There are a few interesting guns to be claimed from the Pale Heart of the Traveler in Destiny 2’s new expansion, The Final Shape, but The Call is the standout. This little sidearm fires rockets–it’s only the second rocket-assisted sidearm to come to Destiny 2, with the first being Indebted Kindness, a gun you could only get from the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon. The Calling is easier to get and comes with a mess of good perks, but most importantly, it hits like a truck; once you get a good one of these, it’s likely to stay in your loadout for a good, long time.
The Call sports a lot of options for perks, and quite a few of the combinations are pretty good. There are at least a couple versions of this gun you might want to chase depending on your loadout. What’s more, it’s also craftable, so you can slap enhanced versions of your favorite perks on the gun for even more devastation. Honestly, there might be a couple “god rolls” for The Call. Here’s how you can nab The Call and the perks you’re going to want to chase for it.
How To Get The Call
The Call will likely come into your inventory naturally through the course of The Final Shape’s story campaign. It’s one of the weapons that comes from Pale Heart engrams, which you’ll get for completing Pale Heart activities and for ranking up your reputation with Ghost as you work through the new destination. There are also some activities, like Alone in the Dark missions in the Pale Heart, that will specifically dish out Deepsight Resonance (red border) versions of Pale Heart guns, so you can unlock the crafting pattern for the weapon.
So generally, focusing your Pale Heart engrams is the best way to reliably pull new versions of The Call. You can unlock focusing once you’ve gathered five different Pale Heart weapons, which you can do pretty easily by completing the campaign and doing some Alone in the Dark quest steps. As you rank up with Ghost, you’ll also unlock a perk that makes your first focused weapon of the week a guaranteed Deepsight Resonance version, helping you get to the crafted version of The Call faster.
The Call God Rolls
While The Call isn’t much of a PvP weapon because of its slow firing rate and slow projectile speed, it’s an absolute monster in PvE activities. It has excellent stopping power, often one- or two-shotting enemies even in raids and at higher difficulties. It also sports a range of perks that offer a ton of build synergy and boost its damage to make it more effective. One of the specific, interesting perks it carries is Beacon Rounds, which gives the gun tracking as you log kills with it and increases that tracking’s effectiveness with more final blows. Tracking is actually really handy on this thing, because it allows you to fire into crowds or in the direction of distant enemies without really having to think or aim. Firing The Call from the hip to indiscriminately annihilate whatever’s vaguely in front of you can be extremely handy.
The Call PvE God Roll
- Barrel: Quick Launch / Volatile Launch
- Quick Launch: +10 Velocity, +15 Handling
- Volatile Launch: +15 Blast Radius, -5 Velocity, -5 Handling
- Magazine: Tactical Mag
- +3 Magazine size, +5 Stability, +10 Reload speed
- First Perk: Demolitionist / Subsistence
- Demolitionist: Kills from this weapon generate grenade energy. Activating your grenade ability reloads this weapon from reserves.
- Subsistence: Defeating targets partially reloads this weapon from reserves.
- Second Perk: Desperate Measures / One For All
- Desperate Measures: Weapon final blows grant bonus damage. Melee and grenade final blows grant a large damage bonus that can stack.
- One For All: Hitting three separate targets increases damage for a moderate duration.
- Masterwork: Velocity / Blast Radius
It’s tough to go wrong with just about any roll of The Call, but there are quite a few great options that, when paired together with the right build, push it over the edge. The first question you want to ask yourself is whether you want to prioritize direct hits over potential splash damage. The Call does fire rockets, but at base, their explosions aren’t very big; you can spec the gun to have a larger Blast Radius to mess up more enemies in groups, and that can be great if you go for perks like One For All. But if you expect to use it more like a long-range shotgun, Velocity is probably more useful to make sure the projectiles get to their targets before those targets have a chance to move out of the way. After that, go for putting as many rounds in the magazine as you can with Tactical Mag.
Perks will depend on how you want to use The Call, but if you’ve got no other more specific plans, go with either Demolitionist or Subsistence. Demolitionist will give you synergy on restoring your grenade as quickly as possible, because you’re very likely to use The Call to put down lots of enemies in quick succession because it’s so damn useful. If you don’t need the grenade energy or would rather increase your uptime with The Call without reloading it, Subsistence keeps giving you rockets back for each kill–and because so many kills will be one or two shots, you’ll just keep firing.
One other good alternative in this column: Lead from Gold. An issue you might have with The Call is that it’s too effective, running you out of Special ammo in a hurry. Lead from Gold can help keep your reserves up if you find you’re scrounging a lot of the time. Oh, and finally, Beacon Rounds is probably not a go-to, but can make for a fun version of this gun, with the tracking making it so you barely have to think about what you’re shooting at and helping you take out pesky enemies at long ranges.
The second Perk column is full of damage-boosting options and they’re basically all good, so you can pick here based on what’s best for your build. Desperate Measures and One For All are the main choices because they’re both easy to activate, specifically with the way you’ll be using The Call. One For All gives a slightly better damage boost if you can kill three enemies within three or so seconds of one another, which is the primary use case for this gun, but Desperate Measures stacks with your melee and grenade ability and lasts longer. If you’re running something like a Prismatic Hunter build with Combination Blow and Liar’s Handshake, Desperate Measures is excellent, getting a big damage boost every time you start punching your way through enemies.
The Call PvP God Roll
- Barrel: Quick Launch
- Quick Launch: +10 Velocity, +15 Handling
- Magazine: High Velocity Rounds
- +10 Reload speed, +10 Velocity
- First Perk: Beacon Rounds
- Final blows grant this weapon tracking. Dealing further damage extends the duration
- Second Perk: Vorpal Weapon
- Increased damage against bosses, vehicles, and Guardians with their Super active.
- Masterwork: Velocity
Where The Call has lots of perks that give good synergy in PvE, where you’re racking up kills against smaller at a constant clip, most of its perks offer very little in PvP, where kills can be harder to come by. Here, you want to focus on Velocity over Blast Radius because the utility of The Call will be in dealing big direct-hit damage to opposing players, and you want those projectiles to get to their targets as quickly as possible.
There aren’t many great perk options here that you’re getting to get a lot of use out of. Beacon Rounds is probably your best bet, adding tracking to your rockets after you notch a kill, which will help you earn a second kill if you’re in a fight with more than one Guardian and can live that long. The second column has very little in the way of reliable PvP damage boosters, though. Vorpal Weapon is a decent pick specifically because you don’t have to do anything in particular to activate it. If you’re scoring a lot of kills, you can opt for one of the other boosters like Desperate Measures, but most don’t become effective until after you’ve already won the fight you’re in, making them all pretty equal in being unappealing.
We’ve got lots more coverage from Destiny 2’s new expansion, so check out our Final Shape guides hub and our Final Shape review.
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