I made this little guide for new players who can’t seem to wrap their head around this games PVP offering. Why am I losing gun fights with my auto rifle? Why does it seem like everyone is doing much more damage with pistols? Why can’t I seem to finish up on most players before they run away or kill me with one hit? Why Is it that every time I have a decent game, it’s followed up by four games where my team is completely destroyed? Why do all the guns I’m using seem to suck? Why you ask? Destiny has the most unintuitive PvP experience on the market today. Almost nothing makes sense in this game in regards to PVP. So let me be your guide through all of destiny‘s head scratching design choices. 1. Your primary weapon as defined by the game, should never be your “primary” method for dealing with enemies. Your Secondary or “special” weapon should be your “primary” choice in Destiny. Try Fusions and shotguns or snipers. 2. If you have to use a primary, Pistols are more powerful than automatic weapons or Designated marksman rifles. Yes, if you haven’t figured it out yet your pistol choices are better than every almost other weapon. 3. Getting hit while using the sniper rifle actually makes it easier to land head shots Against primary weapon fire. At first the scope flinch from incoming fire is jarring, Then you learn that speed of movement and Aim assist are actually linked, and dynamically increase, so sniping then becomes an exercise in literally taking shots and waiting for your reticule to jump up to the Hitbox. This is a serious embarrassment in design, And has persisted since destiny one. 4. There’s no incentive to get better, in fact the more relaxed you are, the less you put up effort to win matches, and the more you just run around and do whatever, the game is and always will be inclined to put you in lobbies where these kind of things are taking place. The more you try, depending on the method in which Bungie has implemented, you will either be playing only players who are hyper competitive(SBMM), or when they open up the player pool to everyone(CBMM), the lobby balancing will place you on the team with the worst players, while populating the other team with competent players. 5. Don’t let the game’s role-playing game trappings fool you, this is not at all a real RPG, nor is it a competent one. It is a shooter with very light role-playing elements. So, given the fact that the game tries to sell itself in this way, you would think that defense, strength, and intellect would be balanced with speed/mobility in terms of how the classes are laid out. Wrong, dead wrong. You’re pretty new with the game so you probably haven’t gotten to the phase where you are studying it. Do yourself a favor and look at the number of players who play as hunters versus any other class. There’s a reason for this, at some point you are going to need to play PVP, and despite the fact that there are other stats in the game, speed and movement are the most important ones. Nothing that any of the other classes have in terms of natural affinity for the other traits means anything when a player can jump on a dime or dodge out of the way of incoming fire. As well, Bungie has no plans on allowing any of the other classes and their stats to mean anything, because the hunters of the game make up the lion share of Feedback for how things are tuned and balanced. We’re far too into the games lifecycle to make a change, as the game has been balanced around and for hunters since its inception. 6. Last but not least, and the most ultimate, important advice on how to proceed if you are interested in playing the crucible. At the release of a new expansion/season/patch, Bungie will be shifting around your 1-2 viable PVP weapon choices. You must keep track of the META weapons. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube content creator, and whatever weapon that they are complaining about is the one that you should be looking to obtain, and trust me they will be complaining about it within hours of the expansion/season/patch’s release. If the YouTube content creator is not complaining, then he is of no use to you, you need to find the whiniest, most entitled one you can find, As he/she will likely be crying about the meta almost immediately. Once you have discovered the meta, Never try anything else(unless it later starts getting complaints from content creators), You may be tempted to use that new gun you obtained in the raid, again, wait for the crying. TLDR In summary: Don’t use primary weapons as a primary option. Put on a Hand cannon for when you have to. Make use of taking shots with sniper rifles and letting the reticle bounce up to their head. Flinch is an illusion. Don’t try at the game, just run around and don’t take it seriously, as soon as you do, you’ll be punished for it. Destiny is not a real RPG, ignore useless stats in PVP, pick a Hunter and spec mobility. Keep track of the Meta, use what people are crying about, especially content creators!