rifle), you can very effectively lock down longer sightlines.