To start, absolutely no hate to the devs here. Seriously, thank you to them for giving us so much info to complain about and my only point here is to give my personal perspective on the recent statements on the Strand Titan so that the future for my crayon eating brethren will hopefully be better. The two things to talk about are the GamesRadar interview question about the community feeling that Strand Titan is too similar to other Titan supers and kits and the Bungie twitter response to the backlash. Full quotes below. “Bladefury is much more about giving you the survivability tools to really lay into those guys and then giving you a range option, which is not something you generally do in these roaming Supers, to Suspend things from afar and damage them," he says. "That's their heavy attack, that double blade uppercut you see them do in the trailer. I think that's two of the core ways we've tried to shift them away. But yeah, Titan mains, we love you. We do. But remember that we try to reinforce your core fantasy. And at some point, your guy's holding the fist on the cover of the game." “We've been monitoring recent impressions around the new Strand Berserker Titan. The team understands the landscape of our Titan supers during development, and has made sure the Strand Titan offers new gameplay opportunities to make it feel fresh compared to previous subclasses“ Alright let’s start with the interview. First thing to talk about is in the first sentence: “Giving you the survivability tools to really lay into those guys”. Unfortunately, as a starting point to defend this class as being fresh and unique, this ain’t it chief. We can safely assume that this is referring to ‘Woven Mail’ and the sever keyword. We have versions of this on every class: Void has overshields and controlled demolition, which heals in an AoE whenever an enemy explodes; Arc has Spark of Resistance and an aspect that heals on melee kills; Solar has Restoration; and Stasis has two fragments that either give overshields or damage resistance when near stasis ice. As for sever, this type of keyword is almost universally, with some MMO exceptions, terrible. If I need to punch an enemy, I don’t want them to keep shooting me, I want them incapacitated immediately. I’m likely already damaged from having to leave cover to punch them, so unless the damage reduction is so significant that it’s borderline broken, this is not worth it. The best status effects are the ones that kill enemies faster because when they’re dead, they deal 0% damage. Or even blinding because at least they’re not damaging you. Now that I think about it, what content is a melee-based sever status effect for? Low-end content and enemies just die to the punch. High-end content and your dead after getting boss stomped when you tried to get close to inflict a status effect with a melee. Plus how long does sever last. Unless it’s indefinite, by the time you get away and pull out a gun, the debuff may already be gone. Okay next line, before I get sidetracked again: “…then giving you a range option, which is not something you generally do in these roaming Supers”. I mean c’mon, this clearly false. Hammers and sentinel shield both have long range attacks, without even mentioning other classes. And if the range is more in line with what I expect (a sort range burst) then we have Burning Maul and Glacial Quake. So that’s not new or unique either. Moving on, next thing is the infamous “reinforce your core fantasy” line. To be fair, according to Datto, this developer did say that this wasn’t the best quote and that interviews are hard. And you know what, fair enough. This quote sounds relatively tone-deaf and also like a “deal-with-it”mentality. But on a constructive note, I believe that if Bungie does believe that melee is the core fantasy of Titans, it may be time broaden that fantasy a bit. I think leaning into the defensive bulwark idea or the frontline soldier persona may be good places to go. Finally, the tweet states that their team “has made sure the Strand Titan offers new gameplay opportunities to make it feel fresh compared to previous subclasses”. Now, I genuinely hope this is true and maybe there’s some tricks up the sleeves of the Berserker. However, given the currently available information, I’ll have to see it to believe it. With all this being said, and dear god look how much I said, I hope that the communities reaction and subsequent press involvement will encourage Bungie to make some adjustments down the line, diversifying the play pattern and creatively tuning my favorite class: the Crayola-gobbling Titan.