*** The Official Destiny Thread (now includes 2.0 and TTK) ***

[Fr0dders]

Oh look a blanket nerf to hand cannons when it was only the Exotics that needed tweaking... totally didn't see that coming... *sigh*

Why on earth has Icebreaker been nerfed? I didn't see anyone complaining about it recently.

Ah G'horn getting a nerf making the "we can't think of a better way of creating an end boss beyond giving it more health" bullet sponge bosses even more fun to fight...

Overall it seems there are some positives but there seems to have been focus on areas that didn't need it.

The nerfs to black hammer / Ice Breaker / Gjallarhorn are aimed squarely at making PVE harder as these weapons make most of the challenges they come up with easy.

Both those snipers had infinite ammo, so they've made black hammer take ammo from your inventory rather than spawn it out of thin air. No longer will you be able to chain together 52 crit hits on fallen walkers etc.. without reloading.

Ice breaker already had infinite ammo, so they've just made it taken even longer to regen.

The weapon balancing isn't just about bungie addressing PVP balance, its about them addressing how easily we laugh at their end game PVE content with the best weapons.

As for the hand cannon changes. They've made specific changes to TLW and Thorn in addition to hand cannon changes. All the generic hand cannon changes amount to, is a reduction in range and clip size to sway you over to scout rifles for ranged encounters.

Fair enough, hand cannons should not be as good as scout rifles at range. That's what they are trying to achieve.

 

[LackyT]

We'll see how it actually plays out...The only thing I'm a bit ****ed about is the Black Hammer nerf

 

[Paul_M]

Everyone knew that a nerf would end up coming for Ghorn, it was only a matter of time , but then it was the best counter to Bungie’s here’s a boss lets just give him a ton of heath to make the fight last, rather then decent fight mechanics. Not sure why Icebreaker required a nerf, always seems to take forever to reload anyway, and I only ended up using it on Oracles in the VoC anyway.

Other interesting bit is the stat perk tuning, as it seems there reducing all the buffs and applying them retroactively to all guns, which may have a greater effect than some of the individual gun nerf’s.

 

[thor]

Most Welcome
Final Round on precision hits only, basically removes the perk entirely. No more hearing two sniper shots being fired into the ground at the beginning of a Trials match.
Necrochasm Cursebringer on ALL precision kills - I might just give it another go.

Most Unwelcome
Hawkmoon can no longer one-shot kill. No Xbox user will ever get to experience it

Most Confusing
Other than the blanket hand cannon nerf, Thorn appears to have gotten a slight buff...?

 

[mid_gen]

Thorn won't be as effective in PvP because of the reduced DoT damage, the DoT won't stack because if you land a few hits they're dead anyway. In PvE the DoT stack will be a fair bit of damage. Basically hand cannons aren't going to snipe you from scout rifle range, mega win in my book.

 

[meths]

Increase base damage for medium to high Rate of Fire Scout Rifles
PVP: Does not affect TTK in PVP on a Guardian with full health
Increase magazine size for all base inventory stats
Reduce Final Accuracy when firing from hip
Fast firing outside of ADS will be less accurate
Boost damage by 5% against AI combatants

I might be wrong but to me it seems like the changes to scout rifles amount to a small buff for Vision of Confluence?

 

[Greboth]

It is some much needed balancing and mostly sounds good but the real test will be in the playing of it. Hopefully they have got the balancing right this time so that one weapon wont become dominant again.

Gjallahorn/BH/IB nerfs are annoying. Yes they were OP compared to other weapons but they were used due to bosses being such bullet sponges. So all these nerfs mean is boss fights will be longer but not harder. Why not, rather than nerf these, buff everything else - boss fights remain as they are now and keeps us happy and you also get balance across weapons.

We joked last night in CE that no land beyond you may as well beat people to death with the gun - I think we may have to start pistol whipping with other weapons too.

 

[martin9887]

We'll see how it actually plays out...The only thing I'm a bit ****ed about is the Black Hammer nerf

Kinda confused about this one myself, and the ice breaker one.

--

Annoying Gjallahorn is getting neutered, we wouldn't all have to use it if everything in the game wasn't such a massive bullet sponge and one level above us.

I'm pleased Hard Light is getting some attention and auto rifles getting a 10% damage boost.

Would've liked to see a slight damage increase to heavy machine guns against AI.

 

[The Chemist]

Damn so nerfs to the icebreaker, jiggly horn and black hammer.... Thorn issue still doesn't appear to have been addressed.

 

[gord]

Overall it seems there are some positives but there seems to have been focus on areas that didn't need it.

I think they've made the right choice. You can't drip feed changes that rely on other changes so heavily. This is why we've not had much out of them on the weapon balancing for ages, they must be testing the hell out of this. It's good that they're addressing the changes they've made over the first year too because we didn't need a lower TTK than it is now.

One thing I'm not happy about is the Black Hammer change. It now uses ammo? What's the point in landing 3 precision shots any more?

Thorn issue still doesn't appear to have been addressed.

What more do you want them to do to it? It's had specific tweaks and inherits the hand cannon balancing too..

 

[ic1male]

OH stop whining you lot. At least you actually HAVE the aforementioned weapons.

 

[mid_gen]

Xur

Helm of Inmost Light +94 STR
Celestial Nighthawk +123 INT
Sunbreakers +105 INT
Helm Engram

 

[thor]

Xur

Helm of Inmost Light +94 STR
Celestial Nighthawk +123 INT
Sunbreakers +105 INT
Helm Engram

Wait... He has NO WEAPON!!?

 

[McDaniel]

No weapon, Xur disappoints on a whole new level

/Edit

Bet they'll add Gjally

 

[Fr0dders]

Kinda confused about this one myself, and the ice breaker one.

--

Annoying Gjallahorn is getting neutered, we wouldn't all have to use it if everything in the game wasn't such a massive bullet sponge and one level above us.

I'm pleased Hard Light is getting some attention and auto rifles getting a 10% damage boost.

Would've liked to see a slight damage increase to heavy machine guns against AI.

Its aimed squarely at making PVE harder.

They don't seem to be able to design intelligent encounters which are difficult and fun to enjoy. They only way they can make them difficult is by making all of the enemies 1 to 2 levels above you.

Now it seems that isn't enough and they intend to make it harder still by reducing your damage output. No longer can you just smash bosses as easily with gjallarhorn, and no longer can you sit at the back and snipe with a sniper that has infinite ammo.

It totally wasn't needed, Just make a better game with more challenges in it, don't just nerf everything to hell so everybody becomes a bullet sponge.

 

[Paul_M]

Thorn won't be as effective in PvP because of the reduced DoT damage, the DoT won't stack because if you land a few hits they're dead anyway. In PvE the DoT stack will be a fair bit of damage. Basically hand cannons aren't going to snipe you from scout rifle range, mega win in my book.

Thorn is still going to be an issue in PvP, most of the maps are relativity close quarters so the range nerf is not going to hurt it that much. Reading reddit, it seems in the right hands its still going to be a just as leathal.

They are turning DoT to 1/3 of what is was. So around 2 or 3 per tick.
84+(5*3)= 99 so 198 for two Headshots which kill everything except max armor Titans and ram warlock. Not really fair to hunters and people running optional codecs. If it's 2 (pray it is), then it will be 94 per shot and 188 total making the Thorn require 3 Headshots to kill which brings it inline with legendary hand cannons as of now. But it fires much faster than equal damage Handcannons (comparable to Timur's lash and Ill Will in damage now) still giving it a big edge over every other legendary.

Does it also seem like they have not really done any thing with fusion rifles, this was the one class along with auto rifles that could have done with a buff, hardly every see any one running with the in PvP or PvE.

 

[Fallen god]

TLW seems to have gotten much more server of a nerf compared too Thorn, and Thorn is much more OP, doesn't make a huge amount of sense there. Nerf all HC also seems silly, and FR which are basically the worse weapons in game didn't get much changed it seems.

Either way don't care NIGHTHAWK finally. Also how comes we have no weapon

 

[thor]

No weapon, Xur disappoints on a whole new level

/Edit

Bet they'll add Gjally

That is going to get the conspiracy theorists going: Gjallarhorn has been removed from Xür's loot table. Xür shows up without a weapon. It was meant to be Gjallarhorn!

 

[Phog]

That calculation doesn't take into account how DoT will stack though, either?

 

[mid_gen]

You're not going to be able to land headshots reliably at long range with HCs with the accuracy nerf, and the damage will fall off much more. Thorn DoT nerfed as well....much more reasonable, still a potent weapon at close/medium range, but going to get spanked at longer range by scouts/pulse/snipers.

The DoT stack won't matter much in PvP, if you're landing shots the damage from the DoT is inconsequential compared to the round damage.