Cataphract GL3 — or just Cataphract for simplicity’s sake — is the relatively new Legendary Heavy Ammo grenade launcher in Destiny 2 from Trials of Osiris that debuted with Season of the Witch. And it’s such an impressive weapon that we just had to fit in a deep-dive review for it before the release of Season of the Wish. The only thing it’s missing at this point is for grenade launchers to finally enter the PVE DPS meta and it’ll be one of the top contenders for being the most powerful option around.
About The Author
This article is part of a weekly series of deep dive weapon breakdowns from Stardust, one of the people behind Clarity - D2 Research, a Destiny 2 project which provides highly trusted explanations of perks, mods, and more for websites like Destiny Item Manager (DIM), Light.gg, Foundry, and more!
How to get Cataphract GL3 in Destiny 2
It being a Trials of Osiris weapon, acquiring Cataphract is quite simple — though not exactly easy. You will have to complete Trials of Osiris matches and you’ll have a chance of one dropping after every win. Additionally, round wins (without a need to win the entire match) will reward you with Trials Rank points. As you increase your Trials Rank, you’ll be rewarded with Trials Engrams that you can then focus into weapons of your choice at Saint-14 in the Tower.
For the Adept version, you will have to go Flawless and visit the Lighthouse when Cataphract is the weekly weapon. After that, further wins on any 7-win cards that weekend will have a chance to reward you with more Adept drops — albeit with a much lower chance if the card is flawed. You’ll also be able to exchange a Trials Engram and any 7-win card at Saint for another chance at the Adept gun.
Starting next season — which is just around the corner — flawless cards with at least five wins on them will also grant you a random Trials weapon drop once a week once they become flawed. This should help a small amount by providing additional chances at snagging the guns you’re hunting for.
By far the strongest grenade launcher around
It a fitting how Cataphract launched alongside the reprise of Igneous Hammer because both are extreme outliers within their weapon families. While Igneous relies on its stats and feel to reign supreme, Cataphract simply just has all of the best perks that you can think of. And it’s really just that simple, it has everything you’d want on it.
A quick aside on Blast Radius just being a VERY odd stat
Before I dig into my roll recommendations for the weapon, however, I want to quickly go over a weird quirk of grenade launchers (GLs for short) that you’ll want to keep in mind when selecting your ideal roll. How the Blast Radius stat works on GLs is a lot more involved than on rocket launchers for example. On GLs, it not only increases the size of the explosion but also determines how the damage will be split between the grenade’s impact and its explosion.
In simple terms, increasing the Blast Radius stat will increase the damage of the explosion but the grenade’s impact damage will also have to decrease by the same amount so that the total remains the same. This matters because Spike Grenades only affects impact damage! To maximize the damage each grenade will deal, you’ll want to get your Blast Radius as low as possible. Keep this in mind when you’re deciding between the higher Handling of Quick Launch and the lower Blast Radius of Hard Launch.
I’ll personally be going for Quick Launch for the higher Handling since the difference in damage is only around 0.5% all things considered but I thought this was an interesting topic to dig into a little. I just can’t stop myself when the opportunity to talk about lesser-known mechanics presents itself. (Another small quirk of this is that the secondary stat bonuses of Adept Masterworks will cost you ~0.2% of your damage, so you might want to just leave it at Tier 9 instead or as low as possible if it’s a Blast Radius Masterwork)
But without further ado, let’s jump into my roll recommendations!
Boss DPS God Roll
Generally speaking, the only roll you should ever need on Cataphract is the combination of Envious Assassin and Bait and Switch. These two perks have been staples of damage strategies ever since their release and that won’t be changing anytime soon. The ability to stock up 15 shots in your mag with Envious to then dump them all with a 35% damage buff from Bait and Switch is essentially the perfect combination.
- Quick Launch or Hard Launch
- Spike Grenades
- Envious Assassin (or Auto-Loading Holster)
- Bait and Switch (or Cascade Point)
- Handling or Velocity Masterwork
But the other roll that I put in parentheses is also an excellent choice — albeit a lot more niche. The key to making the Auto-Loading Holser + Cascade Point combo shine, you’ll need to use a more complex damage rotation. One such option would be using a sniper rifle and a Special ammo GL (that itself has Auto-Loading Holster) since the sniper will activate Cascade Point in only two crits. By the time you swap back to your Heavy GL, it will have reloaded itself and Cascade Point will be active again.
This option is generally not going to be quite as optimal as the Bait and Switch combo and there’s a lot more potential for mistakes but when executed properly, you can dish out very large amounts of damage in a very short amount of time. But with the current state of the meta, I left it in parentheses because rotations like that aren’t as appealing.
Generalist PVE God Roll
I’ll keep this one simple, the choice between Impulse Amplifier and Auto-Loading Holster will depend on how you like using GLs. If you don’t use it a lot and only pull it out to clear out an area or burst down larger targets, Auto-Loading Holster will generally be the play so long as they are relatively close to you. It’s just convenient not having to reload the gun much and the same reasoning applies to Envious Assassin.
- Quick Launch
- Spike Grenades
- Impulse Amplifier (or Auto-Loading Holster or Envious Assassin)
- Chain Reaction or Explosive Light (or Hatchling)
- Any Masterwork aside from Stability
If you prefer to use it more liberally and need to reload it often manually, Impulse Amplifier will be your best bet. Plus it’ll make hitting targets easier from farther away. And it will likely become the best choice around once GLs finally receive their teased substantial reserve size buff.
In the fourth column, Chain Reaction is going to be your add-clear option with Hatchling providing a similar utility but in a much more underwhelming manner. Explosive Light will also be able to help with the add-clear side of things, but its utility will be mostly for quickly bursting down beefier targets like Champions or other Minibosses — just make sure you have a consistent source of creating orbs if you want to run it.
PVP God Roll
As we’ve gone over above, a higher Blast Radius translates to a higher split of our total damage going to explosive damage. And since Proximity Grenades removes the impact entirely, we’re essentially just getting extra damage by cranking up the Blast Radius.
- Volatile Launch (or Quick Launch if you need the Handling)
- Proximity Grenades
- Impulse Amplifier
- Full Court or Chain Reaction
- Blast Radius Masterwork (with optionally the Adept Blast Radius mod)
Because of this — and because it also increases the explosion radius — we’ll want to invest our stat points into it to get a bit of extra forgiveness for hitting our shots. Full Court also contributes to this by ramping up the explosive damage the longer the grenade is in flight. While this won’t be very long since we’re running Impulse Amplifier, free damage is free consistency so no reason not to go for it.
Chain Reaction is also a pretty impactful option especially when the enemies like to stick together as it’ll make snagging the follow-up kills much easier due to the explosion weakening them up.
Finally, Impulse Amplifier is just a must on any PVP grenade launcher. It’s such a wildly powerful option — due to its whopping 35% buff to projectile velocity — that if you’re not running it, you’ll be at a massive disadvantage.
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