Seventh Seraph SAW

For complete perks, see d2gunsmith.com, light.gg or destinytracker.com.

The Seventh Seraph SAW is a 360 RPM, High-Impact Frame, Arc Machine Gun that first appeared in Season 10. MGs haven’t been bananas in PvE for some time (save for the Xenopage), and so in the final TWAB of Season 14 Bungie announced that they’re increasing PvE damage of Machine Guns by 25%.

In lieu of being able to find anyone covering the SAW, I looked for coverage of other 360 RPM Machine Guns. Drewsky has a great review of the Bane of Sorrow another 360 RPM MG that used to drop in the Crown of Sorrow raid. The basic sandbox science there informed much of these rolls.

PvP Thoughts#

Given Heavy ammo availability in Crucible (perhaps save for Mayhem), focus on Legendary heavy weapons tends to be rather low. That being said, we can still pick one up because why not? Good to have on hand in case a new game mode is released or the sandbox updates.

The SAW hits for 48 crit / 38 body (TTK 0.5s / 0.83s). It’s got terrific range and flinches like crazy. It can roll with Opening Shot in the final column. With the rate of fire being so low, you can single tap out shots and get crits across the map. Try out some Machine Gun sniping and let me know how that works out for you 🎯 (non-sarcastically 🙃)

PvE Thoughts#

This is going to be a long one because I haven’t found any super detailed coverage of the SAW (or any other Seraph weapon save for the Hand Cannon). Fortunately since a High-Impact is a High-Impact (at base), Drewsky has a great review of the Bane of Sorrow that’s definitely worth watching! The SAW can’t roll with most of the perks he discussed in that video, but it’s relevant to consider the points he raises.

• Perhaps most important, it’s a Seraph weapon which means it generates Warmind Cells if you have Warmind mods equipped.
• As a High-Impact Frame, the SAW keeps anything it doesn’t kill practically stun-locked. As the difficulty of PvE content increases, this becomes super important. Even if you’re not doing Grandmaster Nightfalls, flinching challenging adds sure makes things more straightforward.
• Its base effective Range is amazing. Damage falloff starts ~45m and is reasonable up to ~50m (-5%). You’re talking maximum damage at Scout Rifle ranges. At maximum range, the sight overlaps your target because MGs don’t have high-zoom sights/scopes. This is why I’m not suggesting any Range boosting below - when I pushed the Range to 93 falloff and floors were unchanged and the recoil/handling will make it challenging to stay on target anyway.
• It’s the only Machine Gun that can roll with Vorpal or Firing Line in the final column, which provide 15% and 25% damage boosts, respectively. Those are substantial increases to damage without requiring a kill or reload to activate.

Let’s step through all the perks in the final two columns:

• Column 3:

  • ✅Field Prep is far and away the winner. It grants a whopping 25% more in reserve (223 to 278), speeds up your reload time by two seconds (~5.5s to ~3.5s) and increases ready and stow speed. Within 45m at 1,222 to 1,716 damage, that’s an extra 67k - 94k damage available to you.

  • ❌Auto-Loading Holster and Grave Robber are the other two reload perks in this column and neither is worth giving up the reserve and handling bonuses that Field Prep provides.

• Column 4:

  • ✅Firing Line: 20% precision damage boost when near two teammates. In PvE content you’re nearly always near your fireteam and especially so in GMs. It has double utility in dealing with adds and on boss DPS and since the SAW fires so slowly you can get those precision shots in.

  • ✅Vorpal: 15% damage boost to bosses and Champions. It’s a solid pick if you don’t have one with Firing Line.

  • ❌Mulligan: Nope. You shouldn’t be missing that many shots and the opportunity cost of Mulligan is too high. “So Slif you’re telling me to git gud?” At maximum effective SAW range, I was hitting at least 50% crits at the base Recoil and no Stability boosts. You will too!

  • ❌Opening Shot: This is interesting because at 360 RPM you can tap out one bullet at a time, turning this in to kind of an incredibly high-impact Scout Rifle. Situationally cool but you can still use the SAW like this just fine without it. Arguably more of an off-meta PvP pick.

  • ❌Elemental Capacitor: While large, the effect of any of these increases pales in comparison to significantly higher damage output. You can also get each of the benefits through other perks or armor mods. This isn’t a case in general against Capacitor, just on this particular weapon.

  • ❌Disruption Break: A 50% Kinetic damage bonus debuff is nothing to sneeze at! This is a niche pick for when you’re up against Arc shields because in a Match Game activity, you won’t do enough damage to break non-matching shields. Myself, if I’m hopping in to a difficult PvE activity I’m going to get more general, always-on use from Firing Line.

We’ll surround our choice of perks with Stability-bumping selections.

🎯 Sniper MG (pvp)#

Single-tap shots out from maximum range, like an incredibly heavy-hitting Scout Rifle.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Hammer-Forged Rifling
  • Magazines: High-Caliber Rounds, Ricochet Rounds
  • Perks 2: Opening Shot
  • Masterworks: Range MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Hammer-Forged Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Polygonal Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: High-Caliber Rounds, Ricochet Rounds, Light Mag, Armor-Piercing Rounds

💥 Super Shredder (pvp)#

Put down supers!

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling
  • Magazines: High-Caliber Rounds, Ricochet Rounds
  • Perks 1: Zen Moment
  • Perks 2: Vorpal
  • Masterworks: Range MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Hammer-Forged Rifling, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: High-Caliber Rounds, Ricochet Rounds, Light Mag, Armor-Piercing Rounds

🤝 Together Forever (pve)#

With other Guardians at your side, you will rip through hordes of aliens no problem. We’re taking any Barrel that increases Stability and magazine- extending… Magazines. Extended Magazine would normally be a hot mess with a base Reload so low, but with Field Prep it only takes the reload from ~3.5s to ~4.5s (still 1s shorter than the base Reload).

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling
  • Magazines: Appended Mag, Extended Mag
  • Perks 1: Field Prep
  • Perks 2: Firing Line
  • Masterworks: Stability MW, Range MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Appended Mag, Extended Mag, Ricochet Rounds, High-Caliber Rounds, Light Mag, Armor-Piercing Rounds

👹 For the Big Ones (pve)#

With the S15 25% MG PvE buff incoming, let’s make sure we’ve got a Vorpal SAW kicking around.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling
  • Magazines: Appended Mag, Extended Mag
  • Perks 1: Field Prep
  • Perks 2: Vorpal
  • Masterworks: Stability MW, Range MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Appended Mag, Extended Mag, Ricochet Rounds, High-Caliber Rounds, Light Mag, Armor-Piercing Rounds