I was incredibly excited when they first showed Tommy's Matchbook, with Sweet Business being my favorite and most used gun I thought I could finally have a worthy alternative. Turns out that, while the idea behind this rifle is nice, its execution is simply bad and the vast majority of players have already forgot about it. Can't blame them, no one wants to use a gun that tries to kill you constatly. However, I really like this weapon and I've been using it almost non-stop since the season came out, and I want to share my thoughts with everyone. Before someone points it out, yes, I know there are many other exotics out there still waiting for buffs/fixes, but this is the seasonal exotic, if it won't get fixed now Bungie will simply forget it exists and it would be a shame. Let's look at some numbers I personally gathered while testing this weapon. While Ignition Trigger is active the weapon gets a ~98% buff to damage, and it will constatly chip away at your [b]SHIELD[/b] every ~0.25sec. As soon as the shield is gone you stop taking damage, so it can't actually kill you. Since it only damages your shield, I tested if resilience would somehow increase the amount of time needed to reach critical health: - at 2, 5 and 9 resilience the shield always gets consumed in ~4 seconds [u]while hip firing[/u] - at 2, 5 and 9 resilience the shield always gets consumed in ~2.5 seconds [u]while aiming downsight[/u] In other words, Tommy's will always eat between 25% (hip fire) and 40% (ads) of your shield per second while ignition trigger is active. The burn [i]appears[/i] to be calculated in real time, so frantically switching between hip fire and ads has no apparent advantage. While I know this is supposed to be a high risk high reward weapon, but the balance is completely off: almost 100% buff to damage is indeed quite impressive, but losing your entire shield between 2.5 and 4 seconds is just too punishing when you consider that you're most likely taking damage from something else while shooting, be it a boss, a guardian or a pack of mobs. This brings us to another, just as important, problem: [b]what is this weapon meant for? [/b]Is it a mower? Is it meant for dps? Tommy's seems to be lacking a direction and thus struggling in both fields. Other primary exotics like Sweet Business, Monte Carlo, Riskrunner or Huckleberry are just as better (or even more) at clearing adds and they won't try to kill you for that, rather, they all offer some kind of reward for that. For boss damage, other exotics primaries like Outbreack Perfected or Devil's Ruin offer better damage without any kind of downside. This is, in my opinion, the core of the problem: [b]Tommy's Matchbook is actually punishing you for using it[/b]. The risk/reward factor weights heavily in favor of the risk. I still haven't completed the catalyst (working on it, should be done before next reset), but from what I saw online an increased health regenaration is simply not enough. With all that being said, these are my suggestion to bring this weapon up in a usable state: 1) The most obvious one: Ignition Trigger [b]MUST[/b] stagger overloaded champions. It's simply mindboggling that this exotic didn't come with a season effect attached to it. 2) Replace the Heat Sink perk: simply make the damage value of Heat Sink baseline. 25% of your shield per second is already a high price to pay for a 98% damage buff, and I firmly believe that hip fire should always be a choice and not something you force upon players. 3) Heat Sink now provides a 20% (maybe even 30%?) damage reduction while Ignition Trigger is active 4) "Heat of the Moment" (catalyst) refills your [i]health[/i] and some ammo in the magazine on every kill With this changes, I believe Tommy could find a place in this game as a sort of "tank weapon" that [i]constatly forces you to play at low health but also offers you all the means to survive and keep going[/i]. This concludes my talk on Tommy's Matchbook. I'd love to hear the community thoughts about this weapon and my suggestion, in order to make Bungie work on it before it's too late and ends up completely forgotten like many other exotics.