Destiny Jolders Hammer Best Rolls Guide
Destiny Jolders Hammer Best Rolls Guide by AquaKnight
With Iron Banner starting tomorrow, I wanted to write a short guide on what perks you should be looking for on your new Jolder’s Hammer (Rank 4 IB). The optimal perk loadouts are purely my opinion; everyone has their preferences (PvE vs PvP loadouts, playstyles, etc), so feel free to use this guide as a summary of all the possibilities you can get when you re-roll. I’m also going to use the DestinyDB website as a source for the perks choices per slot (I’m assuming that the 331 JH follows the same pattern that non-raid legendary HMGs follow choice-wise). If you just want the best roll choices, please skip to the bottom.
With that said, let me list out all of the possible options per slot along with a short description as to what they do for HMGs. I skipped Barrels since this is the heaviest preference based slot; I personally use between a barrel that boosts impact and range in exchange for stability on my Against All Odds with Rodeo and Perfect Balance. For a separate AAO, I use a stability boosting barrel with lower overall damage, but get Field Scout as a trade-off. I feel the important thing to keep in mind is to play to your HMGs strengths and address its weaknesses by balancing it.
| Name | Slot | Description | Desirability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Counterbalance | Left | Increases Stability by 9%. | Excellent for HMGs, but lower fire rate HMGs have easier controllable recoil. Is still a highly desirable roll in this slot for recoil control, the other being Rodeo. |
| Hip Fire | Left | Increases hip fire accuracy. | Not particularly useful; in my experience, hip firing with low fire rate HMGs can be surprisingly accurate without this. That being said, regardless of PVE or PVP, I feel you should always aim down sights unless the target is right in your face. |
| Rangefinder | Left | Increases range stat when aiming down sights. | Solid perk, as you’ll generally be aiming down the sight when firing your HMG. You can opt to lower your Impact or Range in exchange for Stability with barrel options + use this perk if you’re trying to balance stats on your gun. |
| Rodeo | Left | Forces recoil to jump the gun up as opposed to random directions. | Like Counterbalance, Rodeo does an excellent job of controlling your recoil. By knowing how the gun will shift per bullet, you can shift your aim to compensate and stay on your targets. Very desirable perk. |
| Spray and Play | Left | Boosts reload speed when the mag is empty. | Decent for PvE, where you can control when and where to find cover, and it might be okay to run around with a near empty mag. Bad for PvP where you can’t do the former. Reactive reload is a much better reload perk, as is available as a Right Slot choice. |
| Persistence | Left | Increased accuracy the longer you fire. | Not a good perk choice for low fire rate HMGs. It would take too long to reach a point where this is noticable; there are better recoil control choices for your Left Slot (counterbalance, rodeo). |
| Take a Knee | Left | Boost accuracy when crouched. | Not particularly useful, since you need to be crouching for this to be active; again, look for a replacement if you roll this. |
| Perfect Balance | Mid 1 | Boost stability. | Excellent perk on HMGs that increases in desirability the higher your fire rate is. However with a low fire rate HMG like Jolder’s, you may find that you don’t need as much stability as you normally would. This one is preference based, but keep in mind that taking PB would restrict you from taking either Field Scout or Flared Magwell, both of which are immensely useful on Jolders. |
| Single Point Sling | Mid 1 | Slightly boosts strafe movespeed and swap speed. | Not all that useful for HMGs. If swapping speed is an issue for you, aim for Quickdraw in Mid 3. |
| High Caliber Rounds | Mid 1 | Boost flinch. | Mediocre. To this day, I’m still not 100% on how effective this is in PVP/PVE, but either way I’d avoid it. |
| Snapshot | Mid 2 | Faster ADS. | Faster aiming is a legitimately good perk for HMGs; the issue is that the other options in this slot (Hammerforged, Field Scout) are superior. |
| Field Scout | Mid 2 | More reserve ammo and larger magazine. | Possibly the most desirable perk for low fire rate, high impact HMGs. A 26 bullet mag, 13 reserve set in PvP becomes 50/25 on 1 heavy pickup (without armor or weapon perks). Carrying more ammunition as well as having a larger mag is always going to be beneficial to you. |
| Hammer Forged | Mid 2 | More range. | If you didn’t roll Field Scout, Hammer Forged is a solid perk option for the second mid slot. You give up larger magazines and reserve ammo for an HMG that retains its already high impact at an extended range (higher damage due to a greater distance before damage drop-off). Great for both PvE and PvP. |
| Quickdraw | Mid 3 | Faster swap. | HMGs have a very slow swap speed, so Quickdraw isn’t entirely bad here. Personally, even if I rolled this, I would have Field Scout or Hammer Forged selected either way. |
| Flared Magwell | Mid 3 | Faster reload. | Highly desirable, as HMG reload time is one of their weak points. Flared MagwellDOES stack with Spray and Pray, but DOES NOT stack with Feeding Frenzy; keep this in mind if you get this roll. |
| Skip Rounds | Mid 3 | Bullets bounce off of surfaces, increase reserve ammo but also increase recoil. | No. |
| Crowd Control | Right | Damage increases by 15% for 3 seconds after a kill. | Highly desirable, as heavies are generally going to get you kills relatively easily in either PvE (vs. mobs) or PvP. Bonus damage on top of an already high impact weapon? Yes please! |
| Grenadier | Right | Decrease grenade recharge by 2.5 seconds per kill. | A solid perk in general, grenadier helps you with grenade cooldowns, and can provide synergy to some playstyles (kills and melee damage charge grenades, grenades charge super). |
| Feeding Frenzy | Right | Decreases reload time after a kill. | Very desirable perk for HMGs due to their awful reload time. Since you will generally score a kill with your HMG, you can count on this to assist you with reloads. Note that you may be able to delay the actual reload by a second or two from your kill; useful as it may allow you to find cover prior to your reload. |
| Reactive Reload | Right | After a kill, reloading your weapon gives bonus damage for 3 seconds. | By itself, not as useful as Crowd Control for proccing bonus damage. However, if you get Spray and Play and/or Flared Magwell as your Left/Mid perks, can be a good build. Whether or not you feel this strategy compares to your other options is entirely up to you. |
| Surplus | Right | Bonus ammo from ammo drops. | Excellent perk on heavies in general. Landing both Surplus and Field Scout can be considered a godly roll for someone looking to increase their heavy ammo gains /storage for PVE. Does not increase heavy pickups with Field Scout however, so you may want to look for a different perk for a PVP loadout. |
| Who’s Next | Right | Don’t bother. | If you roll this, throw your Jolder’s off the tower. |
Best Possible Roll
Again, the below is my personal opinion, but I tried to write it to accomodate many preferences; by all means if you value a perk, keep rolling until you land it. Please keep in mind, you want your build to address the following negatives:
- Recoil
- Reload Speed
- Low Mag/Reserve Ammo (debatable)
With that said, my best advice for an optimal roll would be a Jolder’s with any of these as the respective slot roll (bold with personal preference).
| Left Slot | Mid Slot | Right Slot |
|---|---|---|
| Counterbalance, Rangefinder, Rodeo | Perfect Balance, Field Scout, Hammer Forged, Flared Magwell | Crowd Control, Grenadier, Feeding Frenzy, Reactive Reload, Surplus |
And my god tier roll would be Rodeo, Field Scout, Crowd Control.
Hope I could help you guys. Best of luck in Iron Banner, guardians; I hope to see you rocking your shiny new Jolder’s soon!
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