I swear, I mean this in a helpful way (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Thursday, August 27, 2015, 23:42 (3157 days ago) @ RaichuKFM

If you want true playstyle balance, it has to be that the top gun of every archetype has to be as good as every other, and probably the Exotics, too.

This is exactly what I meant. You have to balance the best case scenarios against one another, and then pass that down through the lower tiers (and maybe buff the worst ones at the bottom, independently of your top tier balance), rather than balancing "all hand cannons" and then not adjusting for that super powerful but very rare magic roll of perfection.

Then again, playstyle suitability make me better with a Doctor Nope than a Wolfslayer's Claw, even if the latter is better, so they just have to be roughly close.

For what it's worth, I've never felt like I needed a gun in a certain situation when I didn't have it, except a decent shotgun in PvP. Then again, I have Ice Breaker and Gjallarhorn, so maybe I should just shut up. (I've never felt Gjally was crucial to my success except in Crota, but that's just because of the tracking, and Ice Breaker was only necessary for certain tactics, not to be able to do a certain encounter at all.)

It's not so much "I need this gun" as "wow, gun X is dramatically more powerful and useful than anything I have." Again, Thorn in PvP or Gally in PvE are the standouts for this. People without those guns are not as competitive or effective (gross generalization) as people with them. The net result is that you feel like you need a specific weapon in order to measure up, regardless of your actual skill level. That's not the real case, but it's the easy superficial judgement that strangers will put on you when they see you.