You know how difficult it would be to buff every gun in every category just to keep up with the outliers. You address the concern, not just bend everything else around it. Power creep is a real thing that while us gamers don’t have to worry about it because it isn’t an immediate issue, it is something devs have to look at for the lifetime of a game. The real fix is to balance ahead of time to stay on top of these things but that is hard to do since all it takes is a day and a random asshole to bruteforce something and at that point you have things that are far from balanced.

nerfs are needed sometimes, nerf doesn’t always mean bad

Yeah lets balance everything around an smg that tears through adds faster than a machine gun. Sounds awesome

It’s called power creep. Also this game is considerably easy which is why things are nerfed in the first place. To preserve challenge. It’s why 980 nightmare hunts and nightfalls are relatively enjoyable because of their difficulty. If we had the old sandbox it’d be a cakewalk and boring. It also makes exotics less and less worth it “just buff the exotics more” great now we are back at square one where everything is so damn strong that it must be compensated for. Remember season of the drifter, remember reckoning? Ever wonder why that was such a pain? Because we were overpowered af so we ended up with this horrible game type to compensate for our sheer strength. So no. No buffing everything.

There is no tl/dr summation. Read it or don’t. [quote]instead of nerfing sleeper back in the day (which lead to Queenbreaker, which then the next season got nerfed) — why don’t they buff both to the same so it doesn’t matter which.[/quote] Sleeper and Queenbreaker were nerfed because of their effect on Gambit. That is not so much a knock against Gambit as a game mode (why did it ruin my beloved Sleeper?) and more an explanation as to what happened. Sleeper Simulant is a Linear Fusion rifle that equips to the Heavy slot, reintroduced to Destiny 2 in the Warmind expansion. Prior to the Forsaken expansion there was no Gambit, so Crucible was the go to PvP experience at the time (Trials had ended the year prior to Warmind’s release). While the Sleeper certainly hit hard, its utility in the Crucible was limited to an extent due to the necessity of hitting an opponent dead on with a shot, or hoping for a lucky ricochet off a nearby wall: clearly if you’re looking to kill someone ducked behind a wall, or a couple of opponents simultaneously, rocket launcher would be the weapon of choice (Rocket Launchers! For when close enough is the best you can hope for). The necessity of hitting an enemy dead on was offset by the Sleeper’s ability to kill with a single body shot. Then came the Forsaken campaign, and with it came both Gambit and the reintroduction to Destiny 2 of the Queenbreaker Bow. The Queenbreaker Bow didn’t hit as hard as the Sleeper, but it had some pretty damn strong Aim Assist, allowing the user to pretty easily two tap an opponent under the right circumstances. Given that it had no splash damage or ricochet ability, it was less useful than the Sleeper in general Crucible combat. However, there was a new place to use both the Sleeper and Queenbreaker, and that place was Gambit. As you know, a match of Gambit revolves around killing various combatants in order to pick up the motes they drop, and to then return those motes to the Bank, which is centrally located on each map. Opposing players can invade enemy territory to kill those collecting motes, and so the Bank area was placed out in the open for ease of firing into for the invader. The invading player is given two distinct advantages to aide them in disrupting the opposing team: an overshield, and constant Wall Hacks. When invading, the player can post up at a location with a decent view of the bank and scan their surroundings for any players that might be about to run into the open, or simply peak out of hiding hoping to get a shot. The Sleeper, as the heaviest hitting Linear Fusion in the game, has a fittingly long charge time. But as with all Fusions, it’s charge can be “revved up” and let to cool down, allowing the user to keep it in a state of ‘almost ready to fire’. The Sleeper at that time had some pretty good Aim Assist as well, and could easily be used to one shot an opponent clear across the map... It was so powerful it could one shot an invader with a blow to the body, even while they had their overshield, thus effectively negating one of the two advantages given to the invading player. The Queenbreaker was not quite as powerful, but it had a quicker charge time and could fill a similar, if slightly less effective, role of “invaderbane”. There is one other major factor to take into account here: the Taken Armaments mod. As you’re likely aware, equipping this mod grants the effect of instantly obtaining Heavy ammo whenever a Taken combatant is killed using a grenade ability. This is all well and good for a PvE activity, but in Gambit it creates a potential problem with the Heavy ammo economy. Again, when playing Gambit, the goal is to deposit enough motes to spawn a Primeval which must then be killed. Depositing motes in multiples of five send a “blocker” to your opponents bank, locking the bank down until the blocker is killed. These blockers, along with all combatants summoned alongside the Primeval, are Taken. This means that every time you send a blocker to hinder your opponent, you are also likely giving them access to Heavy ammo. You are effectively fueling you opponent’s ability to kill you and stage a comeback. This is true of whatever Heavy weapon they have equipped, but was most pronounced in terms of the Sleeper. Due to the Sleeper’s overall stopping power, it’s outsized effectiveness in Gambit specifically, the easy availability of ammo with Taken Armaments, and the relative ease with which the gun can itself can be obtained through a quest, everyone and their mother was using Sleeper in Gambit (except for the few who protested by not using it). This glut of a single weapon that was heads and shoulders above most other weapons combined with the sheer ubiquity of its use led to a brand new game mode... That wasn’t any fun. And it led to those players who continued using the Sleeper during this time as being viewed with disdain for relying on such a “crutch”. So the devs decided a nerf was in order. After Sleeper was made slightly less dominant in Gambit, some gravitated to the Queenbreaker since it fulfilled a similar role, and didn’t have the lingering disdain that the Sleeper did... At least, not until too many people began relying on it as well. And since the Queenbreaker was a world drop, it soon became widely available, was overused in Gambit, and gained a reputation as a crutch weapon for a while as well, with grief being heaped upon those using it in order to “just compete”. Your suggestion that they “buff both to the same so it doesn’t matter which” was not a solution to the problem at hand as the problem wasn’t that Sleeper was much better than the Queenbreaker and that everything would be fine if they functioned identically. The problem was that they both shifted the balance of the Gambit mode to the point that it became unenjoyable. Gambit was a major selling point of the Forsaken campaign, and so the devs wanted players to at least have a chance of deriving some pleasure from the activity. And since they both occupy the same weapon slot, so making them function identically does not in any fashion promote the idea of player choice in setting up a viable loadout. On a side note, one might bring up One Thousand Voices and its use in Gambit, as it also benefits from Taken Armaments and can be used to very easily kill opponents in this particular game mode. While that is a valid argument, there are two things that set 1kV apart from SS and QB: availability and heightened potential danger to the user. 1kV drops as a potential reward for completing the Last Wish raid. This makes it quite uncommon among the player base due to the low percentage of players who actually participate in raid activities, as well as the rather low rate at which the weapon drops. The less ubiquitous a powerful weapon is, the less it dictates what loadout a player feels compelled to use in order to be able to compete. More perceived viability of choice in loadout goes some way to increasing the player’s enjoyment of the activity. In addition, 1kV “paints” the area it fires upon creating a deadly explosion that can kill players who feel they were “absolutely far enough away to not get killed”... But it paints indiscriminately. While I do not personally have 1kV (I don’t raid so I don’t even have the ability to blame poor RNG) I have witnessed enough instances where a player using the weapon accidentally clips a small piece of geometry nearby, or has a teammate suddenly hop in front of them at the last second (my bad) causing the user to die in an explosion of their own creation. 1kV requires at least some awareness of one’s surroundings in order for the user to not end up their own victim, which must be taken into account as a mitigating factor in why it has not been nerfed. (΄◉◞౪◟◉｀)

It’s because things would be out of control. Balance (at least attempting balance) is needed even if it hurts your personal opinion. QB and sleeper and both still good in gambit. People just want the easiest path and once those weapons weren’t as easy they move on.