Cold Front

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

(Rolls have been added, updated and removed based on the changes in the December 2021 Dawning event. The most noticeable difference is the removal/reliance on Surplus which took a huge transitive hit by how much slower abilities are to recharge now.)

Cold Front is a 750 RPM Aggressive Frame (“High damage, high recoil”) Kinetic Submachine Gun, first introduced long ago during the Season 9 Dawning event. It’s back once again with its yearly refresh of the perk pool. Keep in mind these reviews are from 2020. Its primary utility is in PvE, but we’ll include a PvP configuration if you happent to land the magical combination of perks that make it viable.

I believe it’s one of the best primaries in the game for PvE – Ehroar, Dec. 2020 > I have a reason to believe this is the new best primary in the game, full stop – Blyatnid, Dec. 2020

• Cold Front Is Back & BETTER Than Ever! (Best Destiny 2 Primary?) - Ehroar * IF YOU HAVENT GOT THIS SMG, YOU NEED IT, Cold Front Dawning SMG God Roll Guide - Blyatnid

The Multimach and Shayura’s are best-in-slot for Kinetic and Energy respectively, and have phenomenally better base stats than the Cold Front. With Cold Front you’re spending so much of your roll trying to deal with it’s terriblly low Stability that you don’t leave room for perks on top of that. If you landed the perfect set of Stability perks and a Stability Masterwork you could have something interesting to work with, so we’ll include that roll.

🥶 Ice to See You (pvp)#

Cold Front needs a lot of help in the Stability department. A high-Stability variant puts you way above the base Stability on the vaunted Antiope-D and other Precision Frame SMGs. The Recoil is 92 so be sure to throw on a Counterbalance mod if you don’t end up with a +Recoil barrel. This roll is strict because you need to land a bunch of these in tandem to make it viable. There are three possibilities for the third-column perk, all depending on your play style. The roll is otherwise the same so I’m going to keep them combined and differentiate in the table below.

I’ve added Harmony here because I believe eventually there will be enough weapons with Harmony to where double-Harmony loadouts become the norm or at least plenty viable. It’s a 20% boost that turns this into a shredder.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator
  • Magazines: Steady Rounds
  • Perks 1: Perpetual Motion, Surplus, Dynamic Sway Reduction
  • Perks 2: Harmony
  • Masterworks: Stability MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator, Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Steady Rounds, Tactical Mag, Flared Magwell

🥶 Ice to See You (w/o Harmony) (pvp)#

Same as the above, minus Harmony.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator
  • Magazines: Steady Rounds
  • Perks 1: Perpetual Motion, Surplus, Dynamic Sway Reduction
  • Masterworks: Stability MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator, Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Steady Rounds, Tactical Mag, Flared Magwell

⛈ Storm’s Brewin' (pve)#

Now that Subsistence no longer kills your reserves, it’s become an S-tier PvE perk. The fourth-column perks are subjective/context-dependant but the roll is otherwise unchanged due to Subsistence so I’ve combined them all here.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator
  • Magazines: Extended Mag
  • Perks 1: Subsistence
  • Perks 2: One for All, Rampage, Swashbuckler
  • Masterworks: Stability MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator, Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Extended Mag, Appended Mag

🌨 Light Dusting (pve)#

Harmony instantly applies a 20% damage buff that you can start from afar. You have three seconds to swap to Cold Front and then Harmony is active for seven seconds. With more weapons getting released with Harmony, I think eventually it will be a no-brainer to run double-Harmony loadouts. I don’t have this flagged for PvP because you’re giving up too much Stability by going with Subsistence in the third column.

• Collector’s Edition Roll
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator
  • Magazines: Extended Mag
  • Perks 1: Subsistence
  • Perks 2: Harmony
  • Masterworks: Stability MW
• Extended Perks (referred to with a ‘+’ below)
  • Barrels: Chambered Compensator, Polygonal Rifling, Smallbore, Corkscrew Rifling, Fluted Barrel
  • Magazines: Extended Mag, Appended Mag