Scintillation is the newest
linear fusion to hit the game, joining us in this first week of Episode 1
Grandmaster Nightfall. It is a 3 burst linear fusion of the Strand variety. If you're watching
this during the first few days of its release, it is currently double loot week in the Nightfall
and The Glassway isn't too bad of a clear. But we're here to talk about this weapon and what
perks you should be getting on this thing. I'm not really gonna be comparing to other weapons
in this video because there was enough to go over on this one weapon and I wanted to
keep it isolated to this particular weapon. In the first column, we have Envious Assassin
and Rewind Rounds as our main options, with Firing Line, Reservoir Burst and Bait and
Switch in the second column. The goal is to find out which combination of which things will
lead to the best result and I'm gonna tell you up front that the difference between one of
the worst and one of the best is not significant enough that I think the average person needs
to worry too badly, but we'll get into it. A word on Cornered and Surrounded first
though: obviously this looks very appealing as a combination and much like I suggest on
any weapon that can roll with Surrounded, you shouldn't take Surrounded UNLESS you can
actually trigger it and trigger it for a long time. In both of the new raid encounters for
example, this is not really that feasible, so I'll be ignoring it for Salvation's Edge. I
also wouldn't take Cornered pretty much at all, I would opt for Envious or Rewind.
Also, when it comes to the minor perks, I know there's a lot of differences, should I go
battery, charge time, what weapon mod should I use, enhanced vs. non-enhanced and here's what I'm
gonna say: get a mag perk like enhanced battery if you can. Outside of that, whatever you pick is
not going to matter that much. Unless you are an insane gamer trying to optimize and damagemaxx
as much as humanly possible, then my advice? Don't stress about it, your damage will be fine.
Let's talk about Envious vs. Rewind. I'll be assuming that you are rallying with a reserve swap
for the entirety of this video, that's where you put on a chestpiece with Strand reserves, rally
to the flag and then switch your chestpiece. Envious Assassin feeds ammo into your weapon
as you kill enemies with other weapons, which sounds simple enough. However, this can
actually be a multi-stage sequence. We're able to put 21 of our 22 shots into the magazine if
we play our cards right. How do you do that? By getting 10 primary or 5 special weapon kills,
then bringing out your Scintillation, putting it away and then get another 10 primary or 5 special
weapon kills. If done correctly, you'll have 21 shots to shoot in a row. Note that if you pull
out your weapon too early, you won't hit a full Envious proc and your recourse in fixing this is
little to none other than dying and starting over. Rewind Rounds on the other hand do not overflow
your magazine, it rather replenishes a certain number of rounds based on how many shots you
hit previously. With normal Rewind Rounds, you'll shoot 7 shots, then 3, then 2,
for a total of 12 on this weapon with a non-enhanced Rewind Rounds. Enhanced should
get you an extra shot for a total of 13. We also have Veist Stinger to include in this
equation, but I'll get to that in a moment. So, pros and cons of both? Pro for Envious:
you can get 21 shots in the magazine if you know what to do. Con for Envious: I don't think
most people are going to keep a mental count in their head in order to maximize the effect. Most
people are not counting how many kills they have, then swapping at the right time, swapping
back, getting more kills and then checking again. There is also no UI indication of how far
along your Envious is procced, so you either keep count or you don't. If you die, you need to
start over and that's not always feasible. Pro for Rewind Rounds: you don't have to do
any of that stuff I just talked about, you just shoot the gun. Con: eventually, you
may hit a point where you need to reload. However, let's throw Veist Stinger into the mix.
With 7 shots in the mag, a proc of Veist Stinger will restore 2 shots to the magazine, with a 10%
chance to proc the effect. This means you need to proc Veist Stinger 5 times in order to have a
sequence where you don't reload. And while this sounds like a very rare occurrance, it's actually
not. Even in this example where I'm distracted, I'm getting hit by other enemies, I'm missing
shots, I manage to shoot all 22 of my shots in a row, no reloads, with Rewind
Rounds. Now, if you do get unlucky, then sure, you'll hit a point where you need
to reload, but the nice thing is that at MOST, if you get NO procs of Veist Stinger, the most
you will ever need to reload, assuming you hit your shots, is 1 time and in the grand scheme
of things, that is not a big hit to your DPS. Veist Stinger doesn't proc with an overflowed
magazine, so it's kind of a non-factor when it comes to Envious Assassin, so
don't worry about it for Envious. Now, I did this test with enhanced battery
and adept mag, which gives you 7 shots in the magazine, thinking, apparently like an idiot, that
more shots in magazine = good. After I finished, I learned that adept mag reduces your total reserves
compared to not using it. With adept mag, I can hold 22 shots. Without it, I can hold 25. BUT,
even with just a mag perk, no enhanced rewind and Veist Stinger, I could STILL get off all 25 shots,
in a row, no reloads. Even in this super scuffed clip, pretty sure I shoot the block in front
of me at one point, I get through everything, minus 1 shot but that's because there's nothing
left to shoot. Don't get it TOO twisted though, there aren't THAT many encounters in the game
that give damage windows long enough to shoot that many shots in a row anyway.
So, overall, I'm absolutely leaning towards Rewind Rounds for most people. If
you're a god tier player who doesn't want to rely on getting Veist procs, sure, go
Envious, but the general population should go Rewind Rounds. It's less hassle.
That being said, I did end up doing damage calculations for Envious and every
other damage perk, Firing Line, Reservoir Burst and Bait and Switch and here's what I found.
I used a made up damage number for the linear because as long as we scale everything tuned to
the made up number, every other number will line up in the long term. So, to keep things clear,
I simply used 1000 damage per shot, which makes for 3000 damage per burst. Then, I figured
out how long it took approximately to shoot 21 shots in a row, which is about 30 seconds and
added everything together. This works for Firing Line and Reservoir Burst, but not Izanagi. For
Izanagi, I simply did a full Izanagi rotation, timed how long it took and multiplied by 3
rotations. An Izanagi rotation took about 13.25 seconds, but as usual, your time may vary
slightly. As for the damage of the Izanagi shot, I needed to make sure that it scaled the
same as my made up number of 1000 damage. In terms of other damage numbers, I wanna die.
Initially, I tested in the Enclave and the ratio of damage numbers between a Honed Edge x4 crit
and 1 part of a burst of the linear was 6.3x. So, that would mean in my made up, 1000 damage per
shot number for the linear, Izanagi would do 6300 damage. Cool. Then I go to a Lost Sector, it's
7.0x. Cool, so now it's 7000 damage. Then I go to the Ogre in Grasp of Avarice, it's 5.95x, great,
now it's 5950 damage. I calculated numbers for all 3 environments anyway and the difference between
the lowest and the highest DPS values using my numbers was 3.1%, which is to say, not that much
of a variance in the grand scheme of the game. The highest DPS was Izanagi swapping with
Bait and Switch on the linear. Bait and Switch lasts 10 seconds, which means you can fire
7 shots before you need to reload. Conveniently, we can hold 7 shots at base with nothing else.
Also conveniently, Auto-Loading Holster is on this weapon and will trigger in time while doing
Izanagi swaps, so you can do either ALH or perfect Envious swapping to get the maximum damage. This
did NOT include damage from the 3rd weapon that you use to trigger Bait and Switch as it can vary
from being irrelevant if you use a primary to much more relevant if you are using another special
weapon. For now, I'm assuming you're using a primary to proc Bait and Switch and therefore I
did not include the damage in my calculations. Following that was perfect Envious, that's 21
shots in a row, no misses, and Firing Line. Firing Line is a flat 20% as long as you are near
other people, but if there is no one near you, it is literally useless. And comparing
to my best example numbers from Izanagi, this setup was essentially equal or at the very
least, not different enough to really matter. Finally, we have Reservoir Burst with perfect
Envious. This enables you to get 15 shots at 25% bonus damage, with the remaining 6 being at normal
damage. If we use the best numbers from my Izanagi testing, this combo is a mere 2% less DPS than
Izanagi swapping and that's mainly due to lack of reloads and extra swapping as getting through
3 Izanagi rotations with this setup is about 40 seconds, whereas just shooting 21 shots in a row
is 30 seconds, much like the previous example. Now we move to Rewind Rounds. We learned that
it is quite possible to get all 22 shots of this fusion fired in a row without reloads. However,
we can rule out Reservoir Burst immediately because again, Rewind doesn't overflow the
magazine, it just adds back to it, meaning we'll never really have Reservoir Burst active, ever.
Firing Line seems like a very natural choice to pair with Rewind Rounds. You never need to stop
shooting, Firing Line is always active assuming you're near people. This is the best setup for
the least amount of effort possible. You don't need to do Envious Assassin management. You don't
need to fumble with your weapon swaps. And your damage will be within around 8-10% of the other
things I've discussed so far, which is fantastic. But Rewind Rounds and Bait and Switch can also
work well together, even though I think it's kind of against the spirit of Rewind Rounds, which
is just keep shooting. The reason it can work is because you don't actually lose your Rewind Round
ammo restoration when you swap weapons. And you're going to need to do that in order to re-proc Bait
and Switch every 7 shots, which I poorly simulate in this clip. So, if you can shoot all of your 22
shots without needing the reload, even with the swapping, and you're doing some Izanagi swapping
on top of that, then I don't see why you wouldn't opt for Rewind and Bait and Switch. The benefit of
Bait and Switch over Firing Line is that you can use this thing anywhere, without having to rely
on teammates. For the Witness though, who is in the current raid, Firing Line is very relevant.
So, all that being said, which one should you actually get and use? It depends on your
skill level and it depends on where you're using this thing. If you want the easiest route
to damage, Rewind and Firing Line are the play, point and shoot, you don't have to care about
anything else and you'll be very competitive against other Scintillations. Also keep in mind,
not a lot of damage phases in the game that last long enough to burn through all of that ammo,
especially if you're Izanagi swapping. Witness might be one of the longer ones out there.
Compared to Euphony, I haven't done a ton of testing with it, I simply have anecdotal evidence
that it does pretty well on The Witness. But, considering it's a special ammo linear
fusion and I think it is at the very least keeping up with a power linear fusion, that
should tell you that it's pretty good and I don't think you can really go wrong using
either. But, Euphony excels in a longer damage phase so you can stack the damage bonus.
So do you actually NEED to get a Scintillation? At this very moment when I release this video, I
think it just depends on what you have available. Like if you missed out on Doomed Petitioner or
you just don't even have a good linear, then yeah. If you got some good stuff already or you're like
"piss off Datto, I'm gonna keep using Microcosm on Witness," I get it, because that's what I'm doing.
But let's not pretend Still Hunt isn't gonna get the nerf bat at some point in the future, Bungie
gonna probably hit us with the "we've noticed that linear fusions aren't quite up to speed," talk
a few months down the road and all of a sudden, boom, now it's actually good. So while it's double
loot for the next few days after release and while it's dropping from NOT a battleground GM because
I KNOW how much y'all hate those, just go get one and toss it in the vault for safekeeping.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time.
