That's a lot of nerfs

Thorn was obnoxious because of the DoT mechanic, not the TTK. The TTK it has now in D1 is still at 0.8s and it's not overpowered. You could two-tap someone, but you had to wait for them to burn out. Felwinter's Lie was another thing, but there were counters to it. Sure, the range could have been toned down a bit, but fusion rifles [b]actually had ammo in them.[/b] Sidearms entered the scene in HoW as well. Primaries were a good deal better. These same people were whining their asses off about the baby Matador meta we had in RoI and I was able to get by just fine with a fusion. Shotguns weren't a problem unless I was going up against someone massively better than me and then, well, they would have destroyed me anyways. Save for a tweak to shotgun range, fixing the TLW ADS glitch, and maybe a slight nerf to Thorn's DOT, HoW would have been probably our best PvP without any nerfs necessary. Buffing autos to be competitive again and maybe decreasing the skill gap on fusions so they were more available to the general populace, and that's a relatively balanced meta. If those things bothered you and you don't believe that they'd go away with some competition, the next meta in early TTK was still primary-oriented and not as toxic. Also, the numbers that Datto brings up are laughable. 50% of the winning team in Trials had at least one Thorn on their side? LOLOL. Remember the Mida meta in this game? What was it, 99% of players had Mida on? Not just on the winning team. Overall. Uriels, Prosecutor, and the Mini-Tool also sat above that number that Datto quoted. Even this week, Antiope is being used in 77 percent of all matches. Uriels, Positive Outlook, and Mida all sit above that 50% mark. A couple weeks ago, Antiope was at 99 percent and Uriels was at 96. The last time there weren't four weapons above 50% usage was 5 weeks ago when Mida barely dropped below the line. 50% is not a large number at all compared to the much more exclusive meta D2 has. That's a hilariously low usage number for a meta gun. Overall, you're missing the point. In D1, things became "OP" because the guns that were above it on the pecking order got nerfed to the ground, not because of Bungie making the TTK too fast. From release to the last balance patch, each meta grew progressively weaker. For crying out loud, we had a NLB meta! [b]No. Land. Beyond.[/b] Sidearms got a meta because Bungie took away every other special weapon. Eyasluna remained a meta gun from TTK to now due to everything that challenged it getting nerfed, even though its effective range is a piece of shit compared to what it was -- in fact, all the repeated nerfs to HC did was take Eyasluna's competition out of viability. Stickies rose from something of a minor annoyance to an outright ragefest, all due to Bungie nerfing everything that made them somewhat obsolete. Whether or not the community had anything to do with Bungie's egregious mismanagement of the Crucible is up for debate, but the whining was non-stop through every single meta we had, and usually by the same people: those who weren't good at the game, were unwilling to work to improve, and blamed their failures on the guns they were killed by. I'm not great at this game, but I've gotten much better since I started playing and all of it happened without spending a whole lot of time in the meta. Shotguns are one of my least-used weapons, and fusions are my most-used one. Scout rifles are my most-used primary and yet I never really touched Mida in any of that. D1 had metas that weren't as exclusive. I could go with such a non-meta loadout as Defiance of Yasmin and Colovance's Duty (which was what I ran for most of the second half of TTK) and continue to improve at the game. I could learn to use a fusion rifle in preparation for Supremacy and find that not only did I really like them, but I got good enough with them that I actually began to flounder a bit when one was not in my loadout. Hell, I've been picking up some HoW blue fusions from PoE 28 on my grind for the Final Rest II (ah, grinding for something that is actually worth grinding for) and two of them (Angelic Acid and Prism Schism) have made their way into my rotation. I picked up Exile's Student towards the end of Y3 and found that I actually really liked low-impact HCs. I got good with them and I have one (Free Will III) as a regular part of my repertoire. Auto rifles. Hopscotch Pilgrim. Hygiea Noblesse. Oh yeah, and Sleeper Simulant. Love that. I can run these guns and still perform well against a player of similar skill running the meta. I went from a .8 to a ~1.3-4 without resorting to being a meta whore. I can't really do that in D2. If I go up against a similarly-skilled player running the meta with something like a pulse rifle or a HC, I'm positively screwed unless I play a completely mistake-free game. The heavy meta is a little less exclusive and on the rare occasion that I hop on D2, I enjoy my Main Ingredient or even my Critical Sass. But the actual primary meta is too hard to go up against. I'm not campaigning for a nerf to autos (I'd rather see them buffed along with everything else so that D2 PvP feels like a Destiny game should) but it's just stupid how much Bungie nerfed everything to try to facilitate balance when the game is honestly more unbalanced than ever. TL;DR: D2 is the pinnacle of all the nerfs that D1 received. Everything has been nerfed. Everything. Even sparrows got nerfed. Bungie's finally realizing that maybe it's time for some buffs, but the sad state that D2 is in is the result of the nerf train that Bungie started in D1. Everything kills much slower and yet it's harder to go up against the meta with a non-meta gun. Bungie fixed nothing and broke everything. Let it not be said that D1 was perfect. But at least it was fun to play.

Making excuses already?

Just watched a little. Forgot how long range thorn was lol.