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Destiny 2

Discuss all things Destiny 2.
Edited by True Gravemind: 5/25/2022 10:54:41 AM
2

Solar 3.0 is fundamentally flawed

Alright y'all lots of text incoming, primarily about Titans as I haven't really experienced Hunter or Warlock yet, but I will mention Warlock a little. Solar 3.0, as the topic states, is fundamentally flawed. The concept around the 3.0 subclass system was to give each unique subclass of the given element a specific thing that it was VERY good at, while being only okay to meh at the other things. Void 3.0 accomplished this extremely well. Titans were focused around Barrier and Volatile, both achieved incredibly well by its aspects. Hunter were focused around Invis and Debuffs, both achieved incredibly well by its aspects. Warlocks were focused around CC and Devour, both achieved incredibly well by its aspects. Solar 3.0 has failed to do this adequately. Lets explore why. As stated above I'll primarily be talking about Titans here as I main Titan, so I have the most experience with it. Titans are meant to be based around the Scorch mechanic and "Big Damage (Bungie's words not mine). However this role has not really been fulfilled. Lets start with the melee options. Bungie has removed the bottom tree Solar melee which would cause a solar explosion, burning everything around it. We were left with a nerfed Hammer Strike and the Throwing Hammer. Only one of these melee options, Hammer Strike, scorches. Throwing Hammer does literally nothing, besides being a ranged melee, until you pick it up, at which point it heals you. If you don't see what's wrong with this, let me break it down. Starting with Throwing Hammer, this melee has LITERALLY nothing to do with anything the Titan subclass is supposed to do. It doesn't Scorch and it doesn't do massive damage. In fact it has more in common with the Warlock design philosophy, which was healing and Scorch (yeah they just basically decided every class gets Scorch so F's for diversity)(also don't worry Warlocks we'll briefly talk about how y'all got shafted), than the Titan philosophy. Moving onto Hammer Strike some of y'all may not remember this because it stopped being used, but Hammer Strike actually debuffed enemies on hit. Bungie has removed this functionality from it because they decided debuffs belong to Void exclusively. That leaves us with a shoulder charge that Scorches and that's it. This does fit into the philosophy, but its simple and does nothing for the rest of the subclass. This also means Solar Titans do not have a neutral melee option...the class designed around punching things lacks a melee options to punch things...genius. But if you think this is dumb, wait until we get to the aspects. So once again we are faced with the pillar of the new Titan subclass, Scorch and "Big Damage." Well would you he surprised if I told you that there are only two aspect on Titans that do this, and that both are terrible? Titans have access to 3 aspects, Consecration, a melee override, Roaring Flames, an ability damage multiplier, and Sol Invictus, a reworked Sun Warrior and Sunspot perk all in one. Lets move down the line and explain why each of these options suck. Consecration offers one Fragment slot and changes your melee when you slide. The first trigger will cause you to go flying into the air, sending out a wave of heat that Scorches whatever it touches and consumes half your charged melee. While in the air from this you can trigger it a second time to consume your remaining melee energy to slam back onto the ground, sending out a wave of fire which immediately Ignites anything it hits and will OHK a Guardian in PvP if you land both parts of the attack. This sucks. Well its a little more complicated than simply saying "its bad". An OHK melee isn't terrible in concept, in fact they are usually pretty good, but in execution...it takes more than a full second to complete both animations all the way and about .6 if you stop at the first wave. Basically in PvP unless you have caught someone completely unaware you are dead. Actually, you might be dead regardless because this melee HAS TO LAND IN THE DIRECTION YOU ARE FACING, NOT YOUR CAMERAS DIRECTION. Basically if someone realizes what you are doing, they will simply slide under you and you'll completely wiff. It is also the only aspect that can reliably apply Scorch. In PvE its fine, but it doesn't do anything that Hammer Strike doesn't already accomplish, but its slower to do and leaves you wide open. This aspects screams "style before substance" because while it feels cool as hell, it is functionally worthless. Roaring Flames provides two fragment slots and gives you a stacking ability damage bonus each time you get an ability kill, up to 3. That's it. That's all it does. No bonus cooldown, no stat bump, no speed increase. Just more ability damage after an ability kill. Its bad. It was bad on Burning Maul, its bad now. In PvP its useless outside of gimmick builds and in PvE its pointless because everything already kills fast enough in regular content and in hard content you aren't using you abilities to kill anything substantial anyway, and you certainly arent using them to chain a damage buff so you can try and kill a Champion with a hammer. I mean you can do that, but why would you when there are multitudes of easier, more efficient ways to do this without having to jump through hoops. Finally we have Sol Invictus. It provides 2 fragment slots, creates Sun Spots on Solar ability final blows or final blows on Scorched targets. It also provides you with thre Sol Invictus buff when you pass over it (which decreases ability cooldown timers) and provides Regeneration while standing in them. If this post wasn't already incredibly long I would go on forever about how stupid this change is, but given that its this long I will opt to be brief...ish. So this aspect does NOTHING for the "pillars" of Titan. It does not Scorch targets and it does not increase damage. Once again this feels like somehow that belongs on Warlocks. Regardless of this, simply by virtue of providing the player with some type of thing to build around and creating a gameplay loop that isn't "use ability and pray" every single Titan NEEDS TO RUN THIS. It literally does NOTHING until you get a kill unless you have Loreley equipped, which basically means Loreley is damn near a MUST HAVE for every Titan solar build because otherwise you are doing literally nothing, and it is STILL the best Titan aspect. And then with Loreley sunspots are basically just a discount healing rift. Its like Bungie KNEW sunspots were the reason people played Solar Titan, but instead of making them more engaging they removed the best parts of the Sun Warrior buff, nerfed the damage of sunspots, nerfed the cooldown rate, and then slapped obscene healing on it. I don't understand, I really don't. Finally we reach grenades. Typically I wouldn't say anything here, they're just grenades. Except Bungie, in their infinite wisdom, decided Healing Grenades, a class-defining part of Warlocks, needed to be given to everyone. I mean are you even trying to make the classes diverse at this point? TLDR; Solar 3.0 is a -blam!- yikes.

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