[b][u]NOTICE:[/u][/b] Please make sure you read carefully so you don't ask/say something that's already here. I should also note, to stop further confusion, that not all of these changes would/could happen. They're proposed changes, in other words it could be a mix of any of the changes Well, to start off with, the weapon itself going purely by weapon performance (damage, RoF, accuracy, range) Sleeper Simulant is undeniably great (although ammo could probably be raised to around 10 shots or so). The issue that I have with the weapon is that it has perks that are useless and make the weapon as a whole mediocre. The perks I'm referring to are, in order of appearnace on the weapon: [b]Sleeper Simulant CQB Ballistics Hip Fire Injection Manifold Activate IKELOS[/b] Just to clarify, it's only part of the [b]Sleeper Simulant[/b] perk that is mediocre, which I will get to now as I explain exactly why these above motioned perks are mediocre in regards to Sleeper Simulant and also make suggestions as to possible replacements. And without further delay, let's begin. [b]Sleeper Simulant:[/b] "Weapon's laser tears through enemies and ricochets on hard surfaces". The first part is fine. Over-penetrating rounds on heavy weapon based on single target performance let's it be more versatile. The let down is the ricocheting rounds. We already have Hard Light that... specializes(?)... in bouncing rounds and honestly it's a dead end in terms of usage. It may work at times on an AR due to it's mag size and RoF but on a precision dominated weapon where you may only have time to put out one shot, you aren't going to be trying to bounce shots off walls. It's a novelty perk, a joke even. [b]CQB Ballistics:[/b] This one isn't too big, just wanted to touch on something that it does pointlessly for Fusion Rifles, which is increased stability. Anything that increases stability on a Fusion Rifle at the cost of anything (Injection Manifold, I'm looking at you} is a wasted perk. Not an issue though, just go with Smooth Ballistics [b]Hip Fie:[/b] Sleeper Simulant, going from the range, is meant to be used at long range. I can kind of understand wanting to use it to tear a path through enemies swarming just in front of you but if they are close enough to warrant hip firing then you probably wouldn't miss even without this perk. [b]Injection Manifold:[/b] Less range for more stability... why even bother? Either go with [b]Speed Reload[/b] or [b]Custom Optics[/b] [b]Activate IKELOS:[/b] Oh where to start... makes rounds bounce up to 5 times? I honestly have no idea who that this would make for an acceptable perk on an exotic but this needs to go. The single most useless perk I have ever seen on an exotic... Hell I've seen better perks on Rare gear SO... now that that's out of my system, let's talk changes shall we? [b]Sleeper Simulant:[/b] Instead of having bouncing rounds, how about it doesn't have a mag? Similar to Ice Breaker (without the regenerating ammo). This would improve it's DPS without making the weapon overpowered in PvP or PvE. This would also mean that [b]Speed Reload[/b] would have to be swapped, I suggest either [b]Accelerated Coils[/b] or [b]Enhanced Battery[/b] [b]CQB Ballistics:[/b] Like I said, nothing overly wrong as [b]Smooth Ballistics[/b] is more then enough to compensate. [b]Hip Fire:[/b] I suggest replacing it with [b]Fire Fly[/b], this is because the precision damage is a major incentive to be aiming for the head to try to tear down enemies, and it would also be more useful on adds then [b]Hip Fire[/b] due to being able to damage enemies not directly in the line of fire. [b]Injection Manifold:[/b] I suggest it be replaced with either [b]Accelerated Coils[/b] or [b]Enhanced Battery[/b] as both would be significant improvements to the weapon that would be a tough choice for players to choose from. That's what you want in an exotic, the struggle of what suits it for you and not having an obvious choice because nothing else fits [b]Activate IKELOS:[/b] Not overly sure of this one so it's a sort of "work-in-progress" situation on this one. Ideas are welcome, but here's mine anyway... [spoiler]"Landing consecutive precision shots increase damage (stacks 3 times). If a shot is missed (doesn't hit, body shots are fine) while a stack of [b]Active IKELOS[/b] is active Sleeper Simulant over heats, damaging you and starts a cool down before you can fire again. Enemies not killed by Sleeper Simulant are also ignited, dealing damage over time".[/spoiler] This wouldn't be effect PvP at all and would make this weapon as viable, if not more so, then Black Spindle which has arguably the best DPS of any PvE based weapon I'm probably going to cop some flak for this post, this is the Destiny forums after all, but regardless I would love to know what people think of these proposed changes [b][u]Edit #1:[/u][/b] There is the option of having tracking to the bounced rounds, people have brought this up and I actually considered having the bounced round track but that causes some balance issues. For it to track an enemy would have to be within a certain radius of the previously hit enemy and also be unobstructed. The radius is what causes the balance issue, too large and it will cause issues in PvP where you could essentially kill the whole enemy team with them being in the next post code because they all happened to be just in the radius. Too small and then it because pointless in PvE when enemies are spread out and if enemies are close then Fire Fly would sort them out.