It can be hard for some Destiny 2 players to get excited about a new bow, but the Pre Astyanax IV—a Nightfall weapon added in season 22—has a lot of potential contained within its perk pool for some fantastic god rolls worth exploring.
Despite being billed as the season of Stasis, thus far Season of the Wish in Destiny 2 has proved to be all about Solar. That’s good news for players farming Pre Astyanax IV when it’s available as the weekly Nightfall reward, as it’s not only a Solar Precision Bow but also features the ever-important Incandescent perk in the fourth column. This allows the bow to influence and interact with Solar Fragments and Aspects on a deeper level, rewarding players who grind for a good roll and pair it with popular flame-flinging subclass builds.
Here’s our recommendations on what to look for in a perfect Pre Astyanax IV bow, as well as the best perks it has available for constructing a god roll.
Pre Astyanax IV PvE god roll in Destiny 2
- Bowstring: Elastic String
- Arrow: Compact Arrow Shaft
- First perk: Archer’s Tempo or Shoot to Loot
- Second perk: Incandescent or Explosive Head
- Origin Trait: Wild Card
- Masterwork: Accuracy or Draw Time
In Destiny 2’s PvE activities, there are two directions a god roll for Pre Astyanax IV can take. In low difficulty content, Archer’s Tempo and Incandescent is a fun and efficient duo of perks to pick up. But for those taking the bow into endgame activities like Grandmaster Nightfalls, Shoot to Loot paired with Explosive Head will serve you best.
When paired with a bowstring and arrow pick that improves your draw time, Archer’s Tempo is a great perk for content that has easy health bars to chew through. If you want a bow to keep up with the time-to-kill that primary weapons such as SMGs and Auto Rifles can provide, this is a must-have. Combining it with Incandescent, which adds a useful amount of area-of-effect damage to the weapon, can turn Pre Astyanax IV into a reliable workhorse weapon—something that isn’t always possible to construct out of the Precision Frame archetype.
In Master and Grandmaster content, though, it can be harder to get value out of Incandescent consistently. That’s where Explosive Head comes in, which effectively converts into a 15-percent flat damage boost on body shots and a 10-percent boost on critical hits for the bow. That comes in handy against tankier enemies.
Plus, since you’re more vulnerable to attacks in those higher difficulty activities, putting on Shoot to Loot so you can safely pick up ammo bricks and Orbs of Power from afar is a natural direction to take. There are other bows that pull off this strategy excellently, like Strident Whistle, but Pre Astyanax IV can do the job just as well if you missed out on the best bows of yesteryear.
Pre Astyanax IV PvP god roll in Destiny 2
- Bowstring: Polymer String
- Arrow: Compact Arrow Shaft
- First perk: Archer’s Tempo
- Second perk: Successful Warm-Up
- Origin Trait: Wild Card
- Masterwork: Draw Time or Accuracy
It’s easy to sleep on bows in PvP when other weapons such as Hand Cannons are significantly more popular, but a Pre Astyanax IV with the god roll of Archer’s Tempo and Successful Warm-Up can be a deadly tool in the right hands.
With both Archer’s Tempo and Successful Warm-Up active, you’re looking at a time-to-kill across the board that’s just under one second. If you can find the opening pick on an unsuspecting opponent to get those perks rolling, the sheer speed at which you can fire arrows from the bow can more than match current popular weapons like Rose or Thorn. It won’t be for everyone—bows require a bit more accuracy than most guns. However, there’s a lot to love in this combination for bow fans.
It’s even more important in the PvP god roll to make sure you have the right bowstring and arrow options as well. These components are where you can find some major improvements to vital stats like draw time, accuracy and reload speed, all of which play a role in improving your time-to-kill and consistency. Polymer, Flexible and Elastic String all work for this, in that they provide reductions to your draw time. Flexible and Elastic String provide larger benefits in this regard, but at a greater cost to your accuracy, which is something to consider if you decide to pursue these choices.
In regards to Pre Astyanax IV’s arrows, it’s tough to beat the Compact Arrow Shaft. It’s the only arrow option the bow has which improves its reload speed. Many players assume that the reload speed stat doesn’t offer much benefit to bows, but the speed at which you can dock a new arrow after firing one plays as significant a role as draw time does in many regards. If you’re willing to run Grandmasters, getting an Adept version of the bow is useful too, as Adept weapons get boosts to multiple stats when masterworked instead of just one.
