TL;DR SUMMARY: RECLUSE HAS 100/100 RECOIL DIRECTION BY DEFAULT; COUNTERBALANCE MOD DOES NOT DO ANYTHING AND THOSE SUGGESTING IT DON'T UNDERSTAND HIDDEN WEAPON STATS! Here is a link to The Recluse on Destiny Tracker's item database, and under the typical stat bars you can view the HIDDEN attributes that *every* weapon has and see for yourself that Aim Assist is ALREADY capped out: https://db.destinytracker.com/d2/en/items/3354242550-the-recluse Please read the post below for more details. End tl;dr summary! --------------------- Now that that's out of the way... I know this is an old post, but a Google search regarding Recluse mods points here and I see a lot of misinformation and don't want people to search, end up here, and get bad information. The mod you pick is personal preference; backup mag only gives four rounds, but in the crucible that might mean killing a target instead of leaving it with a sliver of health. Icarus makes it much more reliable when jumping around, but if you mostly stick to the ground it isn't going to do much for you. Every mod has pros and cons like this, without exception; I'd say the "default" mod would probably be backup mag simply because more ammo is always a good thing, PVP or PVE. The issue is this - NEVER PUT A COUNTERBALANCE MOD ON THIS GUN, EVER, BECAUSE IT WILL NOT DO ANYTHING. Recluse already has a recoil direction stat of 100 out of 100 - it CANNOT INCREASE beyond this and the Counterbalance Mod WILL NOT DO ANYTHING. Anybody suggesting it in this thread doesn't know about or understand hidden weapon stats such as recoil direction, aim assist, etc. This is not my opinion, this is not up for debate, and anybody saying they used the mod and "definitely saw an improvement" was imagining it thanks to the placebo effect. Feel free to search the Destiny subs on Reddit if you'd like more concise information, and you can also look up The Recluse on any of the several Destiny 2 item database sites in order to view it's recoil direction stat along with the other hidden stats. So, again, I apologize for necro-ing a relatively old post, but considering the fact that a Google search about recluse mods is pointing here I couldn't help but add a voice of reason to the several posts spreading misinformation. I just hope that anybody led here ends up seeing this post, too.