Devil’s Dawn: Best Sniper in Destiny

Snipers. We’ve all had our fair share of getting our heads popped off and in today’s Crucible it seems like there are more and more red glares off into the distance. If you want to be one of those red glares that people see before noticing that they no longer have a head, you can’t just stroll in there with just any ol’ sniper which is why players wonder what is the best sniper in Destiny.

You want to pick one that has a good scope. One that rewards you for having a skilled hand and one that is reliable.

The 1000-Yard Stare and/or the Y-09 Longbow Synthesis claimed the title of being the best sniper in Destiny due to popular belief. Then Rise of Iron released with weapon changes and a new list of snipers for players to try out. Now the Devil’s Dawn is arguably the best sniper in Destiny and here’s why:

When people ask what the best sniper in Destiny is they usually are talking about which is best to use in the Crucible. As I mentioned above, snipers like the 1000-Yard Stare reigned supreme in Destiny due to their ability to kill players with one head shot while they are in the middle of their super ability and some people favored the high aim assist factor with these type of snipers. Unfortunately, with the release of Update 2.4.0, the decrease to the damage output on middle-high impact snipers means that they can no longer reliably kill high armor guardians in super.

This means that if you want to be able to kill super-charged guardians in one shot, you would need to use snipers like the Black Spindle or Zen Meteor.  The problem with this is that these weapons are exotic weapons, which I’m sure people have other exotic weapons that they would rather use.  These weapons don’t come with ambush or shortgaze scopes, which are the recommended scopes for the Crucible.

The update also increased the amount of Flinch (thank god) that players experience when they take damage while scoped. Before the update, players were able to still easily land head shots even while being hit with bullets. This made it almost pointless to challenge snipers if you were using a primary weapon.

So with these changes in place, the Devil’s Dawn fits in perfectly as your go-to sniper of choice. Thanks to content creator, Th3Jez, we now know that the weird scope on the Devil’s Dawn is actually the same magnification as a shortgaze or ambush scope. This makes it good for the Crucible.

Then we have the fact that it falls in-line with the Black Spindle or Zen Meteor, being a low rate of fire/high impact sniper. This means that you can reliably take out a guardian during their super and best thing about all this is that it isn’t an exotic weapon, which means you are free to use other exotics. Also, have you noticed the increase in Titans running Juggernaut? High impact snipers reportedly can one-shot them if you land a head shot.

The increase in flinch means that in most cases you will only be able to take one shot before your aim gets thrown off from your opponents gunfire. Therefore, a higher rate of fire sniper would not be a better option in today’s Crucible. It would be wise to choose a sniper that dishes out higher damage regardless of the lower rate of fire.

The Devil’s Dawn comes with the Disciplinarian perk which allows you to deal a small amount of bonus damage to Fallen enemies. It also comes with life support, quick draw and firefly. Below you can see that it comes with a base aim assist stat of 39, which is good for people like me because it means that my scope won’t get dragged to a place I don’t intend to aim, but some people prefer a higher aim-assist.

All these reasons makes the Devil’s Dawn arguably the best sniper in Destiny at this moment. You can obtain it by using a Skeleton Key on the reward chest at the end of SIVA Crisis missions. The missions you need are The Wretched Eye, Sepiks Perfected, and The Abomination Heist.