Yup. But they invalidated power levels having any meaning a long time ago. So since you knew that and still wasted all that time? That’s on you.

Word. The thing I hate about it the most is how I'm not able to de-activate certain modifiers and still get decent loot. Like limited revives. I had this one run of the whisper where my character decided to double jump during the traverse section. Now I'm down to 1 revive, I'm about to enter an area where everything will shoot at me and I'm not on a particulary tanky build. You have to play it more carefully than the hardest content back in the day - and this is the default version of what they offer. I'd trade the revive modifier for 10 other modifiers. Also, when the timer runs out, which it did since I had to play so freaking slow because of the revives, I end up with no revives. So now it's down to beating the boss in slow motion - because if you peek you'll instantly lose 90 % health. Which in itself is odd because when I cranked up the delta through modifiers to -50 in the old system it didnt do half as much damage as now. I am 100 % convinced that the deltas are off, or at least on certain enemies. I do the same damage on unstoppables on GM and Ultimate and they've become tanky as hell in Lost Sectors.

It means guaranteed tier 5’s, it’s literally that simple.

This OP is absolutely spot on, something I have been saying since the start of this sorry mess. And I'm sure that the enemies power differs from week to week. For example, I'm 511 at the time of posting this, so I would have been around 506 when this arms nonsense dropped. I've got to this level by mainly playing the optimal route, i.e. solo Caldera, K1, Conflux, with a few of the easier fireteam ops and a bit of crucible. When Arms week dropped, it took me 9 failed attempts on grandmaster Salt Mines, something I was running on Ultimate in around 12 minutes during the previous week, before I thought, blam this, and turned off the game. And even more frustrating was the fact that it was the opening task to begin Arms week, so something fishy was going on there. And if you think about it, there is nothing to do when you hit max power level. No one wants to run dungeons or raids anymore because the rewards are no longer relevant, and everyones vault is jammed full of various god rolls of the same 8 weapons that have been raining upon us for the 2 months or so. Why not drop us some of the hundreds of world pool weapons at our light level, even if it's for infusement? Whether we are at power level 10 or 10 billion, we will NEVER feel powerful so long as the power cap exists to make content that little bit harder in the easiest way possible.

This is 100% accurate. It hurts. Spent all this time farming to 550...only to be rewarded with permanent -30 light level difficulty at the top. And the random BS deaths are absolutely infuriating. It's like game developers don't know how to balance scale, power, progression, and difficulty without making it an exponential curve. I don't want to have to play perfectly to play at all bungie.

This is very true in PVP as well. I thought power level matters in trials, but I’m 550 getting two tapped by someone with 300 power. Just doesn’t make sense.

That’s why I’m still at 10 😎

You became Legend!!!! 🫡

Let me play the small violin for you

Agreed. I think they had it correct during the Witch Queen campaign. Power meant something because you could eventually get at the enemy’s power level and have a much easier time in Master content. GMs were still challenging and you were always at a fixed disadvantage. There’s more but Witch Queen was peak D2 IMO.

I completely agree. I've been 550 for a month or so. The only way to farm decent weapons now is bump the difficulty so high just to get kicked to orbit in a few minutes. Maybe I'm unique but don't want to play top difficulty all the time. I play for the enjoyment and farm the best weapons. This was doable prior to EoF. I know I can pick the difficulty but it feels like a waste of time when getting level 3 and 4 drops.

could not have said it better.

When I was 10, I couldn't beat Timesplitters 2 on HARD. Atom Smasher was BS 😤

I miss the old question mark immune enemies youd randomly see running around. Levels need to mean more than "unlocking the next difficulty that actually the same thing with a champion" destinations need to have levels. And the enemy toughness needs to stop scaling with you. Cosmodrome should be weak for new lights, and destinations become harder as they move thru the story. Not everything is the same. Kepler, if you're under like 400, you see question marks and die instantly. Givea purpose to power level again.

So barely hit 550 this week and I wasn't sure if I was imagining it but I felt like I was taking more damage in the opening of Heliostat. I've been running the same modifiers all week but during my first run after 550 I got killed right at the start.

Why did you-blam- out game??

Couldn't agree more. I came back after a year of break. Started at 10 on the new season story. Move to 300 with that upgrade package. Used FotL event to boost to 430ish. Now hovering at 510ish with mostly T5 an 3x or 4x 100+ stats. Gameplay experience is same or worse. Challenging game comes from power minus 10-30 handicap, build restrictions, champion stompers, timers etc. No real reason to grind like other mmorpg (bungie claim) games. Only ability spam is ok with some builds but that's also limited due to bugs and inconsistent play. Im now thinking that it wasn't worth coming back and doing the power grind race.