Igneous Hammer
Deep Dive Review
Yep, it is still stupid good.
Last Updated: January 29, 2024Igneous Hammer simply has no business being as good as it is.
Weapon Breakdown
High-Level Analysis
Weapon Behavior
Intrinsic Frame information, PVP Damage, Baseline TTK, Damage Falloff, Reload Time, Handling TimesWeapon Frame: Aggressive Frame
Rate of Fire: 120 RPM — can fire every 500ms
Provides no intrinsic benefits
Damage Falloff starts 3 meters farther compared to Adaptive Frame Hand Cannons
PVP Base Damage — non-Checkmate:
49.997 on Body Shots
79.897 on Crits
PVP Neutral TTK (Time to Kill) — non-Checkmate:
Optimal: 1 second with 2c1b (2 crits, 1 body)
Body Shot Only: 1.5 seconds with 4b
Damage Falloff Start Distance without conditionally active perks or adept mods:
Hip-Fire: 23.85m @ 65 Range — 26.55m @ 95 (27m @ 100)
ADS: 35.78m @ 65 Range — 39.82m @ 95 (40.5m @ 100)
Reload Time without conditionally active perks or adept mods:
3.37s @ 10 Reload Speed — 2.47s @ 55 (1.83s @ 100)
With 1 Loader Arms Mod: 2.68s @ 20 Reload Speed — 1.96s @ 65 (1.55s @ 100)
Handling Times without conditionally active perks or adept mods:
Ready Time: 0.4s @ 27 Handling — 0.3s @ 62 (0.18s @ 100)
With 1 Dexterity Arms Mod: 0.32s @ 27 Handling — 0.24s @ 62 (0.15s @ 100)
Stow Time: 0.43s @ 27 Handling — 0.33s @ 62 (0.22s @ 100)
With 1 Dexterity Arms Mod: 0.35s @ 27 Handling — 0.26s @ 62 (0.22s @ 100)
Note: Stow Speed caps out at the equivalent of what you have at 100 Handling.
ADS Time: 0.29s @ 27 Handling — 0.23s @ 62 (0.17s @ 100)
With 1 Targeting Helmet Mod: 0.22s @ 27 Handling — 0.17s @ 62 (0.12s @ 100)
Weapon Stats
The section about the weapon stats is where I would normally compare the weapon against its siblings within the same subfamily (in this case Aggressive Frame Hand Cannons) but I don’t think there’s a lot to go over that I can’t simply convey with the following screenshot of D2Foundry’s comparisons screen:
It’s dumb. Its stats are way too high — end of discussion. There’s just no comparison.
Appearance
In terms of its appearance, the gun is really solid and generally unobtrusive. With its slim model and unobstructed sight, it’s always a pleasure to aim and fire it. It recoiling a bit to the right also helps keep clean visuals on your target as you prepare for follow-up shots.
Recoil Pattern
The recoil pattern is a comfortable left-leaning line for the most part with major deviations only really appearing in the final couple of bullets. Bumping up your Recoil Direction to 100 makes it much more vertical but it still retains a small leftward lean. From personal experience, the focus should mostly be on landing in the ballpark of 50-70 points in your Stability stat and then just getting used to the pattern that way. It’s an extremely pleasant and smooth firing experience like that with minimal effort needed to keep the gun on target.
Perk Pool Analysis
Origin Traits
The gun comes with two relatively average Origin Traits as a whole but both can be extremely impactful as long as you either know how to play around it (in the case of One Quiet Moment) or find yourself as the last man standing a bit too often (in the case of Alacrity).
One Quiet Moment (OQM) is essentially just a solid reload perk or an occasionally useful little bonus depending on your playstyle. Given that Igneous is a 120 Hand Cannon, it lends itself really well to a longer-range peek-shooting playstyle which can benefit quite a lot from OQM’s Reload bumps (and occasionally the Handling bumps as well).
While normally it doesn’t activate until you’ve been out of combat for 5 seconds, if you manage to snag a kill that time is cut down to 1.5 seconds — giving you just enough time to fall back a bit to regen your health before getting in a quick reload due to the 40 Reload Speed and 5% Reload Duration Multiplier it gives you (and then there’s its 20 Handling too but that’s of debatable usefulness).
Alacrity on the other hand is focused more on solo play (so Rumble or certain PVE activities) or giving you a bit of help to clutch up when you’re the last man standing on your team in 3v3 activities like Competitive or Trials of Osiris. The bonuses in these situations are quite substantial: 20 Range, 20 Stability, 50 Reload Speed, and 10 Aim Assist.
But while they are solid stat benefits, they aren’t a silver bullet. So if you are not very confident in clutching a game without them, it’s unlikely that Alacrity will push you over the line — in which case you’re likely better off with OQM. For solo content, however, Alacrity is just a passively excellent choice that you’ll just have completely for free while also being outright better than many conditionally active perks like Surplus or Keep Away.
Overall, I don’t think it’s very important to pay attention to these Origin Traits in your gameplay loop. They are both sort of just there to give you either a passive bonus that you don’t have to think about or just a small push to get the job done. OQM is perhaps the one that you might want to consciously fit into your playstyle to take advantage of it but after a few games of practice, it’ll likely just become second nature and you won’t have to think about it again. All in all, both Origin Traits are just the icing on the top for an already excellent weapon.
Barrels and Mags
If I’m being honest, the first column is mostly just a lot of the same where you really only have two to three competitive choices. My top pick on 120s is generally going to be Fluted Barrel to compensate for their low intrinsic Handling stat and it’s mostly the same in this case as well. If you don’t rely on swapping as much as I do or run Handling-boosting exotics like Ophidian Aspect, Smallbore will probably be a better choice overall. Finally, my third pick would probably be Corkscrew Rifling which provides moderate bumps to the three main stats of Range, Stability, and Handling.
In the second column, the choice for PVP could not be simpler than simply going with Ricochet Rounds and calling it a day at that. You can definitely make an argument for High-Caliber Rounds as well but I would probably just leave that for PVE instead. Flared Magwell is also a solid choice if you reload a lot and want to make that a bit faster (it cuts off around 0.2-0.3s from your Reload Time) even when you don’t have perks helping you reload faster.
Then finally, there’s Appended Mag if you just want to stuff some more ammo into your gun without nuking your Reload Speed stat with Extended Mag.
As a general rule, for PVE, I would go Flared Magwell if my roll focuses on frequent reloads (such as a roll with Heal Clip). Otherwise, all three highlighted options are solid choices with matching pairings in the 3rd and 4th columns.
3rd and 4th Columns
I’m covering the two columns mostly separately by going over each perk in both columns one by one but I decided to somewhat merge the sections so I can discuss synergies between the columns with more freedom. With that said, we’re still going to go column by column here, starting with the third.
Going from the top down, we have Encore as our first perk. It’s a niche choice due to it essentially only providing some stat benefits while also requiring a kill to get them. 5 Range and 8 Stability per Stack (max of 4 Stacks) leaves much to be desired in a situation where the gun’s Stability in a neutral state is more than fine and you can essentially max out your Range by just running Fragile Focus or Keep Away instead. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad choice but I think it’s pretty clear that it’s not going to be what most people aim for on their ideal rolls.
Heal Clip on the other hand is an excellent option but mostly just for PVE unless you’re up to some shenanigans in the crucible that I don’t want to hear a word about. Get a kill, reload, and you and nearby allies receive a 60 HP (30 in PVP) heal in the form of the solar keyword Cure.
While the heal on reload by itself isn’t exactly great on a relatively sluggish weapon archetype, it specifically being Cure allows it to synergize with Ember of Benevolence to boost your ability regen every time you heal your allies with it. And it’s a quite significant boost of an additional 400% of your base (T3) ability regen speeds for 6 seconds (3 in PVP) on top of what you have passively. (Click the dropdown if you want an explanation for this)
I know that number isn’t very intuitive so let’s take an example instead. Say you have a Solar Grenade with a base cooldown of 152 seconds and have T10 Discipline which drops the cooldown to 76 seconds. Your charge rate in these cases is (100/152=)0.66%/s and (100/76=)1.32%/s respectively. Here, you might notice that the charge rate at T10 is exactly double that of your base charge rate .
So adding 400% of your base charge rate to your current one at T10 Discipline would look like this:
1.32%/s + 0.66%/s × 4 = 3.95%/s.
So essentially, you triple your grenade recharge rate for those 6 seconds (in this very specific scenario, tripling shouldn’t be used as a general rule). This cuts your effective cooldown by 12 seconds here so it goes from 76 to 64 seconds. Which is ~15.8% of your cooldown that Ember of Benevolence just saved you.
Going right back into the no-go zone, we have Slickdraw. And DEAR GOD PLEASE NO. If you value your shooting experience in any capacity, I would not recommend it. Sure, you might want the handling if you’re quickswapping with a bow or something of the sort but I personally prefer hitting people with my shot after the swap than otherwise. A whopping 55% reduction in Auto Aim (meaning reticle friction is untouched but your bullets “bend 55% less”) for the same functionality as quickdraw in this situation is just not worth it in my opinion.
If you really want an energy 120 for that use case, either just spec your roll out for pure handling or just run a handling exotic alongside it. Or better yet, get a Bottom Dollar with Quickdraw from Gambit. (Gambit is actually pretty fun and very farmable but you didn’t hear that from me.)
Keeping with the theme of flipping between bad and good perks, we have Rapid Hit. This perk has been a long-time favorite and holds up quite well on Igneous as well. In my opinion, you only really want this perk for PVE because Keep Away provides overall better utility in the Crucible but it’s still a solid choice. I love using it in PVE as long as the enemies I’m dealing with aren’t Vex specifically because I swear to GOD they always crouch down so you physically cannot hit their crit spots. Other than that, though, it’s probably my favorite perk for PVE and something that you can make work in PVP as well if you don’t have something better.
Next on the list is Keep Away which is definitely the top choice for PVP and just like how Rapid Hit is the budget choice for PVP, Keep Away is going to be the budget reload perk for PVE (or the only reload perk against those GOD DAMN… you get the point). Thanks to its essentially passive stat benefits of 10 Range and 30 Reload Speed, it’s an all-around workhorse but leans more toward the PVP side of the sandbox due to its almost negligible but still present 5% reduction in Accuracy Cone Growth (so your gun essentially just blooms out 5% less when firing). And considering the perk is basically active at all times if you’re using the gun at its intended ranges, it’s really hard to pass the offer up.
Second to last in the 3rd column is Rangefinder which I find excessive in the current sandbox. Sure, it increases your Zoom by 10% which then translates to a 10% extension in Aim Assist Falloff and a 10% Accuracy improvement but for most situations, that sort of range is mostly just overkill. Even without Rangefinder, 120s duel at arguably too long ranges so if you slap it on, you’ll be giving up your close-range performance for the more niche extra-long-range engagements that you probably shouldn’t be using a Hand Cannon for anyway. So if you don’t plan to convert your gun to a Hand Artillery, I would probably stay away from Rangefinder.
Last but certainly not least, we have Fragile Focus. It holds a special place in my heart partially because a Keep Away roll refuses to drop for me but also because it’s still a solid PVP option. So long as your shields aren’t broken, it gives you a passive bump of 20 Range which is almost enough to max out the stat even on a Handling-focused roll. In my experience using it, it’s quite good and I’d say a reasonable second choice behind Keep Away.
And that’s the 3rd column done and dusted. Overall, I’d say this is one of the better perk selections around with a couple of non-starter options but it has almost everything you could want there. The 4th column is going to be much the same with even more goodies so let’s jump right into it with Precision Instrument.
Precision Instrument is a perk I don’t quite know how to position yet despite all my time using it. For PVP, it’s definitely a top choice due to it allowing you to rip through the ever-present Void Overshields (45 extra HP) in the current meta but its PVE utility feels like an existential crisis. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a solid option there for just helping you passively increase your damage against elites (orange bars) but I don’t feel it’s particularly needed there. Overall, I’d say it’s an okay option but a 120 Hand Cannon is probably not what you should be looking for it on for PVE activities.
Back on the PVP side, though, it’s just as I said: top tier. A 3-crit kill on overshielded enemies is already enough of a selling point for me but since it’s an effectively passive damage buff during your TTK, it helps out in many other situations as well. For example, the Radiant buff will allow you to kill enemies in 2b1c (2 body 1 crit) as long as the crit isn’t your first shot and that’s just one of many examples. It helps with cleanups, with 1v2+ situations, teamshooting, you name it. It’s probably my favorite perk for high-level PVP.
Next up is Opening Shot which is the same old solid option for the one shot you want to make count. Everything that needs to be said about this perk has been said a million times. It’s good — for one shot. It’s the natural pairing with hot-swap loadouts but you can certainly have success with it in more competitive environments as well. After all, who would say no to a free 25 Range and 20 Aim Assist even if it’s only for a single shot?
Moving Target on the other hand is much more of a question mark for me. Sure, 10 free Aim Assist as long as you ADS (aim down sights) is pretty good and the same goes for the 9.5% decrease in the ADS movement penalty. Doing the math on the latter, it drops the default 25% penalty down to 22.625%. That’s not a particularly groundbreaking change and translates to a ~3% increase in your ADS movement speed so I probably wouldn’t run it just for that. And while it definitely isn’t bad, I would say that the opportunity cost of running it over a different perk is a bit higher than the benefits it provides.
The same certainly cannot be said about Incandescent, however. In PVE, it’s a natural pairing with Solar builds to lean into Scorch and Ignitions and can occasionally be fun to use in PVP as well. I will say that Incandescent in PVP is definitely more helpful on a special ammo gun like a Sniper but the initial explosion damage and the subsequent Scorch ticks can make cleanups easier on nearby enemies — not to mention that the damage ticks will keep you informed about where the enemies are rotating. I for one quite enjoy messing about with it in casual PVP but would not recommend it for the endgame on this gun specifically (but on a crafted Beloved it’s my top choice for all of PVP).
Golden Tricorn is another excellent option with a stronger focus on PVE but it can be a ton of fun in PVP as well. For PVE, it’s an especially solid pairing with Heal Clip for solar builds in activities where you have a fireteam around you. Slap on Flared Magwell, a loader mod, and maybe even a Reload Speed masterwork, and go spam your solar abilities with the help of Ember of Benevolence. Those abilities will then refresh the timer of Tricorn’s second Stack to keep its insane 50% damage buff active.
In the Crucible, its notable function outside of leaning into the meme with its second Stack is the ability to work towards two-taps. This season specifically, you’re in luck because of the Flint Striker artifact perk. Get 3 crits for a kill which then gives you both the first Stack of Tricorn and Radiant. The combination of the two is enough to two-tap against all levels of Resilience as long as they don’t have an overshield or some healing effect on them. But even outside of the buff stacking for the two-tap, it still shifts your optimal TTK from a 2c1b to a 1c2b — making it a lot more forgiving for you to hit it consistently.
Second to last on the list is Frenzy and I have a love-hate relationship with it. For one, it’s objectively good for both PVP and PVE but is a bit of a pain to use for the former. Being in combat (having exchanged damage in the last 5 seconds) for 12 seconds can be a tall order for most and I also struggle with it due to a lack of practice more than anything.
In PVP, it’s a perk that rewards you for essentially dancing on the knife’s edge for an extended period. It takes a good bit of getting used to but the reward is certainly worth it. 100 Handling and Reload Speed on top of a 15% damage buff (same as Tricorn’s first Stack) is quite a deal. I’d say it’s especially suited for 6v6 or objective-based 3v3 like the Dominion game mode of Trials.
In PVE, it’s a lot simpler story. If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of keeping Tricorn’s second Stack active or don’t need the Solar synergy from Incandescent, you can’t go wrong with a mostly passive perk that makes your gun feel amazing when it’s active. As long as you are in combat, it’s an excellent choice.
And finally, the last on the list is Eye of the Storm (EotS). In my opinion, it’s sort of a reverse Opening Shot in a way. It’s good but for it to be helpful, the enemy needs to be shooting back at you and your bloom (Accuracy Cone Growth) also needs to be bad enough for it to be truly impactful. On a 140 Hand Cannon, the second condition is a lot closer to being met than on a 120, however. In my experience, it hasn’t helped a whole lot and even in the cases where I thought it did, it really was just me simply aiming better.
Theoretically, it’s a solid option for a pure dueling monster of a roll but I still find it hard to justify over Precision Instrument or even Moving Target. I would honestly say that the up to 30 Handling it can give you is arguably the more important benefit provided by EotS here just to maybe get one more shot in before hot-swapping to your shotgun to finish the kill. You can make it work but it’s another example of giving up maybe a bit too much in other areas for that specific benefit.
And that’s all! We’ve gone over all the available perks and I have to say Igneous once again has quite the stacked perk pool. It’s sort of a shame having to lose Celerity, One for All, Overflow, and even Quickdraw with its recent reprisal but it still remains the strongest Aggressive Frame Hand Cannon around due to its stat package and amazing perk pool nonetheless.
Roll Recommendations
Considerations for each perk and explanations for them can be found in the section above. The recommendations are purely for a high-level summary of the rolls and some attached reasoning where needed.
For the masterwork, you can go with either Range, Stability, or Handling. All three are excellent choices but I just chose Stability since it’s the most helpful at mid-range engagements. If you’re a really aggressive player or get caught off-guard often, I would recommend Handling instead.
My mod choice is generally (Adept) Icarus but if you play on the ground more, Targeting Adjuster (non-Adept) and Counterbalance Stock (likewise non-Adept) are also solid choices.
Rapid Hit is present due to it being somewhat viable in more casual settings. 4th column choices are as follows: Precision Instrument is passively good, Golden Tricorn has the highest streak and meme potential, and Incandescent just goes boom for dopamine (in addition to the reasonings discussed above).
Frenzy is not present as it is a very niche choice for most. It’s solid but is certainly an acquired taste.
Masterwork and mod choice reasoning are the same as for the casual roll above.
Keep Away is my top choice in the 3rd column with Precision Instrument receiving the same honor in the 4th. Frenzy would be my second choice but its required playstyle is not for everyone. In that case, you can go with Golden Tricorn or Opening Shot as well.
Masterwork should be either Range, Stability, or Reload Speed. The mod of choice should be Minor Spec or Backup Mag. If you’re running Major Spec or Adept Big Ones, you’re using the wrong gun for the job. Ricochet Rounds is still present because the Stability bump just feels good.
Heal Clip is for Ember of Benevolence or general survivability (you shouldn’t need this to live in casual PVE with a longer-range relatively clunky weapon) and requires at least Flared Magwell and/or a Loader arms mod. Rapid Hit is ideal unless facing Vex in which case Keep Away is better.
Incandescent for explosions and Solar synergy, Golden Tricorn for damage stacking on Solar subclasses, and Frenzy for just being an excellent perk.
Origin Trait selection should be Alacrity when solo and One Quiet Moment otherwise.
Endgame PVE Recommendation
Same as the Casual PVE recommendation with a higher priority for Frenzy and Keep Away for being passively-triggered perk options (i.e. don’t require kills). Rapid Hit is still solid. Heal Clip becomes more helpful as enemies deal more damage and Golden Tricorn loses a bit of its appeal when killing enemies becomes more difficult. Incandescent is still an excellent second choice in the 4th column.
A Last Word
I'm trying a new style after the absolute headache of a project that was the Season of the Witch weapons review, let me know what you think! This format lets me go into much more detail about the weapon and my considerations and I hope that managed to provide some extra value to you! If you have a bit of time, please set aside a little for me and shoot some feedback my way about this post on either Twitter, BlueSky, or our Discord Server.
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— Stardust