The first Act of Destiny 2’s Episode Heresy threw some juicy weapons into the game’s sandbox, one of which is Watchful Eye.
The Machine Gun debuted as an instant favourite due to its incredible perk pool for Guardians looking to capitalize on Heresy’s huge buffs to Arc subclasses. For all intents and purposes, you can think of Watchful Eye as a Legendary alternative to Thunderlord when you want to free up your Exotic choice for the Kinetic or Special slot.
As always, performance depends almost entirely on perks and with the right combinations, Watchful Eye is an add-clear monster you’ll never want to be without when running Arc.
Watchful Eye PvE & PvP god rolls – Meta analysis
| PvP God Roll | PvE God Roll |
|---|---|
| Barrel: Arrowhead Brake Magazine: Extended Mag Perk 1: Overflow Perk 2: Jolting Feedback Masterwork: Handling | Barrel: Corkscrew Rifling Magazine: Ricochet Rounds Perk 1: Dynamic Sway Reduction Perk 2: Killing Tally Masterwork: Range |
Watchful Eye is one of the best add-clear weapons for Arc builds.Without doubt, the combination of Overflow and Jolting Feedback is the absolute best combo you want for Watchful Eye.
The former, while inferior to Reconstruction – a perk that Watchful Eye sadly doesn’t have access to – bypasses the Machine Gun family’s biggest weakness by granting automatic reloads whenever a Special or Heavy ammo brick is picked up, pushing it beyond normal capacity to boot.
For the second perk, you’ve got some fantastic options in Rolling Storm and Killing Tally. Both of these are solid, but Jolting Feedback takes top spot for its ability to inflict mass Jolt and synergy with Heresy’s Dielectric Artifact Perk.
For Masterwork, you’d usually want Reload Speed, but Overflow makes that unnecessary. Instead, go for Handling to increase Watchful Eye’s ready and stow speed.
As a general rule of thumb, Machine Guns are an excellent choice of Heavy in the Crucible. While Watchful Eye’s perk pool for PvP is nothing to write home about, you can’t go wrong with the tried and true combo of Dynamic Sway Reduction and Killing Tally paired with a Range Masterwork.
Related
For more Destiny 2 meta commentary, check out the roll you should be on the lookout for on Trials Sniper Keen Thistle, as well as the Exotic that’s going to be a DPS champion in Heresy Act 2.