These are the IKELOS shotgun god rolls and best perks in Destiny 2

The IKELOS shotgun is back in Destiny 2 alongside the rest of its family from the Warmind expansion armory, enjoying its third reprisal with a brand new perk pool in Season of the Seraph. The IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3, as it’s so delightfully called in-game, has never been the most popular of its kind as a Rapid-Fire Frame shotgun. Some potent new perk choices added to its potential rolls could change that going forward, though.

There are still many old favorites here, such as One-Two Punch and Trench Barrel, but it’s really these new additions that form some of the best combinations on the new IKELOS shotgun. Incandescent in the second column will be an immediate head turner for any player that utilizes Solar 3.0 in PvE and Cascade Point—a new perk in Season of the Seraph—has the potential to turn the IKELOS shotgun into an off-brand Fourth Horseman at will.

On top of the new buildcrafting ideas, all of the returning IKELOS weapons this season are also craftable. With some lucky Deepsight drops and some invested grinding, getting the ideal god roll on this weapon will have a lot less RNG involved than its previous incarnations. Furthermore, players can then invest in enhanced versions of their preferred perks to improve their effect.

Even if Rapid-Fire Frame shotguns aren’t usually your thing, IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3’s great perk combinations, its ability to generate Warmind Cells and its craftable nature make it a worthy addition to your arsenal for PvE activities.

These are the IKELOS shotgun god rolls and best perks in Destiny 2

IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3 PvE god roll

• Barrel: Barrel Shroud
• Magazine: Tactical Mag
• First perk: Subsistence
• Second perk: Incandescent

IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3 PvP god roll

• Barrel: Smallbore
• Magazine: Accurized Rounds
• First perk: Pugilist
• Second perk: Incandescent or Trench Barrel

It’s hard to fight against the inevitability of Incandescent as a perk for a weapon so designed for efficient ad clear like the IKELOS shotgun. Players who aim to carve a path toward melee ability enhancements can still find strong options in One-Two Punch and Trench Barrel, but this season’s nerfs to the functionality of such perks puts them lower down on the list of recommendations.

The lack of Lead From Gold for the IKELOS shotgun’s third reprisal is an unfortunate missing piece for its PvE rolls, but its new Origin Trait Rasputin’s Arsenal along with perks such as Subsistence and Grave Robber fill the void well enough.

A PvP roll is far harder to piece together as Rapid-Fire Frame shotguns are not particularly optimal in the fires of the Crucible compared to the likes of the Pinpoint Slug Frame or the Aggressive Frame shotguns. Bungie seems to know this too, as the IKELOS shotgun doesn’t feature any perks best suited for PvP. As you’re already at a disadvantage when it comes to range, your best option is to put all of your focus on improving that to extend the weapon’s lethal distance to better match the competitors it will come up against.

First perk column

Subsistence and Grave Robber

These two perks for the IKELOS shotgun compete with a similar end goal, feeding ammunition from your reserves directly into your magazine for extended uptime in combat. While Grave Robber is a perfect choice for players who have invested heavily into their Guardian’s melee abilities, Subsistence will be a more consistently viable option for most players.

Players who craft the IKELOS shotgun with Enhanced Subsistence can also reload two shots into the magazine instead of one with each kill if combined with a magazine choice that upgrades the IKELOS shotgun’s magazine size to eight or higher.

Feeding Frenzy

Feeding Frenzy is a great alternative to the perks mentioned above, offering the simple solution of incredibly fast reload speeds instead of delving into the minutia of partial reloads. With the IKELOS shotgun mostly serving as a weapon with which to clear dense groups of enemy combatants, it will be easy to build the maximum stacks of Feeding Frenzy as well.

Threat Detector

Threat Detector is a classic perk to pair with Surrounded, a synergistic duo that returns to the IKELOS shotguns perk pool for a second time. Threat Detector can be effective with other perks in the second column as well, but its requirement of enemies in proximity to activate being identical to that of Surrounded makes combining the two a no-brainer. Set up nearby to three or more enemies, and you can enjoy significant boosts to handling, stability, reload speed, and damage simultaneously.

Pugilist

The most obvious perk option for players with a melee build to enhance, Pugilist will no doubt be a go-to perk for many on this weapon. The melee energy it can generate with each kill the shotgun gets pairs great with Trench Barrel or Swashbuckler in the second column.

Turnabout and Offhand Strike

These two perks struggle to make a name for themselves in the face of much greater options in this first column. The overshield that Turnabout provides sounds nice on paper, but the likelihood of you using the IKELOS shotgun to break the shields of combatants—or Super-wielding Guardians—is not enough to guarantee you will regularly get that overshield.

Offhand Strike is a great perk with similar provisional stat boosts to Killing Wind, but taking such bonuses over the ammo generation of Subsistence with every killing blow is a hard ask. However, god rolls are ultimately up to personal preference in many scenarios, and Offhand Strike could find a prominent home in the loadouts of many players that prefer to take the boosts to range, stability, and accuracy.

Second perk column

Incandescent

Ever since it was first introduced in Season of the Haunted this year, Incandescent has been a popular perk choice on any weapon of which it’s graced the perk pool. With its ability to spread Scorch to enemies in close proximity to every combatant killed, it takes what makes Dragonfly or Chain Reaction great and makes it directly synergize with the Solar 3.0 subclass.

Its AoE effect being Scorch ticks means it can influence and be influenced by Solar Aspects and Fragments. The explosions can be made more potent, or the Scorch applied can benefit the player’s abilities. Either way, the multi-faceted utility of Incandescent can never be a bad choice on a gun.

Cascade Point

Cascade Point is a new perk introduced this season, and frankly, it’s already a tempting choice from the nature of its effect alone. Final blows or sustained precision hits with another weapon will temporarily and drastically increase the fire rate of the IKELOS shotgun, turning what is already a Rapid-Fire Frame shotgun into something akin to a Legendary twist on the Exotic Fourth Horseman.

Swashbuckler

The IKELOS shotgun will already be used most often in close quarters, so a perk that requires a melee kill to reach its maximum potential is a small ask in the grand scheme. A single melee kill can give the weapon a 33 percent damage buff, and the stacks of Swashbuckler are easy to maintain with the IKELOS shotgun’s great efficiency at clearing minor combatants.

One-Two Punch and Trench Barrel

These two perks are the classic options in this second column, each synergizing with your melee abilities in different ways but toward a similar end goal. Trench Barrel giving the gun a hefty 50 percent damage boost for a simple melee hit is nothing to scoff at, even if the bonus is limited to three shots. One-Two Punch is a harder ask on the IKELOS shotgun, owing to it being a Rapid-Fire Frame and the requirement to hit all pellets on a target is harder with the wider spread.

Vorpal Weapon

Vorpal Weapon is a perk that specifically caters to encounters against Champions or bosses, and with the IKELOS shotgun hardly being an optimal DPS choice for bosses, that leaves just Champions in the mix. Shotguns aren’t currently featured in the Seasonal Artifact and therefore have no anti-Champion mods, but in seasons with the likes of Unstoppable Shotgun on the table, a Vorpal Weapon IKELOS_SG_v1.0.3 could be a powerful option.

Surrounded

Surrounded might not be your first choice of perk for this column or your second, but a build of the IKELOS shotgun with Threat Detector and Surrounded put together can be fantastic for enemy-dense content. At any given time while surrounded by three or more enemies, the guaranteed boost to damage can make clearing the encounter easier. Additionally, that damage boost is now 40 percent due to Surrounded Spec getting rolled into the base perk, which is only marginally less than the staggering bonus Trench Barrel provides.