https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/44841/

Sunsinger
As promised, we kept an eye on Warlocks after the previous patch. Sunsingers, while not out performing other classes, are still creating frustrating encounters. Most of these encounters are the result of a combination of build perks and the Firebolt grenade so we adjusted the target search radius and arming time. This means that from the moment the grenade lands players will have a split second longer to get out of the area in which the bolts fire and that area is slightly smaller, so there should be a little more counter play.

Changes:
Firebolt: increased arming time by 0.2 seconds
Firebolt: decreased victim search radius by 1 meter

Viking Funeral
The biggest change to Sunsingers is to the Viking Funeral build perk. This perk will no longer extend the duration of Ignite (damage over time) effects. Instead it now causes those effects to weaken the target to other sources of damage (but not the Ignite itself). This will reduce the frequency and duration of the damage over time effect, but should still allow the Sunsinger interesting build options involving Ignite.

Changes:
Viking Funeral: no longer extends the duration of Ignite effects
Viking Funeral: now weakens targets afflicted with Ignite effects, causing them to take 5% more damage from all sources, stacking up to 3 times.

Flame Shield
We added a minor delay to the activation time of Flame Shield. Ideally this makes it so that there is a window of opportunity (if only very briefly) for people to win melee trades against Warlocks running this upgrade.

Changes:
Flame Shield: 0.3 second delay added before the overshield activation

Counterbalance
There are some cases where a perk's effectiveness makes it seem like an absolute necessity to run. For many players this is currently true for Counterbalance; not only is it an extremely effective perk, but it nullifies the uniqueness of each gun’s recoil pattern.

In a nutshell why these type of perks are bad for the game. Anything that straight up makes a stat better shouldn't have a place in a game like Destiny.

People only want it so much because the wildly unfun and heretofore unprecedented sideways recoil patterns of TTK guns. People didn't care before 2.0. MB make guns good plz, Bingle.

Otherwise it seems all right.

Intriguing...

RIP Tripmine:

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Besides the tripmine, this all seems all right.

Vanish now causes the player to vanish on cast in addition to its normal functionality

Um... What?

Sounds like Bungie is playing the original concept of a medieval destiny. :)

I want my magic space frog!

We're taking about the Bladedancer Arc Blade Vannish ability... Right? The one that makes you spin and cloak when using your Super?? What the heck else did it do besides make you vanish???

Several much-needed buffs coming. Golden Gun, Arc Blade, Nova Bomb, Fist of Havok, Hammer of Sol, and Storm Trance all receiving damage boosts, with some of them getting additional damage boosts against AI targets. And Shadowshots will now suppress supers the moment they hit.

We're taking about the Bladedancer Arc Blade Vannish ability... Right? The one that makes you spin and cloak when using your Super?? What the heck else did it do besides make you vanish???

I think they're saying you will now vanish the moment you press the button, rather than at the end of the spin animation. But I'm not sure.

Seems a bit odd. It was already clearing entire Raids in one activation... Then again, I guess a 10% buff to "...unlimited powwweeerrrr!" doesn't really affect anything. +10% to infinite damage and chaining is still just infinite damage and chaining...

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+50% to Fist of Havoc vs Guardians seems a bit silly. Was it not killing something before? But +100% vs AI is gonna be awesome. It'll now actually nuke gold bar enemies instead of pissing them off.

And super ditto for Golden Gun! Should be fun to actually kill something with it for a change. Also, look out armored up / Supering Guardians, ya Fist o Havoc or Radiant Skin ain't gonna save you now! :)

Also, was referring to the linked article. I responded positively to the sunbreaker buffs linked in Korny's post.

(Virtually) ALL of these changes are much needed. My only complaint is that they didn't happen sooner.

The Sunsinger touch-of-flame tweaks are particularly inspired!

So happy!

We're taking about the Bladedancer Arc Blade Vannish ability... Right? The one that makes you spin and cloak when using your Super?? What the heck else did it do besides make you vanish???

I think they're saying you will now vanish the moment you press the button, rather than at the end of the spin animation. But I'm not sure.

I think it means as soon as you pop your super, hence "cast".

But it is vague. We'll see?

Unclear what happened but apparently there are some changes to Clan Management or bug fixes. Apparently changes after 10am today will be lost.

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Got three sentences in and got bored.

Where's the twitch stream version? (:

@GrantGMackay: @Ragashingo The moment when you pull the knife (about half a second into the activation animation) you will enter stealth.

There we go. :)

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As I read through the patch notes for both the weapons and the classes, I kept thinking to myself, "Yes. Yes. Good change. Yes. That was needed. Good change. YES."

Holy crap. I seriously agree with every change made here.

Trip mine no longer sticking is going to F my K/D in the A, but it's a good call to weaken the second best grenade in the game and bring it more in line with the other hunter grenades (so now they all suck! Hooray!). That being said, the 3% damage reduction will drop the grenade from 194 damage to 188.18. I'm not sure how that rounds, but based on the armor values here, it means that you will no longer OHK with a trip mine on anyone running more than 2 armor.

The shorthand is that trip mine will no longer kill anyone on its own, ever. This fundamentally alters how hunters will play the game. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but it is the single most important change in these patch notes. Also: I tried for a while to find solid numbers on how much damage Hunter's other grenades do and was unable to find them. Destiny wiki was the only page with values and they haven't been updated since TTK launched (and didn't even have values for all of the TTK subclasses). I remember hearing that Incendiary grenade can 1-shot if it goes off right at someone's feet, but given that it's not sticky, gunslingers now completely lack a 1-shot grenade stick option for the first time since launch. Since they also lack armor and any sort of quick escape maneuver (no blink or shadestep), gunslingers are now being forced out of aggressive play and pushed back into setting trip mines and then watching them to get finishing shots on trapped enemies. Again, I can't say if that's good or bad, but it certainly will make me think long and hard about whether gunslinger is really useful in pvp anymore.

Another note: With the nerf, trip mines will no longer one-shot ressed players in trials if set below the orb as a trap. orb denial denied. Again, this fundamentally alters the way in which a hunter plays.

Personally, I always thought trip mine being a OHK was a good trade off since it was also easy to spot, had a narrow damage angle, and you can shoot it away, but I fully agree that it is heads and tails better than the other (very lackluster) gunslinger grenade options.

I'm also a bit sad that, with the utility of tripmine lessened, my gunslinger gear, carefully collected around use of the young ahamkara spine gloves, is basically gutted. No idea what exotic I'll use now. Such are the dangers of an investment game.

Now, this change also fundamentally alters the way in which everyone else plays, not just hunters. 7+ armor is no longer needed to survive a trip mine, so many more build options are open to you. Trip mines no longer kill most builds in one hit, so players will be less cautious rounding corners where trip mines tend to be since they know they can do so without fear of a one-shot. Unknown if this is good or bad for hunters, but it will certainly be different.

What disappoints me is that lightning grenade is not being changed, and it is far more powerful than trip mine ever was. Very, very disappointing to see that grenade not be adjusted down. I hope it gets revisited soon.

But at least burn was addressed! Because holy crap if there's one thing I hate, it's knowing you're just going to burn out of the course of the next seven seconds and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Can't even stop, drop, and roll. Good changes here.

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Enough with grenades, let's talk guns. The gun changes are all good. I like the clarification on what rangefinder and handling do (all exactly what we suspected, but now we know for sure), I like the nerf to counterbalance so it's not a "must have" perk (actually, I don't think the nerf was big enough and it will still be "must have"). I like changing the fast ARs to be slightly less effective (though that in no way makes the other AR archetypes viable... Slow firing ARs need at least 0.05% more love, guys).

After this patch, I predict Hawksaw to remain as the overall most common competitive primary in the game, with Eyasluna being probably the "best" option (for the lucky few who get one). Hand cannons, in general, will likely see a lot more use, and everyone's favorite Hawksaw will likely lead the pack just because it's easier to get than a "god roll" option elsewhere.

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The other really important changes here are PvE changes to make the supers feel more super. Absolutely needed. I'm really glad those buffs are coming in, especially given that my shotgun and sniper rifle both out-damage golden gun by a wide margin. Glad to see blade dancer and fist of havok get their due as well.

All in all, I'm happy to see the most commonly used and "must-have" skills, perks, and classes getting the adjustments needed to make the field more level. This is the first time I've felt like Bungie's finger was actually on the pulse of what was going on, and it continues the trend of good updates. There are lots of other changes I enthusiastically agree with, but didn't feel like they warranted discussion or analysis. I'm seriously happy across the board with these changes.

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Here's my wish list for things I'd still like to see addressed:

- Bring back SRL already. Come on, guys.
- Matchmaking is still awful. Why not form teams of 6 independently and then match them together based on overall MMR instead of trying to match individual players all at once and then randomly assigning teams?
- Lightning Grenade needs a big nerf. Like a 20% damage nerf and a 15 degree arc nerf.
- Stormcallers need to be slower, chain lightning needs a shorter range (or to only jump once from the target hit), and they need to lose more super on use similar to the new blade dancer change.
- Give players a non-RNG means of acquiring the hard to get pvp weapons such as eyasluna, lord high fixer, longbow synthesis, party crasher +1, etc. Just cycle them through the vendor or something.
- Chaperone needs a buff. The nerf was too big, especially combined with the ammo changes. Maybe change roadborn to give it +1 ammo per precision kill or something.
- TLW is still too good, and still suffers too much from phantom bullets due to bloom. For a gun that's supposed to be hip fired, it's a weird combination of too good and too bad all at once. Cut the damage by 10-20% and make it more accurate from the hip with a steeper range damage falloff, imo.
- Slow firing ARs need a buff.
- Certain "garbage" perks should be removed (such as reactive reload on rocket launchers, the vortex perk, guerilla fighter) and others need buffing (reactive reload on non-rocket launchers hardly lasts long enough for you to fire a single round after proccing it since the timer starts when the reload starts and not when the reload completes).
- HMGs need ammo values adjusted overall.
- Rocket Launcher perks other than Grenades and Horseshoes need buffing. Grenades and Horseshoes could probably use a tradeoff nerf, such as slower travel speed or reduced blast radius (reduced detection radius has already been applied and it makes no sense to have it detect in a smaller radius than the lethal blast radius anyway).
- MIDA still delivers an awful lot of flinch. Needs looking into.
- Low impact scout rifles could use buffing.

Swarm Grenade buff is long overdue, as are most of the tweaks to gunslinger, but the knife head shots nerf seems odd. Other classes, notably Striker Titans can possibly one hit melee kill, why not the throwing knife, which is harder to hit with most of the time. The damage nerf on the trip mines is also a bit unneeded given the removal of the stick feature.

Bladedancers get another blink nerf, which I'd already dropped in favor of Boots of Eao and better control jump. The blade strike changes also are odd but inevitable. Stealth just wasn't really big in PVP or PVE, so everyone tried backstab or rapid stab, and there really isn't a good way to even it out. What I didn't see is the change so blink strike damage is applied before the animation, so you can still blink to an enemy and die from a shotgun or counter melee before any damage is applied, even if you hit the button first. This still annoys me on occasion. The range reduction now makes it also about the range of titan punches, which is just silly.

The change to arc blade is needed and overdue. No one ran arc blade in KF, Shadowshot orb generation was just too good. Now the ability to rapidly take out several yellow bars may just bring back the high risk/high reward of the blade dancer. Can we get our orb generation back too?

Also like the buff to Striker and Void Walker supers. They also needed to be the room clearing powers that they should have been from the start.

Besides the tripmine, this all seems all right.

As a tripmine gunslinger, I'm okay with the tripmine change. It was hands down bar none the best hunter grenade (and second best grenade in the game, imo, next to lightning grenade). This will open up the playbook for many more varied and lower armor specs, and reduce trip mine use. It also opens up gunslingers to run something other than young ahamkara spine as their exotic armor (though that puts me in a bind since all my gear is based around using that item). The one problem I see is that the damage nerf puts the grenade down so low that it will no longer OHK players with more than 2 armor, which is trivial. The grenade is now a damage assist, and not a true trap or deterrent. Incendiary is going to be the way to go from here on out.

+50% to Fist of Havoc vs Guardians seems a bit silly. Was it not killing something before? But +100% vs AI is gonna be awesome. It'll now actually nuke gold bar enemies instead of pissing them off.

It wasn't killing defender titans or sunsingers with overshields.

And super ditto for Golden Gun! Should be fun to actually kill something with it for a change. Also, look out armored up / Supering Guardians, ya Fist o Havoc or Radiant Skin ain't gonna save you now! :)

You could say that I'm SUPER excited for these buffs!

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I'm also a bit sad that, with the utility of tripmine lessened, my gunslinger gear, carefully collected around use of the young ahamkara spine gloves, is basically gutted. No idea what exotic I'll use now. Such are the dangers of an investment game.

Wow, a 3% damage reduction translates to 'gutted' utility in your mind?

I thought a little bit about how my tripmines have worked in the past - there are two 'pools' of kills I get that swamp the rest.

The first is placing one on a critical doorway/wall at the start of the game; it often (not always, but often) catches an aggressive rusher who aims to fly in to the opposing spawn and wreak havoc before folks are fully ready to play. With this nerf, they won't die as they rush past that grenade... but they'll end up with very low health as they enter what is potentially a full-of-enemies location. I might not get the kill any more, but I can almost guarantee he'll still die (and my team will actually get 50 more points than it would have before). :)

The second is catching folks who are running away from a fight. If you're well-positioned, or not being threatened, you almost always notice tripmines, and (unless you're a really careless player) you shoot them before you get too close. I wasn't going to kill those people anyway. The ones that are running from danger, though... they're the ones who pass a tripmine without noticing it. The thing is... they're almost always slightly (or not-so-slightly) damaged before they get near it - that's probably why they were running. Yeah, you do 6 fewer damage points... but that scout rifle bullet your teammate put on him covers that.

I think the ONLY times that 3% is actually going to come into real play is when full-health players are careless - you will be able to walk by a tripmine you didn't see and live. Those kills are really satisfying, I'll admit... but I don't think they count as a huge percentage of my total.

I'm sad about the nerf (my K/D will definitely go down because of it) - but I think that calling your YAS gloves useless is a bit premature. :)

When can a Striker kill with one melee? At best I thought it brought an enemy to basically no health?

Eh? Can't Fist of Havoc kill an Armor of Lighted Defender? That's the strongest over shield in the game...

Is there any chance a stationary target lies completely outside the cone on an unlucky bounce?

Just remember back to all the times you had one go off and saw 196 damage and were angry at high armor builds grumble grumble grumble. What really gets me is losing the sticky portion of it. I loved chucking them like John Elway down long hallways to an unsuspecting Shannon Sharp titan wannabe and blowing them to smithereens.

I feel like my "pretend I get all American pop-culture references" games is finally failing me...

John Elway is a quarterback who played in the NFL, a gridiron football league. The quarterback's primary duty is the forward pass, that is, throwing the ball a long way down the field, so someone can catch it and continue running towards the goal line. John Elway had a strong arm, but was more famous for being a runner as well, not typically a valued ability in quarterbacks.

Shannon Sharpe played a position of tight end on the same team. This position is usually used to block people on the other team from getting to someone on your team with the ball, but Shannon Sharpe was one who would run down the field to catch balls.

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I somehow thought this was in reference to the article about hunter changes. Ignore me :)

Finally really realized what this means. I think Vanish is adding cloaking immediately when you activate Arc Blade to it's on demand cloaking while Arc Blade is active. So no more Arc Blade + Vanish + Delay = Death anymore! :)

Hmmmm. Is it possible that it destroys the bubble first, removing the overshield, then kills the Titan.

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Besides the tripmine, this all seems all right.

As a tripmine gunslinger, I'm okay with the tripmine change. It was hands down bar none the best hunter grenade (and second best grenade in the game, imo, next to lightning grenade). This will open up the playbook for many more varied and lower armor specs, and reduce trip mine use. It also opens up gunslingers to run something other than young ahamkara spine as their exotic armor (though that puts me in a bind since all my gear is based around using that item). The one problem I see is that the damage nerf puts the grenade down so low that it will no longer OHK players with more than 2 armor, which is trivial. The grenade is now a damage assist, and not a true trap or deterrent. Incendiary is going to be the way to go from here on out.

As a Titan who uses lightning grenades. I was confused why lightning grenades stuck and tripmines didn't. It makes sense that tripmines shouldn't if LG's can't. However, I totally agree with you on that fact that I think they might have nerfed them too much. I mean, they should still 1 hit kill unless you are maxed armor. They are used as traps, which means the hunter won't be there to finish people off. LG's aren't meant for traps, they are meant for suppressing an area with damage.

When can a Striker kill with one melee? At best I thought it brought an enemy to basically no health?

I was of this belief as well. And I play Titans a lot.

That seems a tad much. They spent well over a year in the garbage. I agree that they are pretty powerful, and they could certainly use a nerf to the reticle bounce they cause to other players. I just hope they don't end up back in the storage locker for another year. I think a range reduction would have been a better solution.

That seems a tad much. They spent well over a year in the garbage. I agree that they are pretty powerful, and they could certainly use a nerf to the reticle bounce they cause to other players. I just hope they don't end up back in the storage locker for another year. I think a range reduction would have been a better solution.

I think in general a good rule Bungie should follow is to nerf things half as much as they initially want to. They always go overboard.

Several much-needed buffs coming. Golden Gun, Arc Blade, Nova Bomb, Fist of Havok, Hammer of Sol, and Storm Trance all receiving damage boosts, with some of them getting additional damage boosts against AI targets. And Shadowshots will now suppress supers the moment they hit.

I'm totally with the Golden Gun and Fist of Panic PvE buffs. As I've said here several times, I really felt like those didn't do enough damage to single targets in PvE.

Nova Bomb, I never really felt needed a buff, but I'll take it.

Hammer of Sol... I dunno. I haven't actually used it much since the last nerf, as I've been working on my Striker setup. So I dunno how much it was lacking. But whatever, I'll take any PvE boost I can get.

Stormtrance... LOL

You could say that I'm SUPER excited for these buffs!

Mods, ban plz

I dunno if that was really a pop culture reference. More like a football geek reference. I'm American and I had no idea who Shannon Sharp was.

Kind of like Golden Gun, but spread out over a longer period of time. I guess if I had played Destiny every single day, I wouldn't have noticed it, but after every period of absence, I noticed it killed a bit less than I expected, PvE-wise.

Is there any chance a stationary target lies completely outside the cone on an unlucky bounce?

Completely? Probably not. But the cone is so narrow that a stationary target will certainly survive a bounce. This will also really change how I play as I'm like the king of trip mine sticks. At least one third my tripmine kills are "get it off!" kills.

I'm also a bit sad that, with the utility of tripmine lessened, my gunslinger gear, carefully collected around use of the young ahamkara spine gloves, is basically gutted. No idea what exotic I'll use now. Such are the dangers of an investment game.

Wow, a 3% damage reduction translates to 'gutted' utility in your mind?

I think you misread what was "gutted" in my description. My gear is built around using the Young Ahamakara Spine (which I spent a fortune in glass needles rolling to be tier 12 capable with sniper reload speed and the stats I prefer). After the changes, I won't be using trip mines anymore, so I won't be using the Young Ahamkara Spine as my exotic. I don't have any really suitable replacements with the proper stat distributions to keep my 5/5/1 build and sniper reload speed, so I'll have to rebuild my "gutted" gear set.

I thought a little bit about how my tripmines have worked in the past - there are two 'pools' of kills I get that swamp the rest.

The first is placing one on a critical doorway/wall at the start of the game; it often (not always, but often) catches an aggressive rusher who aims to fly in to the opposing spawn and wreak havoc before folks are fully ready to play. With this nerf, they won't die as they rush past that grenade... but they'll end up with very low health as they enter what is potentially a full-of-enemies location. I might not get the kill any more, but I can almost guarantee he'll still die (and my team will actually get 50 more points than it would have before). :)

Agreed.

The second is catching folks who are running away from a fight. If you're well-positioned, or not being threatened, you almost always notice tripmines, and (unless you're a really careless player) you shoot them before you get too close. I wasn't going to kill those people anyway. The ones that are running from danger, though... they're the ones who pass a tripmine without noticing it. The thing is... they're almost always slightly (or not-so-slightly) damaged before they get near it - that's probably why they were running. Yeah, you do 6 fewer damage points... but that scout rifle bullet your teammate put on him covers that.

Hmm... I almost never use them on people who are running. I usually put one around a corner as in your first example or use it as a OHK sticky grenade in a 1v1 firefight. I also do a fair bit of throwing them behind a group of enemies to kill or weaken them all (which will now just be weakening, but is fine) in the various objective modes. And I use them to counteract a res in trials, which they will no longer be capable of.

I think the ONLY times that 3% is actually going to come into real play is when full-health players are careless - you will be able to walk by a tripmine you didn't see and live. Those kills are really satisfying, I'll admit... but I don't think they count as a huge percentage of my total.

the 3% prevents res-traps from OHKing the resser, which is pretty huge because it let you move away from the orb to put more pressure on the living players.

I'm sad about the nerf (my K/D will definitely go down because of it) - but I think that calling your YAS gloves useless is a bit premature. :)

Well, I anticipate switching to incendiary grenades, in which case the YAS gloves won't be ideal for my build.

Is there any chance a stationary target lies completely outside the cone on an unlucky bounce?

Completely? Probably not. But the cone is so narrow that a stationary target will certainly survive a bounce. This will also really change how I play as I'm like the king of trip mine sticks. At least one third my tripmine kills are "get it off!" kills.

Having played a gunslinger a lot recently, I do find it satisfying to stick people. However I also play Titan and I love how differently I approach an area when I have to think of all of the angles of the terrain in relation to an enemy. It makes it so much more interesting, and I dare say skillful.

Yes, I know that lightning grenades pulse and tripmines are a one shot trick. But the relation is still there :-P

Is there any chance a stationary target lies completely outside the cone on an unlucky bounce?

Completely? Probably not. But the cone is so narrow that a stationary target will certainly survive a bounce. This will also really change how I play as I'm like the king of trip mine sticks. At least one third my tripmine kills are "get it off!" kills.

Having played a gunslinger a lot recently, I do find it satisfying to stick people. However I also play Titan and I love how differently I approach an area when I have to think of all of the angles of the terrain in relation to an enemy. It makes it so much more interesting, and I dare say skillful.

Of course, the lightning grenades has a massive arc that sweeps to catch many players, where the trip mine has a very narrow cone of near-lethality.

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That seems a tad much. They spent well over a year in the garbage. I agree that they are pretty powerful, and they could certainly use a nerf to the reticle bounce they cause to other players. I just hope they don't end up back in the storage locker for another year. I think a range reduction would have been a better solution.

Well, I think high RoF ARs were too strong and needed a nerf. I don't know if 6% is the right number or not.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that the gulf between the OHK secondary weapons and Longer TTK primary weapons is even wider now.

When can a Striker kill with one melee? At best I thought it brought an enemy to basically no health?

I was of this belief as well. And I play Titans a lot.

I get OHK'd by "stormfist overcharge" once every few games. I think this is the "melee hits proc AoE damage" perk but I'm not actually sure. It definitely OHKs my 7 armor gunslinger though.

I leveled up a hammer bro a few weeks ago and the hammers won't OHK some shielded red health enemies. I'm assuming that with the buff, they will.

Activities

Missions

• The alternate ending to "Paradox" can now be completed at any time by selecting it from the Director on the Heroic difficulty
  
• The alternate ending to "Lost to Light" can now be completed at any time by selecting it from the Director on the Heroic difficulty
  
• The "Firewall" mission will now be available as soon as the player has turned in the required items to access it

Looks like you won't have to watch the calendar anymore if you're missing that loot (could that be a source of infinite Spindles? Who knows!).

Challenge of the Elders

“Variks grows impatient” point deduction now grows more severe the longer you are in a given section
Point Deduction = (50 x number of times he has grown impatient)

Welp...

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When can a Striker kill with one melee? At best I thought it brought an enemy to basically no health?

I was of this belief as well. And I play Titans a lot.

I get OHK'd by "stormfist overcharge" once every few games. I think this is the "melee hits proc AoE damage" perk but I'm not actually sure. It definitely OHKs my 7 armor gunslinger though.

None of the Striker mellee abilities do extra damage above the normal overcharge amount. So it should be the same all around.

However, I want to say you can get "precision" damage on melee hits. Just like the golden gun can. It doesn't show it, but it definitely does more damage. I could also be wrong and it's something else.

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However, I want to say you can get "precision" damage on melee hits. Just like the golden gun can. It doesn't show it, but it definitely does more damage. I could also be wrong and it's something else.

You know, I sometimes get that impression too. I'm sure I've had Fallen trigger the "headshot kill" animation a few times with melee and that most of these times I wasn't expecting to kill them.

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Can we get someone to do the math on TTK for the various AR's now? curious as to which archetype will come out ahead.

I understand why and it's probably a good change, but that tiny little loot thing helped my desire.

When can a Striker kill with one melee? At best I thought it brought an enemy to basically no health?

I was of this belief as well. And I play Titans a lot.

I get OHK'd by "stormfist overcharge" once every few games. I think this is the "melee hits proc AoE damage" perk but I'm not actually sure. It definitely OHKs my 7 armor gunslinger though.

None of the Striker mellee abilities do extra damage above the normal overcharge amount. So it should be the same all around.

However, I want to say you can get "precision" damage on melee hits. Just like the golden gun can. It doesn't show it, but it definitely does more damage. I could also be wrong and it's something else.

I can confirm that melees get precision hits. I do find it *much* easier with a hunter to line those up, but I also have hundreds more hours of hunter playtime than striker or warlock.

Can we get someone to do the math on TTK for the various AR's now? curious as to which archetype will come out ahead.

Well, neither medium nor slow RoF ARs got a buff, so they're still going to be well behind the pulse rifles in general, with the exception of a "spinning up" spec'd Suros Regime.

I think the nerf to High RoF ARs will bring them more in line with the medium ARs, and again render them just shy of the TTK of a high RoF pulse.

I understand why and it's probably a good change, but that tiny little loot thing helped my desire.

I'd wager it's not going to be too noticeable, and probably will not take you past needing 3 runs to complete. 2 runs should still be doable, albeit with perhaps a tad more aggression and coordination.

But it requires more coordination than I'm willing to put in. And three runs gets boring, and I don't play frequently enough to just do it once per day I play.

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While Destiny's shooting game is pretty damn good, abilities are what make Destiny really, really fun. Not having abilities is an absolute drag.

But it requires more coordination than I'm willing to put in. And three runs gets boring, and I don't play frequently enough to just do it once per day I play.

That's fair. For me three runs isn't a big deal as I usually end up running it 4 or 5 times depending on which of my friends need help. CoE is a lot faster than PoE 41, and I really, really enjoy the friendly competition and optimization for points gathering.

While Destiny's shooting game is pretty damn good, abilities are what make Destiny really, really fun. Not having abilities is an absolute drag.

This past nightfall was just painful because of how slowly abilities came back.

And yes. You basically cloak once the Arc Blade startup animation is complete. :)

No one is forcing them to showcase the top three teams--they're basically doing it for bragging rights/statistical measures.

I went looking through the Archives, and the heavy point penalty makes even less sense now. A couple of the updates specifically use the word "reward"--meaning pride and/or positive impressions from Bungie upon these players. None of them specify what the reward is(let's just assume it's an emblem for placeholder), but those top three teams get it, and no one else does. If Bungie didn't want us getting 90K+ at once, why plaster their names at the end of each update and give them rewards as well?

That's like praising a dog for pooping in your bed until he's trained to do it, then scolding him after it becomes routine.

Well, now that they've started, they do.

But yeah, I kind of agree with you. They clearly didn't put much thought into Varikis' impatience, since it used to be an extremely low amount of points.

Are you saying that because Bungie recognized the players who did the best at their new challenge (which is a totally normal and even expected thing to do for the community), they're required to just pretend that challenge is perfectly set up and leave it as-is for the rest of time? Even if they later start to think it needs modified? Like them changing the scoring system slightly is some kind of personal attack against the players who did well before? Maybe I misunderstood, but I don't really think that's what's happening. They're just trying to adjust things so that it's a fun challenge that's not too easy.

Maybe you're going off of ZackDark's comment about them getting tired of 100K+ point runs, but I don't think he really meant that Bungie thought the players were doing something wrong. Just that the Sigil wasn't meant to be completed in one run.

I'll concede to that. No, they're not supposed to just leave it "broken". I guess maybe in my personal opinion, I consider the change maybe...overkill. I don't know if that was their intention or not, but it just seems that way to me. Plus, this change affects everyone(obviously it has to), not just the 6 figures. I mean, think about that game we played the other day. We just barely squeaked by with 32k. Now the challenge was difficult, but imagine how many extra points were shaved off in our case, while running trying to catch those teleporting Taken. It makes something like that (at least in my opinion) more fun. Because if I wasn't pouting like a chicken yesterday, that would mean I'd have to do two more runs of that on my Hunter alone.

90k in 1 Run--All Easy, (I'm guessing) no fun.
90k in 2 runs--less easy, moderate amount of fun?
90k in 3 runs--not easy, not fun.

Multiply that by three and it gets lest magical each time, especially considering they're all the same modifiers/enemies/bosses each run. Not that there's any thing wrong with that, but when you have to formulate a specific strategy so often and avoid deviating from it at all costs, it becomes less fun each time, especially if you have to do more runs, or if the LFG's you find totally suck. Or if you ha--

...

nevermindforgetisaidanything!

I forgot who I said this to, but it was before April. I basically reiterated how much I love (Year 1) Prison of Elders, because there was no hardcore elements to think about, and virtually no communication needed. Just kill, kill, kill!

Yes, I'm aware Challenge of the Elders shouldn't be just that. But I also feel that it might be better to cut down the infractions a bit--so that most teams shouldn't "have to" do nine runs of CoE per week.

I guess I'd just like to say that since the CoE opened, I have NEVER completed the challenge in one run. Once, I think, we did it in 2. Usually, it takes us 3.

I do it once (occasionally twice) a week. I feel no drive to complete it every week on every character.

That last bit's beside the point, though; I think my experience is closer to average than yours is. I'm not even sure HOW to get more than 90k/run - as far as I've been able to determine, a fixed number of enemies come out at fixed intervals, based on the boss's health. Killing most of them with whatever the bonus of the week is will get you close to 45k, maybe. You can add to that by ensuring that everyone gets a shot in on every baddie, using assists to bolster the score... but that's really hard to do in the heat of battle. (Usually, it ends up with someone dying.)

And I've done the runs with a bunch of different groups - NOBODY I've played with knew techniques that got us over 50k, much less over 90.

I just think your expectations for fun are too high, if it's not fun at less than 90k/run.

I'll be interested to see how the points go on a less-hard week. I don't think we really could have gotten over 45 on the current one, but I don't know if that'll always be the case.

If it turns out that 3 runs per character is the new normal... well in theory I don't like that at all. But lately it's been so hard to even convince 2 others to run it with me, that I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 runs in total anyway.