What has happened? (Text wall...but detailed answer, in-coming.) Bungie has reaped the whirlwind from 2 years of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. If you want the LONG version of what happened, go to YouTube and watch the four hours of inverviews that Jon Wiesznewski and Sage Merrill (leads at the Bungie's Sandbox team) game to Planet Destiny's "Crucible Radio" podcast last spring. They explain their methods and philosophy for making changes to the weapon systems in the game (Crucible). As a primarily PVE player is was disheartening, infuriating...but also enlightening as to why the game's gear system seems to have so many intractable problems. The SHORT version? 1. Both among fans and people who work at Bungie, there has been a push to make The Crucible play like Halo's famous Multiplayer. But---at Bungie----no real effort to understand what design featrures allowed Halo's MP to work. 2. Going into Year 2 there was a conscious effort on the part of the Sandbox team to WEAKEN the game's primary weapons and (in their eyes') SLOW the pace of the game. So that the game had more of the team-oriented play and "opportunities for counter play" that Halo's MP had. But not realizing that Halo didn't allow you to choose what weapons you wished to fight with, and Spartans didn't have the ability to move nearly as fast or as unpredictably as Guardians. 3. As a result of over a year of uninterrupted primary weapon nerfs, the game's primary awepons are the weakest they've ever been in the game's history. [b] The problem is that this campaign---while it slowed the primary weapon TTK----did absolutely NOTHING to slow the pace of the actual game. [/b] 4. While all this was going on, more and more players mastered the game's movement abilities. Titan-skating (using the Titan's jets/jump to essentially fly around the map rather than sprint) came into wide spread use. Blink, Shadestep and other augmented mobility perks became more deeply integrated into the game. So what happened in reality is that the game kept getting faster and faster....and the game's primarys became simply too weak to be a credible threat to ANYONE, except someone with another primary weapon. In fact at high levels of play, UNLESS BOTH players commit to the fight and seeing it thorugh to a conclusion, most 1v1 primary gun fights are inconclusive. The 0.8 sec TTK simply gives a player too much time to escape to safety...or time to turn the tables on the player who has the initiative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFjlO5ZAhNg I love this montage from Mtashed, because it really demonstrates how critically underpowered primary weapons have become, and how utterly ill-suited to the task of killing people in this fast-paced of a game they are. The first half of the video is practically a laundry list off all the ways you can walk into a 1v1 with the initiative...and still LOSE...despite the fact that you didnt' do anything wrong. 5. So what has happened is that players have responded this to building more and more play around the spamming of special weapons and abilities. In order to FORCE a conclusion to these encounters while the player still has the intiative. Shotguns are a "problem" right now, because snipers----whichi were just as out of control at the end of year 2 basically had primaries "buffed" relative to them by greatly increasing the amount of flinch that primary weapon fire induces. So we've been seeing a succession of increasingly obnoxious builds in The Crucible centered around spamming special weapons.....and leveraging the weakeness of primary weapons...for a competitive edge. Thus allowing shotguns (in conjuction with speed of movement and/or the increased durability these builds provid) dominate at distances FAR, FAR beyond the range they can shoot....and essentially becoming overpowered, because the game gives you few if any options. The skating Defender Titan with No Back Up Plans and a shotgun is one of the more obnoxious of these builds. Once they're able to get Force Barrier to proc, they are almost uncounterable on a 1v1 basis. It was even MORE obnoxious before Universal Remote got nerfed back into balance with other shotguns with the last weapon patch. Imagine that build, but armed with a TRUE shotgun primary....unlimited ammo...AND a range that is farther than any other shotgun in the game..... My personal favorite is the Juggernaut, Titan-skating shotgun Warrior. Now imagie that Defender Build...who now has an overshield that doesn't require a kill. All he has to do now is just SPRINT...and its there. AND this shield is a separate entity from his standard shield and health pool. In the hands of a good player, this build is TRULY OP. I've had people playing this build take a full blast from Plan C in their chest (a OHK to any other class)....and all it managed to do was strip off their shield. Didn't touch their health bar. ...and of course at that range, you're dead before you have time to do anything else. 6. Other than backpedalling and trying to stay out of shotgun range...there is VERY LITTLE you can do against some of these more obnoxious builds in this play style. Primaries aren't simply upt to the task....and sidearms and fusion rifles can't even do enough damage in some fo the more OP builds. The only LONG term solution is for some of these (Juggernaut) to get nerfed. [b]...AND FOR BUNGIE TO REALIZE THAT THIS NOT HALO.....AND IT WILL NEVER PLAY LIKE HALO IN ANY HEALTHY WAY. THEREFORE THE ONLY LONG TERM SOLUTION IS TO SLOWLY BUFF PRIMARIES BACK UP TO A POWER LEVEL THAT CAN KEEP WITH THE SPEED OF THE ACTUAL GAME.[/b] ....and give us a weapon system that is balanced around the game that people actually play in the Crucible...and not some nostalgic recollection of tournament Halo.

I absolutely hate pvp in this game now. It's a stale, broken, laggy, shotgun shitfest. I've given up on it lol. Bungie arn't doing anything about it and haven't said much other than they see the problem and are working on it. If you've recently come back for the pvp experience then I'd choose another game... This one is in a sorry state. Sad to say it's borderline broken. BF1 is what I've mainly been playing for a while now.

No. Hunters are the current meta. Been like this for 3 years now

Picked up a fusion rifle a while back, hardly ever touch my shotty anymore.

Special ammo's the current meta, everyone uses it all the time because there's to much of it available.

Are you new to this game?

Nope

Except for Trials