Bygones Pulse Rifle: Ultimate Perk Guide

The Bygones pulse rifle stands as one of Destiny 2’s most versatile kinetic weapons, offering players exceptional flexibility across both Player versus Environment and Player versus Player encounters. With a massive perk pool containing 24 distinct perks spread across two selectable columns, this weapon demands careful consideration when chasing optimal rolls. Understanding how to navigate these options transforms Bygones from a competent choice into a powerhouse tailored to your specific playstyle.

Understanding the Bygones Perk Architecture

Bygones operates within Destiny 2’s standard weapon crafting system, where players can select from predetermined perk combinations. The weapon’s appeal lies in its balanced stat distribution and the breadth of available options across its left and right perk columns. The left column houses twelve distinct perks, while the right column mirrors this with twelve additional choices. This extensive array means that players have numerous viable paths to optimization rather than a single narrow definition of perfection.

The weapon’s Origin Trait, Gun and Run, provides inherent value by improving accuracy and handling when defeating targets, granting players a built-in benefit that enhances the weapon’s responsiveness during extended engagements. This trait sets a foundation upon which perk combinations can build, creating synergistic effects that amplify the weapon’s strengths.

Barrel and Magazine Foundation for Success

Before examining the critical perk columns, addressing the weapon’s foundational barrel and magazine selections proves essential. These elements dictate how the weapon handles in practical scenarios, influencing everything from accuracy to reload efficiency.

Barrel Options: The selection of barrel modifications significantly impacts Bygones’ performance characteristics. For PvE encounters where survivability matters less than raw output, Fluted Barrel emerges as the preferred choice, trading minimal damage for improved handling and reload speed. In Player versus Player scenarios, Smallbore becomes the go-to selection, providing stability enhancements that tighten the weapon’s effective range and grouping precision.

Magazine Selections: Magazine perks contribute substantially to the weapon’s practical effectiveness. Flared Magwell appears universally beneficial for PvE applications, where reload speed enables faster cycling between targets. For competitive play, Ricochet Rounds or High-Caliber Rounds provide utility by either bouncing rounds unpredictably or stunning opponents with additional knockback, creating advantages during firefights.

Masterwork Direction: The masterwork slot benefits from Reload Speed investment across both playstyles. This choice compounds the benefits of other perks focused on efficient weapon cycling, allowing players to maintain offensive pressure without extended reload downtime.

Left Column Perks: Building Your Foundation

The left perk column establishes the weapon’s primary function, whether focusing on utility, survivability, or raw damage output. Several options deserve detailed examination:

Demolitionist: This perk regenerates grenade energy with each kill, creating synergy with grenade-focused builds. For PvE players running explosive subclasses or grenade-centric loadouts, Demolitionist transforms Bygones into a grenade battery that accelerates ability uptime. The constant flow of grenade energy enables sustained special ability usage, particularly valuable when paired with builds incorporating grenade-damage multipliers.

Perpetual Motion: Providing automatic stability and handling increases whenever the player moves, Perpetual Motion rewards aggressive positioning. Players who favor constant repositioning and mobile combat find this perk exceptionally valuable, as it removes the need to remain stationary while maintaining superior weapon handling.

Subsistence: This perk returns fired rounds to the magazine on precision kills, effectively extending magazine capacity without reloading. For players with strong accuracy, Subsistence enables extended engagements without reload interruptions, though it requires consistent headshot execution to maximize benefits.

Outlaw: Precision kills trigger dramatically accelerated reload speeds, creating a high-skill-ceiling perk for players comfortable prioritizing accurate shooting. When combined with high-damage secondary perks, Outlaw enables a rhythm of quick kills followed by rapid reloads, maintaining continuous offensive momentum.

Zen Moment: Granting automatic stability increases when taking damage, Zen Moment helps players maintain their attack vector even while absorbing incoming fire. This defensive utility appears particularly valuable in PvP scenarios where gunfights involve mutual damage trading.

Keep Away: Consecutive precision kills stack bonus damage, rewarding players who chain together accurate shots. This perk creates escalating damage potential, transforming successful accuracy strings into increasingly powerful outgoing damage.

Shoot to Loot: Eliminating enemies with precision shots collects ammunition automatically, providing utility for ammo-sensitive encounters. This perk proves particularly valuable during ammunition-limited scenarios or when farming efficiently becomes important.

Right Column Perks: Amplifying Your Output

The right column determines how your Bygones damage translates into practical effectiveness, offering damage amplification, utility, or survival enhancement:

Frenzy: This perk delivers sustained damage increases when engaged in continuous combat, stacking bonuses the longer gunfights persist. For players favoring aggressive positioning in both PvE and PvP, Frenzy rewards sustained participation and penalizes retreat, creating a damage incentive for maintaining offensive contact.

High Ground: Bonus damage multipliers apply when shooting enemies from elevation advantages, encouraging tactical positioning and vertical combat awareness. Players who understand arena control and elevation advantage find this perk exceptionally synergistic with their natural playstyle.

Headseeker: Body shots increase precision damage for a short duration, creating a unique mechanic where defensive hits transition into precision bonuses. This perk removes the strict requirement for constant accuracy, instead providing gracious compensation when players land body shots.

Kill Clip: Reloading after a kill grants temporary damage amplification, creating a reward mechanism for successful eliminations. Pairing Kill Clip with rapid-reload perks creates a damage loop where each kill enables enhanced damage for the next target.

Desperate Measures: Damage increases scale with the number of active debuffs affecting enemies, functioning best within coordinated teams deploying multiple debuff effects. Groups utilizing shared debuffs from subclass abilities or other weapons benefit substantially from this multiplicative perk.

Firefly: Precision kills trigger explosive detonations affecting nearby enemies, providing area-of-effect utility during PvE encounters with clustered opponents. The visual feedback and satisfaction from chaining explosive kills makes this perk particularly rewarding.

Closing Time: Melee kills grant handling and reload improvements, creating synergy with melee-focused subclasses or close-range combat patterns. Players operating at close ranges benefit from the stacking bonuses this perk provides.

PvE Optimization Strategies

Player versus Environment encounters prioritize sustained damage output and ability synergy over precision consistency. The recommended foundational build emphasizes grenade generation and explosive scaling:

Alternative left column selections like Perpetual Motion or Subsistence work excellently for specific builds. Players running mobile subclasses benefit from Perpetual Motion’s continuous bonuses, while accurate shooters maximize Subsistence’s extended magazine potential. The key principle involves matching perks to your ability rotation and positioning habits.

PvP Competitive Loadout Configuration

Player versus Player success demands stability, precision assistance, and rapid target elimination capabilities. The competitive-focused approach emphasizes reliability and consistent performance under pressure:

The competitive environment rewards players who understand their engagement distances and positioning. Keep Away scales damage with successive precision kills, rewarding confident aggressive players, while Zen Moment supports players who prefer weathering damage while maintaining accuracy. High Ground encourages positional awareness and map control, while Headseeker provides safety nets for players whose accuracy fluctuates.

Advanced Perk Synergy Combinations

True mastery involves understanding how specific perk combinations create synergistic effects beyond their individual contributions.

Outlaw with Kill Clip: This combination creates a reload-focused rhythm where precision kills enable rapid weapon cycling followed by enhanced damage amplification. The synergy transforms Bygones into a precision instrument that punishes enemies through accurate shooting sequences.

Perpetual Motion with Frenzy: Mobile players benefit from stacking continuous bonuses, as Perpetual Motion’s movement benefits activate during the aggressive repositioning that Frenzy requires. This combination rewards players who never stop moving.

Demolitionist with Desperate Measures: When paired with debuff-heavy subclasses, these perks create multiplicative scaling where grenade generation from Demolitionist enables more debuff application, which then amplifies Desperate Measures damage. The combination excels in team scenarios.

Practical Acquisition and Testing Strategy

Pursuing god rolls requires understanding Bygones’ availability and acquisition methods. Players should prioritize testing different combinations within lower-stakes activities before committing resources to full optimization. Starting with foundational perks like Demolitionist for PvE or Keep Away for PvP, then experimenting with secondary perk variants, helps identify personal preferences before extensive grinding.

The weapon’s accessibility means most players can acquire multiple versions with different perk combinations, enabling side-by-side testing to determine personal effectiveness. What performs optimally on community forums may not match your specific playstyle, making personal testing invaluable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Outlaw really the undisputed best choice for PvE?
A: Outlaw excels for precision-focused playstyles where reload reduction matters, but Frenzy or Desperate Measures often prove equally effective in practical PvE scenarios. Your playstyle determines effectiveness more than theoretical rankings.

Q: How does Gun and Run affect perk selection?
A: The Origin Trait’s inherent bonuses mean you don’t need to prioritize accuracy or handling perks as strictly. This flexibility allows experimentation with alternative left column options like Shoot to Loot.

Q: Can I swap between PvE and PvP roles with the same weapon?
A: While possible, the significant differences between optimal barrel and perk selections mean maintaining separate rolls yields superior performance in each mode.

Q: What makes Demolitionist superior for PvE builds?
A: Demolitionist’s grenade energy generation creates ability uptime that scales with your subclass abilities, particularly when running grenade-damage enhancement mods.