For those only interested in the 5 second recharge, skip ahead to the Scavenger section below, or to 1:33 in the video. For those interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Gunslinger Modifiers, enjoy the full video or full read at work: [b]Intro[/b] Hey everyone, Dukaness here with the third video in my Gunslinger viability analysis, after the June Update. Part 1 and Part 2, covered grenades and Throwing Knives, and I suggest you watch them before this video. Today’s focus is on the Ability Modifiers and the Additional Modifiers in the Gunslinger Skill Tree, starting with Keyhole. [b]Ability Modifiers[/b] [i]Keyhole[/i] Some people swear by Keyhole, which effectively lets you get collateral kills with your Golden Gun if your targets are lined up. Although it has the potential to get some flashy multi kills, I personally find that enemies in the Crucible don’t line up and funnel through frequently enough to warrant its use, so I’m going to dismiss it right away. [i]Gunslinger’s Trance[/i] Another option is Gunslinger’s Trance. This stacks stability improvements for each precision kill up to three times, for 14 seconds. Ask yourself how frequently you manage 2 headshots in a 14 second span. I think most of us would agree we don’t do that consistently, unless we’re sniping, but in that scenario a stability buff is not all that important. So generally speaking, most of us will only be utilizing one stack the majority of the time. I went ahead and tested the effects of one stack. The video shows footage of me firing The Last Word with and without the buff. First, I just let the weapon fire freely, then I actually try to control the recoil. Free firing, the difference is obviously noticeable, but when you actually try and control the recoil, the difference is nominal, certainly not enough to warrant the use of a whole perk. I tested this with other weapons too, I just left them out for timing purposes. [i]Scavenger[/i] [u]The Facts[/u] So we’re stuck with Scavenger right? Wrong. You aren’t stuck with it. You love Scavenger, and if you don’t love Scavenger, pay attention because you’re about to. Scavenger reduces the cooldown of your grenade and Throwing Knives when you pick up ammo, and this was buffed by 33% in the update. I want to show you how powerful this is. Video shows me in a Crucible game. I launch my Throwing Knife and grenade to reset the cool down. I pick up a special box and boom, my abilities are charged by about 25%. I was already full on primary ammo, so the game only registered my character picking up special ammo, even though special boxes drop both. I fire a shot from my primary and go back. Now that I’m under full primary capacity, it registers my character picking up more ammo and I get another 25% reduction. In the next clip I show, I double dip into the special box (50%) as I’m not full on either ammo. If you didn’t know this, players can drop primary ammo when they die. So, I then fire a shot from my primary and pick up another primary box laying on the ground, snaking another 25% reduction. [b]That’s 75%, plus the cool down just from time passing, and my abilities are charged in 5 seconds[/b]. Your Intellect, Discipline, and Strength build does not impact the cooldown. [u]Optimization[/u] You can optimize this perk by making a few gameplay adjustments. Even if you pick up 1 primary bullet, the perk activates, which I proved. So if you are full on primary and get a special weapon kill, fire a random shot from your primary, walk over your enemy’s corpse and the perk will trigger if they dropped ammo. Since the modifier works this way, my recommendation is to make sure you are ALWAYS short at least one bullet of primary ammo. That way, when you walk over ammo without noticing, your abilities will charge. I guarantee that if you make a conscious effort to keep wasting primary ammo for a couple of games, you will not only start doing it by habit, but you’ll also notice your abilities charging way faster. In addition to forcing your primary reserve below maximum capacity, keep an eye out for the little white boxes in combat, and make sure you get special ammo boxes as frequently as possible. [b]Additional Modifiers[/b] [i]Chain of Woe[/i] I feel the same way about Chain of Woe that I do about Gunslinger’s Trance. You simply won’t activate the full potential of the perk enough to warrant its use in Crucible. For Chain of Woe to activate passed the first stack, you need two headshots in 9 seconds. Even if you did activate more than one stack consistently, you’ve killed 2 or 3 players so you probably have time for a full reload. Of course, you’ll get single headshots many times each game, so I tested the first stacks reload speed reduction with a few weapons, with and without the perk activated. In the video, you can see the change in reload speed as I put both situations side by side. The change is hardly noticeable. Interestingly enough, the drop in reload speed on the first stack is almost identical to the effect of wearing a pair gauntlets that reduces the reload speed of a specific weapon. You could use Chain of Woe with one of those pairs of gauntlets to get even more reload speed, but knowing this information I still don’t think the perk is very valuable in Crucible. [i]Over the Horizon[/i] Not much to say about Over the Horizon. It increases the range of the Golden Gun. In Crucible, you can only be so dead, so unless you’re counting on coming across a Ram-wearing, Self-reviving Sunsinger who also happened to revive a teammate and simultaneously activated a Flame Shield while exiting an Armour of Light Bubble AND you’re shooting him from across the map, there isn’t much use for this in Crucible, so I’m ruling it out. [i]Gambler’s Dagger[/i] Again, process of elimination leaves us with the last modifier, Gambler’s Dagger. And again, this is not a bad thing. Having an extra Throwing Knife always has the potential to come in handy, and you can spam them when combined with Scavenger. [b]Conclusion[/b] Chain of Woe and Gunslinger’s Trance are a super fun combo in PvE. Both of them get extended for every precision kill, so although it only stacks 3 times, you can extend them for an infinite duration. You can spend minutes at a time with max reload and stability. But as I mentioned before, it’s not a good PvP combination because the benefits of one stack aren’t significant, and you likely won’t activate more than one stack very often. Same for Keyhole, which is good for groups of adds, and Over the Horizon, which is good for hitting enemies from far away with your Golden Gun. Neither add enough value on a frequent enough of a basis to warrant their use in PvP. Process of elimination leaves us with Scavenger and Gambler’s Dagger, although I wouldn’t say we’re stuck with them as they are great individual perks, but also work phenomenally well in tandem. This is because you can burn two Throwing Knives and have both recharge at a very fast rate if you leverage Scavenger well enough. [b]Outro[/b] That’s it for the video, and for the viability analysis on the Gunslinger. I hope you all learned a couple of things, or at least feel better prepared for setting up your own Gunslinger build. I don’t expect everyone to only use my recommendations, so let me know what you disagree with in the comments below. I’m working on a video with a full Gunslinger build that incorporates everything we talked about and a little bit more, just to wrap up the series. I’ll show you guys a video of that breakdown and highlights of gameplay in a couple of weeks. Next week’s video will likely be another Trials Tutorial. Until then, good luck with your Gunslinger. -Duke