Bungie to nerf everything version 2.0

If these changes actually make the time-to-kill a little bit longer, then I'm all for it. I prefer encounters more like Halo where you actually have time to react instead of it being more like the person that lands the first shot wins the engagement. 

I have some concerns that Destiny is about to get too big for its britches. The game just feels like a constant roller coaster of changes instead of well-planned updates. Let's change this...oops that broke this, so now we have to make more changes...that didn't work, so let's see what happens when we do this...

Now Bungie is bragging about an even larger sandbox when TTK launches, so I can only imagine what kind of mess we'll be in when that hits. Granted, I'm sure we'll be forced to adopt these new "year 2" weapons as I'm sure our old stuff will not be "ascended".

I had my fun with Thorn, but I've since moved on to other weapons in the Crucible. I do agree Thorn needs some changes and perhaps the range nerf will help and let people move to other weapons.

I do not like the Ice Breaker or Black Hammer nerfs. Those are just dumb.

The Ghorn nerf actually doesn't bother me. I think it's a bad sign when PvE participants think the Ghorn is requried and then people are excluded just because they do not have this one weapon. Yes it's the best single-target weapon in the game, but fireteams, raids and strats should not be focused so much on one particular weapon. 

The only time I care about what weapons people use are on Nightfalls/Strikes/PoE when burns are active. Otherwise, use what you want and have fun. 

At least they didn't mention nerfing Lightning grenades. That goodness for me.

I can sort of see the Ice Breaker nerf. It can be the lazy man's PvE go to weapon and I think it may have hurt weapon experimentation by a lot of people.

So happy the new fast firing scout rifles are getting a small buff.

I'm okay with everything except for the Ice Breaker and the Ghally. Those weapons are special and should remain untouched.

The Thorn just needs some range taken off of it, but that is it.

I am glad they nerfed the range of hand cannons. Getting killed by Thorn from sniper range was bull shit. I am not happy about the Ice Breaker and Black Hammer nerfs.

To the best of my knowledge I've never been killed by a Thorn at long range and I've never killed anyone at long range with my Thorn. One hit and I/them always take cover. The very short range low magnification sights on the Thorn mean that the large green dot covers the entire opponent at long range. Making a head shot (twice) is so very very difficult under those conditions, unless he's a newly hatched noob and just stands there and takes it. I'm done grinding weapons bounties. Work hard for a good gun, and the timmies cry for its demise (based on BS and envy) and Bungie capitulates.

Weakening the top guns will just make it harder to help new people through the harder activities. 

Thorn distance buff won't do anything to aide in the massive AIM assist it has.  The only buff they should've made was RoF reduction.  I am upset about the gjallarhorn buff, but it won't kill me.

Red death and the messenger are still my goto PVP rifles :)

Man, I just got a ghorn and thorn, dammit!

Sure....let's make the supposed "rare" weapons in our game just like other weapons. Then whats the goddamn point of wanting them or using them?

Is it gonna get to the point where we're aren't gonna even bother with exotics anymore? Exotics are supposed to be overpowered and magical. Just make them not usable in PVP except for iron banner....and if people use them too much in PVE....decrease the drop rate and make them more rare so less people have them. Not to the point of ridiculous and unattainable but a little more to make them truly exotic weapons.

I don't play PVP much. So whenever I was in a match I never had problems overusing my gally....because I never managed to grab heavy ammo before the match was over. So I've mostly stuck with my regular weapons. I'll use the red death occasionally, but only when everyone else isn't using a Thorn. When the Thorns come out I usually just pull out the tub of lube and try to backup the rest of my team and duck behind rocks & people when I can. The Thorn is the ONLY weapon I've had an issue with. And even then I don't think it should nerfed. I just think autos & scouts should be buffed a bit to match, so the Thorn isn't an auto-win in almost every showdown.

The sniper rifle nerfs are just flat out retarded. Sure...let's take away the perk that made the Black Hammer a good gun to use. Now any other sniper in my inventory can take it's place, except of course now the Ice Breaker...which I may as well go make a sandwich while I wait for the clip to refill. How about if you're gonna make the time increase? Have a perk that decreases the time anytime I use a special ammo synth or pick up special ammo boxes. Thanks Bungie. My Ghallarjorn. My sweet sweet Ghallarjorn. Why is Bungie punishing me for owning a gun I didn't even buy? It dropped for me the first week the game was out. It was a truly random drop during a story mission in the Cosmodrome. Killed a random enemy "holy shit why is this engram yellow?"  "What the hell is a Ghallarjorn? Looks badass." Had no idea how powerful it was gonna be overall. And its a sweet-ass weapon. It's almost the poster child for exotics in this game. It's in the goddamn live action ads! I mean come on.

I suspect the life of the game developer is the fable of the old man, the kid, and the donkey lived out on a daily, possibly hourly, basis.

Stat Perk Tuning Pass

The initial set of stat perks that have been on weapons since launch (Send It, Hammer Forged, Field Scout, Perfect Balance, etc.) all granted a pretty huge increase to their targeted stat. Not only did they spike their stat, but they never asked the player to make a meaningful trade-off for it on the weapon. We have gone back to all of these stat perks and reduced the amount that they buff your weapon stat, and this change was made retroactively against all year one weapon talent grids. 

The above is a statement from the weapon tuning update announcement that is easily missed. Basically, every weapon worth having from year one will be given a hair cut. 

I do think the non-raid guns will be pointless to keep around, but the raid primary weapons should still be good for Nightfalls/PoE with burn multipliers and the Raids. Until you are able to replace said weapon with a "year 2" primary.

This is why I'm still wanting a Fatebringer. Considering how few primaries I have with a burn, these "year 1" raid guns will have to carry the torch for me.

Sad to think about we'll be trashing most of this stuff we've worked on for a year. Bungie is keeping quiet on the subject of "year 1" and "year 2" weapons, but we'll see what kind of corner they have painted themselves into once it all hits the fan. 

Sorry for the long, dry post, but I've been thinking about the upcoming gun rebalancing a lot this week and felt the need to summarize. To a large extent, Destiny is a game about collecting guns. If one or two guns are clearly "best in slot", players are delighted when they find those guns, but long term it makes the game kind of pointless. So I get why Bungie gets concerned when certain guns are overused, and it makes sense to nerf them mildly (though granted, Bungie could screw this up, and perhaps are on the way to doing that with the Blackhammer nerf already).

Then there are the new TTK weapons. If Bungie makes the new weapons better than the old, then all of us year one players will be bitter. But if none of the new guns are better than the year one guns, we will miss the fun of hunting the new guns. The only way I see to resolve this tension is with additional TTK-specific modifiers that are useful on the new content, the way VoG weapons are great whenever you need to kill oracles, but oracles are only present in some of the content. So I expect one or more TTK-specific modifiers to play a big role in the new weapons. Here's hoping Bungie has dreamed up some fun ones!

If Bungie continues to create Raid/PoE/ToO specific weapons the gun cabinet will get full. We will always feel reluctant to dismantle them. I believe activity specific weapons like that are a poor choice going forward. Instead, they should create guns that look like, sound like and act like what we want and have selectable attributes (reforging).  I think Bungie might be heading that way, if it wasn't their plan all along.

We crave change but we don't like getting screwed over through every change.

I actually fully support activity specific weapons and armor. Yes it's frustrating for those of us that don't have these goodies, but we need a reason to keep playing these end game activities.

This is part of playing an RPG. You want THE best stuff, you gotta play the hard stuff.

A lot of us do get left out because we can't do certain activities because of time or skill, but the game needs that carrot-on-a-stick to keep us grinding away.

I agree DEEP and I think we'll see more of your system in TTK and what follows. Bungie will have to come up with a system that allows us to grind, but do it in a way we want instead of forcing us all into using basically the same weapons and armor. 

I've played a lot of the Diablo series - especially Diablo 3. The game offers so much variability and it continues to evolve. This is what needs to happen with Destiny. If TTK is not a relatively new form of the game, I'm not sure how much longer it will hold our attention. Especially with big games like Halo 5 coming this year. 

Guess we should not put a lot of mental energy anguishing over our existing guns being nerfed. Looks like legendary weapons will basically be obsolete anyway.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/08/04/destinys-year-one-legendary-weapons-staying-behind-in-year-two-9432.aspx

Just saw that. "Wasted 3 etheric light on year 1 legendaries" this past week. I kind of thought my enjoyment of them was going to end in Sept.

Update: Just realized that was a dumb statement. I had no other choice, with exception to harvesting Etheric light and then it might be useless in TTK.

Here's another link.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/08/04/destiny-the-taken-king-redesigns-leveling-from-one-to-forty-4682.aspx

I think it means what I have suggested a few posts back. More choice going forward.

Well crap.  Wonder how far I can kick the 5 etheric lights I have.

"Older legendary armor and weapons from across Destiny’s first year are not set to progress in power as Year Two begins."

I hear people talking as if all legendaries will be obsolete, not just "older" ones. Is that coming from this vague sentence, or did I miss something?

Personally, I hate trying to read tea leaves. Hopefully the promised explanations will make it so clear, even I will understand it!

Looks like legendaries should still work fine in PVP modes where level advantages are disabled (e.g. Control, Clash, etc.).

The next question then is: "How much storage space are we going to have for our gear and guns?"