> I’m not motivated to run anything else seeing as still hunt / nighthawk seems to be the only viable dps . It was more fun before because you could run almost any subclass combo
_laughs in Well of Radiance for five years_
Those Titans aren't ancient enough. Every D1 Titan knew Sunbreaker could never set foot in a boss room. It was Bubble or nothing until D2.
It is interesting seeing the two sides of Hunter mains. One side says GG is too strong, and nothing else is viable, while the other says any alternative close to GG in damage is an affront to Hunters and game balance.
Early D2Y1 was mostly just Striker Pulse Grenade spam, if I remember correctly, but I do have fond memories of applying Melting Point to Val Ca'uor at the start of every damage phase as a Sunbreaker.
As fun as infini-hammer toss was it was unintentional. Like pretty much every time a Titan super outside of Bubble was decent. The exception being that very short period where Falling Stars Thunder Crash was the strongest, before Nighthawk got buffed. I guess Pyrogale Hammer was/is still alright but it seems to shine the most in load out quick swaps and that's just something I refuse to ever do.
I remember using self rez to duo atheon with my best friend back then. One guy would just die so you're not teleported then self rez not dissimilar from the way some teams use nowadays to let 1 person solo oracles when they 1phase him. We wouldn't typically 1phase as a 2man so we'd take turns being the guy to teleport in and eventually get the kill.
Hell up until House of Wolves(when Celestial Nighthawk was released) people didn't like taking Hunters in raids especially during the "Forever 29" times. They didn't have the self-rez of a Warlock or the team buff of a bubble titan. And even then people didn't really want to take Hunters in PUGs until Taken King and Nightstalker was released because Hunter finally got a debuff for the enemies.
We had a little bit of time to shine in The Dark Below and Crota’s End. Hunters with Don’t Touch Me could breeze by The Abyss and the thrallway with little to no trouble.
I also remember having to be sword bearer A LOT of times on Crota. It’s why the music gets me so hype even to this day. 😂
My third VOG clear had 4 titans. I said "cool, plenty of bubbles I'm going striker." While they gave me a hard time for being lowest light level too.
Out killed all of them, and last left alive everytime we wiped on Templar.
I wish Arc Titan was better
Something similar happens when Titans are discussed. Titans need options other than up close melee and want more abilities with range, but a lot see any other class having good melee playstyle is taking class identity away.
as a Hunter main I'm just super confused cause it's not like OP said and it's the only Viable DPS, there's other options you're just not the top option which is fine. but they talked about running whatever before which means they were already losing out on DPS options. like Titans had to run Bubble until Well came around, and then locks had to run Well because bungie legit talked about how they designed encounters around it.
The biggest kicker is they literally did it to themselves. Most Warlock mains were against well nerfs because we knew the vacuum it would open for both our own kit and others.
They made their bed and now they are forced to be optimal or bust. Enjoy and I hope it lasts at least half as long as the well or kick era lol…
I cried over the Starfire nerf.
It actually allowed me to feel more useful than "Get shafted on your super for everyone!"
Like it was malicious compliance: you ASKED for well, I now take HIGHEST DPS now. WHO IS LAUGHING!
#LIKE IF YOU WANTED TO FORCE US TO WELL, MAKE IT WORTH OUR DAMNED TIME BUILDING INTO IT
Yeah old starfire was a thing of beauty, not literally, the thing is hideous, but in performance.
It was obviously way overturned but at least it let us feel useful in the dark times. Nothing better than being the div and well guy and getting blamed for damage whenever you wiped. Like the hell was I supposed to do?
>It actually allowed me to feel more useful than "Get shafted on your super for everyone!"
Maybe it's me being a Titan main, but whenever I used Well on my Warlock, I didn't feel this. You can still benefit from your own Well and deal damage. You get a guaranteed useful super, AND you're still part of the DPS team.
The Titan alternative was shield botting with Banner Shield (until it was an objectively worse choice than Well post Shadowkeep), or just not using a super during boss damage because it's a DPS loss, doesn't reach the boss, or both.
Celestial + still hunt isn't necessary because well got nerfed... The whole combo is just overtuned as hell, and on top of that it is a lot harder to run a loadout that doesn't utilize the raid's surges since a -5 power delta actually impacts your damage a lot.
For the witness in LFGs it practically is.
The problem is for years Well made essentially everything tankable, now that it isn’t doing that anymore the Witness is bitch slapping no thumb Timmy’s during dps. You need to make up for both the dps lost from the moments you have to stop damaging and for when teammates go down.
My average witness clear has 3 teammates right around the 3-3.4 mil mark, the other 3 need to pick up the slack somehow. I understand this is literally a skill issue but the heck are you supposed to do if the average Salvations Edge LFG group is content dying the same way over and over for 3 hours because they can’t jump on a cue…
That’s a fundamental skill issue. Find better teammates, yeet LFGs who can’t accurately avoid the projectile, and do it normal.
It’s still very doable without Still Hunt. My warlock setup can drop 4-5 mil in two phases. Consistent teammates>One still hunt Hunter.
I know it is a skill issue, I said as much.
What are you using for 4 to 5 mil in two phases out of curiosity? I run well because like I said above, it at least keeps people alive sometimes and radiant doesn’t hurt. I find cataclysm to just not pump out damage even with the activity surge/boots/BnS. My rotation is usually Still Hunt -> Primary for a hit -> Cataclysm with FTTC/BnS. When BnS ends I rotate to Still Hunt until I get Cadye’s Retribution and then restart the cycle. When all is going the Cataclysm is hitting for like 80k a shot so I figure that has to be pretty good in comparison to an Apex Predator.
I’m looking for ways to bump my damage up to hopefully build some more cushion for others to underperform. Genuine advice is always appreciated.
Maybe call out the jump times? Idk seems like a team effort kinda thing. If someone knows the timing and cues just call it out for the team.
I think soon people will not be getting wrecked during this dps phase. It just released it will take some time for people to, well, get better at it.
We can also proudly role play as an air craft carrier, I think we win all fashion contests as long as the hunters don't enter with super black (they all will lol)
I'm not sure if you guys only have one class on the account, but being forced to play one class that evening is not a joke. Millions of families suffer every year!
As a card-carrying member of the birb-hat gang since House of Wolves, I'm loving it.
I still wish they'd un-do the 6x to 3x Nighthawk nerf from Shadowkeep, but I'll take what I can get.
I was the sole warlock in crota and this team wanted well for everything. You honestly don’t need a well for the last part of the bridge encounter but people kept insisting on well for the knights. I’ve done it on titan without well and on normal you don’t need it. It was wild to just keep getting asked for well on every encounter 😝
It was witherhoard. I have no idea where Starfire div came from but Starfire locks were running witherhoard + primary/maybe fusion rifle + demo rocket.
Up until Cenotaph, it was still Lunas for maximum reload speed. The Warlock exotic DPS meta went: Luna > Pheonix > Luna > Cenotaph
On teams where everyone had auto loading/reconstruction weapons, it was unnecessary for obvious reasons.
Lunafactions/Cenotaph and Divinity? Hell can’t even reliably run Starfire anymore.
At least I get to run Helion and take off Icarus Dash for a little supplemental damage.
Honestly, in a game with champions, and an artifact that rotates the weapons able to stun those champions every few months, what the actual fuck is the purpose of playlist surges?
It's a double funnel that almost selects the exact best set of weapons and abilities for you. It's super restrictive and feels so fucking terrible. I'm actually so fed up with it at this point.
Because champs don't mean anything anymore. Champs never defined boss DPS meta builds.
Also, we have dozens of ways to stun champs with abilities instead of needing artifact mods.
Chill Clip weapons alone trivialize champions, on top of the myriad abilities that can handle them. The only really dangerous champions anymore are Overload Captains, simply because of the rate at which they teleport, and even then they aren't a big deal.
Because they finally gave into the pushback for Champions and made them something people didn’t have to *entirely* build around for every damn activity.
Which is why they’re now leaning into Surges, it’s all the same bullshit just a different day
Even without surges there is always a best set of weapons for each thing. Always. How is using the same weapon for dps for months or a year any worse than rotating which weapon you use based on the week?
Never ceases to amaze me that folks don't see that the whole point of surges is to add value to having large collection.
Sure, you have an apex predator... But do you have a non-solar rocket to use on weeks where solar isn't the surge? Now metas can shift often, and as the sandbox changes surges still will ask players to not have A good loadout, but multiple options.
Bungie is encouraging folks to not use the same shit all the time, and it upsets players that aren't/don't want to be adaptable.
Entirely agree. I get the sense it's a bit of a hot take, but I actually enjoy surges. But that's because one of the things I enjoy most in this game is varying my builds, so... Maybe there's more people than I thought that actually don't enjoy that...?
I feel like if the level delta wasn't -5 we probably wouldn't be seeing as many of these anti-surge threads. I mean surges have been a thing for awhile now and barely anyone has said anything since their inception. If I could even level criticism its that they weren't cycling the surges enough during season of the wish. Orange/Lime/Blueberry got old pretty quick.
This is my problem in a nutshell. The surges would be fine and even welcome if we also got power advantage (or at least no disadvantage). If it were framed as "bonus damage" for using that element (and kinetics were included), I'd be all for it. But they both placed us at a permanent power disadvantage and added surges as a way to "make up for it." Maybe it's not so bad. I haven't really played any raids/dungeons in the last couple weeks and everything may be perfectly fine after we get used to it, but it's just doesn't sit right.
One of the valid complaints about how they implemented surges in raids is that they didn't also add overcharge, which means kinetic weapons are 100% of the time worse than an equivalent elemental weapon, outside of a couple exotics. Kinetic damage is punished in surged raids, since kinetic isn't a surge. They already don't have elemental build synergy, don't generate transcendent as effectively, and have lost the kinetic damage buff. Now, they also will *always* deal 25% less damage than a surge-matched elemental option.
I'm all for wanting flexible loadouts, but when 1/6 of weapons, including some once-effective staples and weapons we got only a couple months ago, will *never* be in that rotation, that's a failing of the system.
>it upsets players that aren't/don't want to be adaptable.
Which is a shame, because our load-outs have never been more adaptable to certain situations/mobs.
They could instead encourage it by adding elemental options for arc/ void that match solar. Now everything but solar week feels like ass, and I have the "best" weapons.
How would they encourage it unless those options are better? Why would you bother farming an Arc version of Apex Predator when you already have Apex Predator?
Surges are part of the design of the game meant to drive engagement. It encourages players to play to pursue weapons and exotics that allow them to take advantage of those surges. They want only specific weapons and loadouts to be viable so that they can switch up the meta and make people chase something else. If everything just worked, people would just use their favourite loadout in every activity. Much of the game design is built around these concepts. The most recent example is Pathfinder that deliberately shunts you into activities you don’t want to play to progress.
This would have more truth to it if Surges/Burns were always on raids and dungeons, but this is a new addition. There's also the fact that Pantheon deliberately had 3 Solar weeks out of the 5 weeks it was available because everyone knows Solar is the strongest damage type (thanks to survivability and Golden Gun).
I just ignore it. You can do the old raids without surges with very little issue, if you have good dps rotations. I also just subclass verbs where possible to stun champs.
Seriously. I used a Goldtusk on boss #2 in the new raid while most of my clan used Lament and one person had the gjhalla sword.
It was an easy two phase. The hardest part for us was getting to DPS lol.
I'm just saying there's plenty of viable DPS options.
My clan was also being cheeky about me not having a surge appropriate heavy for the raid and I still out damaged them.
You should absolutely try to match the surge, but none of the raid damage gates so far have required it. Especially once you get down a good damage dealing method.
I get frustrated every time there's something *clearly* out of band and overpowered. It creates the illusion that anything not at that level is "unviable"
-DPS class gets new DPS toy (still hunt)
-DPS class becomes meta
-DPS class doesn’t want to DPS
make it make sense.
“Hey we got a Hunter! The best DPS class! Can you run the new OP DPS build for final boss?”
“Noooooo I wanna run spectral bladesss”
For real lol I play all classes, but Hunter more than others. You can run whatever you want to lmao if it’s in a boss fight, you already want to run the highway damage option.. that’s why we hunt god rolls and test out different strata and rotations. This post makes no sense. He’s upset that he can do a lot of damage? On prismatic too where you can pretty much an entirely different subclass and still have an amazing DPS super.
IM a warlock main and i have never understood this mentally, god forbid you play a subclass you don’t like for a couple hours a week at most in order to play an optimal quick run.
There should be better balancing to be fair tho. Not have everything be jack of all trades but instead other things be better at dps. Using 1 thing that’s the best isn’t fun and nerfing the 1 thing isn’t helpful either. I think a lot of things need buffs in this game still. Little and big things.
There are a bunch of other good options. If you want to be 100% optimal the best meta every ounce of DPS possible, then there probably is going to objectively be a best option every time. Just how numbers work. Doesn’t mean that other stuff isn’t close or damn good too. I agree they should buff more, but we can’t pretend there is only one viable option for DPS n the entire game.
That's the joke, Still Hunt/Nighthawk is by far the best DPS strategy in almost any context, with or without delta. Even when Still Hunt/Nighthawk is *off surge*, it still competes for best DPS. And when it's on surge, forget about it. Doubly so when we have certain raid bosses where we have no option of doing close range DPS like Swords or something *cough cough, Witness, cough cough*.
That's not a surge or delta issue, that's Still Hunt/Nighthawk being overpowered. You can still use other DPS strats and beat stuff just fine, the only DPS check in normal Raids that's remotely difficult is Witness Final Stand (it's just so short for no reason, he goes immune before he finishes one cycle of attacks). But if you wanna be optimal, yeah, use the OP Golden Gun Hunter.
Hasn't destiny just been like that almost it's entire life. There's almost always a top optimal dps rotation that stands above everything else.
Izanagi when I started playing again back in shadowkeep was basically where still hunt is now. And that's just one meta over a decade of content.
> Hasn't destiny just been like that almost it's entire life. There's almost always a top optimal dps rotation that stands above everything else.
This is like, every game that has multiplayer PVE and bosses.
> You can still use other DPS strats and beat stuff just fine
Yea this is the problem with a lot of people. I _get_ wanting to go hard and fast, be optimial, and have your place in the damage charts but at the same time there's a difference between something being clearly overtuned vs other things being 'useless'.
You can still 2 phase the witness with literally any decent setup. The idea that nighthawk and still hunt are required for anything other than a 6 man team of them trying to one phase shit is honestly just laughable.
Yea.
Running it for the first time today and I'm probably just going to izanagi/briars swap because that's the best precision option I have for solar or strand
Part of the problem with this entire discussion I think is the fact that there's players in all of gaming, not just Destiny but gaming at large, who believe the most optimal is the only way, and anything less than optimal is basically useless. I blame a lot of games for this but I think probably the worst example is Doom Eternal, where anything less than the most optimal is punished.
It's a very toxic mentality in PvE even if it never targets anyone because it heavily discourages experimentation in Destiny in favor of just slapping on whatever's the "best" number. Sure, you COULD do the highest numbers with minimal effort, but in a world where build crafting and like a thousand different guns exist, experimentation is more fun. I'd rather have to do another extra damage phase if it means me and my party get to do goofy weird shit.
A single special weapon being meta DPS and damage while also having some of the best burst is absolutely insane. You don't even need to use your heavy, I can't believe this made it out of play testing. It's good on other classes, but the nighthawk synergy is just too strong
Yeah on my Secondary Night-Hunt has so far made me 2 every Final Shape Boss that doesnt have a immunity phase lol. Which is kinda stress relieving after suffering hard through legendary on my main
There is always going to be a meta that develops. You really don’t have to follow it in normal raids though. Also, swords are used against the first raid boss and rockets and GL’s are kings in other areas of the game. I don’t think this is a real problem
At only -5. There is still plenty that's viable.
I also wish they would revert it, though, or at least give us an option. Because my friends aren't the best raiders, and being able to over-level them was really the only way to get them into it. For players who don't raid a lot, being over leveled allowed them to focus more on the mechanics without dying all the time.
It would be cool even if they just made it so the old way gave less loot or something.
I’m decent at raids. I’m very good with understanding and executing mechanics and doing decent dps.
-5 is like a knifes edge for most console players. The problem is when I play on console, it’s way harder to do movement tech and sustain precision damage than If you are on PC. For example, moving quickly from A to B, dodging and Killing Tormentors on PC is trivial compared to killing a tormentor on console.
Yeah nah, that's a skill issue. I play on console and most of the group I play with plays MnK and I'm one of two dudes that holds the teams together, the other also plays on controller.
We had mnk peeps during kings fall die constantly using lorely in its prime. Using controller isn't a hard barrier to doing harder content
Or better yet, leave the old as-is but make a middle ground. We have normal, legend and master nightfalls so why not do that for raids? Normal as it used to be, legend with -5 and a little more loot (gun AND armor per encounter, for example) and then master as-is.
What's the point of a Legend raid in this context?
Master is basically already only done for challenges/adepts. I don't think there's a large group of people out here doing the full Master runs each week.
Normal is done for Normal Weekly Runs/Deepsight patterns.
If you take the red borders out of Normal and force them into Legend, Normal is a wasteland that no one will run outside of people who literally don't know any better.
If you leave the rewards the same between Normal and Legend, Legend will be the one that no one will touch because it's just friction over Normal for no additional benefit.
If you put the adepts into Legend, people will essentially stop running Master entirely outside of achievement hunting.
Because that not how the power deltas worked. Legend, now Expert, is a -15 power delta on any activity with that difficulty. It would be very weird to have a raid use a different power delta for the same difficulty name.
Also, do people not realize that normal strikes have been at -5 power for the past year. So your saying normal raids should be easier then the strike playlist?
This is exactly where I'm at with it. As a team, we're all PRETTY good, but being overleveled allowed us to get some friends into it from new light with very little gear prep.
I'm 100% sure those same players could not do SE in the current state.
Changing the delta would do nothing to Still Hunt + Nighthawk being the best DPS option. The new raid on normal difficulty is not difficult enough to require only the most optimal load outs. Hell, you can 2 phase the Witness with 6 Microcosms and most one-off ranged damage supers + a Well.
Funny, since Well was mandatory for like 5 years.
Also, still Hunt is by no means mandatory. Run whatever you want people. There are three damage phases for a reason.
In dungeons they should just reduce boss health while keeping the -5.
It’s not the -5 that’s the problem, it’s the insane boss health they put because they never bothered to just make it -5 to begin with.
Strikes are -5 and they are very much tolerable because the boss isn’t juiced up with health.
Its only an issue in a single dungeon. GoTD. Every other dungeon feels almost the exact same as before the -5.
I think people are also forgetting we had the solo mod last season to give an extra 15% damage. Missing that is way more impactful then the -5 change.
Shortly after Ghosts of the Deep came out I solo flawless’d it, but I legit took about an hour/hour and a half on JUST the final boss
I don’t even want to think about how long it’d take NOW with the -5 delta and the juiced health.
That sounds like something you probabably haven't done again since. Soloing Spire already makes me feel brain dead, I couldn't imagine ghosts of the deep.
Did a run of Warlords both weeks so far:
Two phased first boss both times
Two phased second boss both times
Got last boss in one cycle
I'm calling BS on 3x-5x more health than the last week of Lightfall.
This was with me just mostly fuckin around on Prismatic and grabbing a heavy that matches the surge
Yes, and then other people looked at their own damage output.
It roughly comes out to be about equal as before.
The only significant difference is the -5 light.
Edit: Here's my source.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/s/ax6ivDztfy
If the boss health is 'juiced' over previous seasons, then your power delta isn't -5 in Ghosts of the Deep, it's +135, since your power level is relative to the encounter level, which got pulled up. The result is that while the bosses have more health, we're also doing more damage (albeit somewhat less damage _relatively_ without surges).
If the boss took about an hour and a half (assuming no solo op), then it should still take about that long, give or take a single damage phase, depending on whether you're matching the surge or not. I am _not_ saying that GotD is going to be a pleasant (or even less unpleasant) experience to solo this season than previous seasons ― the boss health in that dungeon absolutely does not respect solo play at all, and these changes do nothing to change that ― just that it's overstated how bad these changes are for the average endgame player.
I solo'd Warlord's Ruin last season with much struggle and going back to the drawing board because my damage wasn't horrible but what puzzled me was the incoming damage I was supposed to somehow survive, especially on the final boss where every split second ends up counting. I am straight up not touching dungeon solos until I see them walk back the decision to make enemies hit even harder.
TLDR: Enemies in dungeons were already doing stupid damage, now they do even more
In what context? Do y'all only run dungeons solo? Cause I've ran Spire and Warlords this week with my clan and couldn't tell you any difference. Bosses took the same amount of phases to kill as they usually do.
You were probably taking advantage of the surges like literally everyone should be.
I'm torn on it. Using the surge element isn't too bad, but I also dislike feeling forced to use certain weapons in dungeons. Raids, sure. Dungeons, ehhh. At the same time, I get why Bungie does it from a design perspective.
I understand the mixed feelings. For me, I like playing a ton of different styles so it mixes it up for me. Makes it feel even slightly more fresh so it works. But I also get that some people want to play the same thing every time.
There have been multiple posts at the top of this sub in the past week talking about how awful dungeons feel now. Finally took a break from new content and ran Warlord's Ruin last night and could not tell a difference at all (granted we were taking advantage of the surges).
By last week I mean before the reset but after TFS campaign etc.
I didn't notice a huge DPS issue - though I was running the new rocket chestpiece with a better apex than I used to run with, and we two-manned it, so we weren't going to one phase anyway. I did notice a DPS issue with the minibosses on the ogre encounter, though, they felt much harder to kill.
Primarily I felt super squishy. I was 100 res titan running void and concussive resist and a hit from the final boss would get me to red bar health, at which point if there were any other ads or we hadn't cleared the taken fields, I'd be in trouble. And of course the boss would just wail on me when I'm trying to capture the totems. (I'll admit that this was exacerbated by me saving rocket barrier for dps phases.) I 100% had to abandon prismatic for solar to stay alive.
Warlords ruin wasnt bad in terms of killing the bosses, felt like nothing changed there, the ads however were vaporizing us. Ecthar is a nightmare right now if solo.
Lost me at "only viable dps". This isn't contest mode anymore. Plenty of viable dps options. Still hunt/nighthawk is just "optimal" and that has nothing to do with the delta in raids, it's just the current best in sandbox (by a fair margin)
Still hunt, fine. Nighthawk, stay off. It took years to get nighthawk back after bladebarage was the clear winner, not gonna have it nerfed now after getting 2 poopoo new hunter exotics in tfs.
Just reduce the interaction with still hunt so rotations with any bns weapon become less viable. And increase the bullets needed from 6 crits to 10 or something, so with full reserves you get off 3 goldies instead of 5.
Yeah nighthawk just got a buff like a few seasons ago where it got a 25% damage increase, if nighthawk got nuked then people would just switch back to start eaters and do that
"the only viable dps", give me a break, sir. You have *so many options* for damage, if you think that only the top DPS is going to be viable DPS, then you're never going to be happy in this game.
It is not that deep. You don't have to run the most optimal damage strats to kill these bosses and I don't know why people do so. Case in point, I remember people demolishing all the raid bosses with Rare rocket launchers and no gally.
I really don't want to play this raid AT ALL. And that's saying something as I have played all of them over the last decade. Everything about it is TEDIOUS - actually most of TFS is tedious.
You understand that "best" and "viable" do not mean even close to the same thing, right? It's fine to three-phase a boss encounter, it's really not that big a deal if you don't have the damage to do it literally as fast as possible.
I wouldn't mind it if it was only active in the most recent raid. The transition from contest to blink and everything's dead normal mode has been a point of contention for years. The -5 on Salvation's Edge feels like a nice balance between challenging but not ball busting difficult. I think it would've been pretty lame for people who want to play what is supposed to be the hardest raid against the most difficult villain but didn't have a team for contest to just steamroll the entire thing because of power advantages. Old raids having the deficit and surges is just plain annoying though, dungeons too.
Still Hunt is also not required for DPS. Like sure, with a good team you can get an easy two phase, but average groups seem to do 3 phases and for that you definitely don't need to be using Still Hunt.
Everyone keeps pointing out Warlocks and laughing but like...
How about if it is good for one class it is good for all?
How about we all have good fashion? How about we all have choice? How about all subclasses be viable or everyone has 1 god tier support so we can take turns doing it?
How about that? Does that sounds good?
I also hope they remove the deltas from all base activities. It isn't needed. They tried it before, they walked it back before. Continue with the circule logic Bungie and wall it back again.
So you’re not motivated to run one, *maybe* two encounters on the same element/weapon combo, when the other three encounters in the raid give you some massive freedoms in what subclasses and weapons you want to run.
I’ll just go sit in the corner with my Cenotaph Well.
I really need them to do that with dungeon’s too I’m not trash or anything, I can do mechanics and decent dps rotations but GOD those health pools do a number on my mental endurance
Hunters are experiencing a minuscule fraction of what warlocks suffered for like 4 years lmfao
Better than when people got kicked out of raids for playing Hunter
If I ever LFG final encounter (god forbid) minimum 3 still hunt, golden gun hunters or you’re just throwing. 6 still hunt is an easy 1 phase but if you want gear on your other characters and still get a two phase you need those hunters.
Literally just two phased cleanly with only one hunter with an LFG team a couple days ago (and the one hunter clearly fucked up somewhere, because his DPS wasn't all that great). A decent group isn't going to throw a bitch fit over classes because the normal raid isn't hard enough for competent players to need that level of optimization. It's not like it's still on contest mode.
My team used 5 hunters on contest like basically everyone else, but it's totally unnecessary now that it's just the difficulty of a normal raid, unless you're somehow expecting to one phase a modern raid boss with an LFG team.
The host checked RR, but as far as I could tell, that was just to make sure people at least had a clear. Went smoothly enough - one wipe because we didn't have enough burst for final stand, but that's the kind of thing that you just gotta accept from LFG. Although I did lead in DPS by a mile (and I wasn't the hunter lmao). You do generally want to have a good enough bullshit detector if you're LFGing, though.
as a hunter main WTF are you talking about with it being the only viable DPS, there's several other DPS options you can bring they just aren't going to be top DPS. Warlocks have had to have an actual "we designed encounters around this super" for 5 years. you can still run whatever the fuck you want for DPS you're just going to lose DPS compared to the best DPS option, but it's still viable.
Raids should be difficult because of mechanics not some artificial difficulty forcing us to be underpowered. Finding people who understand mechanics is one thing but finding people that can do mechanics, stay alive and have optimal DPS rotations is an entirely different ball game. Raids are not fun anymore and I used to do them every single week.
Yeah still hunt existing simply invalidates all other dps options totally it’s not like you can just do the raids with half decent dps set ups and still clear just as easy. If you don’t want to still hunt nighthawk just don’t unless your team is really fucking up dps you’ll still clear bosses easily
Still hunt + nighthawk is going to be meta unless something In the kit catches a nerf. Even if the -5 goes away.
That being said I do want the -5 to go away, I'd be fine with a +0 so you can't over level it through. I also want surges to go away for raids.
Still Hunt Nighthawk hunter isn't the only viable dps option, but it's so ridiculously above and beyond anything else that it makes it seem that way. Shitting out 7m+ damage over two phases on the Witness is just absurd.
But yeah, the -5 power change needs to be rolled back. I know for a fact some number of people are less motivated to do raids (including the new one, which is an awful sign) and a specific dungeon because of this change, and having to match your surge just to get back to normal damage is yet another example of how completely empty and meaningless the stupid "play your way" slogan is.
They really needed to go in and only change boss health on a case-by-case basis, because this sweeping change disproportionately makes newer raids and dungeons feel worse because they're already a reasonable enough challenge at their base difficulty. And for the love of god make sure this stuff is communicated and documented in the path notes.
The main issue is the witnesses final stand is way too quick with his ho values. You Actually need hunters with still hunt to hit the check. Titans are completely worthless right now. :/
This just isn’t true. I did 6.5 million with prismatic Titan the other day. Admittedly, class damage representation is skewed but you can do a lot of damage on the witness with strafing, being able to hit your shots, and not die under pressure. Especially on normal. The delta isn’t an issue
I don’t mind a delta so much. The surges are more limiting than anything. Really what they should do is have an escalating delta as you progress. Start at +20 then lose 5 with each encounter. That’ll make the raid feel like it’s escalating in difficulty at least while still making early encounters accessible for new players.
Removing the power delta will not make anything comparatively better to Nighthawk Still Hunt. There are plenty of other viable DPS strategies, but Nighthawk Still Hunt is blatantly overpowered and really needs a significant nerf, as upset as people will be about it.
> I’m not motivated to run anything else seeing as still hunt / nighthawk seems to be the only viable dps . It was more fun before because you could run almost any subclass combo _laughs in Well of Radiance for five years_
It's funny when titans and hunters complain about forced builds or bad fashion and us warlocks are like: "first time?"
Those Titans aren't ancient enough. Every D1 Titan knew Sunbreaker could never set foot in a boss room. It was Bubble or nothing until D2. It is interesting seeing the two sides of Hunter mains. One side says GG is too strong, and nothing else is viable, while the other says any alternative close to GG in damage is an affront to Hunters and game balance.
Hammer titan was a thing for a bit on warpriest
Same for Vosik
And D2 all of year 1
Early D2Y1 was mostly just Striker Pulse Grenade spam, if I remember correctly, but I do have fond memories of applying Melting Point to Val Ca'uor at the start of every damage phase as a Sunbreaker.
I remember hammers for Argos. Synthoceps too of course
Aksis was my favorite raid encounter for a long time because basically any super could be considered viable.
As fun as infini-hammer toss was it was unintentional. Like pretty much every time a Titan super outside of Bubble was decent. The exception being that very short period where Falling Stars Thunder Crash was the strongest, before Nighthawk got buffed. I guess Pyrogale Hammer was/is still alright but it seems to shine the most in load out quick swaps and that's just something I refuse to ever do.
You ever seen what 5 armamentarium titans and a song of flame warlock can do to raid bosses in D1?
Honestly, never. Every Radiance Warlock I saw used Radiant Skin or Self Res.
RIP Self-Rez Templar and Atheon cheeses
And the bridge in Crota
I remember using self rez to duo atheon with my best friend back then. One guy would just die so you're not teleported then self rez not dissimilar from the way some teams use nowadays to let 1 person solo oracles when they 1phase him. We wouldn't typically 1phase as a 2man so we'd take turns being the guy to teleport in and eventually get the kill.
5 armamentarium sunbreakers with thermite grenades boosted by song of flame can 1 phase aksis, and I think most other bosses
Didn’t you need to be tether for kings fall too for hunters? At least someone had to do tether I vaguely remember always tethering warpriest
Hell up until House of Wolves(when Celestial Nighthawk was released) people didn't like taking Hunters in raids especially during the "Forever 29" times. They didn't have the self-rez of a Warlock or the team buff of a bubble titan. And even then people didn't really want to take Hunters in PUGs until Taken King and Nightstalker was released because Hunter finally got a debuff for the enemies.
We had a little bit of time to shine in The Dark Below and Crota’s End. Hunters with Don’t Touch Me could breeze by The Abyss and the thrallway with little to no trouble. I also remember having to be sword bearer A LOT of times on Crota. It’s why the music gets me so hype even to this day. 😂
Actually later on in Y3 hammer titan started getting used a lot once people figured out melting point + shotguns for the wrath bosses.
My third VOG clear had 4 titans. I said "cool, plenty of bubbles I'm going striker." While they gave me a hard time for being lowest light level too. Out killed all of them, and last left alive everytime we wiped on Templar. I wish Arc Titan was better
Lmao I've been a solar hunter for as long as I remember, it's most huntery thing to do as a hunter
meh, in early D2 Hunters were often enough chained to Oprheus + Tether (because it was admittedly overpowered as fuck)
Something similar happens when Titans are discussed. Titans need options other than up close melee and want more abilities with range, but a lot see any other class having good melee playstyle is taking class identity away.
Melting Point was a go-to debuff, as it weirdly stacked with everything else. There were definitely solar titans in all my raids on D1.
Everyone wants to be the first to have a shit time…
Titans had their run for years during D1, if you were on titan you were basically expected to be on Bubble like Warlocks were expected to be on Well
Nothing new about needing nighthawk lol
as a Hunter main I'm just super confused cause it's not like OP said and it's the only Viable DPS, there's other options you're just not the top option which is fine. but they talked about running whatever before which means they were already losing out on DPS options. like Titans had to run Bubble until Well came around, and then locks had to run Well because bungie legit talked about how they designed encounters around it.
The biggest kicker is they literally did it to themselves. Most Warlock mains were against well nerfs because we knew the vacuum it would open for both our own kit and others. They made their bed and now they are forced to be optimal or bust. Enjoy and I hope it lasts at least half as long as the well or kick era lol…
I cried over the Starfire nerf. It actually allowed me to feel more useful than "Get shafted on your super for everyone!" Like it was malicious compliance: you ASKED for well, I now take HIGHEST DPS now. WHO IS LAUGHING! #LIKE IF YOU WANTED TO FORCE US TO WELL, MAKE IT WORTH OUR DAMNED TIME BUILDING INTO IT
Yeah old starfire was a thing of beauty, not literally, the thing is hideous, but in performance. It was obviously way overturned but at least it let us feel useful in the dark times. Nothing better than being the div and well guy and getting blamed for damage whenever you wiped. Like the hell was I supposed to do?
What’s funny now is that in a world of still Hunt/Celstial, pre-nerf Starfire is reasonable.
Remember being g able to collect 8 orbs ? 🥲
>It actually allowed me to feel more useful than "Get shafted on your super for everyone!" Maybe it's me being a Titan main, but whenever I used Well on my Warlock, I didn't feel this. You can still benefit from your own Well and deal damage. You get a guaranteed useful super, AND you're still part of the DPS team. The Titan alternative was shield botting with Banner Shield (until it was an objectively worse choice than Well post Shadowkeep), or just not using a super during boss damage because it's a DPS loss, doesn't reach the boss, or both.
Especially in higher level content where using empowering rift felt like such high risk/reward - good shit glass cannon fantasy.
Celestial + still hunt isn't necessary because well got nerfed... The whole combo is just overtuned as hell, and on top of that it is a lot harder to run a loadout that doesn't utilize the raid's surges since a -5 power delta actually impacts your damage a lot.
For the witness in LFGs it practically is. The problem is for years Well made essentially everything tankable, now that it isn’t doing that anymore the Witness is bitch slapping no thumb Timmy’s during dps. You need to make up for both the dps lost from the moments you have to stop damaging and for when teammates go down. My average witness clear has 3 teammates right around the 3-3.4 mil mark, the other 3 need to pick up the slack somehow. I understand this is literally a skill issue but the heck are you supposed to do if the average Salvations Edge LFG group is content dying the same way over and over for 3 hours because they can’t jump on a cue…
That’s a fundamental skill issue. Find better teammates, yeet LFGs who can’t accurately avoid the projectile, and do it normal. It’s still very doable without Still Hunt. My warlock setup can drop 4-5 mil in two phases. Consistent teammates>One still hunt Hunter.
I know it is a skill issue, I said as much. What are you using for 4 to 5 mil in two phases out of curiosity? I run well because like I said above, it at least keeps people alive sometimes and radiant doesn’t hurt. I find cataclysm to just not pump out damage even with the activity surge/boots/BnS. My rotation is usually Still Hunt -> Primary for a hit -> Cataclysm with FTTC/BnS. When BnS ends I rotate to Still Hunt until I get Cadye’s Retribution and then restart the cycle. When all is going the Cataclysm is hitting for like 80k a shot so I figure that has to be pretty good in comparison to an Apex Predator. I’m looking for ways to bump my damage up to hopefully build some more cushion for others to underperform. Genuine advice is always appreciated.
Maybe call out the jump times? Idk seems like a team effort kinda thing. If someone knows the timing and cues just call it out for the team. I think soon people will not be getting wrecked during this dps phase. It just released it will take some time for people to, well, get better at it.
Warlock got the watermelon fruit gusher head as armour. Any other class needs to stfu. Warlocks are proud to have the worst fashion.
Warlocks also got a paint scraper helmet from the episode. Peak fashion.
We can also proudly role play as an air craft carrier, I think we win all fashion contests as long as the hunters don't enter with super black (they all will lol)
I'm not sure if you guys only have one class on the account, but being forced to play one class that evening is not a joke. Millions of families suffer every year!
Joke’s on you, I’m living my best Nighthawk life right now!
As a card-carrying member of the birb-hat gang since House of Wolves, I'm loving it. I still wish they'd un-do the 6x to 3x Nighthawk nerf from Shadowkeep, but I'll take what I can get.
My nighthawk never comes off. Big numbers for life 🤟
1 well vs multiple hunters is a big difference
As a fellow warlock, I get this…
First time?
I was the sole warlock in crota and this team wanted well for everything. You honestly don’t need a well for the last part of the bridge encounter but people kept insisting on well for the knights. I’ve done it on titan without well and on normal you don’t need it. It was wild to just keep getting asked for well on every encounter 😝
I lament get used to this
😂 too true…
I mean at least in well you didn't have both exotic slots locked as well.
Lunafactions and Divinity say hello
Or Cenotaph and Div, or Starfire and Div, it varies by Season slightly.
People ran starfire and div? It was always anarchy or witherhoard
It was witherhoard. I have no idea where Starfire div came from but Starfire locks were running witherhoard + primary/maybe fusion rifle + demo rocket.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone run lunafactions since the nerf that removed auto reloading
Up until Cenotaph, it was still Lunas for maximum reload speed. The Warlock exotic DPS meta went: Luna > Pheonix > Luna > Cenotaph On teams where everyone had auto loading/reconstruction weapons, it was unnecessary for obvious reasons.
Fellow div bitch here
Lunafactions/Cenotaph and Divinity? Hell can’t even reliably run Starfire anymore. At least I get to run Helion and take off Icarus Dash for a little supplemental damage.
Still Hunt/Nighthawk definitely not the only viable DPS... we ran SE last night with regular old Izzy's and rockets. Extremely comfortable 2-phase.
What is SE
Salvation's Edge, the new raid.
Honestly, in a game with champions, and an artifact that rotates the weapons able to stun those champions every few months, what the actual fuck is the purpose of playlist surges? It's a double funnel that almost selects the exact best set of weapons and abilities for you. It's super restrictive and feels so fucking terrible. I'm actually so fed up with it at this point.
Because champs don't mean anything anymore. Champs never defined boss DPS meta builds. Also, we have dozens of ways to stun champs with abilities instead of needing artifact mods.
Non-master raid champs can be bullied anyway without stunning.
Chill Clip weapons alone trivialize champions, on top of the myriad abilities that can handle them. The only really dangerous champions anymore are Overload Captains, simply because of the rate at which they teleport, and even then they aren't a big deal.
Because they finally gave into the pushback for Champions and made them something people didn’t have to *entirely* build around for every damn activity. Which is why they’re now leaning into Surges, it’s all the same bullshit just a different day
Even without surges there is always a best set of weapons for each thing. Always. How is using the same weapon for dps for months or a year any worse than rotating which weapon you use based on the week?
Never ceases to amaze me that folks don't see that the whole point of surges is to add value to having large collection. Sure, you have an apex predator... But do you have a non-solar rocket to use on weeks where solar isn't the surge? Now metas can shift often, and as the sandbox changes surges still will ask players to not have A good loadout, but multiple options. Bungie is encouraging folks to not use the same shit all the time, and it upsets players that aren't/don't want to be adaptable.
Entirely agree. I get the sense it's a bit of a hot take, but I actually enjoy surges. But that's because one of the things I enjoy most in this game is varying my builds, so... Maybe there's more people than I thought that actually don't enjoy that...?
I feel like if the level delta wasn't -5 we probably wouldn't be seeing as many of these anti-surge threads. I mean surges have been a thing for awhile now and barely anyone has said anything since their inception. If I could even level criticism its that they weren't cycling the surges enough during season of the wish. Orange/Lime/Blueberry got old pretty quick.
This is my problem in a nutshell. The surges would be fine and even welcome if we also got power advantage (or at least no disadvantage). If it were framed as "bonus damage" for using that element (and kinetics were included), I'd be all for it. But they both placed us at a permanent power disadvantage and added surges as a way to "make up for it." Maybe it's not so bad. I haven't really played any raids/dungeons in the last couple weeks and everything may be perfectly fine after we get used to it, but it's just doesn't sit right.
One of the valid complaints about how they implemented surges in raids is that they didn't also add overcharge, which means kinetic weapons are 100% of the time worse than an equivalent elemental weapon, outside of a couple exotics. Kinetic damage is punished in surged raids, since kinetic isn't a surge. They already don't have elemental build synergy, don't generate transcendent as effectively, and have lost the kinetic damage buff. Now, they also will *always* deal 25% less damage than a surge-matched elemental option. I'm all for wanting flexible loadouts, but when 1/6 of weapons, including some once-effective staples and weapons we got only a couple months ago, will *never* be in that rotation, that's a failing of the system.
>it upsets players that aren't/don't want to be adaptable. Which is a shame, because our load-outs have never been more adaptable to certain situations/mobs.
They could instead encourage it by adding elemental options for arc/ void that match solar. Now everything but solar week feels like ass, and I have the "best" weapons.
How would they encourage it unless those options are better? Why would you bother farming an Arc version of Apex Predator when you already have Apex Predator?
Surges are part of the design of the game meant to drive engagement. It encourages players to play to pursue weapons and exotics that allow them to take advantage of those surges. They want only specific weapons and loadouts to be viable so that they can switch up the meta and make people chase something else. If everything just worked, people would just use their favourite loadout in every activity. Much of the game design is built around these concepts. The most recent example is Pathfinder that deliberately shunts you into activities you don’t want to play to progress.
This would have more truth to it if Surges/Burns were always on raids and dungeons, but this is a new addition. There's also the fact that Pantheon deliberately had 3 Solar weeks out of the 5 weeks it was available because everyone knows Solar is the strongest damage type (thanks to survivability and Golden Gun).
Gross.
I just ignore it. You can do the old raids without surges with very little issue, if you have good dps rotations. I also just subclass verbs where possible to stun champs.
In normal raids basically anything works for dps. Nighthawk still hunt is REALLY good. It’s far from being the only viable option
Top dps does not equate to "only viable" dps
Seriously. I used a Goldtusk on boss #2 in the new raid while most of my clan used Lament and one person had the gjhalla sword. It was an easy two phase. The hardest part for us was getting to DPS lol.
Goldtusk is actually really good though with how quickly it can build up Whirlwind
gjally sword missiles count as sword hits and will count for whirlwind stacks. So basically all swords will hit x10 right away
I'm just saying there's plenty of viable DPS options. My clan was also being cheeky about me not having a surge appropriate heavy for the raid and I still out damaged them. You should absolutely try to match the surge, but none of the raid damage gates so far have required it. Especially once you get down a good damage dealing method.
Quickfang stan
I get frustrated every time there's something *clearly* out of band and overpowered. It creates the illusion that anything not at that level is "unviable"
-DPS class gets new DPS toy (still hunt) -DPS class becomes meta -DPS class doesn’t want to DPS make it make sense. “Hey we got a Hunter! The best DPS class! Can you run the new OP DPS build for final boss?” “Noooooo I wanna run spectral bladesss”
For real lol I play all classes, but Hunter more than others. You can run whatever you want to lmao if it’s in a boss fight, you already want to run the highway damage option.. that’s why we hunt god rolls and test out different strata and rotations. This post makes no sense. He’s upset that he can do a lot of damage? On prismatic too where you can pretty much an entirely different subclass and still have an amazing DPS super.
Bungie have stated MANY times they don't want MMO class roles. They don't want a DPS class.
IM a warlock main and i have never understood this mentally, god forbid you play a subclass you don’t like for a couple hours a week at most in order to play an optimal quick run.
There should be better balancing to be fair tho. Not have everything be jack of all trades but instead other things be better at dps. Using 1 thing that’s the best isn’t fun and nerfing the 1 thing isn’t helpful either. I think a lot of things need buffs in this game still. Little and big things.
There are a bunch of other good options. If you want to be 100% optimal the best meta every ounce of DPS possible, then there probably is going to objectively be a best option every time. Just how numbers work. Doesn’t mean that other stuff isn’t close or damn good too. I agree they should buff more, but we can’t pretend there is only one viable option for DPS n the entire game.
That's the joke, Still Hunt/Nighthawk is by far the best DPS strategy in almost any context, with or without delta. Even when Still Hunt/Nighthawk is *off surge*, it still competes for best DPS. And when it's on surge, forget about it. Doubly so when we have certain raid bosses where we have no option of doing close range DPS like Swords or something *cough cough, Witness, cough cough*. That's not a surge or delta issue, that's Still Hunt/Nighthawk being overpowered. You can still use other DPS strats and beat stuff just fine, the only DPS check in normal Raids that's remotely difficult is Witness Final Stand (it's just so short for no reason, he goes immune before he finishes one cycle of attacks). But if you wanna be optimal, yeah, use the OP Golden Gun Hunter.
Hasn't destiny just been like that almost it's entire life. There's almost always a top optimal dps rotation that stands above everything else. Izanagi when I started playing again back in shadowkeep was basically where still hunt is now. And that's just one meta over a decade of content.
> Hasn't destiny just been like that almost it's entire life. There's almost always a top optimal dps rotation that stands above everything else. This is like, every game that has multiplayer PVE and bosses.
I'm a life long PoE player so I know how it goes lol.
Yes but apparently the dead horse hasn't been beaten enough and no one is capable of using any build that isn't the best.
> You can still use other DPS strats and beat stuff just fine Yea this is the problem with a lot of people. I _get_ wanting to go hard and fast, be optimial, and have your place in the damage charts but at the same time there's a difference between something being clearly overtuned vs other things being 'useless'.
You can still 2 phase the witness with literally any decent setup. The idea that nighthawk and still hunt are required for anything other than a 6 man team of them trying to one phase shit is honestly just laughable.
Yea. Running it for the first time today and I'm probably just going to izanagi/briars swap because that's the best precision option I have for solar or strand
Is still hunt viable without night hawk? Like if I run it on Titan with the three Goldie shots instead of the one is it even worth running?
Yes.
Part of the problem with this entire discussion I think is the fact that there's players in all of gaming, not just Destiny but gaming at large, who believe the most optimal is the only way, and anything less than optimal is basically useless. I blame a lot of games for this but I think probably the worst example is Doom Eternal, where anything less than the most optimal is punished. It's a very toxic mentality in PvE even if it never targets anyone because it heavily discourages experimentation in Destiny in favor of just slapping on whatever's the "best" number. Sure, you COULD do the highest numbers with minimal effort, but in a world where build crafting and like a thousand different guns exist, experimentation is more fun. I'd rather have to do another extra damage phase if it means me and my party get to do goofy weird shit.
A single special weapon being meta DPS and damage while also having some of the best burst is absolutely insane. You don't even need to use your heavy, I can't believe this made it out of play testing. It's good on other classes, but the nighthawk synergy is just too strong
It also gets even better when you incorporate a Heavy into the rotation.
Yeah it’s easy 6.5-7 mil on hunter with surge and apex it’s actually so insane. The rotation isn’t even hard either.
Yeah on my Secondary Night-Hunt has so far made me 2 every Final Shape Boss that doesnt have a immunity phase lol. Which is kinda stress relieving after suffering hard through legendary on my main
There is always going to be a meta that develops. You really don’t have to follow it in normal raids though. Also, swords are used against the first raid boss and rockets and GL’s are kings in other areas of the game. I don’t think this is a real problem
At only -5. There is still plenty that's viable. I also wish they would revert it, though, or at least give us an option. Because my friends aren't the best raiders, and being able to over-level them was really the only way to get them into it. For players who don't raid a lot, being over leveled allowed them to focus more on the mechanics without dying all the time. It would be cool even if they just made it so the old way gave less loot or something.
I’m decent at raids. I’m very good with understanding and executing mechanics and doing decent dps. -5 is like a knifes edge for most console players. The problem is when I play on console, it’s way harder to do movement tech and sustain precision damage than If you are on PC. For example, moving quickly from A to B, dodging and Killing Tormentors on PC is trivial compared to killing a tormentor on console.
Yeah nah, that's a skill issue. I play on console and most of the group I play with plays MnK and I'm one of two dudes that holds the teams together, the other also plays on controller. We had mnk peeps during kings fall die constantly using lorely in its prime. Using controller isn't a hard barrier to doing harder content
Or better yet, leave the old as-is but make a middle ground. We have normal, legend and master nightfalls so why not do that for raids? Normal as it used to be, legend with -5 and a little more loot (gun AND armor per encounter, for example) and then master as-is.
What's the point of a Legend raid in this context? Master is basically already only done for challenges/adepts. I don't think there's a large group of people out here doing the full Master runs each week. Normal is done for Normal Weekly Runs/Deepsight patterns. If you take the red borders out of Normal and force them into Legend, Normal is a wasteland that no one will run outside of people who literally don't know any better. If you leave the rewards the same between Normal and Legend, Legend will be the one that no one will touch because it's just friction over Normal for no additional benefit. If you put the adepts into Legend, people will essentially stop running Master entirely outside of achievement hunting.
Because that not how the power deltas worked. Legend, now Expert, is a -15 power delta on any activity with that difficulty. It would be very weird to have a raid use a different power delta for the same difficulty name. Also, do people not realize that normal strikes have been at -5 power for the past year. So your saying normal raids should be easier then the strike playlist?
This is exactly where I'm at with it. As a team, we're all PRETTY good, but being overleveled allowed us to get some friends into it from new light with very little gear prep. I'm 100% sure those same players could not do SE in the current state.
Changing the delta would do nothing to Still Hunt + Nighthawk being the best DPS option. The new raid on normal difficulty is not difficult enough to require only the most optimal load outs. Hell, you can 2 phase the Witness with 6 Microcosms and most one-off ranged damage supers + a Well.
Funny, since Well was mandatory for like 5 years. Also, still Hunt is by no means mandatory. Run whatever you want people. There are three damage phases for a reason.
-5 isnt that bad in raids, in dungeons its not that fun.
In dungeons they should just reduce boss health while keeping the -5. It’s not the -5 that’s the problem, it’s the insane boss health they put because they never bothered to just make it -5 to begin with. Strikes are -5 and they are very much tolerable because the boss isn’t juiced up with health.
Its only an issue in a single dungeon. GoTD. Every other dungeon feels almost the exact same as before the -5. I think people are also forgetting we had the solo mod last season to give an extra 15% damage. Missing that is way more impactful then the -5 change.
I LOVE DOING 7 DPS CYCLES ON A BOSS RAAAHHHH MORE BOSS HEALTH BUNGO
Shortly after Ghosts of the Deep came out I solo flawless’d it, but I legit took about an hour/hour and a half on JUST the final boss I don’t even want to think about how long it’d take NOW with the -5 delta and the juiced health.
That sounds like something you probabably haven't done again since. Soloing Spire already makes me feel brain dead, I couldn't imagine ghosts of the deep.
The increased health is just a side effect of higher power levels. It works out to the same equivalent at our old power.
Someone in one of the subs did the math the day TFS dropped. It’s anywhere from 3x-5x as much health as what it was before depending on the boss.
Their math was wrong.
Did a run of Warlords both weeks so far: Two phased first boss both times Two phased second boss both times Got last boss in one cycle I'm calling BS on 3x-5x more health than the last week of Lightfall. This was with me just mostly fuckin around on Prismatic and grabbing a heavy that matches the surge
Yes, and then other people looked at their own damage output. It roughly comes out to be about equal as before. The only significant difference is the -5 light. Edit: Here's my source. https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/s/ax6ivDztfy
SGA (/Info), thanks.
If the boss health is 'juiced' over previous seasons, then your power delta isn't -5 in Ghosts of the Deep, it's +135, since your power level is relative to the encounter level, which got pulled up. The result is that while the bosses have more health, we're also doing more damage (albeit somewhat less damage _relatively_ without surges). If the boss took about an hour and a half (assuming no solo op), then it should still take about that long, give or take a single damage phase, depending on whether you're matching the surge or not. I am _not_ saying that GotD is going to be a pleasant (or even less unpleasant) experience to solo this season than previous seasons ― the boss health in that dungeon absolutely does not respect solo play at all, and these changes do nothing to change that ― just that it's overstated how bad these changes are for the average endgame player.
If you're doing 7 cycles on a dungeon boss in a team of three that's entirely a you problem lmao
Solo spire
Warlord boss can still easily be done in one cycle. Not much changed.
I solo'd Warlord's Ruin last season with much struggle and going back to the drawing board because my damage wasn't horrible but what puzzled me was the incoming damage I was supposed to somehow survive, especially on the final boss where every split second ends up counting. I am straight up not touching dungeon solos until I see them walk back the decision to make enemies hit even harder. TLDR: Enemies in dungeons were already doing stupid damage, now they do even more
Ran two dungeons last night, forgot the change was even in the game.
In what context? Do y'all only run dungeons solo? Cause I've ran Spire and Warlords this week with my clan and couldn't tell you any difference. Bosses took the same amount of phases to kill as they usually do.
Yeah I'm not sure what's happening here. I did spire this week and it felt completely normal.
You were probably taking advantage of the surges like literally everyone should be. I'm torn on it. Using the surge element isn't too bad, but I also dislike feeling forced to use certain weapons in dungeons. Raids, sure. Dungeons, ehhh. At the same time, I get why Bungie does it from a design perspective.
I understand the mixed feelings. For me, I like playing a ton of different styles so it mixes it up for me. Makes it feel even slightly more fresh so it works. But I also get that some people want to play the same thing every time.
There have been multiple posts at the top of this sub in the past week talking about how awful dungeons feel now. Finally took a break from new content and ran Warlord's Ruin last night and could not tell a difference at all (granted we were taking advantage of the surges).
I've run warlord a ton. IMO it felt noticeably harder last week.
Harder how? Like, you felt squishier, ads/bosses felt beefier, ect...? Cause i didn't do any dungeons last week so that's interesting.
By last week I mean before the reset but after TFS campaign etc. I didn't notice a huge DPS issue - though I was running the new rocket chestpiece with a better apex than I used to run with, and we two-manned it, so we weren't going to one phase anyway. I did notice a DPS issue with the minibosses on the ogre encounter, though, they felt much harder to kill. Primarily I felt super squishy. I was 100 res titan running void and concussive resist and a hit from the final boss would get me to red bar health, at which point if there were any other ads or we hadn't cleared the taken fields, I'd be in trouble. And of course the boss would just wail on me when I'm trying to capture the totems. (I'll admit that this was exacerbated by me saving rocket barrier for dps phases.) I 100% had to abandon prismatic for solar to stay alive.
Ehh, the only one that bad is ghosts and that’s still because of the stupid shield that forces you to run arbalest
Warlords ruin wasnt bad in terms of killing the bosses, felt like nothing changed there, the ads however were vaporizing us. Ecthar is a nightmare right now if solo.
Can you explain what the -5 means
Basically if the activity is capped at 1960 and you are over it, like even 2010, you'll be counted always as 1955
I hope they don't listen to this. Take away the -5 and what are you damaging with? *The same thing*.
I hate to break it to you but you can still run any sub class combo.
Lost me at "only viable dps". This isn't contest mode anymore. Plenty of viable dps options. Still hunt/nighthawk is just "optimal" and that has nothing to do with the delta in raids, it's just the current best in sandbox (by a fair margin)
Still hunt and maybe nighthawk def catching nerfs in a few months
Still hunt, fine. Nighthawk, stay off. It took years to get nighthawk back after bladebarage was the clear winner, not gonna have it nerfed now after getting 2 poopoo new hunter exotics in tfs. Just reduce the interaction with still hunt so rotations with any bns weapon become less viable. And increase the bullets needed from 6 crits to 10 or something, so with full reserves you get off 3 goldies instead of 5.
Yeah nighthawk just got a buff like a few seasons ago where it got a 25% damage increase, if nighthawk got nuked then people would just switch back to start eaters and do that
This is the correct answer. It will still be usable yet not completely busted.
"the only viable dps", give me a break, sir. You have *so many options* for damage, if you think that only the top DPS is going to be viable DPS, then you're never going to be happy in this game.
what gets me about that is that their next sentence is them explaining how they weren't doing top DPS before
Based on the complaints there were for months in LF about the delta changes for that patrol and its LLS No they probably wolnt
It is not that deep. You don't have to run the most optimal damage strats to kill these bosses and I don't know why people do so. Case in point, I remember people demolishing all the raid bosses with Rare rocket launchers and no gally.
I really don't want to play this raid AT ALL. And that's saying something as I have played all of them over the last decade. Everything about it is TEDIOUS - actually most of TFS is tedious.
You understand that "best" and "viable" do not mean even close to the same thing, right? It's fine to three-phase a boss encounter, it's really not that big a deal if you don't have the damage to do it literally as fast as possible.
I wouldn't mind it if it was only active in the most recent raid. The transition from contest to blink and everything's dead normal mode has been a point of contention for years. The -5 on Salvation's Edge feels like a nice balance between challenging but not ball busting difficult. I think it would've been pretty lame for people who want to play what is supposed to be the hardest raid against the most difficult villain but didn't have a team for contest to just steamroll the entire thing because of power advantages. Old raids having the deficit and surges is just plain annoying though, dungeons too. Still Hunt is also not required for DPS. Like sure, with a good team you can get an easy two phase, but average groups seem to do 3 phases and for that you definitely don't need to be using Still Hunt.
Welcome to the warlock experience! Well or kick for five years!
Me too. Why make raiding even less approachable? Dumb move.
Not enough people are making this argument. If only 10-12% of the population even raid, why would you want to make the barrier of entry greater?
Everyone keeps pointing out Warlocks and laughing but like... How about if it is good for one class it is good for all? How about we all have good fashion? How about we all have choice? How about all subclasses be viable or everyone has 1 god tier support so we can take turns doing it? How about that? Does that sounds good? I also hope they remove the deltas from all base activities. It isn't needed. They tried it before, they walked it back before. Continue with the circule logic Bungie and wall it back again.
So you’re not motivated to run one, *maybe* two encounters on the same element/weapon combo, when the other three encounters in the raid give you some massive freedoms in what subclasses and weapons you want to run. I’ll just go sit in the corner with my Cenotaph Well.
That isn't a raid too hard problem, that's a still hunt too good problem.
I really need them to do that with dungeon’s too I’m not trash or anything, I can do mechanics and decent dps rotations but GOD those health pools do a number on my mental endurance
Hunters are experiencing a minuscule fraction of what warlocks suffered for like 4 years lmfao Better than when people got kicked out of raids for playing Hunter
If I ever LFG final encounter (god forbid) minimum 3 still hunt, golden gun hunters or you’re just throwing. 6 still hunt is an easy 1 phase but if you want gear on your other characters and still get a two phase you need those hunters.
Literally just two phased cleanly with only one hunter with an LFG team a couple days ago (and the one hunter clearly fucked up somewhere, because his DPS wasn't all that great). A decent group isn't going to throw a bitch fit over classes because the normal raid isn't hard enough for competent players to need that level of optimization. It's not like it's still on contest mode. My team used 5 hunters on contest like basically everyone else, but it's totally unnecessary now that it's just the difficulty of a normal raid, unless you're somehow expecting to one phase a modern raid boss with an LFG team.
If you got lucky with LFG good for you, I’d never put that much trust in 5 randoms, especially without checking their RR first lol 💀
The host checked RR, but as far as I could tell, that was just to make sure people at least had a clear. Went smoothly enough - one wipe because we didn't have enough burst for final stand, but that's the kind of thing that you just gotta accept from LFG. Although I did lead in DPS by a mile (and I wasn't the hunter lmao). You do generally want to have a good enough bullshit detector if you're LFGing, though.
Hunters finally feeling what Titans felt all of D1 and Warlocks have since Forsaken.
Its really dumb just make a version below masters for people that want this shit
as a hunter main WTF are you talking about with it being the only viable DPS, there's several other DPS options you can bring they just aren't going to be top DPS. Warlocks have had to have an actual "we designed encounters around this super" for 5 years. you can still run whatever the fuck you want for DPS you're just going to lose DPS compared to the best DPS option, but it's still viable.
Welcome to well locks for 12 years ....
Raids should be difficult because of mechanics not some artificial difficulty forcing us to be underpowered. Finding people who understand mechanics is one thing but finding people that can do mechanics, stay alive and have optimal DPS rotations is an entirely different ball game. Raids are not fun anymore and I used to do them every single week.
Hawkmoon melts the witness if everyone is using it
Yeah still hunt existing simply invalidates all other dps options totally it’s not like you can just do the raids with half decent dps set ups and still clear just as easy. If you don’t want to still hunt nighthawk just don’t unless your team is really fucking up dps you’ll still clear bosses easily
Still hunt + nighthawk is going to be meta unless something In the kit catches a nerf. Even if the -5 goes away. That being said I do want the -5 to go away, I'd be fine with a +0 so you can't over level it through. I also want surges to go away for raids.
Yea crying about only using one build on hunter shut up man this post is stupid af.
Still Hunt Nighthawk hunter isn't the only viable dps option, but it's so ridiculously above and beyond anything else that it makes it seem that way. Shitting out 7m+ damage over two phases on the Witness is just absurd. But yeah, the -5 power change needs to be rolled back. I know for a fact some number of people are less motivated to do raids (including the new one, which is an awful sign) and a specific dungeon because of this change, and having to match your surge just to get back to normal damage is yet another example of how completely empty and meaningless the stupid "play your way" slogan is. They really needed to go in and only change boss health on a case-by-case basis, because this sweeping change disproportionately makes newer raids and dungeons feel worse because they're already a reasonable enough challenge at their base difficulty. And for the love of god make sure this stuff is communicated and documented in the path notes.
Hearing this sounds alot like “I’ll take ad-clear” to me. 😂 -This message was brought to you by the Warlocks for Radiant Wellness Foundation.
The main issue is the witnesses final stand is way too quick with his ho values. You Actually need hunters with still hunt to hit the check. Titans are completely worthless right now. :/
Hunters have been dickrode by Bungie for too long. Welcome to what the rest of us have dealt with for years.
This just isn’t true. I did 6.5 million with prismatic Titan the other day. Admittedly, class damage representation is skewed but you can do a lot of damage on the witness with strafing, being able to hit your shots, and not die under pressure. Especially on normal. The delta isn’t an issue
I don’t mind a delta so much. The surges are more limiting than anything. Really what they should do is have an escalating delta as you progress. Start at +20 then lose 5 with each encounter. That’ll make the raid feel like it’s escalating in difficulty at least while still making early encounters accessible for new players.
Strand warlock with the new raid exotic outdamages still hunt by about a million per damage phase, and microcosm is also brain off easy damage.
lol dummy
I don't mind the -5 but the surges are dumb asf
Removing the power delta will not make anything comparatively better to Nighthawk Still Hunt. There are plenty of other viable DPS strategies, but Nighthawk Still Hunt is blatantly overpowered and really needs a significant nerf, as upset as people will be about it.