I originally posted this on YouTube, but have felt so strongly about it that I decided to open an account here and post for the first time, in the hopes that someone who matters at Bungie can see it. I have stood by nerfs before, and I started playing just after the Auto Rifle nerf. Because, other than the aforementioned nerf, they never felt really heavy handed and they didn't do damage to the game. This time, it's different. This is the style of blanket into-the-ground nerfs which, among other things, convinced me to leave WoW two years ago, after 8 years of play. To start, no, it's not all bad. We all should be telling Bungie what we feel they did correctly. Productive criticism requires you to tell someone both what they did wrong [b]AND[/b] what they did right. So, I'll start with what I think they did well: - Handcannons in PvP actually aren't in a bad spot. They feel a lot more accurate and snappy. I haven't noticed the 5m damage falloff increase to be quite frank. - Actual balance between primary weapons has almost been achieved. - An under-used exotic, Young Wolf's Howl, got a much needed buff. Hopefully other low-use exotics join it in the future. - The Primary weapon in-air aiming changes. - The buffs to low RoF Pulse Rifles. It's about time that archetype got some love and saw more play. - Nerf to shotgun ADS speed and hip fire accuracy. - Nerfs to Stormcaller melee range was needed, and were very reasonable. Now, for what they haven't done well: - The changes to the highest RoF pulse rifles went too far. All they needed were the nerfs to damage falloff and HCR. It did NOT need the changes to rate of fire and magazine size. Destiny wrote about not nerfing things into the ground...and proceed to absolutely neuter this archetype of weapon. I have read several posts on the Bungie forums of people who have been farming forever to get a good roll on a Grasp of Malok, only to see it utterly ruined and now they're pissed. It's like the year 1 auto rifle nerf all over again. - The auto rifle buff worked out nicely for low RoF auto rifles and gave focused fire viability back for the first time since Vanilla. All good news, but the changes didn't help medium and high RoF auto rifiles that much. - Landfall nerf was unneeded. If anything needed nerfs on the Stormcaller's super it was ionic blink. - Blink nerfs weren't needed. - Universal remote and Truth now ruined. - The armor nerfs and the corresponding buffs to Mag Grenades, shoulder change etc. Is there still a reason left to use high armor builds now? - Hungering blade changes. Not only the change to hungering blade, but also how that broke so many other abilities and exotics. There was no point to this change in the first place, it was a waste of time and made already the squishiest roaming super totally useless. You could have actually made an effort to limit the effect to just hungering blade, but no, you just let the change ruin so many other abilities and weapons and didn't care. When you see something broken to the extent that this was, and you have to either release it as is or delay it to fix the issue, you delay it to fix the issue, and put out an announcement saying "Really sorry guys, but this nasty bug came up and we need another week to sort it out". There will be some grumbling, but reasonable people will understand. Saying "we'll see how it goes" and releasing it as is just plain lazy. On the bright side, those who don't play Bladedancers now know how the Bladedancers feel, and instead of the non-Bladedancers gloating and the Bladedancers being annoyed, it's united the two camps in the criticism of the change. - Special ammo changes. I was nervous they initially said they were re-examining it. And it looks like it was for good reason. I appreciate the goal of trying to increase primary weapon usage, but the execution was atrocious. It's like someone cutting off a limb to meet a weight loss goal. All you've done here is ensure the first team to wipe the other will dominate. If they decide to double down on this change come next balancing patch by making sidearms lose ammo, the dominance will be absolute. You claimed only want to make small tweak nerfs, only to give us a hit across the head with a steel baseball bat nerf. This to me was the straw that broke the camels back. As for what I would change: - Scrap all the nerfs to shotguns besides the ones regarding hip fire accuracy and ADS speed, but then scale them depending on weapon impact and the movement speed of the user, someone standing still has higher hip fire accuracy and a quick ADS time, someone sprinting has a slower ADS time and less hip fire accuracy, someone blinking/skating/shadowstepping etc has a very slow ADS time and poor hip fire accuracy, etc. That will reduce shotgun rushing and encourage people to use shotguns more defensively, and encourage more diversity with shotguns, so we can see things like Invective and Stolen Will instead of just MatadorMatadorMatador. - Scrap all nerfs to highest RoF pulses besides the damage falloff and HCR. - Return the Low RoF pulses to their original rate of fire, but boost the damage per precision shot to 36 in optimum range for easier 2 bursts, and increase the damage for medium RoF pulses to enough to allow 2 bursts on low-armored targets in optimum range. If this makes these guns OP, then revert back to original damage values and a higher RoF on the low RoF pulses, then scrap the medium RoF pulse rifle archetype and divide up the weapons in it between the high RoF and low RoF archetypes. As it stands, the medium RoF pulse rifle archetype feels like a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation. It hasn't got the range to compete with low RoF pulses and scouts, and requires the same number of bursts to kill as a faster firing higher RoF pulse rifle. - Higher precision damage multiplier, and maybe a 1 point base damage increase for medium and high RoF auto rifles, and push out the damage falloff just a little. - Have flinch effects in general reflect the impact of the weapon and damage falloff. - Revert Landfall, blink, Ophidian Aspect, Quickdraw and hungering blade and health regen perks to their previous states. - Universal remote returned to it's previous state, with less harsher effects to precision damage and ADS times to make up for the fact it's a primary. If it becomes too OP, bring those two things into line with other shotguns. - Give Truth a 2 round mag. - If you must have special weapons lose ammo, have them only lose reserve ammo if they have more than a full clip, or 2 1/2 clips for sidearms, with crates on between a 75-90 sec respawn timer. And exempt Mayhem gamemodes from this. - Also, I saw a video where the suggestion was made that in elimination gamemodes, give everyone 5 special ammo per round, and whatever the equivalent is for sidearms. No crates spawn, and your number of rounds resets to 5 at the start of each round. Tune the numbers as needed, but it will allow skilled use of special weapons and punish people for recklessness with their special weapons. That's a pretty solid suggestion, at least from my limited experience with elimination gamemodes. I called that the new meta would be Scout Rifle/NLB (and maybe low RoF Pulse Rifle) + Sidearms, and Handcannons + Sidearms on the smallest maps (eg: Anomaly). And so far based on the data we've seen, it's been panning out that way. A Fast firing auto rifle won't cut it against sidearms. Once you've lost ammo with your shotgun after dying, you're basically left naked in close range, as I found out while trying my NLB + Matador. While TLW might stand a chance against sidearms, then there's the problem of having ammo to challenge people with long range primaries, and the level of flinch you'll get when trying to aim. People will find this very stale very quickly. I found it stale almost immediately. There will be a lot of people taking a break from Destiny over the next month because of this. I love this game, but this patch was phoned in and has adversely affected my Crucible playstyle in a way that no patches before this has. I just haven't been having fun in Crucible since patch day. I use other weapons, and other combos every so often depending on the map, gamemode and what I personally feel like doing, but at the end of the day, I run with a sniper for the majority of the Crucible matches I play because I find that playstyle the most fun and rewarding. I do like the NLB + Sidearm combo, but being pigeonholed into it to maintain my desired playstyle isn't fun (I don't have Yr 3 Ice Breaker). My friends and I are in the market for a fresh game to play. Once we find it, my guardians will be hanging up their guns until these changes either scaled back or outright reverted. And no, that new game won't be Destiny 2. I won't be buying that if they continue to mess up Destiny 1 like this.