Ager's Scepter — Cold Snap (Hunter)

Weapon: Ager's Scepter (Trace Rifle · Special · Stasis) · Subclass: Revenant · Role: Freeze-and-shatter add control + Unstoppable champion deleter Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Created 2026-06-16

A Stasis beam that slows on every kill and freezes the moment you dump Super energy into it. Pair it with Mask of Bakris — shift, and the beam gets a stacking Stasis damage buff while every kill refunds your dodge — and run a Revenant Harvest aspect so the beam's own kills make shards that wrap you in Frost Armor. 9.7.0 buffed trace rifles +20%/+20% and quietly made Stasis Shatter stun Unstoppable again: this beam is now its own champion answer.

The weapon

Ager's Call (intrinsic): "Final blows with this weapon generate a slowing burst around the defeated target." (perk text: "Final blows with this weapon slow nearby targets.")

Catalyst — Will Given Form: "[Alternate Weapon Action]: Drain Super energy, overflowing the magazine and empowering the beam with bonus damage and the ability to slow and freeze targets until the magazine or Super energy runs out, or the weapon is stowed. Can only be activated when Super energy is full."

So the base gun is a continuous Stasis beam whose every final blow drops a slowing burst — passive, free crowd control on every kill. The catalyst (full Super only) converts your Super bar into an overflowed, bonus-damage beam that freezes outright. You are trading "press Super for a burst" for "hold a freeze-laser that lasts your whole Super bar," which is exactly what an add-clear weapon wants. Frozen targets then shatter — and the whole Stasis loadout below exists to turn that one freeze into shards, Frost Armor, and a champion stun.

Loadout

Slot	Pick	Why
Subclass	Revenant (Stasis Hunter)	Native slow/freeze/shatter + Frost Armor; everything the beam already does, amplified.
Super	Silence and Squall	Squall's roaming storm slows/freezes a whole room — free freeze fuel for the beam to shatter, and the catalyst spends this Super's energy.
Class ability	Gambler's Dodge (or Marksman's)	Bakris turns dodge into a cloaking shift that arms the Stasis damage buff; beam kills refund it.
Melee	Withering Blade	Ricocheting shuriken slows/freezes — more freeze targets to shatter and to trigger Grim Harvest.
Grenade	Duskfield (with Touch of Winter elsewhere optional)	Pulls a pack in and slows them into one spot for the beam to mow and freeze.
Aspect 1	Grim Harvest	Defeating slowed/frozen targets drops Stasis shards → Frost Armor on pickup (9.7.0 Harvest rework). The beam slows everything, so this prints shards.
Aspect 2	Winter's Shroud	Dodging slows nearby targets and speeds class-ability regen — chains into Bakris shifts and feeds Grim Harvest.

Exotic armour — Mask of Bakris (Helmet): "Light Shift: While you have a Stasis or Arc Super equipped, your Dodge becomes a longer range, faster moving shift that partially cloaks you during use. After shifting, your Stasis and Arc weapons gain a stacking damage bonus for a short time. Final blows with this bonus active refund class ability energy." This is the iconic Ager's pairing: shift → Ager's hits harder → kills refund the dodge → shift again. The damage buff and the dodge are a closed loop the beam never falls out of.

Other two weapon slots:

• Primary (Kinetic/Energy of choice): anything to cover the trickle of red-bars while the beam is on cooldown ammo; a Strand/Arc primary keeps a surge slot free. The beam is Special, so this is your "always-loaded" gun.
• Heavy — a Stasis Heavy (e.g. a Stasis machine gun or the Stasis Heavy GL): it inherits the Stasis Weapon Surge mods and the Bakris Stasis damage buff, so your shift empowers two guns at once for boss/champion burst.

Why this works (the mechanics)

• The beam is a slow-engine, and slow is the whole build's trigger. Every Ager's final blow drops a slowing burst (Ager's Call). Slowed kills feed Grim Harvest (shards → Frost Armor) and Whisper of Refraction-class regen behaviour; the slow itself sets up freezes. One weapon does the work that normally needs a grenade.
• Catalyst turns Super into a freeze-laser. With a full Super, Will Given Form overflows the mag and makes the beam freeze for bonus damage. Frozen targets are then shatter-bait for the whole loadout — and you spent Super energy, not a Super cast, so you keep firing instead of animation-locking.
• Stasis Shatter stuns Unstoppable (9.7.0). Freeze with the catalyst beam (or Squall, or Withering Blade) → shatter → Unstoppable stun is intrinsic to the shatter. This weapon carries its own champion coverage; you don't spend a mod or an archetype slot on it.
• Mask of Bakris is a self-sustaining damage loop. Shift cloaks you and arms a stacking Stasis damage buff on Ager's; final blows with that buff active refund class-ability energy → another shift. Winter's Shroud's class-regen bump and beam kills both keep the dodge charged, so the buff almost never lapses.
• The 9.7.0 Harvest rework makes Frost Armor passive. Grim Harvest now grants Frost Armor on shard pickup, Frost Armor melts one stack at a time (~35% DR at 5, high uptime), and Whisper of Rime extends it. The beam slows → kills → shards → you stand in ~35% DR for free while clearing.
• Whisper of Hedrons rides the freeze. Freezing grants a large weapon-stat spike (stability/aim assist/etc.). A freeze-laser that freezes on a near-loop keeps Hedrons up near-permanently — the beam literally buffs its own handling.
• Trace rifles are +20%/+20% in 9.7.0, and the ability-nerf pass pushed the meta toward weapons. A Special-ammo beam that also crowd-controls, generates its own survivability, and stuns Unstoppable is exactly the kind of gun that patch rewards.

Stats & mods

Weapons 200 → Class 100+ → Health (Frost Armor covers it). Class fuels the Bakris/Winter's Shroud dodge economy; Weapons stat is straight PvE damage onto the beam (and matters more post-9.7.0). Health is the dump stat — Frost Armor's ~35% DR plus Bakris cloak carry survivability.

Mods:

• Helmet: Harmonic Siphon (Stasis kills → Orbs — the beam makes these nonstop) · Hands-On (Super on melee, feeds the catalyst's full-Super requirement).
• Gauntlets: Trace Rifle Loader / Reserves · Heavy Hand or Melee mods for Withering Blade uptime.
• Chest: elemental resists (flat DR under Frost Armor).
• Boots: Stasis Weapon Surge ×2 (≈+17% Stasis damage onto Ager's and the Stasis Heavy — stacks with the Bakris buff) · Innervation/Recuperation for shard- light moments.
• Class item: Powerful Attraction (dodge vacuums shards/orbs — instant Frost Armor on every shift) · Bomber/Outreach for ability regen.
• Stat tuning: +Weapons / −Health where available; the build trades Health for beam damage because Frost Armor already covers the DR.

Where it shines

• GMs / −power add control: a freeze-laser that slows on every kill, drops Frost Armor passively, and clears packs with shatter bursts (Whisper of Fissures) is a premier survival-clear tool.
• Champions: Unstoppable handled intrinsically via Stasis Shatter (freeze → shatter). Barrier/Overload are not covered by this weapon — bring a primary or Heavy of the right archetype, or artifact anti-champ mods, to plug those two.
• Boss/miniboss burst: shift (Bakris Stasis buff) + Stasis Weapon Surge ×2 + a Stasis Heavy stacks multiple Stasis multipliers; the catalyst beam's bonus damage adds on top during a freeze.
• Survival content (solo/duo): Frost Armor ~35% DR + Bakris cloak + permanent slow on everything you shoot makes this a defensive anchor, not just a clear gun.

Mod selection (masterworked — full allocation)

All 15 sockets used, 10 energy per masterworked piece; costs from the manifest. Core mods are the build's engine; fill mods are strong defaults — swap freely (chest resists should match the activity's damage types).