How Good Is the Ace of Spades? [Weapon Stat Breakdown] Destiny 2

So the legendary, most-loved character in the Destiny universe dies. After avenging him, you find that you can wield his legendary hand cannon, (the Ace of Spades), after following instructions from the Gunsmith. If you’re going to put a weapon like this into the game, it has to be good, right?

Well after using this myself I can assure you that this is definitely a weapon that you want to add to your arsenal. As a matter of fact, I plan to and have been using the Ace of Spades as exclusively as Cayde-6 did (at lease for now). Not only because it belonged to Cayde, but it has my favorite perk from Destiny 1, Firefly.

So just how good is the Ace of Spades? Well, lets look at the stats of the weapon (aim assist, etc). Then lets compare it to a few other hand cannons that have made a name for themselves.

Ace of Spades Weapon Stats

Optimal Time-to-Kill

• 0.87 (Average)

Optimal Kill

• 3 crit

Body Shot Time to Kill

• 1.73 (Very bad)

Range

• 78  range (Very good)

Stability

• 46 (Average)

Aim Assist (console)

• 70 (Average)

Recoil Direction

• 100 (Very good)

So to summarize, this is a hand cannon with average time to kill and a bad body shot time to kill. Then we have a hand cannon that has the longest range than any other hand cannon in Destiny 2 (next is the Duke Mk. 44 with 68). Top that off with decent stability and really good recoil direction.

As far as the perks we have:

Memento Mori

• Reloading after a kill loads magazine with a few extra-damage bullets. Grants radar while aiming down sights.

Now when they say extra damage bullets, they don’t mean that random bullets in the gun does extra damage. When it activates, the next 6 shots does the extra damage.

Corkscrew Rifling

• Slightly increases range and stability
  Slightly increases handling speed

High Caliber Rounds

• Shots from this weapon knock the target back farther.
  Slightly increases range

Firefly

• Precision kills with this weapon increases reload speed and causes the target to explode dealing solar damage to nearby enemies.

Smooth Grip

• Slightly increases stability
  Slightly increases handling speed

Memento Mori

Let’s talk about the damage from Memento Mori. On average your crit shots will do 70 damage. With Memento Mori active it does about 93. This means that anyone who has less than about 5 resilence will die in 2 head shots.

For everyone else, it’s now 2 crits and one body instead of 3 crits. They usually only have about 2 hp after getting hit with 2 crits with Momento Mori activated so if they even take the slightest amount of damage before you shoot them it will be a 2 hit if you land the crits with this activated.

The one bad thing about this hand cannon was the body shot time to kill. I would say that this isn’t too far high up on the importance scale because you always want to be aiming for the head anyways. But of course there are a lot of things that happen on the battlefield so head shots can get difficult at times.

Range

The high range on this gun means that you have the potential to cross-map players, which means kill from a far distance. This also means that you have an advantage at a distance in most hand cannon vs hand cannon battles. The Sunshot for example, has a range of 38 to your 78.

PvE

So from we see here (and from my personal use), this gun shines in pvp. But this gun is loaded with good perks and they allow it to shine in pve too. Especially the Memento Mori and Firefly.

Firefly allows for some crowd control with the Solar damage burst from precision hits. And Mori with the extra damage bullets. And then we have the increase in reload speed from Firefly which is pretty much Outlaw and High Caliber Rounds knocking enemies back.

So again, this is definitely a solid powerful gun in both pvp and pve. If you don’t know how to get this gun, finish the exotic quest you get from the Gunsmith after you complete the story. Just try not to cry while you’re doing the last part of it.