I just spent about an hour in someone's stream, listening to him discuss subclass "balance". He is highly regarded as a very good PvE player (lol) and has a huge community and following on Twitter-I mean Twitch. But today, what he tried to do was just outright unacceptable. Prepare for an incoming wall of text. No TL;DR - this is actually something that really needs to be read, analyzed and addressed in our community now. Jk TL;DR at the bottom 🗿 So he spent an hour (actually more than that, I'm just drawing from what I actually heard him say) pretty much talking about how Stormcaller is the strongest subclass in the game, and if you know this streamer, you would know that he was also the same guy crying about firebolts and Thorn and just Warlocks in general all over Twitch last February. Yeah, a dude that speedruns Crota and doesn't even compete in tourneys or scrim regularly with well-known PvP players, is trying to cry about what's fair and unfair in the name of "balance". Now, if you were there to actually see the "tests" he was performing, a lot of the points about the subclass he tried to 'anatomize' ended up being him throwing a Warlock against a Hunter in extremely situational instances, and claiming that "Even though we're not in the heat of a real fight, like, actually in a real PvP match where most players generally know how to engage and disengage an opponent when they're low-health or how to pick their battles properly; I popped my Storm, and your Blade can't catch up to me and kill me while I'm clearly in the max effective range of my super which is WAY beyond yours (being that Storm shoots a cone of lighting and Blade is an up-close melee attack ((and because that makes so much sense to compare the two anyway, instead of comparing say, Blade to Radiance! Oh but they're both blue and use lighting and whatnot so I guess that works too.)) so therefore, Storm is automatically superior to Blade! EVEN THOUGH 9 times out of 10 if a blade is anywhere near a Warlock in Stormtrance the Hunter will either decimate the Storm or trade with the Storm. Even though nobody uses Transcendence and it already got nerfed, it's still OP just because in his mind extra super-time means that you're almost guaranteed to not get babied out of your super by the dozens of other counter supers that you KNOW people save up just for yours (lol). Even though Storm is one of the easiest supers to counter, it's still OP because it sometimes wipes teams in 6's, although in any right situation a Hammer Bro, Tether, Nova Bomb, FoH, and even Blade can do the exact same. Even though the melee can't OHK anyone even with Feedback (requiring melee damage to proc it, and it doesn't do enough damage to a full health Guardian) or make you go invisible, or regenerate your health back to full in seconds, while Blade still has RNGstab which can OHK from any angle, Hungering Blade which gives them instant life-regeneration attached to their melee AND super, and ShadowJack which provides a whole new way to enhance your neutral game and the way you use your super other than blinking around like an idiot chasing one dude and only getting one kill because that talent ate up your super-energy (sigh), it's still OP because it has extended range with Amplitude, which actually requires a shotgun, or more specifically special ammo, to make any real use out of it. EVEN THOUGH Storm has GARBAGE GRENADES but ONE GOOD MELEE *PERK*, and Blade has a GOOD MELEE and TWO GOOD GRENADES, it's STILL OP because -blam!- what you like, I want what *I* like to be better than what you have, so I'm going to make up a whole bunch of lies and distort the truth so that my easily impressionable community will agree with me and ask Bungod to nerf it. So okay, but hold up. First of all, he had clearly stated multiple times throughout the "discussion" (more like a one-sided, "I'm the dude who's actually speaking to you with my voice which grants me a much more powerful position over you, someone who's comments I can easily over-look and dismiss as 'harassment', and you're just a kid behind the computer listening to what I have to say - I'm right, you're wrong and you can't debate me" kind of lovely discussion) that he "never uses the super/class"...so, what the actual -blam!-? How do you tell people something is the best or overpowered when you have NEVER USED IT competitively, OR casually? That's like me telling you "I think playing guitar is so easy, I WATCH famous musicians shred on the guitar and I've played ranked Guitar Hero for a couple of months, but I've never actually played a real instrument myself. It looks so simple, all you do is slide your hands back and forth and pluck the strings". That's got to be the dumbest shit I've heard in my entire life, but you know what, nobody was there to stop him, because everybody else in his chat was just as biased and ignorant as he is. I mean, his chat was literally a haven for all the salty Hunters (so sorry if you main Hunter, but I do love all you level-headed people that play the class and don't cry victim that your class is weak because Warlocks only have a better melee while Hunter's clearly have the best mobility including an inherent doge ability and QuickDraw and Kneepads built into two of their subclasses and Bones which makes their already GREAT jump even BETTER, while Warlocks don't have ANY kind of movement enhancing or evasion exotics. Yes, I love you guys, it's actually quite fun raiding with you all xoxo) that get killed by Warlocks to cry and complain. It's like, you try to say one thing to counter his point, and three other little kids in his chat that have a sub-badge and sword next to their name would chime in with their useless, high-sodium, passive-aggressive comments. WHAT A COMMUNITY DISCUSSION! ☕️ Let me tell you how someone ACTUALLY knows what they're talking about. If I've been studying a disease, like, let's say - cancer, in a laboratory for all my life; performing tests on humans and other species and seeing how the disease affects those afflicted with it, and ultimately learning its weaknesses and strengths and what makes it one of the deadliest and incurable diseases in history, then I have the CREDIBILITY to tell you what's wrong with cancer and how to avoid getting it or how to treat someone with the disease. If one of your family members was diagnosed with any kind of disease today - who would you listen to? A pathologist that's been studying tumors and helping patients all his life, or some scrub that just graduated from a 4 year college and hasn't even found employment at a hospital yet? People like him do not have the EXPERIENCE REQUIRED to make their personal judgment a FACT! He mains Hunter for Christ's sake, he's subject to so much confirmation bias to the other classes, so it's impossible for him to know how it feels to be a Warlock or a Titan always getting killed by Hunter's. What he lacks is experience and empathy; the experience needed as someone who actually plays a Warlock competitively (because we all take the skill of a player into consideration when making De-Facto claims like "That's OP, pls nerf"), and the empathy of being someone who has immersed themselves into the play style of that certain class. If a Hunter main were a Warlock main, there would be posts about "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY WARLOCKS IN CRUCIBLE", and vice-versa. That's how confirmation bias works, and this dude doesn't even realize that his absence of empathy towards the other classes doesn't really let him feel the same frustration and challenge other players face when going up against his main class. You know, I love Twitch, there's some great people that play to actually HAVE FUN and NOT MAKE EASY CASH CARRYING NOOBS TO THE LIGHTHOUSE AS A SIDE-JOB AND HARASS THE COMMUNITY MANAGERS BECAUSE THEY SWITCHED UP TRIALS AFTER ALMOST TWO YEARS SO THAT IT ISN'T THEIR STALE LITTLE PLAY-PEN FOR A WEEKEND. There really are some cool people like that, and I've said this a couple of times on here, and imma say it again: Streamers and yes YOUTUBERS (so much caps-lock I'm sorry!) that use their fame/status from within the community to MANIPULATE, and spread LIES about weapons and classes (regarding balance) and create STEREOTYPES like Scrub-Lock, Skill-Melee, Try-Hard, Hard-Scoper, Shotty-Warrior, and stupid garbage like that, are the biggest and greatest threat to this community and the game itself. Repeat that to yourself so you don't forget. And for the love of God try to speak up next time a streamers going in trying to bully a class/subclass or back-up someone who's trying to defend theirs. They do this almost every time they stream actually, because it's the meta to completely shit on Warlocks, lol. So with all of that said, and to be honest I could go on with a lot more about this, I hope everyone was able to understand the points I'm making, and bring awareness to this pretty sly game these streamers are playing. Twitch is a very huge part of Destiny, but don't let 6 guys & one chick tell you how the -blam!- you should be playing YOUR game and making you believe all these stereotypes that they create. TL;DR: Some streamers try to use their status in the community to start unnecessary nerf wars and I got tilted after this dude tried to create one in his stream. Peace out, -Virsai ❤️