Hunter Changes... Stealth buff to melee? (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, June 15, 2016, 06:16 (3177 days ago)

Okay, so I just finished 3 CoE runs. CoE is much more difficult (in large part to Trickle this week. Not fun Bungie. Please remove Trickle forever). The Variks point removal buff was noticeable, but not entirely problematic.

Here's my takeaway from the hunter changes:

- Trip Mines are fine. They do not actually "bounce" as advertised, but rather drop immediately to the floor in front of the target and still blow that target the hell up. I'll have to take the to PvP to see how they fare, but it looks like the "nerf" to them sticking was more to prevent the bonus damage from the stick than to make them less useful in the situations where you used to stick them to someone.

- Hunter melee seems to have received a stealth buff, and a pretty big one at that. The normal melee will now redirect you mid-air and lunge about 30% farther than before the patch. It is tremendously effective. My guess here is that they made the "blink" portion of blink strike shorter (0.4 meters shorter per the patch notes) but simultaneously buffed normal melee attack lunge by a similar amount. The only reason I can think for them doing that is to prevent the odd "blink behind the hit box and get a backstab kill from the front" issue. Anyway, hunter melee got a significant buff to the point where it is usable as a mobility tool if there is an enemy close enough to activate the melee aim assist.

- Golden gun now does ~11k damage (up from 6000). I'm guessing the 50% buff was to the base value, and that escalated greatly due to level multipliers or something. That being said, my sniper rifle still crits for 29k. I'm sorry, GG should do more damage than any gun, with the possible exception of sleeper simulant. Regardless, the buff is much appreciated.

I did not really test nightstalker's new and improved trap grenades etc... but the non-trap versions all seemed to behave just like before in the PvE realm.

Blink change to blade dancer is noticeable. IMO there's really no need for blink anymore, except as a sometimes poor man's shadestep.

Speaking of which, the shadestep change is totally fine and I think it actually is better for forcing players to get into the "sprint, jump, slide, shadestep, repeat" loop of movement.

Anyway, all good changes and reports of any hunter demise were greatly exaggerated.