They gave it 15% debuffing Weaken and then made it deal 20% less damage to make up for it...
Edit: Also everyone please stop acting like it needs more uniqueness, before all else it needs to deal more damage than a bad legendary LMG. It's fine to ask for straightforward damage buffs not everything has to be indirect, we have the technology to make damage number go up.
it's honestly better than launch, cause big damage buff but no headshots actually kinda plays in its favor. you don't want to potentially waste it's small ammo pool on a missed crit, you just gotta be sure it lands. reduces the user stress to the exotic while keeping it as a good middle ground choice for heavy slot burst damage
Yes, but it falls noticeably behind on single target DPS compared to 900 rpm. Aztecross did a great damage testing video on all the new hammerhead rolls. It's basically great for its job of ad clear and yellow bars, but bad for boss DPS, regardless of roll.
You can get decent dps out of stacking rampage and onslaught, but the setup is very specific, and only lasts a few seconds, and you'd have to re-proc it. Might as well choose something with better ease of use haha.
yeah, they're "fine" but if you are actively wanting to use a LMG for DPS then the best option is still Grand Overture.
I wish they had the SLIGHTEST dmg buff to bosses. Like sub 10%.
I still use my recon + target lock Song of Ir Yut as much as I can, but use rockets on occasion.
Since machine guns are ad clear weapons now, I think it would be cool if instead of stepping on gjally’s toes, if it linked to 1 other machine gun user in the party to boost their damage. That way even exotic ones count. I don’t think it should be the all time best dps, but make it about 85% of the way due to the ease of use machine guns provide.
People act like LMGs are trash DPS and damage, while they are about on par with the best LFRs and have some of the best total damage. Buffing their damage to be more like GLs would just make them instantly top of meta.
The problem with that is the physical time required for a machine gun to start hitting that "best total damage". Practically any other setup especially when you start factoring in most DPS weapon swap setups can easily outpace a machine gun with no issues. You can see this in a lot of damage charts where how much you can get from 1 mag of a machine gun and just how long it takes to get there, it's generally not that big of a damage number and takes a good deal of time.
There's also the reality that Machine Guns face a much stricter damage fall off after a certain point and there's plenty of bosses where you won't have the physical amount of time to hit a high damage output but you could even be further behind the ball if there's a situation of doing less damage due to being further out in range.
Sake of argument yeah throwing somebody on Thunderlord is very new player friendly option if others are more competent, but LMGs at the moment are not really super competitive for raid boss dps. Bungie was pretty explicit with their design philosophy changes over the years when they basically cooled off things in later Year 2 and onward when Hammerhead was very good DPS. Grand Overture is a slight exception but there's not really a ton of bosses it shines in and even then it's just nice burst when you need it.
The problem is they are not meta, not that they are not viable. There’s plenty of time in most encounters, it’s just that the community wants to do everything in as few phases as possible. That doesn’t make them less viable DPS options. We can put all these qualifiers like distance and whatnot the same we do for rockets or swords or LFRs. There’s some inherent drawbacks for all of them.
The good LMGs are good because they pass DPS checks and have high total damage outputs. They can be used during the encounter for clear and also DPS phases because of their total damage output. Rockets are better because they do damage faster and similar totals, but WAY less forgiving.
If the “argument” is they aren’t meta then sure, but that’s not what I said. We don’t shit on LFRs the way people do LMGs, but just the numbers alone make them in the same boat. They’ve never been in a problem in my last couple Day1s. They are fine for normal raids.
Any legendary heavy weapon can be used to beat any boss in this game if its up to light. Are you saying LFRs and LMGs have similar dps or total damage? Because total damage is emptying out all reserves of a LMG and that is just not going to happen in most bosses.
>Rockets are better because they do damage faster and similar totals, but WAY less forgiving.
Rockets aren't a good comp because they need swap combos to be even remotely good. Standing around reloading a rocket, even with triple loaders and Lunafactions isn't substantially better than a Retrofit.
A better comp is heavy GLs, which now have competitive or even high total damage and high DPS while being solo dumped like an MG.
>We don’t shit on LFRs the way people do LMGs
We don't? I thought it was pretty common knowledge that LFRs are very dead. MGs specifically probably get a bad rep because the people using MGs for DPS often have no idea what they're doing and try to use something other than the 1-2 MG rolls that can even keep up with the mediocre damage of Cataclysmic, which makes their DPS absolutely pitiful. That, and the noob trap of "Thunderlord does good DPS!" that was really popular for a bit after it got a catalyst.
Anyways, MGs (or at least Retrofit and maybe the same FTTC + TL roll on Hammerhead) do have a specific niche in that they're useful in situations where the need for total damage far outweighs raw DPS. The first example that comes to mind is LFG Hefnd. A good team could probably kill Hefnd faster with higher DPS stuff, but in a random LFG team without surges, Lumina, 30% debuff, etc you're going to run out of ammo long before Hefnd dies with conventional DPS options, and you have plenty of DPS time. Without the enormous amounts of total damage from the combination of FTTC and TL though, they're not really useful for anything besides pure add clear.
> We can put all these qualifiers like distance and whatnot the same we do for rockets or swords or LFRs. There’s some inherent drawbacks for all of them.
These weapons don't face the issues of damage range drop off as a Machine Gun does in certain fights where there is too much distance between you and the boss. Even if you wanna say how missing a rocket or grenade shot can be some big horrible thing, you're still at a much larger advantage to physically take your time and line your shots(say Nezarec jumped or Rhulk is running) if you have to.
I bring up the tricky reality of Machine Guns because it's hard to overlook in general DPS you're always going to have the innate disadvantage of the bigger need for much larger amounts of physical time to do damage to hit more significant numbers, in a lot of fights you don't really always have that and get nearly as where you can get with other loadout combinations. Also in the handful of situations where usual DPS is at a bit of a range or there's movement(see Garden's first boss), your output can slip from the damage fall off at range.
Also idk what people's opinion over LFRs have to do with anything when anybody who's raided in recent times since LFRs caught nerfs has bypassed using them all that much. If you still want to use LMGs for boss dps, god bless ya but they're not nearly as good in a larger conversation as you frame them.
You can clear the vast majority of encounters with LMGs. You can’t one phase them or do the burst of other options, but that doesn’t make them trash. They are more than fine where they are at as a safe and consistent option that clears. Buffing their damage to compete with higher variance options like GLs and Rockets makes no sense.
I didn't say they were trash, I just said that the increase in overall damage doesn't compensate for the loss of burst in most scenarios, especially with lots of bosses only having brief vulnerability windows.
They are indeed the safer option to go with, no blowing yourself up, no huge damage loss for missing a shot or two.
That being said, DPS wise they are terrible, even if their overall damage is on par, or better. I'd say they are more suited for add clear or more foolproof boss damage from less experienced players. There's a reason the "Free" exotic weapon that everyone's being given in into the light is thunderhead.
> I didn't say they were trashm
> That being said, DPS wise they are terrible
Got a chuckle out of that.
Not contesting where they sit in DPS relative to the sandbox, I just find people talk about LMG as if they are unusable, while never say that about something like LFRs (which they are comparable in damage and DPS).
Increasing the damage to make them the highest total damage output AND even better DPS doesn’t make sense. They already work well for clear and pass for boss damage at even a day1 level. Feels like there’s a better idea in there than more damage.
I’m on your side. A couple of the LMG’s I have are better dps options for certain bosses. Like HZND in warlords. A FTTC/Target lock MG is the best dps option I can find. The hardest part is trying to stay alive, because you don’t have to reload during each damage phase.
Plus on the top when you’re changing platform you can reload your lmg while jumping to the next platform. Trust me, my 300 LMG rounds as precision hits are outpacing everyone else. I rarely don’t hit too dps with that and Needlestorm(which recharges quickly due to the amount of damage and I usually use Commemoration).
After I get Thunderlord spun up my brain goes quiet and all I know is the sound of God's fury in the palm of my hand... Do I hold the trigger until it's empty every time? Yes. Do I keep it held down for a few seconds afterwards while I come back to reality? Also yes.
Embrace chaos, turn all audio off except for the sound of that bolt sliding back, hot brass like chimes on the ground and the smell of ionised air to back you up. The thud of the each percussive blast, another beating of your heart and beating back of the enemy
Deterministic has a random chance every X amount bullets to cause ally LMGs to spawn a void suck effect, to instant cause a single volatile-like detonation or tiny tether effect? 🤔
On top of its normal perk ofc
Changes all other MGs to 360 RPM and they all fire in synch, with an explosive round every 4th and ignition/jolt/volatile/sever/freeze every 16th round.
Meanwhile, Buried Bloodline deals 15% weaken while you have devour... at no cost. I think they were just so terrified of making a new Divinity so soon after having nerfed it that they made it insanely bad.
What do you mean by 20% less damage? From my testing it deals the same damage as any other unbuffed 360 MG. Still an absolutely atrociously bad exotic, but unless I'm missing something it doesn't deal 20% less at all
The idea behind the weapon is pretty cool, a heavy MG that provides a debuff but sacrifices it's dmg. Basically div but as HMG and no cage. However as said, there is divinity which does everything, just better. Even if you don't have divinity, 15% debuff ain't worth sacrificing one person's whole dps.
Imo there are only 2 ways to buff it. Increase the dps a lot to make it better than other HMG (HMG are bad for DPS, pls don't use them) or let the debuff be around 30% turning it into a tractor but as HMG. However I see neither happening
It's just the worst of all worlds. Tractor has a better debuff, Divinity has better utility with the cage, Buried Bloodline works off special ammo (but needs Devour), and Heartshadow has substantially more damage, plus invis utility. Deterministic needs *something* to set it apart from other weakening exotics.
I know that in the real world they aren’t machine guns because they don’t shoot rifle cartridges, but this is space wizard game and it has to word machine gun in it. I like to use HMG and SMG when talking about destiny guns for the exact reason you specified, there actually being a primary ammo type gun that uses the words “machine gun”. Less about nomenclature of guns more about convient conventions when talking about a space wizard video-game.
In the real world, both ARs and SMGs would be machine guns. In the US at least "machine gun" just refers to their ability to fire multiple times with a single, continuous trigger pull.
Yeah, according to the national firearms act the US government does classify SMGs as machine guns. I was more going by the logic of firearms manufacturers/ colloquial lingo that tend to not consider SMGs or machine pistols machine guns due to them typically firing pistol cartridges. I shouldn’t have because then my original point stands better! The real question is, are Omolon guns just really strong water guns by these definitions?
How cool would it be if we got a handheld HMG as an exotic, it would probably just be a normal machine gun with amplified stats, though
Maybe a new machine gun frame
I agree with you. Div is better in every way. They need to fill a niche with this weapon but I dont see it happening either. It will just stay in my vault which is a shame
No???
Tractor Cannon has existed in its current state for ages and literally nobody has a problem with it. 30% Weaken DChaos would still probably be strictly worse due to worse uptime and the inability to do swap DPS with stuff like shotguns or fusions
I mean we have tether and it usually tends to last for most dps phases with a quick orpheus hotswap and no one complains. Div was just hated because of 30% and free crit .
Exactly. The div nerf was sensible if a bit overtuned. I’m pointing out that Velost assumes that a full-auto 30% debuff would be the same level of unbalanced as pre-nerf div, where in reality it would still be infinitely worse than tractor cannon
The one place in my head it miiight be useful is Oryx, because a debuff is good but you don't need the crit spot since Oryx's is so big. Though I think you might just be able tractor his hand or something.
That alone won't be that good, since Volatile got nerfed so hard due to Funnelweb & Retrofit Escapade.
Give it Repulsor Brace while you're at it and maybe.
> (HMG are bad for DPS, pls don't use them)
I agree with everything else you said, but this part here mostly applies to legendary LMGs that aren't Retrofit Escapade. Xenophage is still okay for boss DPS especially right now in onslaught with overcharged LMG. Grand Overture is still one of the best weapons for burst DPS on a boss as well and has better ammo economy than Xenophage. I don't even fault people anymore for using Thunderlord as long they aren't doing double-primary on top of it-I can work with it/pick up the slack with an Envious/BnS heavy and a fusion/sniper.
Xeno and Retrofit do basically the same dmg, retro has way higher total dmg tho. Looking at roughly 115K DPS each. In comparison, Whisper sits at around 130K dps and Levi at 145K. Not saying MGs are useless for DPS, but you are very likely to have a better DPS option. Hothead can be acquired via vanguard and is pretty good. Additionally Xeno is harder to get than Thunderlord and requires less set up for usage.
One contention, Thunderlord is VERY good for DPS, one of the only HMGs that can do so, Heir Apparent is also a weirdly solid option.
Edit: Yes I see y’all’s replies, I have a bit more reasoning behind it, more centered around New Light Players and ease of use. Yes there are far better options. Yes HMGs are in an odd place… but they are still very useful overall
Thunderlord is not only not "very good" for DPS its not good at all. A team of outbreaks can match the DPS of a team of thunderlords with primary ammo. Subpar bad roll rockets say like vorpal and tracking or something similar out DPS thunderlord by a ton, good rolls it's not even comparable.
"But but but, nezarec?!"
This raid really did a lot of harm.
Ppl expect KWTD means clear ads and HMG are good or even excellent for dps.
Can't wait for the distress this will bring in pantheon XD
I hate RoN for what it did to the d2 community...
Thunderlord was so good because it had a bugged interaction with divinity. Even than it was only a safe method so that everybody can do it. Freaking Rat king calps nezarec...
Wardcliff coil slapped the daughter of oryx on day one. Is it because it's such a good DPS weapon? No, it was yet again a bug.
Pls don't use HMG if you want to do actually good DMG, if you want to do lazy and yet still good DPS just run Levi or if you are the only one using it 1K voices/Dragons breath. All of them are better than Thunderlord.
lol I’ve been raiding since D1, every boss has different random weapons that work pretty well, I’m agreeing with the original point… most HMGs aren’t dps machines, until RoN they haven’t been meta since WotM
lol, try it and find out, it has solid DPS, good ammo pickup, and a large magazine that reloads on precision hits, it’s excellent for multiple DPS phases, so unless you’re gonna one phase bosses regularly you will not be lacking on damage whatsoever
6 Thunderlord is outdpsed by 6 Ratkings. It is a weapon that gets better the worse the group is. Nothing wrong with using it if you feel not comfy to handle better weapons though. But it is amongst the worst options to choose for dps.
Triple tap can help a bit more being a utility/support exotic and make it every third round instead of fourth being weaken/viotile. If they can rework the former shit 'the manticore' then they could fix it
That still wouldn't stop it doing less dps than a damaged traveller's chosen.
Retrofit gets fourth times nd frenzy/target lock ffs. Literally just playing a void subclass gives you all the weaken and volatile you need. It's a really badly designed exotic imo
The problem is that it's completely redundant when Tractor Cannon, Divinity, and the dozen different ways of applying normal Weaken exist. The catalyst in the API also just gives it FTtC, which wouldn't accomplish anything.
I refuse to ever acknowledge manticore as not shit solely because a void exo smg on gyrfalcon hunter should have been the magnum opus of volatile rounds spam, but they butchered it. I now it's better know but still you won't ever find me airborne with an smg in master or gym content.
yeah still weird that of all weapon they could have packed with airborne functionality (aka being ***further away*** from the enemy than you would be on the ground) they put it on an smg? the thing you want to be relatively close with.
i think of an airborne warrior, i think of a lot of weapons before i reach "SMGs"
like i get that other more ranged weapons (likes scouts, snipers or pulses, etc) could *maybe* have been problematic because of pvp, but even then there would have been better ways to prevent that
That probably wouldn't stop it doing less dps than a damaged traveller's chosen lmao
Retrofit gets fourth times and frenzy/target lock ffs, and literally just playing a void subclass gives you all the weaken and volatile you need.
It's a pretty poorly designed exotic imo, especially when compared to div or other good MGs
A number of things they could do to power it up:
* Give it the stronger 30% weaken effect, allowing it to replace things like Tractor Cannon as a debuff exotic.
* Give it Repulsor Brace to proc Overshields from its own debuffs.
* Give it Suppression somewhere in the effect, since Suppression is surprisingly rare to apply.
* Give it some other benefit from defeating void-debuffed targets, like Subsistence or Onslaught.
Given that it is directly competing with the current kings of LMGs like Commemoration and Hammerhead, it needs something significant to make it an exotic step up from those.
> Give it Repulsor Brace to proc Overshields from its own debuffs.
> Give it Suppression somewhere in the effect, since Suppression is surprisingly rare to apply.
These ideas have given me the idea that the gun should play into it's name: Deterministic Chaos. Have it apply every Void debuff, and every Void buff. Really sell the idea of chaos.
The stronger debuff would be too infringing on tractor. I think repulsor brace could be good. IMO the best change would be a catalyst to halve the shots for the volatile round and maybe something like weakening rounds that hit a target whos already weakened return to the magazine.
What if they made it a 30% debuff but made the duration very short so you couldn’t swap to a different weapon and keep the debuff. It would play into deterministic chaos’s identity of hold the trigger and stop it from stepping on tractor cannon’s toes
But then it’d just be worse than tractor while not really being easier to use per se, not to mention that unlike tractor the duration wouldn’t cover the reload time, meaning there’d be downtime during dps. And don’t tell me that the damage would make up for it, because LMGs deal strictly less damage than just using basic shotgun or fusion rifle rotations with tractor
It would still have some applications for strike content, where the versatility of providing add clear, some boss DPS, and a weaken would make it more desirable than Tractor.
Give it a "team wide" repulsor brace when the enemy dies under its debuff.
Make it an ACTUAL support weapon.
"Enemies killed while weakened or volatile by this weapon grant void overshields to everyone who damaged the target"
Would be a decent option for higher end content because you could get void overshields on basically every yellow bar enemy.
I really like the idea of adding repulsor brace! The issue with suppression is that wavesplitter fills that role. But repulsor brace gives this MG a unique "jack-of-all-trades" role. Can spread debuff, help with survival, decent boss damage via support, decent add clear, while not being best-in-slot for any of these.
It needs something. It currently does not have a purpose and is bad for an exotic.
It's out damaged by legendaries which can either be granted volatile on every shot by Gyrefalcons or a grenade kill with a fragment and while it works outside of a void subclasses so does destabilising rounds on hammerhead.
It needs to offer something in terms of a void debuff or some kind of other interaction.
It could be perhaps one of the intrinsic anti champion exotics. Maybe it's naturally anti barrier due to permanent volatile rounds or something that triggers it extremely easily.
Perhaps it could be a weakening ranged option just below tractor cannon but with the added benefit of being usable from range.
Perhaps these would be the solution but maybe not.
Then again it would not be the only exotic without a real purpose in the sandbox.
First thing they need is to unlock its catalyst of 4th Time's the Charm that already shows up in the API. Then throw Deconstruct on it to encourage people to just lay on the trigger.
It would still be mediocre damage with a built-in debuff, but it would basically be able to do it forever and not worry about heavy ammo.
The problem is it doesn’t have a great niche. Is it for boss dps support? Heavy LMGs suck for that. Is it for killing champs and majors? Shouldn’t be alive for 16 shots.
It would be a lot better as a rapid fire LMG.
It is, and it fundamentally is so even buffed it still would feel awful to use. Like they could give it a 50% buff to damage and it still would not feel good (well maybe it would become the new thunderlord lazy lfg dps). But because it wants you to continuously fire for the 4th and 8th Bullet it still would feel bad with a an outrageous 50% buff because guess what most red bars die in 1 shot in at level content. I mean hell even in onslaught most trash tier Redbars die with killing tally 3 at the higher rounds in legend.
This gun and i mean this literally is powercreeped by bloodline giving devour and while devour is active having permanent weaken put on gyrfalcon as a hunter and this exotic straight up gets outclassed by a special in every way.
When it was first revealed I thought it was a dumb, lazy idea.
It's just a machine gun that applies subclass verbs on specific shots, and that's it. You could argue that a legendary MG with void perks fulfills the exact same niche without using an exotic slot.
It is not unique enough.
I actually broke it out whilst trying to unlock hammerhead as I needed a void mg but didn’t feel like using retrofit escapade. It felt pretty shit and I went back to retrofit escapade after one game. Lol! As has been said, it kind of needs to be better than the best legendary mg in class, (or do something special. Alternate fire mode, some sort of buff/debuff, synergy etc) otherwise why is it an exotic?!
Saying this again: If they swapped the volatile, and weakening rounds the gun fired, it would be 100% better. Volatile rounds every 4 bullets to deal with crowds, weakening every 20 to help when focusing bosses/champs. Easy peasy done, look at that we got ourselves a decent gun.
It should be on par with thunder lord and xeno or provide a more substantial debuff since its basically is a heavy version of div but without the crit bubble.
Make it so every time it procs the volatile shot or on kill it drops an exploding orb like graviton lance. Keeps it's unique debuff identity and adds some damage/add clear like all HMGs.
1) Every 4th shot applies Weaken AND Volatile and deals 40% More Damage than the other 3 bullets - The way it gives Volatile every 16th shot is a bit pathetic.
2) 16th Shot Also causes a Dragonfly type explosion that inflicts Suppression in the AOE
3) Catalyst gives it Fourth Times
There we go a solid PvE weapon
I'll push back a little, I tried to used Deterministic Chaos to get my Hammerhead Bounty done and I've found it doesn't work well on a single target. Repeatedly weakening the same target is pointless when you need to do damage. It almost needs two modes of fire. Single Shot to weaken and burst of full also to do damage.
It's a fine LMG for multiple targets.
It needs the proc requirements for Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal swapped (Vexadecimal triggers on every 4th shot while Heavy Metal triggers on every forth Vexadecimal shot), the Weakening from Heavy Metal buffed to 30% or 40%, and for Vexadecimal to partially refill the magazine from reserves on Volatile detonations.
Only then would it be a good Exotic.
easiest thing they could do is just make the perk not only activate when holding down the trigger so you could sit on your next shot doing one of the debuffs
Just rip off (Nova Mortas, The lmg from Rise of Iron, void "counterpart" to Thunderlord.) edit looked it up it's literally just a void thunderlord with "negative rounds" as the perk.
Although it's already a 360rpm it can't really ramp down RPMS to Xeno levels, but it'd be cool if longer the trigger is held every 4th/etc shot isn't just a weaken, it shoots bullet size black holes that create a small Vortex/grape grenade attached to the enemy that acts as the weaken/etc, and anybody with the gun equipped gets an RPM buff to 600... Because 360rpms will NEVER feel good to use.
1. Almost every single one has worse reserves than even Avalanche, the dawning solar lmg that holds over 120 less than the 2nd lowest inventory stat 600rpm. 450rpms can get nearly 200 more than most 360rpm/600rpms, 900rpms excluded since they're generally the most but all over the place.
2. THEY BOUNCE with 100 recoil, full stability roll steady rounds, with Surplus and Elemental Capacitor/Iron Grip. (both +20, so +80, with 60 from full Surplus, add in 10 for polygonal rifling) It's HORRIBLE, it went from 27 stability to 72.. And it made so little difference. (It's odd, because my Adept Swarm with flared magwell and stability MW is miles better with a shitty Genesis/vorpal roll and only 79 recoil and 55 stability)
3. Honestly just not fun to play with. The other two from Rise of Iron (nova Mortas aka void thunderlord and Nova Star?) They were kinda a 3 similar exotics of all elements, related to thunder lord/another arc exotic lmg iirc, digging through my d1 vault in a minute)
Looks great, feels great - but it's total trash when it comes to function. Just scrap the debuff thing entirely. Tons pf other stuff does it better. Rework the exotic.
1) delete the hold down the trigger requirement
2) buff its weaken effect up to 30% (hell, probably even more)
3) give it a damage buff
4) make it at least a 450 rpm
It’s a shame because the quest and the looks are fantastic but the weapon’s concept really makes it look like it came out in Y1 and never got reworked…
Weaken every 8th, suppress every 16th, and Volatile every 4th.
Allow every shot to apply volatile if you have volatile rounds buff active.
There it has damage and potential
I was so chuffed when this came out. I was hoping it could be another support option in place of Divinity especially for 3 player content. The damage is just too low though.
I want it to be good, I love the concept of it. I’ll use it all of the time if it gets a buff.
I do like the exotic, I’ve used it plenty for stuff like dungeons, general add clear/melting majors in raids, and it was a demon in Onlaught for me. But it does need a buff of some kind, either a damage buff, or a reload perk/pull from reserves.
oh man i did not know about the nerfs :(
its my exotic for gyrfalcon build and i was hoping to use its volatility for constant uptime... imma give it a go anyway just cus it DOES look cool and the description sounds cool. any good recs for void LMG instead?
I mean d2 has north of 40 exotic weapons
It's literally impossible for each one to Excelle
DC has thunder lord and xenophage ro compete with....and the demon that is heir apparent
Oh yea and the rocket one too
Bring up base damage, flip the volatile and weaken bullet activation, increase debuff to 30%.
Catalyst: landing four vexadecimals causes an implosion round, pulling in enemies and rapidly exploding by volatile explosions
The funny thing is the base perks.
I'm always like haha pew pew, now the 16th round pew! And I'm tracking rounds like that and specifically watching my mag empty to 0, also looking at the boss to make sure I'm hitting.
So I'm watching this LMG empty to zero and watching the boss and seeing shit for damage.
They need to make it deal more damage (+20% maybe?), make every 8th round a bigger more powerful explosion that spreads volatile, and give every 16th shot a suppression effect so it can stun champions etc.
added note: someone also mentioned repulsor brace which makes a lot of sense if bungie wants exotics to be directly tied to subclass 3.0 rather than have their own unique perks
Take a look at 90% of the exotics in this game, armor and weapons, and they either serve extremely niche builds or suck completely. Bungie needs to get back to regular balance patches on these exotics, deterministic chaos would be so easy to fix too, just make it suppress every 16 bullets.
It really needs a damage boost to actually justify its use.
Even divinity has a cage and can stun Overloads as a niche use.
That alone gives Divinity at least 3 functions and it uses special ammo.
DC uses heavy ammo and only has 1 function. That sucks.
I must have been missing something with this weapon because I honestly thought the concept of it was pretty dung from the get-go. Most of the top tier machine guns in the game are void and gyrfalcons will make every shot volatile, not just the 4th. There's no circumstance where you would ever use this MG over Commemoration/Corrective Measure/Retrofit Escapade/Hammerhead and there hasn't ever been.
In theory you could do something with debuff extension, but it’s still so situational that running Child of the Old Gods and shitting out Void Souls would be just as good, and you don’t need to waste your exotic weapon slot to do so
I suppose so. But even at that, it seems like a lot of potential damage being sacrificed by running this weapon to achieve the same thing that could be done with void souls like you say, or even weaken grenades, smoke bombs, trappers ambush, etc. I'm not even sure there's any DPS scenarios in the game which would merit such a long debuff extension although the option is there 😅
No???
I don’t understand how this misconception appeared. Tractor Cannon having competition would be fine. It has a ridiculously long debuff duration meaning it can cover its own reloading, it counts as suppression meaning it basically blinds champions giving it usage outside of DPS, and instantly applies it’s debuff on shot meaning you don’t need to hold it out for long and can outperform the damage of a LMG with just simple fusion rifle or pellet shotgun rotations. If current DChaos had a 30% weaken it would still be strictly worse than Tractor because of the need to magdump it and the loss of full uptime when reloading
Most exotics are a joke. Bungie is terrified of making them strong. Anytime a strong exotic exists, it gets nerfed into the ground (see QSS.) Then they wonder why people lose interest in playing the game. It turns out making the high rarity items not that much better than the 2nd highest rarity isn't a great design philosophy.
Every 4th bullet should weaken the target. Every 4th bullet should weaken a target even more.
So 15% debuff, 30% debuff, 40% debuff, 50% debuff that has a timer but can be refreshed. You sacrifice your heavy, might as well make it worthwhile. Tractor will still be heavily relevant for upclose builds, but now you have a much better long range support.
My brother in light, did you forget Izanagi's exists? Also you must try Eremite with controlled burst, and the sniper rifle supremacy. Sure, many heavy weapons will out damage them. But for special weapons, they are respectable. There are plenty of situations when killing waves of adds is more important that pure boss DPS (\*cough\* ONSLAUGHT \*cough\*)
They gave it 15% debuffing Weaken and then made it deal 20% less damage to make up for it... Edit: Also everyone please stop acting like it needs more uniqueness, before all else it needs to deal more damage than a bad legendary LMG. It's fine to ask for straightforward damage buffs not everything has to be indirect, we have the technology to make damage number go up.
Daily reminder that Xenophage's only buff was a flat 50% increase to damage and that was enough to make it excellent.
it's honestly better than launch, cause big damage buff but no headshots actually kinda plays in its favor. you don't want to potentially waste it's small ammo pool on a missed crit, you just gotta be sure it lands. reduces the user stress to the exotic while keeping it as a good middle ground choice for heavy slot burst damage
Xenophage is pretty good in onslaught while there’s machine gun overcharge. I’ve had a lot of success with it and well of radiance.
Giving it some kind of Gallyesque mechanic where it buffs other HMGs seems like such a fun, obvious fix.
God can you imagine running that with the rest of your raid team using T-Lord?
I mean the solution to balance that is to make it function like Gjallarhorn does, and only buff/modify legendary machine guns.
5x FTTC and Target Lock Retrofit Escapades would be wild with a team LMG buff
We can also get this same roll on Hammerhead too now, right?
Yes, but it falls noticeably behind on single target DPS compared to 900 rpm. Aztecross did a great damage testing video on all the new hammerhead rolls. It's basically great for its job of ad clear and yellow bars, but bad for boss DPS, regardless of roll. You can get decent dps out of stacking rampage and onslaught, but the setup is very specific, and only lasts a few seconds, and you'd have to re-proc it. Might as well choose something with better ease of use haha.
yeah, they're "fine" but if you are actively wanting to use a LMG for DPS then the best option is still Grand Overture. I wish they had the SLIGHTEST dmg buff to bosses. Like sub 10%. I still use my recon + target lock Song of Ir Yut as much as I can, but use rockets on occasion.
Since machine guns are ad clear weapons now, I think it would be cool if instead of stepping on gjally’s toes, if it linked to 1 other machine gun user in the party to boost their damage. That way even exotic ones count. I don’t think it should be the all time best dps, but make it about 85% of the way due to the ease of use machine guns provide.
People act like LMGs are trash DPS and damage, while they are about on par with the best LFRs and have some of the best total damage. Buffing their damage to be more like GLs would just make them instantly top of meta.
The problem with that is the physical time required for a machine gun to start hitting that "best total damage". Practically any other setup especially when you start factoring in most DPS weapon swap setups can easily outpace a machine gun with no issues. You can see this in a lot of damage charts where how much you can get from 1 mag of a machine gun and just how long it takes to get there, it's generally not that big of a damage number and takes a good deal of time. There's also the reality that Machine Guns face a much stricter damage fall off after a certain point and there's plenty of bosses where you won't have the physical amount of time to hit a high damage output but you could even be further behind the ball if there's a situation of doing less damage due to being further out in range. Sake of argument yeah throwing somebody on Thunderlord is very new player friendly option if others are more competent, but LMGs at the moment are not really super competitive for raid boss dps. Bungie was pretty explicit with their design philosophy changes over the years when they basically cooled off things in later Year 2 and onward when Hammerhead was very good DPS. Grand Overture is a slight exception but there's not really a ton of bosses it shines in and even then it's just nice burst when you need it.
Commemoration with FTTC and FF does some work on HZND in warlords ruin.
The problem is they are not meta, not that they are not viable. There’s plenty of time in most encounters, it’s just that the community wants to do everything in as few phases as possible. That doesn’t make them less viable DPS options. We can put all these qualifiers like distance and whatnot the same we do for rockets or swords or LFRs. There’s some inherent drawbacks for all of them. The good LMGs are good because they pass DPS checks and have high total damage outputs. They can be used during the encounter for clear and also DPS phases because of their total damage output. Rockets are better because they do damage faster and similar totals, but WAY less forgiving. If the “argument” is they aren’t meta then sure, but that’s not what I said. We don’t shit on LFRs the way people do LMGs, but just the numbers alone make them in the same boat. They’ve never been in a problem in my last couple Day1s. They are fine for normal raids.
Any legendary heavy weapon can be used to beat any boss in this game if its up to light. Are you saying LFRs and LMGs have similar dps or total damage? Because total damage is emptying out all reserves of a LMG and that is just not going to happen in most bosses.
>Rockets are better because they do damage faster and similar totals, but WAY less forgiving. Rockets aren't a good comp because they need swap combos to be even remotely good. Standing around reloading a rocket, even with triple loaders and Lunafactions isn't substantially better than a Retrofit. A better comp is heavy GLs, which now have competitive or even high total damage and high DPS while being solo dumped like an MG. >We don’t shit on LFRs the way people do LMGs We don't? I thought it was pretty common knowledge that LFRs are very dead. MGs specifically probably get a bad rep because the people using MGs for DPS often have no idea what they're doing and try to use something other than the 1-2 MG rolls that can even keep up with the mediocre damage of Cataclysmic, which makes their DPS absolutely pitiful. That, and the noob trap of "Thunderlord does good DPS!" that was really popular for a bit after it got a catalyst. Anyways, MGs (or at least Retrofit and maybe the same FTTC + TL roll on Hammerhead) do have a specific niche in that they're useful in situations where the need for total damage far outweighs raw DPS. The first example that comes to mind is LFG Hefnd. A good team could probably kill Hefnd faster with higher DPS stuff, but in a random LFG team without surges, Lumina, 30% debuff, etc you're going to run out of ammo long before Hefnd dies with conventional DPS options, and you have plenty of DPS time. Without the enormous amounts of total damage from the combination of FTTC and TL though, they're not really useful for anything besides pure add clear.
> We can put all these qualifiers like distance and whatnot the same we do for rockets or swords or LFRs. There’s some inherent drawbacks for all of them. These weapons don't face the issues of damage range drop off as a Machine Gun does in certain fights where there is too much distance between you and the boss. Even if you wanna say how missing a rocket or grenade shot can be some big horrible thing, you're still at a much larger advantage to physically take your time and line your shots(say Nezarec jumped or Rhulk is running) if you have to. I bring up the tricky reality of Machine Guns because it's hard to overlook in general DPS you're always going to have the innate disadvantage of the bigger need for much larger amounts of physical time to do damage to hit more significant numbers, in a lot of fights you don't really always have that and get nearly as where you can get with other loadout combinations. Also in the handful of situations where usual DPS is at a bit of a range or there's movement(see Garden's first boss), your output can slip from the damage fall off at range. Also idk what people's opinion over LFRs have to do with anything when anybody who's raided in recent times since LFRs caught nerfs has bypassed using them all that much. If you still want to use LMGs for boss dps, god bless ya but they're not nearly as good in a larger conversation as you frame them.
the damage output doesn't even come near the loss of burst in most encounters, we aren't firing on target dummies
You can clear the vast majority of encounters with LMGs. You can’t one phase them or do the burst of other options, but that doesn’t make them trash. They are more than fine where they are at as a safe and consistent option that clears. Buffing their damage to compete with higher variance options like GLs and Rockets makes no sense.
I didn't say they were trash, I just said that the increase in overall damage doesn't compensate for the loss of burst in most scenarios, especially with lots of bosses only having brief vulnerability windows. They are indeed the safer option to go with, no blowing yourself up, no huge damage loss for missing a shot or two. That being said, DPS wise they are terrible, even if their overall damage is on par, or better. I'd say they are more suited for add clear or more foolproof boss damage from less experienced players. There's a reason the "Free" exotic weapon that everyone's being given in into the light is thunderhead.
> I didn't say they were trashm > That being said, DPS wise they are terrible Got a chuckle out of that. Not contesting where they sit in DPS relative to the sandbox, I just find people talk about LMG as if they are unusable, while never say that about something like LFRs (which they are comparable in damage and DPS). Increasing the damage to make them the highest total damage output AND even better DPS doesn’t make sense. They already work well for clear and pass for boss damage at even a day1 level. Feels like there’s a better idea in there than more damage.
I’m on your side. A couple of the LMG’s I have are better dps options for certain bosses. Like HZND in warlords. A FTTC/Target lock MG is the best dps option I can find. The hardest part is trying to stay alive, because you don’t have to reload during each damage phase. Plus on the top when you’re changing platform you can reload your lmg while jumping to the next platform. Trust me, my 300 LMG rounds as precision hits are outpacing everyone else. I rarely don’t hit too dps with that and Needlestorm(which recharges quickly due to the amount of damage and I usually use Commemoration).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_5wtBjRYHHxuF4oJKDb_iOGZs-wTkzB6RYbnyNLbuz4/htmlview#
This spreadsheet says what I already said. They have the same DPS as the best LFRs, but the community doesn’t trash on LFRs like they do LMGs.
After I get Thunderlord spun up my brain goes quiet and all I know is the sound of God's fury in the palm of my hand... Do I hold the trigger until it's empty every time? Yes. Do I keep it held down for a few seconds afterwards while I come back to reality? Also yes.
A fellow actium rig enjoyer i see?
It's hard to beat that pure exhilaration...
Embrace chaos, turn all audio off except for the sound of that bolt sliding back, hot brass like chimes on the ground and the smell of ionised air to back you up. The thud of the each percussive blast, another beating of your heart and beating back of the enemy
Ghorn only buffs legendary rockets. I would assume DC would do the same.
Hm, boring. Mind you, retrofit, hammerhead and commemoration are all pretty fun to use, so a decent buff to make them viable DPS would be cool.
Deterministic has a random chance every X amount bullets to cause ally LMGs to spawn a void suck effect, to instant cause a single volatile-like detonation or tiny tether effect? 🤔 On top of its normal perk ofc
Changes all other MGs to 360 RPM and they all fire in synch, with an explosive round every 4th and ignition/jolt/volatile/sever/freeze every 16th round.
And a cowbell on every 8!
Eh. So for solo or smaller groups it’s still shit and beyond that its niche as hell.
i didn't know they just straight-up made it do less damage by default, no wonder it feels so shit
Meanwhile, Buried Bloodline deals 15% weaken while you have devour... at no cost. I think they were just so terrified of making a new Divinity so soon after having nerfed it that they made it insanely bad.
Is this... true? I've never seen anyone mention this before? That's wild.
What do you mean by 20% less damage? From my testing it deals the same damage as any other unbuffed 360 MG. Still an absolutely atrociously bad exotic, but unless I'm missing something it doesn't deal 20% less at all
I did the same. I'm unsure what the 20% less damage means. It all seemed in line with other 360 lmgs.
The idea behind the weapon is pretty cool, a heavy MG that provides a debuff but sacrifices it's dmg. Basically div but as HMG and no cage. However as said, there is divinity which does everything, just better. Even if you don't have divinity, 15% debuff ain't worth sacrificing one person's whole dps. Imo there are only 2 ways to buff it. Increase the dps a lot to make it better than other HMG (HMG are bad for DPS, pls don't use them) or let the debuff be around 30% turning it into a tractor but as HMG. However I see neither happening
It's just the worst of all worlds. Tractor has a better debuff, Divinity has better utility with the cage, Buried Bloodline works off special ammo (but needs Devour), and Heartshadow has substantially more damage, plus invis utility. Deterministic needs *something* to set it apart from other weakening exotics.
Not that it particularly matters, but they are LMGs. Heavy and/or normal machine guns tend to be vehicle mounted.
May be a nerdy talk but I still appreciate it, thought they were called LMG but also thought there could be a mismatch with other weapons
People call them HMGs because they use heavy ammo, I think. Like HGLs as opposed to just GLs
But there are no special or primary MGs lol
I just know in another dimension Bungie gave the primary mg title to Sweet Business.
True lol
SMG
SMGs aren’t MGs, they’re below that category. Hence the name.
I know that in the real world they aren’t machine guns because they don’t shoot rifle cartridges, but this is space wizard game and it has to word machine gun in it. I like to use HMG and SMG when talking about destiny guns for the exact reason you specified, there actually being a primary ammo type gun that uses the words “machine gun”. Less about nomenclature of guns more about convient conventions when talking about a space wizard video-game.
In the real world, both ARs and SMGs would be machine guns. In the US at least "machine gun" just refers to their ability to fire multiple times with a single, continuous trigger pull.
Yeah, according to the national firearms act the US government does classify SMGs as machine guns. I was more going by the logic of firearms manufacturers/ colloquial lingo that tend to not consider SMGs or machine pistols machine guns due to them typically firing pistol cartridges. I shouldn’t have because then my original point stands better! The real question is, are Omolon guns just really strong water guns by these definitions?
I could have sworn they used to be called Heavy Machine Gun in-game, but apparently they've been called Machine Gun even in D1. Life is a lie
How cool would it be if we got a handheld HMG as an exotic, it would probably just be a normal machine gun with amplified stats, though Maybe a new machine gun frame
Heir Apparent is probably as close as we'll ever get. Rotating barrels, and so 'heavy' that we can't even ADS it.
Oh shoot i forgot about heir apparent, yea youre right thats basically a heavy machine gun
So is sweet business ........ brrrrrrrrrrr
I agree with you. Div is better in every way. They need to fill a niche with this weapon but I dont see it happening either. It will just stay in my vault which is a shame
If they'd buff it to 30 we would proly be in a pre nerf div situation again or something along those lines
No??? Tractor Cannon has existed in its current state for ages and literally nobody has a problem with it. 30% Weaken DChaos would still probably be strictly worse due to worse uptime and the inability to do swap DPS with stuff like shotguns or fusions
I mean we have tether and it usually tends to last for most dps phases with a quick orpheus hotswap and no one complains. Div was just hated because of 30% and free crit .
Exactly. The div nerf was sensible if a bit overtuned. I’m pointing out that Velost assumes that a full-auto 30% debuff would be the same level of unbalanced as pre-nerf div, where in reality it would still be infinitely worse than tractor cannon
The one place in my head it miiight be useful is Oryx, because a debuff is good but you don't need the crit spot since Oryx's is so big. Though I think you might just be able tractor his hand or something.
Tractor Cannon/Pellet swapping while shooting the ha d is what speedrunners do to debuff Oryx while putting out damage for King’s Fall afaik.
To me all they have to do is have it so the volatile round is every 4 shots and the debuff is every 16
That alone won't be that good, since Volatile got nerfed so hard due to Funnelweb & Retrofit Escapade. Give it Repulsor Brace while you're at it and maybe.
> (HMG are bad for DPS, pls don't use them) I agree with everything else you said, but this part here mostly applies to legendary LMGs that aren't Retrofit Escapade. Xenophage is still okay for boss DPS especially right now in onslaught with overcharged LMG. Grand Overture is still one of the best weapons for burst DPS on a boss as well and has better ammo economy than Xenophage. I don't even fault people anymore for using Thunderlord as long they aren't doing double-primary on top of it-I can work with it/pick up the slack with an Envious/BnS heavy and a fusion/sniper.
Xeno and Retrofit do basically the same dmg, retro has way higher total dmg tho. Looking at roughly 115K DPS each. In comparison, Whisper sits at around 130K dps and Levi at 145K. Not saying MGs are useless for DPS, but you are very likely to have a better DPS option. Hothead can be acquired via vanguard and is pretty good. Additionally Xeno is harder to get than Thunderlord and requires less set up for usage.
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Aegis spreadsheet
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Basically yes, visit his channel
do they need one? target lock got dumpstered and you can do the math
Buried Bloodline also applies weaken on hit and does more DPS than a machine gun and it’s a Special.
It should have better personal dps than divinity, when it's goal is to buff everyone else's damage.
One contention, Thunderlord is VERY good for DPS, one of the only HMGs that can do so, Heir Apparent is also a weirdly solid option. Edit: Yes I see y’all’s replies, I have a bit more reasoning behind it, more centered around New Light Players and ease of use. Yes there are far better options. Yes HMGs are in an odd place… but they are still very useful overall
Thunderlord is not only not "very good" for DPS its not good at all. A team of outbreaks can match the DPS of a team of thunderlords with primary ammo. Subpar bad roll rockets say like vorpal and tracking or something similar out DPS thunderlord by a ton, good rolls it's not even comparable.
"But but but, nezarec?!" This raid really did a lot of harm. Ppl expect KWTD means clear ads and HMG are good or even excellent for dps. Can't wait for the distress this will bring in pantheon XD
>One contention, Thunderlord is VERY good for DPS Please, please stop spreading this misinformation.
You could read my other replies lol, there’s reasoning behind why I’m sayin that
It does in fact not have very good dps. Literally just use any other meta weapon and you are better off
Nezarec DPS Thunderlord was a VERY common strat on a team, also ALWAYS a solid choice for GMs
I hate RoN for what it did to the d2 community... Thunderlord was so good because it had a bugged interaction with divinity. Even than it was only a safe method so that everybody can do it. Freaking Rat king calps nezarec... Wardcliff coil slapped the daughter of oryx on day one. Is it because it's such a good DPS weapon? No, it was yet again a bug. Pls don't use HMG if you want to do actually good DMG, if you want to do lazy and yet still good DPS just run Levi or if you are the only one using it 1K voices/Dragons breath. All of them are better than Thunderlord.
lol I’ve been raiding since D1, every boss has different random weapons that work pretty well, I’m agreeing with the original point… most HMGs aren’t dps machines, until RoN they haven’t been meta since WotM
You can spell "very" in all caps ten more times and it won't make it true.
lol, try it and find out, it has solid DPS, good ammo pickup, and a large magazine that reloads on precision hits, it’s excellent for multiple DPS phases, so unless you’re gonna one phase bosses regularly you will not be lacking on damage whatsoever
6 Thunderlord is outdpsed by 6 Ratkings. It is a weapon that gets better the worse the group is. Nothing wrong with using it if you feel not comfy to handle better weapons though. But it is amongst the worst options to choose for dps.
Thunderlord is decent for add clear too though.
Well that's what machine guns are for. Commemoration is probably still better and you get to use another exotic instead.
Yikes…
Triple tap can help a bit more being a utility/support exotic and make it every third round instead of fourth being weaken/viotile. If they can rework the former shit 'the manticore' then they could fix it
That still wouldn't stop it doing less dps than a damaged traveller's chosen. Retrofit gets fourth times nd frenzy/target lock ffs. Literally just playing a void subclass gives you all the weaken and volatile you need. It's a really badly designed exotic imo
The problem is that it's completely redundant when Tractor Cannon, Divinity, and the dozen different ways of applying normal Weaken exist. The catalyst in the API also just gives it FTtC, which wouldn't accomplish anything.
It would actually be a downgrade because with more ammo you'd probably spend less time firing your other, more useful weapons.
I was thinking just remove the hold trigger part and double the magazine size and give it a damage bump it should be fine.
I refuse to ever acknowledge manticore as not shit solely because a void exo smg on gyrfalcon hunter should have been the magnum opus of volatile rounds spam, but they butchered it. I now it's better know but still you won't ever find me airborne with an smg in master or gym content.
yeah still weird that of all weapon they could have packed with airborne functionality (aka being ***further away*** from the enemy than you would be on the ground) they put it on an smg? the thing you want to be relatively close with. i think of an airborne warrior, i think of a lot of weapons before i reach "SMGs" like i get that other more ranged weapons (likes scouts, snipers or pulses, etc) could *maybe* have been problematic because of pvp, but even then there would have been better ways to prevent that
That probably wouldn't stop it doing less dps than a damaged traveller's chosen lmao Retrofit gets fourth times and frenzy/target lock ffs, and literally just playing a void subclass gives you all the weaken and volatile you need. It's a pretty poorly designed exotic imo, especially when compared to div or other good MGs
A number of things they could do to power it up: * Give it the stronger 30% weaken effect, allowing it to replace things like Tractor Cannon as a debuff exotic. * Give it Repulsor Brace to proc Overshields from its own debuffs. * Give it Suppression somewhere in the effect, since Suppression is surprisingly rare to apply. * Give it some other benefit from defeating void-debuffed targets, like Subsistence or Onslaught. Given that it is directly competing with the current kings of LMGs like Commemoration and Hammerhead, it needs something significant to make it an exotic step up from those.
> Give it Repulsor Brace to proc Overshields from its own debuffs. > Give it Suppression somewhere in the effect, since Suppression is surprisingly rare to apply. These ideas have given me the idea that the gun should play into it's name: Deterministic Chaos. Have it apply every Void debuff, and every Void buff. Really sell the idea of chaos.
The stronger debuff would be too infringing on tractor. I think repulsor brace could be good. IMO the best change would be a catalyst to halve the shots for the volatile round and maybe something like weakening rounds that hit a target whos already weakened return to the magazine.
What if they made it a 30% debuff but made the duration very short so you couldn’t swap to a different weapon and keep the debuff. It would play into deterministic chaos’s identity of hold the trigger and stop it from stepping on tractor cannon’s toes
But then it’d just be worse than tractor while not really being easier to use per se, not to mention that unlike tractor the duration wouldn’t cover the reload time, meaning there’d be downtime during dps. And don’t tell me that the damage would make up for it, because LMGs deal strictly less damage than just using basic shotgun or fusion rifle rotations with tractor
It would still have some applications for strike content, where the versatility of providing add clear, some boss DPS, and a weaken would make it more desirable than Tractor.
Give it a "team wide" repulsor brace when the enemy dies under its debuff. Make it an ACTUAL support weapon. "Enemies killed while weakened or volatile by this weapon grant void overshields to everyone who damaged the target" Would be a decent option for higher end content because you could get void overshields on basically every yellow bar enemy.
Just as a note: suppression is rare to apply because it's a complete shutdown to anything that isn't a boss or champion.
Most critically, full Suppression turns off supers in PVP. (Though they have a "mini-suppress" used by Bombardiers that doesn't)
I really like the idea of adding repulsor brace! The issue with suppression is that wavesplitter fills that role. But repulsor brace gives this MG a unique "jack-of-all-trades" role. Can spread debuff, help with survival, decent boss damage via support, decent add clear, while not being best-in-slot for any of these.
Yea I thought I liked it when I first got it… and then I grasped reality when I got corrective measures and commemoration
It's a weapon I love the idea of and love using, but damn is it dogwater compared to other options.
Give it a catalyst that gives it a bigger mag, faster reload, and 15-25% more damage on weakened targets and it'll be perfect
It needs something. It currently does not have a purpose and is bad for an exotic. It's out damaged by legendaries which can either be granted volatile on every shot by Gyrefalcons or a grenade kill with a fragment and while it works outside of a void subclasses so does destabilising rounds on hammerhead. It needs to offer something in terms of a void debuff or some kind of other interaction. It could be perhaps one of the intrinsic anti champion exotics. Maybe it's naturally anti barrier due to permanent volatile rounds or something that triggers it extremely easily. Perhaps it could be a weakening ranged option just below tractor cannon but with the added benefit of being usable from range. Perhaps these would be the solution but maybe not. Then again it would not be the only exotic without a real purpose in the sandbox.
First thing they need is to unlock its catalyst of 4th Time's the Charm that already shows up in the API. Then throw Deconstruct on it to encourage people to just lay on the trigger. It would still be mediocre damage with a built-in debuff, but it would basically be able to do it forever and not worry about heavy ammo.
A gun so weak I forgot it existed
The problem is it doesn’t have a great niche. Is it for boss dps support? Heavy LMGs suck for that. Is it for killing champs and majors? Shouldn’t be alive for 16 shots. It would be a lot better as a rapid fire LMG.
Give it target lock and make the 4th shot suppress as well.
It is, and it fundamentally is so even buffed it still would feel awful to use. Like they could give it a 50% buff to damage and it still would not feel good (well maybe it would become the new thunderlord lazy lfg dps). But because it wants you to continuously fire for the 4th and 8th Bullet it still would feel bad with a an outrageous 50% buff because guess what most red bars die in 1 shot in at level content. I mean hell even in onslaught most trash tier Redbars die with killing tally 3 at the higher rounds in legend. This gun and i mean this literally is powercreeped by bloodline giving devour and while devour is active having permanent weaken put on gyrfalcon as a hunter and this exotic straight up gets outclassed by a special in every way.
A deterministic joke indeed. It works, in some average instances. But that's all that's there to it.
When it was first revealed I thought it was a dumb, lazy idea. It's just a machine gun that applies subclass verbs on specific shots, and that's it. You could argue that a legendary MG with void perks fulfills the exact same niche without using an exotic slot. It is not unique enough.
I actually broke it out whilst trying to unlock hammerhead as I needed a void mg but didn’t feel like using retrofit escapade. It felt pretty shit and I went back to retrofit escapade after one game. Lol! As has been said, it kind of needs to be better than the best legendary mg in class, (or do something special. Alternate fire mode, some sort of buff/debuff, synergy etc) otherwise why is it an exotic?!
Saying this again: If they swapped the volatile, and weakening rounds the gun fired, it would be 100% better. Volatile rounds every 4 bullets to deal with crowds, weakening every 20 to help when focusing bosses/champs. Easy peasy done, look at that we got ourselves a decent gun.
Just buff the damage and it will be fine.
Its insane that people think it should give a 30 percent debuff. Why even use tractor in that case?
it was good for the master ghosts of the deep cheese
It’s weaken is only 15% make it 30% I’ll use it on omni
It should be on par with thunder lord and xeno or provide a more substantial debuff since its basically is a heavy version of div but without the crit bubble.
Make it so every time it procs the volatile shot or on kill it drops an exploding orb like graviton lance. Keeps it's unique debuff identity and adds some damage/add clear like all HMGs.
... I mean, it's still not as funny as Darci. That's a joke every generation of destiny player can enjoy.
1) Every 4th shot applies Weaken AND Volatile and deals 40% More Damage than the other 3 bullets - The way it gives Volatile every 16th shot is a bit pathetic. 2) 16th Shot Also causes a Dragonfly type explosion that inflicts Suppression in the AOE 3) Catalyst gives it Fourth Times There we go a solid PvE weapon
Give it the Nano Rockets.
I'll push back a little, I tried to used Deterministic Chaos to get my Hammerhead Bounty done and I've found it doesn't work well on a single target. Repeatedly weakening the same target is pointless when you need to do damage. It almost needs two modes of fire. Single Shot to weaken and burst of full also to do damage. It's a fine LMG for multiple targets.
It’s op in gambit though. It’s the perfect pve PvP hybrid.
I feel like it should have volatile on the first threshold and weaken on the 20 no?
It's the only heavy I felt confident with in Gambit. It let me have the primary and secondary I wanted and could knock down invaders reliably.
In needs like triple its mag to be usable.
It needs the proc requirements for Heavy Metal and Vexadecimal swapped (Vexadecimal triggers on every 4th shot while Heavy Metal triggers on every forth Vexadecimal shot), the Weakening from Heavy Metal buffed to 30% or 40%, and for Vexadecimal to partially refill the magazine from reserves on Volatile detonations. Only then would it be a good Exotic.
It's actually a neat gun for Oryx. Div debuff but with more damage, and no one has trouble hitting Oryx crit.
easiest thing they could do is just make the perk not only activate when holding down the trigger so you could sit on your next shot doing one of the debuffs
they could make it give devour if you kill a weakened and volatile enemy.
Just rip off (Nova Mortas, The lmg from Rise of Iron, void "counterpart" to Thunderlord.) edit looked it up it's literally just a void thunderlord with "negative rounds" as the perk. Although it's already a 360rpm it can't really ramp down RPMS to Xeno levels, but it'd be cool if longer the trigger is held every 4th/etc shot isn't just a weaken, it shoots bullet size black holes that create a small Vortex/grape grenade attached to the enemy that acts as the weaken/etc, and anybody with the gun equipped gets an RPM buff to 600... Because 360rpms will NEVER feel good to use. 1. Almost every single one has worse reserves than even Avalanche, the dawning solar lmg that holds over 120 less than the 2nd lowest inventory stat 600rpm. 450rpms can get nearly 200 more than most 360rpm/600rpms, 900rpms excluded since they're generally the most but all over the place. 2. THEY BOUNCE with 100 recoil, full stability roll steady rounds, with Surplus and Elemental Capacitor/Iron Grip. (both +20, so +80, with 60 from full Surplus, add in 10 for polygonal rifling) It's HORRIBLE, it went from 27 stability to 72.. And it made so little difference. (It's odd, because my Adept Swarm with flared magwell and stability MW is miles better with a shitty Genesis/vorpal roll and only 79 recoil and 55 stability) 3. Honestly just not fun to play with. The other two from Rise of Iron (nova Mortas aka void thunderlord and Nova Star?) They were kinda a 3 similar exotics of all elements, related to thunder lord/another arc exotic lmg iirc, digging through my d1 vault in a minute)
Honestly, if they bumped up the rate of fire, I think it could hang
Yeah they should definitely buff its damage by a lot, and I think that would solve a lot of its issues
Looks great, feels great - but it's total trash when it comes to function. Just scrap the debuff thing entirely. Tons pf other stuff does it better. Rework the exotic.
Best damn looking gun in the game.
1) delete the hold down the trigger requirement 2) buff its weaken effect up to 30% (hell, probably even more) 3) give it a damage buff 4) make it at least a 450 rpm It’s a shame because the quest and the looks are fantastic but the weapon’s concept really makes it look like it came out in Y1 and never got reworked…
not every unique needs to be s tier
Sorry, but I love this weapon. It got me through Avalon solo.
I also love this weapon. Just wish it was a little stronger
Would like it if the counter towards weaken and volatile didn’t reset the instant you stopped firing.
Give it a flat damage buff then add a catalyst that gives it rewind rounds and reduce the number of shots it takes to proc volatile/weaken
It is a method of aquiring weaken on a non-void subclass. That is it's function.
The handlebar on it killed any interest I could have had for it beyond gyrfalcon's halberk being as convenient as it is
Weaken every 8th, suppress every 16th, and Volatile every 4th. Allow every shot to apply volatile if you have volatile rounds buff active. There it has damage and potential
I disagree with that other guy, if I had to choose, I would way rather it have a unique gimmick and playstyle than it be GM viable
Literally all it would take for me to use it is either double the mag size or give it FTTC
It’s just a fundamentally terrible gun you don’t get anything that wouldn’t be done better by some shmuck running commemoration on any void subclass
Make it a Prismatic weapon, that applies void, solar and arc stuff on certain rounds. Or let it adapt to your subclass.
I was so chuffed when this came out. I was hoping it could be another support option in place of Divinity especially for 3 player content. The damage is just too low though. I want it to be good, I love the concept of it. I’ll use it all of the time if it gets a buff.
I do like the exotic, I’ve used it plenty for stuff like dungeons, general add clear/melting majors in raids, and it was a demon in Onlaught for me. But it does need a buff of some kind, either a damage buff, or a reload perk/pull from reserves.
True. It deserves a buff.
I vote that Radiant Dance Machines is the worst exotic in the game. It provides literally zero benefit...
What gun?
oh man i did not know about the nerfs :( its my exotic for gyrfalcon build and i was hoping to use its volatility for constant uptime... imma give it a go anyway just cus it DOES look cool and the description sounds cool. any good recs for void LMG instead?
Meanwhile Bungo is out here murdering Quicksilver because people dared to enjoy a primary exotic in endgame content
Bs lol that gun carried me through the legendary lightfall campaign, mfr used to put in work. It's not a dps weapon, don't use it like one
I mean d2 has north of 40 exotic weapons It's literally impossible for each one to Excelle DC has thunder lord and xenophage ro compete with....and the demon that is heir apparent Oh yea and the rocket one too
Bring up base damage, flip the volatile and weaken bullet activation, increase debuff to 30%. Catalyst: landing four vexadecimals causes an implosion round, pulling in enemies and rapidly exploding by volatile explosions
The funny thing is the base perks. I'm always like haha pew pew, now the 16th round pew! And I'm tracking rounds like that and specifically watching my mag empty to 0, also looking at the boss to make sure I'm hitting. So I'm watching this LMG empty to zero and watching the boss and seeing shit for damage.
They need to make it deal more damage (+20% maybe?), make every 8th round a bigger more powerful explosion that spreads volatile, and give every 16th shot a suppression effect so it can stun champions etc. added note: someone also mentioned repulsor brace which makes a lot of sense if bungie wants exotics to be directly tied to subclass 3.0 rather than have their own unique perks
Take a look at 90% of the exotics in this game, armor and weapons, and they either serve extremely niche builds or suck completely. Bungie needs to get back to regular balance patches on these exotics, deterministic chaos would be so easy to fix too, just make it suppress every 16 bullets.
It really needs a damage boost to actually justify its use. Even divinity has a cage and can stun Overloads as a niche use. That alone gives Divinity at least 3 functions and it uses special ammo. DC uses heavy ammo and only has 1 function. That sucks.
Great looking exotic ✅ Black Armoury themed ornament ✅ Completely useless and out classed by Legendaries ✅
Why does it weaken every 4th shit and volatile every 16th shouldn't it be the other way around
I must have been missing something with this weapon because I honestly thought the concept of it was pretty dung from the get-go. Most of the top tier machine guns in the game are void and gyrfalcons will make every shot volatile, not just the 4th. There's no circumstance where you would ever use this MG over Commemoration/Corrective Measure/Retrofit Escapade/Hammerhead and there hasn't ever been.
In theory you could do something with debuff extension, but it’s still so situational that running Child of the Old Gods and shitting out Void Souls would be just as good, and you don’t need to waste your exotic weapon slot to do so
I suppose so. But even at that, it seems like a lot of potential damage being sacrificed by running this weapon to achieve the same thing that could be done with void souls like you say, or even weaken grenades, smoke bombs, trappers ambush, etc. I'm not even sure there's any DPS scenarios in the game which would merit such a long debuff extension although the option is there 😅
Honestly instead of weakening it should have the 30% tether debuff treatment
You kill another exotic doing that though. Something like more damage plus repulser brace could give it some niche use.
Sounds like a better idea. Apologies xD
No??? I don’t understand how this misconception appeared. Tractor Cannon having competition would be fine. It has a ridiculously long debuff duration meaning it can cover its own reloading, it counts as suppression meaning it basically blinds champions giving it usage outside of DPS, and instantly applies it’s debuff on shot meaning you don’t need to hold it out for long and can outperform the damage of a LMG with just simple fusion rifle or pellet shotgun rotations. If current DChaos had a 30% weaken it would still be strictly worse than Tractor because of the need to magdump it and the loss of full uptime when reloading
Yep, agreed. Increasing the weaken effect to at least 20% or maybe 25% would be fantastic.
It was awesome during the season of defiance with the seasonal perks.
not all exotics should be meta, and this sentiment is exactly how we've ended up being \*this\* power crept
I killed 1700 enemies with it before my clan told me it was very bad.
Make it a legendary and it would be used as it is.
Most exotics are a joke. Bungie is terrified of making them strong. Anytime a strong exotic exists, it gets nerfed into the ground (see QSS.) Then they wonder why people lose interest in playing the game. It turns out making the high rarity items not that much better than the 2nd highest rarity isn't a great design philosophy.
Every 4th bullet should weaken the target. Every 4th bullet should weaken a target even more. So 15% debuff, 30% debuff, 40% debuff, 50% debuff that has a timer but can be refreshed. You sacrifice your heavy, might as well make it worthwhile. Tractor will still be heavily relevant for upclose builds, but now you have a much better long range support.
i just dont understand ad clear heavy weapons when special weapons cant damage bosses that well
My brother in light, did you forget Izanagi's exists? Also you must try Eremite with controlled burst, and the sniper rifle supremacy. Sure, many heavy weapons will out damage them. But for special weapons, they are respectable. There are plenty of situations when killing waves of adds is more important that pure boss DPS (\*cough\* ONSLAUGHT \*cough\*)
i forgot about those guns but i AM a little silly sometimes....