The Malfeasance hand cannon is a powerful weapon on its own but when paired with the right pieces of armor and mods, it becomes an absolute beast of a damage dealer.
In this guide, we’ll tell you how you can build into the exotic hand cannon with Lucky Pants. This build is great in PvE and somewhat serviceable in PvE. This specific build also favors dusk field grenades to generate stasis shards.
Stasis Hunter Malfeasance and Lucky Pants Build
Hunter Subclass – Revenant
Abilities
- Markmans’ Dodge
- Triple Jump
- Withering Blade
- Duskfield Grenade
Aspects
- Grim Harvest
- Touch of Winter
Fragments
- Whisper of Shards
- Whisper of Rending
- Whisper of Rime
- Whisper of Torment
- Whisper of Impetus
The most important parts this build needs in order to work are the Grim Harvest aspect and the Whisper of Rime fragment. If you don’t already have them already, you’ll have to progress the Exo Stranger’s quest over at Europa and expand your knowledge of Stasis. Whisper of Rending is also key to this build to a degree for it allows you to deal 50% more damage on frozen enemies and 100% on stasis crystals.
You’ll also need a specific armor mod to make this whole thing work. But we’ll get to that later. Just know that we’re using Grim Harvest to stasis shards whenever we defeat a frozen or slowed enemy and Whisper of Rime allows us to collect stasis shards to generate a temporary overshield. On the off chance that you didn’t reload your primary and have your energy weapon out, Whisper of impetus will reload stowed weapons and allows you to get your hand cannon out faster.
Every other aspect is optional. This build in particular is fond of duskfield grenades for area denial and very low cooldown, so that makes us want to run with Whisper of Torment and Impetus.
Armor Mods
Helmet – Any
- Kinetic Siphon
- Harmonic Siphon
- Elemental Charge
Gauntlets – Arc
- Momentum Transfer
- Powerful Friends
Chest Armor – Solar
- Your choice of weapon reserves
- Bountiful Wells
Leg Armor – Lucky Pants – Void
- Better Already
- Insulation
- High-Energy Fire
Class Item – Stasis
- Distribution
- Elemental Shards
As stated earlier, this entire build works off of the Elemental Shards well mod. This mod makes it as if stasis shards count as stasis elemental wells for your character. You can get this mod by chance if you visit Ada-1 frequently enough at the Tower Annex.
The rest of the build is essentially Charged with Light with Bountiful Well. With the number of stasis shards you’ll be creating with your grenade and charged melee, you won’t be out Charged with Light very often. As long as there are shards to pick up, you should be fully charged.
You also have the option to remove both Distribution and Lord Kelvin’s Basilisk on your class item for Solo Operative in season 19. The 15% damage buff makes a big difference in solo endgame content.
Weapons
Many players are still sleeping on the Malfeasance even after it got a buff almost half a year ago. It’s a wonderful gun in PvE on account of its Explosive Shadow intrinsic trait which causes an explosion after continuously landing shots on an enemy.
Now that it’s buffed with Lucky Pants and high-energy fire, the Malfeasanse is capable of doing considerable damage in a short amount of time.
Since your abilities will do much of the crowd control, we suggest a hard-hitting weapon like a shotgun to occupy your energy slot. For Champion killing purposes, you can bring a pulse rifle. But really, if you time your grenade before they pop a bubble, barrier champions will be frozen solid.
For your power weapon, we suggest something that has Chill Clip to up the number of targets that activate Grim Harvest and Whisper of Rime. Otherwise, go with the one that’s best suited for the occasion. A machinegun with Headstone does wonders in PvE.
Gameplay loop
Before the start of an engagement, you’re going to have your energy weapon out. That’s because of Lucky Pants. The moment you bring out your Malfeasance you’re going to get the Illegally Modded Holster buff for a few seconds. For a short period of time, your hand cannon shots are going to deal increasing amounts of damage per hit upon drawing the weapon. Additionally, its ready speed is faster and more accurate during that duration.
At the start of an engagement, you’re going to open up with your powered melee attack to get the ball rolling. A quick kill there to jump-start the aggression. If there’s a clump of enemies before you, even better. You can throw your grenade instead. The important thing here is that you start gathering stasis shards as quickly as possible.
This build doesn’t do much if you aren’t actively collecting shards left and right. You need them to have near-constant up time on your powered melee, for High-Energy Fire, and the overshield that’s going to keep you alive in endgame content. There’s also no other way of healing, so you have every reason to go around and make as many shards as possible.
Going after yellow bars gives you a good fifth of shields. But we’ve found that defeating a group of frozen enemies is better since multiple grabs charges melee faster compared to one big crystal.
On a final note, you may want to throw either your Super or a dusk field grenade on top of a boss-level enemy. Freezing an enemy solid comes with the added benefit of making them more susceptible to damage. That’s another bump in your already stacked potential for destruction.
And that’s our third hunter build for season 19. We’re always working on other builds both for fun and endgame builds. Check back here with us when the next one drops.
Check out our builds for this season:
- Merciless Hunter Build for Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph and Beyond
- Gyrfalcon Hauberk Void Hunter Build With Veles X Destiny 2 Season 19
Also, check out this video from YouTuber Destiny Fun Police where he showcases clips of Malfeasance after its buff a while back.
