To be honest I can agree with most of what you said. However I also believe that top tree dawn blade is in fact the best subclass for PvP, but it has a great drawback because of the MAJOR amount of skill required to use it “properly”. I also think that both warlocks and hunters need a little bit of love in the PvP side of the game. IMO hunter supers are pretty mediocre with spectral blades being the best option. For example: Tether is awful and needs a buff for PvP, more often than not a tether will end in a trade because of the ridiculously long animation, there is also the fact that it is a super that does the same exact thing as a titan suppressor grenade plus the extra damage with weapons. Arcstrider is just meh, it has its positive but it also still has some bad hit registration and no movement boost other than the dodge and the block on middle tree, but those movements are no where near comparison to a titans fist of havoc super where they become fast af and are pretty tough to get away from when close. Now on to other things, you mentioned movement but I also disagree. A hunter can only beat a class in straight line speed, but they are at a disadvantage when it comes to obstacles. Titans are fast because of the way their jump works and warlocks are also really and slippery thanks to burst glide/ blink and on top tree dawn icarus Dash x2. I feel as though Titans are the best class in general because of them having three amazing super shutdown options ( middle tree striker, striker in general, and suppressor grenades) . Warlocks only have one, nova bomb ( I guess you can also consider chaos reach a super shutdown but most of the time you are target practice for a sniper). The we have hunters with two, tether( which is a trade most of the time) and blade barrage( which also has poor hit res). All in all I feel like compared to Titans, warlocks and hunters lack power. Hunters also don’t really have any uniqueness to them. They had dodge but warlocks now have two dodges with a 5s cool down. Tether is cool and all but I mean suppressors are just better to use because there is no trade involved. Then, blade barrage is just a copy and paste nova bomb but worse. The only thing they have unique is the smoke bomb melee and golden gun. Spectral blades is just arcstrider but better in most senses, however they both are shut down nearly always to a fist of havoc titan. Other than that I agree that warlocks need love, but i think hunters need some too.

Im a trio main i try to play all classes equally and i feel like before the top tree buff, the bottom tree had major advantage and then after the buff top tree had the advantage. I wish bungie could do something where i have a hard time choosing which subclass to choose but it is always top tree dawnblade (Even in pve, have you seen it with sunbracers)

Sunbracers are nice with top tree. I still rock Starfire and Well for endgame PvE stuff

[quote]I had a lengthy back and forth with an ignorant Hunter main that tried to prove Warlocks are the best class in the game for PvP[/quote] That's just hilarious to me. Every time I have a conversation like this, the person will point to an expert player as a solid reason why Warlocks are the best. LOL. Experts, will make any class look good. Warlocks and Titans are fun, but Hunters are the best class, period. They have the best movement in the game and most variety of builds. It's no contest.

ill give you a little pointer on the most over powered setup a warlock can run Nezeracs sin Telesto double light reactor mods You can run whatever super you want to run but personally id run top tree nova.

I recently got two great rolled Sins i would just have to work it around the armor I got. I haven’t shot Telesto in a hot second I might just try that tonight... have a little fun again lol

I like to call it the molesto setup

Lemme guess, it was goldenhunter?

Actually he was a double dodge vanish in smoke I think... which I found odd lol

I meant a user on this forum called goldenhunter haha, he will argue to the death about warlocks being the best in PvP.

I think that subclass nodes coming back could fix warlocks in some of the ways you mentioned. For example, I love nova warp’s melee, but the super and the grenade are so awful it’s just not worth it. I like the healing grenades from well of radiance but the super isn’t good in pvp. I like the melee from chaos reach but it’s just not a good pvp super.

For specific loadouts, top tree dawn's my favorite sniping subclass by far. Used to main a hunter for everything before that, and still do hunter for shotguns. But top dawn has by far the best horizontal mobility in the game (better than hunters), which is huge with sniping. Double burst glide icarus dashes let you move 20-30 meters to any direction in a couple seconds, every 5 seconds. Gets you to lanes first and let's you make room when someone tries aping you. Couple that with transversive slides, 2x sprint speed buff stack from transversives + lightweight frame and faster strafing from 100 mobility and I really can't see myself sniping on any other subclass just for the ability to move fast across the map and in and out of engagements. Then mini missiles and firebolts are both perfect for cleaning up snipe bodyshots too. It's really like they designed the subclass for sniping.