Destiny 2 Old Sterling God Roll: best PvP & PvE Perks

By Erickson Melchoron
Destiny 2 Old Sterling God Roll Featured Image

The Old Sterling is a new Strand auto rifle world loot drop from Destiny 2 Season of the Deep. The weapon looks and feels similar to the old Scathelocke kinetic auto rifle. The biggest differences are the scopes and the fact that the Old Sterling’s shooting visuals give it the appearance of shooting green tracer rounds.

If you like auto rifles in your gameplay, this one is worth checking out. And it does come with the Field-Tested Origin Trait so it has value in both PvP and PvE.

How to get the Old Sterling in Destiny 2?

The Old Sterling is a world drop weapon that can drop from any activity in the Season of the Deep onwards. The chances of this weapon actually dropping are quite low so you may want to look toward Banshee-44 at the tower for a more guaranteed instance.

Banshee does occasionally sell rolls from the current season’s world loot weapons. He has two sets of weapons to choose from. One that changes on a daily basis and one that changes with the weekly reset.

Best Old Sterling PvP God Roll

  • 1st Column: Arrowhead Brake
  • 2nd Column: Accurized Rounds
  • Range Masterwork
  • Targeting Adjuster (Counterbalance stock as an option)
  • Slideways + Frenzy (Take or deal damage for a split second before sliding into cover. Quickly repeat the steps to activate Frenzy. This may or may not strain your actions per minute.)
  • Slideways + Adagio (It runs with the same idea but is more patient. Slide into combat, and get a kill to get Adagio. The perk slows down your DPS to something close to a 450 RPM auto. Think of it going from a Scathelocke to a harder-hitting Firefright for a few seconds.)

Alternative rolls

  • 1st Column: Smallbore
  • 2nd Column: Flared Magwell
  • Range Masterwork
  • Targeting Adjuster
  • Surplus + Demolitionist (This is more intended for dueling purposes. Surplus bumps up your stats as long as you don’t use any of your abilities. The moment things start heating up, throw your grenade to instantly refill your magazine and hopefully allow you to finish the fight.)

PvP Tips:

Slideways offers other bonuses than just refilling the magazine. It gives +20 Stability and Handling for 3 seconds after sliding. This is perfect for peeking in and out of cover. You really are dependent on Slideways in a way. If you don’t use and abuse the perk, you are pretty much just a moving target that won’t likely win in straight-up fights.

The Surplus roll offers the most stability overall, provided you don’t go all-out on your abilities. The bump in stability can make all the difference on an auto rifle.

The roll pictured above is very situational. The only time we ever got Rewind Rounds to activate at all was in an Iron Banner match when the entire enemy team was sitting at spawn and the perk allowed us to shoot for longer. We don’t recommend actively going after this roll unless you really like shooting barriers.

Best Old Sterling PvE God Roll

  • 1st Column: Arrowhead Brake
  • 2nd Column: Extended Mag
  • Range Masterwork
  • Backup Mag (Brings the magazine up to 58 bullets)
  • Rewind Rounds + Hatchling (Intended for ad clear purposes.)
  • Rewind Rounds + Focused Fury (More for boss DPS)

PvE Tip:

There aren’t many options in the PvE department here. Rewind Rounds is the only perk that actually does something for you. Now, Rewind Rounds are inferior to something like Reconstruction. When Rewind Rounds activates, this auto rifle will immediately get 50% of the magazine back. It will allow you to shoot longer. Our biggest issue is that the Old Sterling already reloads relatively quickly. But without any other good option, it is the best we’ve got.

The best reason to pick this up is if you don’t have the Quicksilver Storm and its catalyst in your possession and the active Surge happens to be Strand.

How good is the Old Sterling Auto Rifle?

In PvP, the Old Sterling is actually pretty good. The one drawback the Scathelocke has in close to mid engagements is its 20 zoom value. Old Sterling sits comfortably with a 16 zoom value. This can allow the weapon to duel at closer ranges.

At the end of the day, It really is just the weapon you bring out if you already have the Exotic slot filled up and really, really want to use a Strand auto rifle for some reason.

These are the Old Sterling Base Stats before any perks are applied:

  • Impact: 21
  • Range: 43
  • Stability: 42
  • Handling: 63
  • Reload Speed: 55
  • Zoom: 65
  • Rounds Per Minute: 600
  • Magazine: 42

Both the Scathelocke and the Old Sterling have similar stat spreads. The only category the Old Sterling is really higher at is airborne effectiveness. We don’t know how to feel about that, and you shouldn’t be jump shooting out of cover because of it. All in all, a nice addition to your collection of Field-Tested weapons. Not much else.

3rd column perks

  • Rewind Rounds
  • Perfect Float
  • Hip-fire Grip
  • Discord
  • Surplus
  • Slideways

4th column perks

  • Harmony
  • Frenzy
  • Hatchling
  • Demolitionist
  • Focused Fury
  • Adagio

And that’s everything we have right now for this Old Sterling god roll guide. We are a bit disappointed that we don’t have any PvE options on this weapon outside of a couple of perk combinations. Hopefully, the next set of world loot weapons has a bit going for them. Good luck and have fun out there, Guardians.

Iron Banner God Rolls (Season 21)

Season 21 God Roll Weapons

Destiny 2 Season of the Deep is out now on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles. The season will run from May 23, 2023, to August 22, 2023.