Kinetic/Energy, Cool Downs, and Coordination. (Destiny)

by Harmanimus , Sunday, July 23, 2017, 11:25 (2725 days ago) @ BeardFade

So, I invested some more time, with people, into the Crucible. Has some conversations about how people were feeling. In general it helped refine my reasoning for the things I don't like in D2 Beta Crucible.

I've already been critical of nerfing cool downs as well as power, at least one of these may be rectified through aspects of the gear system that we do not have access to in the Beta. However, while I do think that a degree of additional power for grenades would have merit (albeit I am fine with stickies still not being a one-shot on a Guardian with higher resistance) that is mostly from cases of feeling like they aren't even good for finishing a Guardian off as they retreat behind cover from a gunfight.

So, with a substantial focus on gunplay (as it takes 3 uncharged melees or 2 with a charged melee to kill without any shots fired, and an SMG can outpace 3 melees in damage/grenades seem very situational in lethality) the purpose of abilities is diminished in both frequency and power. But what is the purpose of those abilities? Melee is best when used in conjunction with a weapon. As are grenades. However, I think that the most important things for grenades to be able to do is aid in controlling combat flow.

For Control it seems in most cases the best strategy is just to roam around as a group, when you find a target, team shot and there is nothing they can do. If they have a friend, one person peels off for a flank and you counter most of the class ability play. Highly simplified, but still important. I'd like to see grenades stay as a support/mop up action, so they don't need crazy damage increases, though some grenades may need more tinkering than others. But what they can do is help you break up those team clusters that roam the map, or allow you to zone off a doorway, or at least delay being challenged through a doorway. These are great tactical uses of your abilities. My problem is when I get to use these only a handful of times during a game and it really makes it feel limited.

The gunplay is solid and feels good, usually. There may be some hit registration stuff, delayed damage specifically, that irks me. Both on receiving and dealing. It is refreshing to still pickup a kill as you are pretty sure they rabbited away. But it definitely feels bad when know you had full cover and still get finished off. The gunplay itself gets replaced by coordinated fire, though. It loses the quality dance of a 1v1 when you are on either end of team shooting, and given that roaming CFs are more effective than a lot of tactical flanking means that you see more of that.

So, tl;dr ver.

- Gunplay feels good.
- Team shooting is more dominant/less interesting play.
- Grenades should be able to more reliably split groups through either a threat of frequency or power.
- Health Regen is already delayed enough that you are still relatively easy to mop up if you can't get support.
- It will be nice when specs vary due to gear (as it anticipated) so that I don't run into 4 games in a row where not a single super gets used/are all used within about 10 seconds of each other in the last minute of the match.