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Destiny 2's The Witch Queen brought a lot of much-needed diversity to the game's meta through more balanced seasonal mods for Season of the Risen, and also through new features like weapon crafting. The fact that players can take the grind to another level by farming for Deepsight Resonance weapons and then craft those same weapons to choose their perks is a fantastic improvement overall. This is because obtaining god rolls in Destiny 2 has historically been an exclusively random experience for players, whereas now it can be deterministic.
This guide explains what the god roll for the Thoughtless sniper rifle from Season of the Risen is, and why players should prioritize crafting this gun over many others when it comes to maxing out boss DPS.
Why Thoughtless is a Meta Weapon for DPS
Thoughtless is a new Stasis sniper rifle introduced with Season of the Risen, and while it would seem like a regular sniper when it comes to its stats, it can be a DPS monster if built correctly. Before delving into why that is, Destiny 2 players should understand why Thoughtless is such a good weapon to have in Raids, Dungeons, Grandmaster Nightfalls, and other high-end activities that require high DPS.
One of the most powerful DPS combos in Destiny 2 at the moment consists of using the Izanagi's Burden Exotic sniper rifle and combining it with the Palmyra-B rocket launcher, hot-swapping between them in specific reload windows so to maximize the damage.
This works thanks to Palmyra-B's ability to roll with Auto-Loading Holster, which can be enhanced, bringing the automatic reload on the rocket launcher to a 2.3 seconds activation time, which is just enough for players to shoot Izanagi's Burden, reload it, and swap.
On the same note, Thoughtless can be used with an identic strategy, freeing up an Exotic slot and doing almost the same amount of damage as the Izanagi combo does when fully maxed out. Because Thoughtless is a craftable weapon, players can also enhance its traits, making it all the more powerful in high-end activities.
For comparison, Destiny 2 YouTuber and content creator Scrub did testing of the entire combo of Izanagi's Burden and Palmyra-B versus Thoughtless and the same rocket launcher. The results show that Thoughtless, while unbuffed and not swapping to a rocket launcher, deals slightly more damage than Izanagi's Burden, but the outcome is reversed in the opposite conditions.
A full Izanagi's Burden combo deals around 882k damage to bosses while debuffed with Divinity, whereas a full Thoughtless combo does around 847k damage.
Lastly, it's worth noting that Thoughtless is a Stasis sniper rifle, which means that players can further increase their DPS through the use of a Font of Might mod and picking up a Stasis Elemental Well. This combo also works on Palmyra-B, which is why these weapons work best together. This was used in Scrub's testing, and it accounts for a big chunk of the damage in both tests.
What The God Roll on Thoughtless Sniper Rifle Is
The frame slot for crafting Thoughtless has two major options: reload speed and handling. Reloading quickly and efficiently is part of what makes or breaks DPS phases in Destiny 2, and that's why many endgame weapons are best rolled with Auto-Loading Holster or other reload-oriented perks.
The sniper rifle would mainly be used in DPS phases when switching from one weapon to another in a quick manner is very important, which is why the handling Masterwork frame is a good pick on Thoughtless. This choice is mostly for personal preference, but the overall best option is handling, for most situations.
The first column on Thoughtless follows the same principle, and the only perk players should check out here is Fluted Barrel. This perk adds a lot of handling to the weapon, making it even faster to switch to when using the Palmyra-B rocket launcher. Furthermore, Fluted Barrel adds a decent stability bonus to Thoughtless, which does help make the gun feel more consistent to shoot.
The second column features two main options for players, which are Appended Mag and Extended Mag. These two perks are mostly equivalent, with only one major difference based on their interactions with the perk in column three, which will be explained first.
Column three is what makes Thoughtless such a good pick in boss fights and for DPS in Destiny 2 in general, and that's Overflow. This perk allows players to do what it says on the tin: overflow the magazine, but only under the condition of picking up a Special ammo brick.
With the Enhanced version of Overflow, combined with the Backup Mag mod, players can reach up to 17 bullets in the magazine, making Thoughtless a weapon that hardly needs to be reloaded in any given DPS phase.
As such, it's worth investigating the differences between Appended Mag and Extended Mag, which are both used to increase the maximum possible rounds in the magazine when Enhanced Overflow triggers. With Appended Mag, players will more consistently reach a magazine of 16, but they will have more reload speed than with Extended Mag.
Conversely, with Extended Mag, players will get up to 17 bullets in the magazine, which is one more than with Appended Mag, at the cost of some reload speed.
It's also worth noting that players will deal more damage with a Backup Mag mod than they would with a Boss Spec mod, and the reason for it is that overflowing the magazine even further calls for fewer reloads and an overall increase in DPS.
The lack of powerhouse mods from Season of the Risen also helps weapons like Thoughtless shine more, alongside heavy weapons like linear fusion rifles.
Again, this is mostly personal preference, and players should make the choice based on where they plan on using the sniper rifle the most. For example, Vow of the Disciple's Caretaker encounter is renowned for being a place where ammo is lacking, for the most part, and it may be more common for players to need to reload than constantly shoot their sniper, making Appended Mag slightly better.
Column four is where Thoughtless gets one of the best damaging perks in all of Destiny 2, which is Firing Line. This is extremely easy to proc, as all players need to do is to stand near two allies while shooting the gun. This is very easily achievable in Raids, and it's still consistent in game modes like Grandmaster Nightfall Strikes and Dungeons, even though they are activities for three players only.
Firing Line provides a 20% damage buff to Thoughtless, allowing it to fire several powerful shots before swapping to a rocket launcher to increase boss DPS. It does have an Enhanced version, but it only increases the weapon's range by a very trivial amount, making it not necessary at all.
Enhanced Overflow increases the number of bullets in the magazine even further, which is why it's the only truly recommended Enhanced trait on Thoughtless.
Destiny 2 is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
