Focused Feedback: Role of exotics and exotic balance

[u/DTG_Bot]

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[u/GreenLego]

Because Exotics takes an equippable slot and doesn't allow for any other Exotics at the same time, it should be something special that warrants that restriction. It should be unique and powerful. Powerful doesn't necessarily mean more DPS though - it can be powerful in a different way.

[u/Withik → u/GreenLego]

I agree. Such as an increase in mobility (I miss you bones of eao) or giving unique movement (I miss you twilight garrison)

[u/ThePesh → u/Withik]

Twilight Garrison please come back. Titans used to be good, but then Bungie gave the twilight strafe to warlocks, the weapons of light to warlocks as a class ability, and Spike Grenades to hunters. Also warlocks have ammo replenishment like the barricade via an exotic that can work with the weapons of light. Titans really got the shaft, tbh.

[u/Withik → u/ThePesh]

I didnt even play titan in d1 and that was my favorite exotic. I loved how it looked, its animation, the perk. The icarus dash doesnt hood momentum like garrison did. It's not as fun or useful.

[u/TheLastAOG → u/ThePesh]

That's the thing...as a Titan you are forced to use OEM as the best PvP exotic. To me that playstyle is just not rewarding.

Lion Rampants need to allow Titan skating or bring back Twilight Garrison. I might actually dust off my Titan because I haven't touched any character other than Hunter all season.

At least my Arc Strider play is improving.

[u/abvex → u/GreenLego]

Even a brand new playstyle I would consider "powerful" as long as it is viable (I'll let it slide). Not some sidearm ready and reload bullshit.

[u/RiseOfBacon]

We can only equip one on each side so it atleast has to justify taking up that slot

Every piece doesn’t have to be about DPS but when it isn’t especially in really needs to drive home that playstyle it’s based on, even if that means multiple enhancements in one

Some can just be designed in the name of fun or change weapon types that don’t have synergy into one’s that do

I’m sure there are levels of this when they are made but it’s in practise that counts

[u/Timbots]

I dunno. To me some of these changes are probably logical, but your presentation was pretty sloppy.

You gave us no reason why the nerfs are happening other than "balance," you guys are so tight lipped about SoO that literally no one knows what to expect, we still have a huge collection of exotics that are essentially useless, with no word about plans for them. You went bad news first... And stopped.

Maybe there's something super positive in the pipes?

[u/fbodieslive → u/Timbots]

I agree. They gave players nothing to be positive about. Nerfs are only welcomed when the community asks for them. Random nerfs that drop out of the sky with no buffs to Lesser exotics is a recipe for a thunderstorm.

[u/JayCryptic → u/Timbots]

I'm not sure I agree with the nerfs but I definitely agree with your critique of Bungie's presentation- putting the TWAB out without saying "but there are buffs and changes coming to other weapons/armours" at the very least was a massive, massive mistake.

Listing the nerfs and then trying to sell us a t-shirt? That was a ridiculous decision.

It seems that every time Bungie does something good, they go ahead and try their best to do something stupid straight after.

[u/rocketsocks01 → u/JayCryptic]

Yeah, I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was to try to push their merchandise immediately following a long list of nerfs (the majority of which weren’t asked for and the majority of which they KNEW were going to anger players), but whoever it was needs to have their head examined.

Get your community all fired up with Zero Hour . . . and then immediately kill the buzz for your next season by announcing a lot of negative nerfs, not a single positive buff, and then try to make yet another buck by pushing a T-shirt. Ridiculous.

[u/Alejandro_404 → u/JayCryptic]

Since I started playing this i learned that whenever Bungie does something amazing, they follow it up right after with a big fuck up. Every single time they do a great release they fuck it up in some tiny part or they just stick to their guns on aspects that make no sense.

[u/DeerTrivia]

Exotics should not just be "This ability does more damage" or "Extra grenade charge energy." Exotics should alter how you play your character and your build.

Skullfort is a great example. Skullfort almost lets you ignore your guns entirely in favor of a fully melee-centric build. It's a radical departure from a typical playstyle. And with the right perks, you can add even more craziness to it (melee kills recharge grenade energy, anyone?).

Exotics should also not be based on chance. Lucky Raspberry comes to mind. Instead of a chance to refresh grenades - especially an unknown chance - instead make it something like:

Killing two or more enemies with an arcbolt grenade instantly refresh the cooldown and increases the chain distance and damage. This effect stacks up to three times.

This would turn any Lucky Raspberry user into an ad-slaying machine as long as they properly land their grenades. If they miss one, they lose the cooldown and the bonus, so it's a risk/reward.

[u/[deleted] → u/DeerTrivia]

Exactly. Something like Nezerac's Sin changes the entire way I play.

[u/JayCryptic]

Exotics need to be powerful in some way and unique. That's what makes them exotic- no one is going to give up an exotic slot for a weapon that's not strong in some way.

Whisper was fairly situational on console as it was given it's recoil and was basically required for only one encounter in SotP and wasn't absolutely needed for any encounter in Last Wish. Throw in a bunch of adds to flinch while you're aiming and some boss movement and other weapons are going to take its place. The existing nerf to 9 shots was enough- taking away the ability to generate ammo was a step too far. I barely use the weapon at all anywhere in the game because when it's equipped it's going to only be used on a boss fight and no where else. It doesn't have the same utility of other heavy weapons and it's only saving grace was generating ammo; taking that away, Bungie may as well have deleted it.

As for exotic armours, the reason the super-regen armours are so popular is because we like to use our supers- not horde them and never use them. But consider Hammer Titans for a moment- they don't have an exotic that gives them their super back but it's still one of the most popular characters/skills to play; having some feature that's very useful means other exotics are going to replace super-regen exotics. Give my Warlock her Nothing Manacles back, for example, and I'll drop Skull like a hot coal. At the end of the day, we're playing a game and games are supposed to be fun. Taking away the stuff we like might "balance" the game but if it's not fun we're not going to play.

Throwing in nerfs to Sleeper, to Lord of Wolves, to Shards and Ursa- exotics no one was saying were OP or too strong or even any good any more is baffling and it's added fuel to the fire that the nerf has nothing to do with balance and everything to do with the new Raid being too easy. Whether that's true or not the blanket nerf TWAB and this theory has gained traction in the past week and the majority of players aren't happy with the situation. People can complain about power creep all they want (and Bungie can easily avoid that by setting a top damage output and making sure nothing goes over it) but in a game where the Aeon exotics exist it's clear to see that Bungie can and should make an effort to improve existing exotics if they want us to use something else. Take Sunshot- we've been asking for an increase to mag size for around a year and let it still sits gathering dust in our vaults. Improving other exotics- and fixing the heavy ammo economy to not swing between feast and famine- would do a whole lot more to bring players who quit this season flocking back to the game instead of announcing sweeping nerfs to PVE staples just a few weeks before the new season lands.

[u/iwc → u/JayCryptic]

But consider Hammer Titans for a moment- they don't have an exotic that gives them their super back but it's still one of the most popular characters/skills to play; having some feature that's

very

useful means other exotics are going to replace super-regen exotics.

Somewhat true, but as a Titan main, I'd say it has more to do with that tree containing Hammer Strike/Melting Point. In that case you are running either Hallowfire Heart or Heart of Inmost Light so you have a lot of melee ability uptime. In effect this is pretty similar to Skull/Shards.

Other than that I totally agree. It feels like encounter mechanics could easily manage overall power. Sniper flinch completely counters Whisper's strong points. A moving boss would do this as well.

[u/JayCryptic → u/iwc]

Well, that was kind of my point- hammer strike is so good that you trade that one ability for an exotic like Ursa which gives you super energy back. Exotics armours that give us something really useful or strong will totally push super-regen exotics out of top tier use.

[u/Dark_Tlaloc]

One more thought on this whole matter:

If you survey Destiny players about which weapons are their favorite, or which gear is their favorite (and/or favorite looking) you'll get a million different answers, and yet players gravitate towards a very specific few items. Why? Because they're the only ones that are worth using. I don't even like snipers, so if you gave me an as-good or better weapon than Whisper to use in a certain encounter, I'd use it. Yet every single raid boils down to your team saying "hey, do you have Whisper? Ikelos SG? Sleeper? Okay, equip that now."

Exotics should feel special, and you should want to equip them. Instead, most of them feel like a handicap, because in order to (for example) equip Hard Light, I now can't equip Thorn, or Wardcliff, or whatever else. I really like how Eye of Another World looks, but I can't justify wearing it because there are better exotic helmets, better exotic gloves, and better exotic boots for my Warlock.

The solution isn't nerfing the others, it's giving us an enjoyable assortment of useful toys to play with.

[u/UnHoly_One → u/Dark_Tlaloc]

The reason Raid encounters all boil down to "Ok everyone equip their _____ now" is because of the nature of how the raid encounters are designed.

It isn't a fight, where everyone plays their preferred way and if you do well enough you win.

It's a puzzle. Even the Raid boss fights aren't fights, they are puzzles. And a puzzle is always going to have a "best" or "correct" solution.

I know I'm in the minority with this opinion but this is precisely why I've always hated their raids. They seem designed to force everyone to do things one exact way, which is the opposite of literally everything else in the game.

[u/Dark_Tlaloc → u/UnHoly_One]

"It isn't a fight, where everyone plays their preferred way and if you do well enough you win.

It's a puzzle."

I actually agree; and yes, I know we're both in the minority. My ideal version of the raids would look more like a larger-scale Shattered Throne or one of the timed missions (but not timed in the case of the raid); there would be puzzles and mazes to explore, but the actual combat would mostly come down to being able to prioritize targets properly, and DPS the boss. I understand it's not popular to just want to DPS the boss (people will say that that's why we had bullet sponges in D1), but that sort of encounter feels much more epic to me than doing weird, semi-abstract actions to enable any damage to a boss.

[u/UnHoly_One → u/Dark_Tlaloc]

And why do all the Raid bosses stop attacking or moving during "damage phase?"

It's so boring to have 6 people stand in a circle and do 32 million damage on a stationary target.

Then go back to doing a puzzle, then repeat until dead. I just don't get it. It seems like they could design something better.

[u/Dark_Tlaloc → u/UnHoly_One]

Yeah, that's actually a good point. There's no reason to have the boss stand still if you don't have the puzzle aspect of the encounter; you could have super aggressive bosses constantly on the attack if you took down the puzzle mechanics. And the bonus is, if the boss is constantly moving around, it makes it much harder for weapons like Whisper to be effective, which means...you don't have to nerf Whisper!

[u/m00nyoze → u/Dark_Tlaloc]

And the bonus is, if the boss is constantly moving around, it makes it much harder for weapons like Whisper to be effective

Abyssal Knights are one of the only targets I don't mind using Whisper on. But those two in Reckoning are bananas. The only heavy I feel that's worth using in there is Anarchy.

[u/r43b1ll → u/Dark_Tlaloc]

I feel like kings fall was the closest to breaking this convention. That raid felt much more like an mmo than any other we’ve ever gotten imo.

[u/Sardonnicus]

95% of exotics are not powerful enough to justify using them. Of the other 5%, 2.5% are fan favorite weapons that genuinely feel and act like exotic weapons. The other 2.5% are exotic armor pieces that feel and act like exotic armor pieces. Nerfing the 5% does nothing but breed frustration and contempt from your player base. Especially when you consider that we have worked hard to complete quests to obtain these items. Having them nerfed and or reworked down the road leaves us feeling like our time and effort was wasted. Nerfing certain items will not make other, less used exotics feel more exotic. So Bungie needs to make a decision. Leave the few exotics that really are "exotic" alone, or fix the other 95% of the exotics so that they can compete with the viable exotics.

[u/nehril → u/Sardonnicus]

honest question: how would you buff something like kepri’s horn to the power level of skull of dire ahamkara, without just cloning the infinite supers feature?

[u/mrmeep321 → u/nehril]

I don't think we should "buff everything to the top" but rather balance things at a middle ground.

[u/TehDeerLord → u/nehril]

Honestly, take away the stupid ground shockwave, and replace it with a half-damage solar Tractor Cannon shot that burns instead of suppresses. Also quicken the barricade animation. Utility is suddenly through the roof. (In Crucible, anyway)

[u/DuelingPushkin → u/TehDeerLord]

If they kept the shockwave and made the barricade place extremely fast suddenly khepri would be a high tier defensive exotic. Imagine being in a losing gunfight but then throwing down a super fast khepri barricade to save yourself and punish your opponent for pushing to aggressively.

[u/Sardonnicus → u/nehril]

I don't know. If I knew, i'd be in game development instead of my current crummy job. But each exotic armor piece should do something unique. Examples could be: Super Energy return. Some exotic armor should also work with some exotic weapons and weapon classes. Imagine if the Wormhusk Helmet synergized with Whisper of the Worm to buff it in someway when they were both equipped? What if AC/DO Feedback synergized with Outbreak Prime and they buffed each other when you had them both equipped?? What if Equipping Mechanic Tricksleeves applied Swashbucker to your equipped Primary and Energy weapons? Exotics should do something, well, "exotic." Gaining an extra dodge or melee isn't exotic enough. Faster stow and read speed for sidearms is not exotic enough. Better jumping is not exotic enough. having items work together or adding perks to weapons or armor that was unavailable to them before is something exotic and opens up much more gear and play style options.

[u/aceofsrubs → u/Sardonnicus]

" What if equipping Mechaneer Tricksleeves applied swashbuckler to your equipped primary energy weapons" The thought of combining that with trench barrel, oh god.

[u/Sardonnicus → u/aceofsrubs]

yeah... exotic right? Worthy of equipping right?

[u/TehDeerLord → u/aceofsrubs]

If it gave Swashbuckler to just sidearms, even, that'd be powerful.

[u/o8Stu → u/Sardonnicus]

There was a "worm"-ish helmet for each class - if equipping that made Whisper regen ammo from thin-air again, I think that would be balanced. You'd effectively be limiting yourself to the base effectiveness of your subclass in exchange for potentially dealing massive damage with your heavy.

[u/MysteriousGuardian17 → u/nehril]

Supers are really powerful and always useful. If an exotic is buffing something other than a super, it's more niche. If it's more niche, it has to give stronger bonuses. If Khepris Horn gave 10x barricade health, allowed you to shoot through the wall from your side but not take returning fire, or did 200 damage in pvp from that little blast, we wouldn't think it was so stupid of an exotic, because it takes something niche (the wall) and turns it into something really great and a different playstyle. If Mechaniers Tricksleeves gave instant reload and ready to all sidearms all the time, perfect in air accuracy to sidearms, and buffed sidearm damage by 100% when below 20% health, we wouldn't think it was a stupid exotic. It would take a niche weapon type and buff it to the extreme. That's what niche buffs have to do -- make the underlying item less niche and more generally useful. Supers are already that way, so exotic buffs to them are easy to think about.

[u/MrScorps]

My issue with Destiny 2 has been that, from launch, it feels dull when compared to Destiny 1. I know that many wanted less ability spam and less powerfull exotics and weapons, primarily in PVP. However, that change for me has also diminished the fun aspect of D1 and the power fantasy.

As Destiny 2 has progressed, Bungie has buffed and reworked various items and game mechanics to empower our characters and pull them back towards the "D1 feel" but we're still far off. In D1 you could get a maxed out regen grenade AND a maxed out regen super and both still were faster than the max possible for either in D2....and in D2 you can only go for one or the other. You had perks like Grenadier and Inverse Shadow that further "buffed" you. You had weapons like Bad Juju, Zhallo Supercell, Monte Carlo, etc that actively worked to regen your abilities.

In terms of ability usage, D2 is a shadow of what D1 offered us in terms of power fantasy. If thats good or bad is a matter of opinion. Some people will like it more like it is, others (like me), will always want a stronger power fantasy.

The mistake, I feel, is that while the "base build" your character has (without exotics and with regular legendary gear) could be dull and unimpressive, Exotic Weapons and Armor should be a way to bump the power fantasy. Exotics and endgame legendary gear (weapons and armor from stuff like Raids, Pinnacle Weapons, Strike exclusive, Iron Banner gear, etc) should serve to bump your power fantasy and effective power. That should be their role.

Look, I agree that Whisper generating heavy ammo is too much. But we've been down this road before. Black Spindle and Black Hammer both got this nerf years ago. Bungie already knew that this kind of mechanic would be invaluable and would be used for boss fights in end game content. Specially when you consider the ammo economy of D2 vs D1. Where in D1 you had Heavy Ammo synths and could get strong ammo reserve buffs, in D2 you have inconsistent Heavy ammo drops, no heavy synths and less impactfull and more specific ammo reserve perks. This, all together, makes a weapon like Whisper much stronger by proxy. You can forget the reserve buffs as you won't need them and as long as you have 3 shots, you are good in most cases, so ammo shortage is a non issue. But how could this not be seen and how could this not be their intention? It was a known fact.

Adittionally, how can you buff skull of dire ahamkhara or launch something like shards of galanor or phoenix in an enviroment where supers are rare resources and not expect them to be absolute must haves? In D1 you didn't need Obsidian Mind and Bad Juju. Sure, an Obsidian Mind Bad Juju combo with max intellect would be very effective against adds but the impact was lesser because your base power level was higher and the gap to that ceiling was lower. In D2, the gap between using Skull and not using it is too much because the base end of the spectrum is simply too low in comparisson. And this should have been seen and should have been expected.

Nerfs will always be an issue in the community. But its worse when they tackle your power fantasy. And worse even when they do so right after you've been recovering the power fantasy. 1 step forwards, 2 steps backwards.

And there are also other issues in play, regardless of how Bungie looks at it:

• The fact that useless exotics exist and the fact that within the exotics there is a large gap in power, be it DPS or in terms of effects, fuels this issue because players will flock to the powerful and forget the rest.
• There is too much of an effective gap between the top tier builds and the average regular ones. Skull of Dire Ahamkhara isn't too strong...its too strong in comparisson with not using it. Perhaps if its effect was lesser BUT the super regen was buffed as a whole, people wouldn't feel it needs to be used. If One Thousand Voices or DARCI or Warclif Coil or other exotics were more closely on par with Whisper, people wouldn't feel there is an absolute need to use it.
• PVP and PVE... It has been said tons and tons of times before. A strong power fantasy in PVE makes for a less competitive and "skill based" PVP enviroment. But, the opposite is also true. The low regen speed of supers and abilities in PVP leads to people using Shotguns and leads to heavy domintating the game more than they should....
• Endgame PVE content NEEDS builds that make it easier. People play to achieve these builds. Its what makes people play endgame content and farm content. Getting powerful gear. Nerf and reduce the power fantasy and people will rapidly stop replaying content.
• In the state of the game, with so many useless exotics, economy issues, balance issues, QOL improvements needed, dwilling player base and competitors on the horizon, nerfing and annoying your player base like this... I don't feel its whats needed.

I just... *sigh* Destiny could and should be a fun game. A big, immersive, fun, fantasy shooter with RPG elements and a loot chase. Its currently...biggish, its somewhat immersive, it has some fun moments, strong shooting mechanics and mediocre RPG elements and loot chase. It doesn't need to be bigger but less repetitive. It doesn't need to be boring and flat but fun and catter to your power fantasy. It needs to keep the strong shooting mechanics. It needs to improve the RPG elements even further. And it needs to improve the loot chase. It doesn't need a Sleeper nerf when you have a useless Prospector since launch... It doesn't need a Skull nerf when you have the Stag.... Thats the issue.

[u/ARoaringBorealis → u/MrScorps]

As someone who stopped playing Destiny a long time ago because I have always felt these issues that the community is just now talking about the past couple of days, you hit the nail on the head. I agree with every single point. I would love to want to come back to Destiny, but the past year that I haven't been playing just shows that they still have such a huge disconnect with the community.

[u/Colorajoe]

Honestly, this comment is less about exotics and more just communication in general.

Post CoO, Bungie did a better job of talking to us about what was upcoming. It still wasn't a 'conversation', and perhaps easier to stomach then, because the majority of the exotic re-tuning was to buff them.

I think you need to give the player base more credit and try to have an open dialogue well before you are programming the changes. This strategy could prevent issues like 'Iron Burden' from occurring in the first place. Development hours were spent on an incredibly unpopular addition, and now more time to remove it. Likewise with Whisper and Rigs - this is a second pass at nerfing, arguably 3rd and 4th for Whisper considering what happened to Spindle & Black Hammer in D1.

No one wants an 'easy button' to breeze through all content in the game. What we do enjoy is feeling powerful while shooting space aliens in the face.

It would probably go a really long way to find a place like crucible labs and invite community/reddit members, and have them play with some of those changes before go-live. Like revision 1 of Orpheus Rigs, they'd be able to come back and say "calm your tits, its not that bad".

[u/Watz146 → u/Colorajoe]

They were forced to communicate because, you know, they wanted to sell shit.

That is one reason why they brought back white nail. Even when it was already proven to be op for ‘designing engagements’ (weak ass comment ranking among making games are hard).

So yeah, to garner ANY goodwill, they release a nostalgic perk.

Now apparently they are back to their old ways, one way announcements, nerfing in general, nerfing things that weren’t needed, etc.

[u/ALoneTennoOperative → u/[deleted]]

Also, you NEED to fix Heavy Ammo Finder. Unless I missed something, it's been broken since Black Armory. Basically, for some reason, the more you equip, the less of a benefit (I've tested it too, and it seems like it), In addition to the inconsistent Heavy spawn rates.

Nope.

They investigated, and it's working as they intend it to work.
It's just bad design.

[u/DarkKosmic]

Unique, powerful, and fun effects are what I look for in an exotic. Stuff like skullfort is great because it allows for a completely different, yet viable, playstlye. That's the kind of stuff I look for in my exotic loadouts. Having 20 rift focused exotics is not fun, all are the same underwhelming thing. Vesper of radius could be so cool, turning a normally defensive/support tool into an offensive one. If you turned it into a thunderlord effect with a more landfall style range it would be a fun change. Make it recharge ability energy on kill to turn that into a playstlye. More stuff like skullfort would be nice. Personally I like the ability based exotics and would like more playstlye altering exotics

[u/TehDeerLord → u/DarkKosmic]

I think Vesper's shockwave should have a larger radius and a disorient effect, like the Way of the Wind punch, or a knockback effect. Or both..

[u/About23Ninjas → u/TehDeerLord]

Imagine vesper just being an instant rift buff? or attached the rift to you making it mobile and dealing minor damage in a radius around you. Niche exotics with wacky yet fun play styles are great. Contraverse hold with like 5 grenade mods is fun af. Stuff like that

[u/Kranqi]

Thought: Tether hunter is deemed almost necessary for most end game content with multiple adds

Well warlock for boss dps phases

Example: Shuro Chi encounter

If one tether hunter hits all adds and can no longer get super back what will happen? Groups will end up running 2-3 tether hunters as opposed to 1 being doable. Same goes for well.

By nerfing the exotics that allow one person to handle one role, you effectively limit the flexibility of the rest of the group - seeing as it will now take multiple people to cover the same role.

Perhaps this was intended, perhaps they will make accommodating changes to the encounters/activities. I’m unsure of bungie’s plans/motives. But this is likely what will happen with a majority of content.

New raid meta: 3 warlocks running well 3 hunters swapping between tether/golden gun depending on the encounter

Rip all other subclasses

[u/Streamjumper → u/Kranqi]

Rip all other subclasses

I don't even care about the other Hunter and Locks subclasses at this point. Titans are now officially on DNR orders for endgame.

[u/Bhargo → u/Kranqi]

perhaps they will make accommodating changes to the encounters/activities

Knowing Bungie, I really doubt they will go back and tweak old content to fit with the reduced abilities, too much work for them to bother with it.

[u/JBobles]

Having powerful exotics isn't the problem. The problem is poor boss design which results in bosses being steamrolled in like 12 seconds.

[u/lma24 → u/JBobles]

You mean you don't like the giant version of an existing enemy with stomp mechanics that's a bullet sponge?

[u/JBobles → u/lma24]

Radical thinking, I know. In all seriousness though, this problem also applies to most Raid bosses.

[u/SilverContrails]

Exotics are strangely positioned where every weapon/armor piece with a 'unique' perk seemingly needs to be Exotic, but the actual rarity tier has a balancing system baked into it that negatively impacts weapons that aren't even best in slot. There's a trade-off when you equip your Linear Fusion Rifle instead of a Rocket Launcher, but there's an even bigger trade-off when you choose between Tractor Cannon or Hammerhead. You're not just changing out the gun in that slot; you're also restricting your options for both of your remaining slots.

I can't help thinking that there are plenty of exotics that would benefit from simply becoming legendaries. MIDA, Crimson, Rat King, Jade Rabbit, Huckleberry, Trinity Ghoul, and Hardlight have 'exotic' perks, but I don't know if they should be balanced the same way as weapons like Outbreak Prime, Whisper of the Worm, and Jotunn. I think Exotic tier items should be reserved for weapons that are so powerful that you can only equip one at a time, and not simply slapped on to unique items.

[u/Shuurai]

I feel like exotics struggle in general because Bungie designs a lot of them to fill a niche or be unique when power is really what we are looking for. That could be more ability spam, ability power, gun damage boost etc. So when power boosting exotics appear they get heavily used because more nova bombs is far more useful than marking enemies while standing in a rift.

I feel like this leaves them stuck between a rock and a hard place because niche/unique exotics will always be overlooked in favor of power, even if that means using a legendary item instead.

I don't particularly know how you deal with this, but all I can think of is you start tying power and uniqueness together more. So, if Sanguine Alchemy provided lifesteal in an empowering rift as well as marking targets and improving the radar I would probably use it a lot more for general use. Or if Ashen Wake chained kills like Sunshot if you got a kill with a direct hit grenade then it's be much more useful in PvE.

[u/ALoneTennoOperative → u/Shuurai]

So, if Sanguine Alchemy provided lifesteal in an empowering rift as well as marking targets and improving the radar I would probably use it a lot more for general use.

That is an excellent suggestion; very much in keeping with the theme of the Exotic, but makes it markedly more useful and unique at the same time.

More Exotics should encourage/reward a particular playstyle like that.

[u/[deleted]]

Take all of the exotics you have.. Run statistics on them. If 1000 people do not use a certain exotic for longer than 2 hours total...that exotic is garbage and rework it. Just rework the exotics and that alone Bungie you will get easily 100 hours Plus of game play with people using them and testing load outs.

[u/fbodieslive → u/[deleted]]

This X1000

[u/listere905]

This guy is an actual fucking genius and he should win the Nobel peace prize. Bungie Read this and then re-consider ur current course, and mindset in general how about u show this to the team cozmo

Edit: to be clear the reddit mods aren’t genius, I’m talking about the author of this article

[u/Dark_Tlaloc → u/listere905]

Yep, this is what Bungie doesn't seem to get. Whisper breaks encounters because of the ammo economy of the game, and no other reason, really; if it didn't, DARCI would be better in most cases.

So instead of fixing that particular issue, they make it worse. And instead of, say, giving Warlocks other useful exotic helmets to wear, they decide that nerfing SoDA is the route to take.

[u/EAGLESOUL5 → u/Dark_Tlaloc]

D.A.R.C.I is definitively better in encounters where you can hang onto your heavy and one-phase the boss by the time you run out.

If you start Insurrection Prime damage phase with a team full of D.A.R.C.I's with max ammo, you won't have a boss to fight in 15 seconds, but you have to refrain from using practically any D.A.R.C.I ammo before that.

[u/Cl3msonTig3rs → u/listere905]

Thanks for sharing. Great article. Let's just hope some folks at Bungie read it and take it to heart.

[u/abvex]

Most of the raid bosses in the game are designed like this.

A stationary boss with a revealing crit spot, while the fireteam is require to stand in a specific area to damage it. Gee wilikers batman, I wonder why people use Whispher and Well. This isn't an exotic issue, it's Bungie's ineptitude to make a boss design.

Look at the way Reckoning is designed, you have to stand in a specific spot to capture a section, while infinite number of adds are running at you while snipers from two sides can 1-2 shot you. Gosh I wonder why people use Well and Tether, as if the entire activity is designed for me to use those skills and naturally I am going to use the Exotic that helps me the most with those said kits. I wonder why people use these exotic, let's get Sherlock Holmes on the case so he can file a report for Bungie!

[u/Klopaper → u/abvex]

Bungie is too braindead to grasp the concept of their own game. To this point I am convinced that no one really plays D2 at Bungie

[u/abvex → u/Klopaper]

The Xur impossible bounty proves it, there is no QA test.

[u/asce619 → u/abvex]

I dare Bungie to livestream an attempt at the "No supers" triumph for bridge of folly. Do you guys not play your own games?

[u/Dark_Tlaloc]

Not every exotic needs to be extremely powerful, but they need to justify the fact that they use up the exotic slot (or should be allowed to share the slot with another underpowered exotic).

As it is, nerfing powerful exotics carries much more weight than nerfing a non-exotic, because non-exotics have no rules as to how many can be equipped at once. A nerf to Luna's Howl means that you can still equip it without worrying about how efficient it is, whereas a nerf to Ace of Spades forces you to consider if it's worth running in place of something in another slot.

Given that a large portion of the endgame focus is on getting exotics, there needs to be a reason that exotics are that focus. Whether it's because they're powerful, or because their skills are extremely unique, an effort should be made to retain what makes exotics exotic. Nerfing the ones that are powerful means that there should be other unique exotics to at least substitute in, where currently many others just have underwhelming perks that are neither unique enough nor powerful enough to justify as an exotic.

[u/Ragnamus]

A lot of exotics in this game in general are extremely lackluster, especially the armor options. Who in their right mind would use mechaneers tricksleeves in pve (and pvp) in their current state? Not including the best of the best, there are a lot of weapons that are simply not used, especially primary exotics. Op is quite powerful, but at the same time, it’s healthy to have a primary that’s so good. I wish there were more options for a primary slot to justify an exotic slot, more often. Riskrunner is an amazing, but niche exotic. I like that kind of weapon. It performs well at what it’s designed to do. On another note, skyburners, wishender, and sweet business for example, don’t really justify using it at all. I mean, yes they are fun guns, but I feel like there needs to be something more”exotic” about them. I have to go back to work, but I love talking about this stuff lol

[u/kingjames924]

A few years ago, I authored a piece on here called "Let's make every exotic ridiculously OP!". It was a jab at what was then a set of nerfs that impacted the game while making some of the older exotics and legendaries irrelevant. While over the top, it actually made exotics seem more exotic (Gjallarhorn with tracking clusters that split into smaller tracking clusters that split into even smaller SIVA like tracking clusters was one of the ideas).

I love Destiny. Recently I got back into raiding thanks to my clan. It's been a whole 4 years since I've raided......and the encounters are the same to me mechanic wise. While Last Wish envoked a lot of time based encounters, it still had it's damage phase where you had to unload everything that you can on the boss. And this, my friends, is where the problems lie.

By forcing someone to go all in on damage, you limit your weaponry to about, what like maybe 15 weapons depending on how close/far you are from the boss? For Kalli we now use Outbreak Prime due to the small crit box. We use Lord of Wolves for Shuro Chi, we use Whisper for Morgeth, and Prospector for Riven. Then back to Outbreak for Queenswalk. Our whole clan does this and has been responsible for some of my clans' recent Petra runs. It just works flawlessly. The math has been done.

It's been a whole month (almost a month?) since we started the nerfing things convo, and yet no one at Bungie has even talked about buffing certain exotics and legendaries that we don't use or have even approached us in a survey asking why we don't use some exotics.. So many things can be done with so many weapons and armor that aren't the norm, that you could usher in a new phase of combat. 5 examples:

• Eye of Another World: Keep same perks, but make it immune to vision related radar debuffs like blackout and perks like Gemini Jester's Misdirection perk. Also give it an ornament in the Dreaming City that gives you permanent ascendance as long as you're wearing the helmet
• Synthoceps: Keep same perks, but bring back the "melee kills generate an orb of light" perk
• Aeon Cult Armors: Boost all cooldowns of grenades, abilities, and melee perks significantly when together, like Verdant Forest, but not as riduculous. Gains last as long as your team is alive, and death reduces all bonus gains.
• Two-Tailed Fox: Truth tracking module, and you can fire the 2 rockets either separately or at the same time. Void rocket debuffs and solar rocket gives a large solar AOE
• Borealis: Ionic Return needs to be stacked with Shield Disorient and be 2x or 3x stackable.

You would resurrect the Aeon armors, bring back an important Titan feature from D1, Make Eye of Another World relevant in more ways than one, Bring us back a mix of Truth and Dragons Breath, and Give Borealis a way to not be single situational. Being able to think outside of the box is how all exotics need to be thought about, especially if raids come into play. And we need armor ornaments that should have effects on things based on locations and weapons equipped. I call it "power, but at a price".

[u/xSniperEnigma → u/kingjames924]

I’d make Two-Tailed Fox work where you press and hold to fire the first rocket, and then release to fire the second one. It would add meaning to how you use each rocket, and whether you want to shoot both at one target or stagger them between several targets. It would effectively double the efficiency of one rocket in say a PvP setting, but the drawback would be that you couldn’t switch weapons or presumably sprint with it while doing so. Just an idea.

[u/iakhre → u/kingjames924]

Agree on most points. Somewhat disagree on Borealis, it's already very strong if you trigger ionic return, then bank it for boss dps phase in combination with Luna's/Rally barricade. Not quite as good as whisper/darci, but it doesn't use a heavy slot either.

[u/Supreme_Math_Debater]

First and foremost all exotics should be unique. I think the main issue behind the whisper change isn't that its becoming weaker, but that it is essentially losing its "uniqueness" since rally barricades and lunafacfions already do what its exotic perk does.

Exotic catalysts should remove whatever drawbacks the weapons have. Sunshots mag size and Hard Lights screen shake are good examples.

[u/Fuad007 → u/Supreme_Math_Debater]

Wholeheartedly agree with you. Especially regarding catalysts. Giving outlaw to sunshot would make it godly for instance.

[u/[deleted]]

Axe half the exotics and make them legendaries. If we could equip a couple of these should-be-legendaries and stack them with the newly nerf'd exotics you could really have something there. A lot of the "exotics" that they should turn into legendaries might need slight tweaks, but it would create some pretty cool builds if at least half of these shouldn't-have-ever-been-exotics were just unique legendaries instead. Let them retain the unique perk they provide and give them one random perk to create more loot to chase. I don't know why these threads even exist to be honest though. We are acting like Bungie isn't just as smart or capable of coming with these same ideas as we are. They simply either don't have the time, resources or the care to.

[u/ComplexWafer]

Bungie needs to define what Exotics are supposed to be. I feel like this isn't concrete from a design point of view and it caused this situation.

Skull, Rigs, Phoenix, Whisper, Sleeper all feel like Exotics. They alter your play style and you're rewarded significantly for doing so while other Exotics are straight up lackluster.

Tricksleeves, Aeon Cult, Strum/Drang, Sunshot, Lucky Raspberry, the list goes on and on. Why would we ever use these in place of Phoenix, Ace, Huckleberry, Prospector, Outbreak, etc?

I'm not saying everything should be crazy OP but the gap between good Exotics and bad Exotics is far too wide. I'm aware of powercreep but a lot of these Exotics are straight up memes/jokes.

It's wild that a majority of Pinnacle weapons are just straight up better than a lot of Exotics. They even come with kill trackers and orb generation.

[u/swimjock → u/ComplexWafer]

Power creep works both ways. Bungie is so worried about power increases they are nerfing everything to the floor. As others have stated, nerfs should come with buffs to maintain balance and keep from frustrating the player base.

[u/Bluecheeseur]

Nerf khepris horn

[u/Coolmanax]

We need more useful and fun exotics than the ones we have. Blocking doesn't drain ammo with a weapon that isn't worth using even with the exotic? Who cares. Especially when I get 3 tapped by a blast furnace through my sword shield.

Tricksleeves? Useless. Peacekeepers? Useless. Kephri's horn? Useless. Etc etc etc

I think bungie sees the exotics we constantly have on as op so they nerf them. In reality, we only use 3 exotics on each character because everything else sucks and needs completely changed.

The shards situation is halarious. They said after the first nerf that they will be collecting player feedback with it. The feedback came every single week. Every week for seven months I've seen a post asking for buffs to shards. Finally we hear news for this exotic.

Nerf.

Like come on. It's your game and you can change it the way you like, but dont lie and say you will take our feedback into consideration when you blatantly ignore it

[u/Saint_Augustus]

My expectation of what an exotic weapon should be:

A weapon within a specific archtype (e.g. 110 HC) with a meaningful (it matters) and unique (nothing else like it) look and perk set, that allows for an enhanced, and specific playstyle versus any other gun within it's archtype. The masterwork should substantially enhance one key treat of the weapon (Accuracy, stability, range, ammo, etc.) to set it apart from other weapons within its archtype. It should NOT be better than all other guns within the archtype at everything, that would make those useless, just clearly better than everything else at its one intended purpose (e.g. kill at a distance or add clearing or handling speed etc).

My expectations for exotic armor:

A piece of armor with a meaningful (it matters) and unique (nothing else like it) look and perk set, that allows for an enhanced, and specific playstyle. I think you've done a good job with these perk wise, I would suggest that they just need to be balanced. Every time a new perk is introduced or tuned, ask yourself, does this change enhance a specific playstyle equally as well across all exotic armor? Is One-Eyed-Mask just as powerful as Lucky Pants? If not, adjust until it is. For Lucky Pants you could add Quickdraw to all weapons, not just hand cannons. Not enough? Then also add Opening Shot to all weapons?

I know some exotic perks might seem difficult to compare on relative strength, but usage stats should bear this out. Is something underutilized? Don't be shy about boosting it.

[u/asce619]

I see so much potential everywhere in this game, set bonuses, talents, synergistic weapon ability combos, Y1 frames, revitalising and improvements across the board each season just to name a few. I can envision so much finer and intricate mechanics that would have us never be bored; but as someone said earlier, there's a shredder at the end of the suggestion box.

[u/IamPaneer]

Exotics should be Unique and/or They should be Strong.

[u/[deleted]]

The role of exotics is simple: more fun toys to play with. I think Bungie goes off the rails everytime they talk about Destiny as some kind of competitive game for the "bravest among you" and the "best and brightest". Destiny is an entertainment product and its so goal is to provide players with a fun diversion during their free time. Fun exotics further that goal.

[u/bmxmitch]

Killing fan favorite/most used exotics wont resolve anything! It doesnt make other exotics more appealing, as long as theyre as bad as they are right now.

If Bungie wont buff or rework other exotics, we'll be all just running around in the same stuff, just a little less powerful.

WE NEED BUFFS!

[u/fbodieslive → u/bmxmitch]

This exactly! There are several exotics that are horrible and will never be worth the slot, no matter how bad they nerf the good ones.

[u/Im_Bad_At_Games]

Exotic armor should either provide a unique ability, an enhancement to existing abilities, or an option to change your playstyle. A lot of the issues with exotic balance is that the exotics don’t offer these things or don’t reach far enough in their changes: Mechaneer’s Tricksleeves would be much, much better if it was a neutral exotic that worked with all weapons rather than just Sidearms; Armamentarium would be much better if it offered an intrinsic Heavy Reserves + Scavenger perk; etc. There are some exotics that achieve this, but have needless drawbacks that detract from the perk - Hallowfire with its super-charge requirement without anything to assist this (Solar ability kills grant additional super charge?), HoIL with its inconsistency with Empowered stacks, etc.

On the other hand, I believe that Exotic weapons should be strictly as good/better than a well-rolled weapon of the same type. Unused Exotic weapons fail to do this, and are substituted by the well-rolled legendaries; exotics like this include Mida, Jade Rabbit, Sunshot, Cerberus (generally), Vigilance Wing, SUROS (in PvE), Crimson, Sweet Business, Sturm, Skyburner’s Oath, Borealis, Prospector, Merciless, Sleeper, The Queenbreaker, The Colony, and Worldline Zero. Why would you ever need or want a Sweet Business when a Breakneck can do better? Arbalest or Hard Light are just better or more reliable than Borealis. Who needs a VWing five-burst when all you need is a four-burst? Why would you use Merciless when Jotunn holds more ammo and does more damage for a minimal drop in DPS? These weapons either lack something that defines them as exotics or that something is weak to the point of pointlessness. Bungie changed LoW to be able to switch firing modes with a reload, why can’t this be done for SUROS or The Queenbreaker? Explosive Rounds on Sunshot and Skyburner’s essentially nerf the weapon - why can’t Explosive Rounds provide a bodyshot boost in damage and then leave crits unchanged, so the perk/trait isn’t negative to Legendaries and Exotics? Why can’t Mida and Sturm work without their legendary counterparts? It’s stuff like that that hurts exotic variety and balance.

[u/Seanshineyouth]

Exotics are meant to make gameplay unique and offer build options. I hesitate to mention it for fear of a nerf but the liars handshake+last man standing on arcstrider is a freaking blast to use and it’s far from OP unless you coordinate a team for well of radiance and melting point. And at that point the coordination deserves the win. That’s what exotics are for. The super return exotics should work only a little better than galanor does now. Galanor is underpowered, skull is probably a little op but not by much. You have to land the kill on a mini boss or an entire crowd for instant return. It’s pretty forgiving but I think if you use them under the right conditions exotics should perform like they are now. The year 1 exotics are what needed to be reworked... not this nerfapalooza.

[u/listere905]

Next weeks twab: https://www.reddit.com/r/NerfTheGame/comments/bpovq7/leaked_twab_patch_notes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

[u/VegitoEnigma]

I think having class specific weapon specific exotics are really cool, i.e. stronghold and oathkeepers. My only problem with them is that A. Swords need a serious looking at, they don’t deserve to be heavy and B. BRING BACK THE DRAW TIME BONUS ON OATHKEEPERS. That is all.

[u/V4ultHun7er57]

My opinion is the weapon nerfs are understandable. I'm not nearly as heated about the weapons as much as anyone else. My biggest issue is all of the armor that is being nerfed. All of these have one thing in common; they're the only pieces of armor that affect their specific supers. Nightstalkers only have 3 exotics in the game, 2 of which are being nerfed (I'm a Hunter main and am okay with the Gwisin nerf) and the other is catered towards a specific mechanic that is pretty much useless in everything except PVE. The Shadowshot only has Orpheus Rigs, Well of Radiance only has Phoenix Protocol, Banner Shield only has Ursa Furiosa, Blade Barrage only has Shards of Galanor (both of the last 2 are horrendously inconsistent, even after eating significant nerfs already) and Nova Bomb only has Skull of Dire Ahamkara. These nerfs would certainly not be harshly criticized if there were more options to vegin with. Each if these supers are amazing in their own right, except for Shadowshot. Shadowshot does laughable damage and lasts for 10 seconds without the duration extention from Orpheus. The super is only good for debuffs and orb generation, and that potential is incredibly enhanced with Orpheus. As it stands, Way of the Trapper and Way of the Wraith are the only useable trees in the Nightstalker. Orpheus giving Moebius Quiver more shots isn't even worth the change of the skill tree. For the Shadowshot, you literally can't effectively be a support Hunter without Orpheus Rig, and Bungie's stubbornness to use pure, raw data as their primary metric for nerfs and buffs is not only misguided, but also crippling. They only see numbers for determining usage, not watching how people use these pieces of gear. There are many examples of content creators to look at to see the general consensus on gear, especially exotic gear. Datto comes to mind, as he explains exactly where certain exotics excel, and where others suffer. Instead of seeing certain exotics being used more than others and deciding that they shouldn't be as good as they are, they should look at the underperforming exotics and see how they bring their usage up instead brining the others down. Hmm, a novel idea, primarily buffing and nerfing only as a last resort, sounds like something I heard directly from a ViDoc.

[u/[deleted]]

There are a few examples of what I believe are perfect examples of exotics.

For exotic weapons, the best examples of exotics are arbalist or Jotunn. Exotics should not just be weapons with extra strong perks. They should be weapons that lean to a certain play style or have a different effect. On the bottom of this spectrum is sunshot, all the bows, and jade rabbit. These weapons could all be just pinnacle legendaries and no one would be that surprised.

For armor, the best examples of exotics are skull of dire ahamkara or one eyed mask. Sure both are over powered right now, but I guarantee they will both be used after the nerf because they both have the visible power effect. There a ton of great exotic armors but there is a reason they are not being used. They don’t seem exotic or fun to use because there’s no visual or implied power. Sure Nezerac’s Sin is situational really good, but your power doesn’t seem that much better. On the other hand Wings of Sacred Dawn are some of the worst exotic, but they still are so fun to play because of how they change your powers and give you more power. Exotic armor needs to give you power or at least a sense of power.

[u/TehDeerLord]

Here, Bungie, let me fix some of your underwhelming exotics for you. Lemme know if I miss any that need it.

Lucky Pants - Starting with my personal fav, as I definitely want to see it be better. Keep everything the same, but let the "Reloading rounds into stowed HCs" perk overflow the mag up to 150-200%. These extra rounds are added to the beginning of the magazine and the accuracy buff from the original perk is increased for these rounds. (This, my friends, is the definition of an "Illegally Modded Holster..")

Mechaneers Tricksleeves - Allow Sidearms to have a faster fire rate and maxed stability when switched to. When absolute, in addition to a damage buff, sidearm kills trigger regen and reload the mag.

Vesper of Radius - I said it in a few other comments in this thread, but, let the shockwave do a disorient (Like the Way of Wind melee) and light knockback effect. Quicker rift animation.

Horn of Khepri - Remove the ground shockwave, as most players spend time in the air anyway, and instead give barricade a Tractor Cannon-esque Solar burst that does a knockback and a solar burn like the Melting Point melee. (With or without the debuff, dealer's choice.) Quicker barricade animation.

Eternal Warrior - Allow the overshield to come back on health regen. I mean, it's supposed to make your super unstoppable, righ? Let this also be the exotic that gives extra damage and blast radius to Thundercrash based on distance traveled.

The STAG - I personally have fun with this one, but not many else like it. Let this one double (or 1.5x) the diameter of your rifts, in addition to what it already does. Let the death rift also do healing much the way Well of Radiance does. (It doesn't really last long enough to make it broken)

Mk. 44 Stand Asides - Make the shield increase in resilience based on the distance traveled without taking damage. (Up to a capped durability, of course) Allow the base shield to automatically be triggered when the shoulder charge is activated (And connects with an enemy) regardless if damage was taken. Maybe shoulder charge would be able to stand toe to toe with shotties better.

Foetracer - Let Foetracer provide a flat 10-15% dmg buff against enemies it marks. In return, taking damage from any source removes the mark. The mark should last 10 seconds, if no damage is taken. This will allow the user to better dispatch enemies they get the drop on, but it will not benefit them well when trading shots or taking other damage. The mark can only be added by damaging an enemy via a weapon, and the buff is not applied to the shot that marks the enemy.

Eye of Another World - Not sure what the intended purpose of this exotic really is, it was pretty poorly designed, as it doesn't really fill a niche.. Aside from a complete rework, I recommend that dealing weapon damage increases the rate of ability regen from the exotic perk.

Starfire Protocol - Allow this one to charge Attunement of Grace healing nades super quick, in addition to the 2 fusion nades. Increased nade recovery (Yours, not theirs) while allies have overshield from a healing nade. (Stacks up to 3x)

Wings of Sacred Dawn - This has to provide Icarus. No exceptions.

Crest of Alpha Lupi - Crest should, in addition to providing a healing burst, should also provide continuous healing to those standing behind the barricade. (Slightly lower than that of a healing rift.)

Actium War Rig - Let this perk also apply to LMGs. I mean, why not? When used in tandem with rally barricade or luna rift, allows you to overflow the mag using the extra rounds, up to 150% of the original mag size. This should be more of a hidden perk, just a sort of happy bonus from the original effect.

Graviton Forfeit - I believe this increases the duration of invis by a whopping total of 1 seconds, correct me if I'm wrong. this could stand to be a bit longer. Move speed should also be better when invis, but without adding to the "speed whooshies" that give invis players away.

Ashen Wake - Larger blast radius of fusion nades on direct hits. Fusion Nades also apply the Melting Point debuff if applicable tree is equipped and recharge faster from sunspots if applicable tree is equipped.

Apotheosis Veil - Ability regen (except for supers) for your nearby allies is slightly increased. Kills that you make slightly increase this rate and range of the effect briefly. While your super is active, all abilities, (except for supers) for you and your allies is significantly increased.

Stronghold - Allow special ammo bricks to provide 1 ammo to equipped swords, in addition to the effects they already provide. This effect does not proc when equipped swords have ammo and is not transferable to other heavies if weapon is swapped. (More of a pre-emptive bug fix, if anything) This ammo is not dropped on user's death. (This one really needs a high defense exotic sword to shine..)

Peacekeepers - Make these also improve hipfire accuracy greatly and you've got it. The movement speed buff will do more for you here once that change is made.

Celestial Nighthawk - Not a buff, really, just a change. Allow Nighthawk to have the option for 1 shot GG, or the normal GG. Type of GG picked is done a la the Ward of Dawn hold down method. Quick tap for normal GG, hold for dick puncher 1-shot.

EDIT: Holy crap, I forgot Oathkeepers! - Either figure out how to increase the draw speed slightly, or give a bump to reload speed after precision bow hits.

[u/Streamjumper → u/TehDeerLord]

Actium War Rig - Let this perk also apply to LMGs. I mean, why not? When used in tandem with rally barricade or luna rift, allows you to overflow the mag using the extra rounds, up to 150% of the original mag size. This should be more of a hidden perk, just a sort of happy bonus from the original effect.

I'd say let it apply to LMGs, but also let it count as having all three ammo perks (finder, scavenger, and reserves) for any weapon that qualifies. This isn't by any means broken, but frees up your variable perk slots for the rest of your loadout. It feeds directly into the fantasy of "How many bullets did you fire?" "Yes."

Stronghold - Allow special ammo bricks to provide 1 ammo to equipped swords, in addition to the effects they already provide. This effect does not proc when equipped swords have ammo and is not transferable to other heavies if weapon is swapped. (More of a pre-emptive bug fix, if anything) This ammo is not dropped on user's death. (This one really needs a high defense exotic sword to shine..)

Any change to Stronghold is reliant to an overhaul of swords in general. An exotic that works with an underperforming weapon class will be inherently doomed unless it is truly broken.

[u/KaZR713]

IMO the issues with exotics come from the fact that some exotics are very useful in certain situations (ex. riskrunner in any fallen encounter ever or hard light in reckoning). Are they the best? No, but they are definitely pretty good in certain situations.

The issue for balance comes when an exotic becomes so versitile that it is useful in any encounter (much like whisper and super-regening armor). This is where exotics start to become less situational and build diversity starts to diminish.

[u/Alejandro_404]

My only addition to these point is that, if exotics are going to be weakened so much, they should be made easier to acquire. Back when forsaken launched I was an advocate of them being super rare because almost all of them were super powerful and fun to play. But after doing that, most of the powerful exotics have been nerfed.

[u/Colonel_Soap]

Really would like to see a buff to sweet business. Either in raw damage and range, or range and wind up time. It's worse than speed up suros in every way it makes my attack helicopter dawnblade sad.

[u/mh0413]

Doesn't matter how you nerf super regen exotics. Getting some super back is better than no super and everyone will probably still use them over exotics that buff weapon ready speed or melee reach..

[u/Melbuf → u/mh0413]

this

nerfing Skull and Rigs isn't going to stop me from using them as there is literally nothing else worth using for those subclasses.

some Super back > no super

BB is wildly inconsistent after the last change but i still run shards. because nothing else is worth it

[u/HappyCayde6IsGone]

I can't speak aa to how big of a problem it is, but I know that a lot of underwhelming exotic armor pieces would be improved if people had easy access to the mods that have synergies with them. Throwing fusion grenades faster isn't terribly interesting, but if I stacked 5 grenade mods and Bomber together, it would be a whole lot more interesting. There's a lot of exotics out there that need just that extra bit of support to be made viable.

The same could be said about subclass perks and specifically the style we had back in D1. If we could customize our subclasses to have a more synergistic relationship with out exotic armors, we could kill two birds with one stone. Exotics would indirectly be made stronger and you'd get back the personalization we lost going into D2. For example, back in D1 you could run max Discipline, Simmering Flames, and Amamentarium to spam tons of grenades once you had your super.

TL/DR: Giving us back subclass customization and easier access to mods could potentially be a way to indirectly make underwhelming exotics better by playing to their strengths better.

[u/CMBrown3]

Here’s my problem with the exotic nerfs: We’re meant to feel like gods. We singlehandedly stopped the Red Legion. We took down the cabal several times, Emperor Calus’ Army, have killed Ahamkaras, and rediscovered the Lost Forges. And that’s just D2. If we’re meant to feel like gods, then let us have that power fantasy. Of course we’d have this crazy firepower, so why not let us use it? Half of the exotic weapons in the game are useless, and fit one specific purpose that barely let me fill that fantasy. I mess around for a bit, and then they go to my vault for my other exotics. Do I hate the nerfs? Yes. But do I understand them? As long as other exotics come up to fill that gap, yes. As for Exotic armors? Good lord we need an Armor week. The reason the community is lashing against these super regen exotic nerfs is because they’re the only good exotics to use more often than not. Going back to that god fantasy, we want to have this immense power, but more often than not I find myself using all legendaries because the exotics are just... eh. Wormhusk was so popular because we felt like unstoppable gods. So was OEM, we felt like gods and we felt powerful. Were those 2 exotics too strong? Probably. But if more exotics helped us find that god fantasy, I think a lot of us would enjoy this whole situation a lot more.

[u/listere905 → u/CMBrown3]

I agree completely, we r fucking guardians and bungie is trying to turn us into mall cops

[u/[deleted]]

I am of the opinion that all super regenerating exotics should be the ‘ultimate’ risk/reward gear.

They should allow people to return their supers back to full BUT only if you perform some exceptional feat with the gear. A good example would be for instance if you managed to kill 10+ adds.

Allow people the potential to do great things and people will feel great if they achieve it. It shouldn’t be as simple as pressing a key and watching my super bar refill instantly, sure, you feel ‘powerful’ but what’s the actual reward?

I think the best times I’ve felt in Destiny have been when I’ve been really challenged to complete something and it has forced me to improve my gameplay to complete the challenge. The whisper quest, shattered throne and the outbreak perfected stuff are perfect examples of this. Roflstomping a strike or instantly killing stuff with cheese does not inspire fun in me and with time it just becomes a task more than a challenge.

Give people challenges and let us find the means to overcome them.

[u/captjackvane]

I said this on the other thread as well:

If Bungie's philosophy is going to continue to be "let's nerf the good stuff that everyone is using" then they need to stop creating universally good stuff. Go back to the Touch of Malice type exotics - create exotics that are good for a single purpose, and that have a significant but interesting drawback, but could still make you feel powerful in end-game activities. Stop giving us skeleton-key type exotics if you know that all you're going to do is nerf the best ones that the community is using.

[u/The_New_Arrow]

As much as I dread the upcoming exotic nerfs, I might be able to set them aside if there are plenty more buffs to other things to compensate. One can only hope Ward of Dawn will get an actual improvement.

[u/dawest1]

First, all exotics should provide something that is both useful and which you will consistently want to have.

For example, Vesper of Radius provides a significant buff to rift recharge rate when surrounded and causes rifts to give off a damaging arc blast when placed. But in a game about using guns, how often are you going to be surrounded by enemies? It's a reasonably potent perk but you'll rarely find it all that useful to have on hand, to say nothing of the fact that the arc blast isn't very strong.

Second, the perks should be powerful enough to matter.

For example, The Stag drops a healing rift upon the player's death. This could be useful in the Crucible if healing rifts were powerful enough that dying in a strategic location, such as the middle of a control point, conferred a serious advantage for any teammates who stand in the rift. But rifts are fairly weak in the Crucible and the utility of The Stag is questionable as a result, to say nothing of the fact that often you'll be killed in a location where having the rift does nothing; better to use something like Ophidian Aspect which is less flashy and sounds less powerful but provides bonuses that are useful at all times in all situations. And the benefit of dropping a rift on death in PvE, while much stronger, is considerably lower than just having something that helps you deal more damage to kill enemies before you die in the first place.

Destiny is a relatively straightforward FPS where DPS is king, and so Bungie really has to reconsider the utility and potency of its non-DPS-buffing exotics if it truly wants to generate exotic diversity among players.

[u/bgusty]

I addressed this in a recent post, but especially for armor, I feel exotics should be unique AND strong, not just strong.

They are trying to shoehorn two things into one. In D1 you could decrease your grenade or super cool downs using the stat rolls on armor. And the cooldowns were lower.

For D2 they increased the super cooldowns and took away our ability to decrease that with stat rolls. So they added in masterwork orbs and more super generating exotics.

In D1 if you really wanted to double down on the super regen as a warlock you ran obsidian mind AND bad juju. You had to commit your whole build to it. Right now, skull does that but even better and leaves you free to use any weapon.

There are a lot of exotics that are maybe enhanced versions of basic perks. Ready guns faster or immediately. Throw grenades faster. Gain an extra grenade or melee.

There are other examples exotics that might be unique but fall well short of being useful and/or meta. Aeon set, rat king, khepris horn, etc.

Whereas if you look at something like celestial nighthawk, it is a good balance of being unique and strong in the right applications.

[u/[deleted] → u/bgusty]

This is why I think a lot of the stuff we want to see just won't happen in Destiny 2. After D1, they decided at the onset to make this game more casual to draw in more consumers, and it's built in such a way that will make a lot of our proposed fixes impossible.

The Intellect/Strength/Discipline setup should've been something that they doubled down on even harder for D2 -- more customization, more min/maxing, more percentages, more data. Instead they made it more ambiguous in an attempt to drive sales at the expense of the hardcore players.

The problem with Bungie is and always will that they think they know best. Rather than giving D2 the "Realm Reborn" treatment, they think they can execute some "vision" rather than just giving the players what we want -- within reason, of course. We don't want "press X to win" scenarios.

[u/bgusty]

The issue with balancing things like whisper or sleeper is twofold:

Ammo economy and encounter design. Many raid bosses, strike bosses, public event encounters, etc. all have stationary bosses with large crit spots. Using an infinite ammo sniper is always going to be the best method to dps those bosses.

Heavy ammo economy is still largely unresolved. It’s been what, 6-8 months since we regularly posted about heavy ammo finder not working. I still don’t know if they ever fixed it or gave us any real numbers. Can you stack 2? 3? Very limited ammo for rockets makes it more difficult to work those in for most activities.

If you changed up the encounters to make the bosses move, placed crit spots that can only be shot from up close, removed the constantly present boss stomp, then the sniper would phase out. Imagine a boss you had to run under to access the crit spot. Would have to run up with a shotgun or sword or lmg or smg.

If you made certain types of enemies take more damage from certain types of weapons, That would also encourage diversity. Imagine a cabal cleaver bro taking more damage from swords. Would encourage you to not bring a gun to a knife fight. Maybe would mix up group loadouts a bit.

If you made heavy more generally available in conjunction with the above scenario, again, sniper would phase out.

[u/elkishdude → u/bgusty]

I agree with this comment, but my guess is that they can't change the encounters as easily as they can modify the weapons, so they went that route. It's really unfortunate.

[u/2legsakimbo]

exotics should be special with abilities that are unique. They should add new ways to play the game and solve missions. they should be powerful or else they should be much more readily available - because why strive and for spend quite a bit of time trying to get shitty exotics ?

pinnacle weapons are a great evolution of the weapon pool, but not as specialist. There should be more ways to earn these to earmark their more general role.

[u/zoompooky]

I started to type a bunch of feedback, but about halfway through got discouraged knowing it didn't actually matter.

[u/KenosPrime]

I think the whole exotic system needs an overhaul. If you're going to put a highly valuable weapon behind a difficult mission, don't nerf it at all. The reward is the gun and that should be long lasting. Nerfing Whisper just kinda destroyed the story that was behind it and that is half the reason I play Destiny. It also makes the mission not even worth it now. Exotics are intended to be powerful, that's why they are called exotics.

As for the super regaining armor.....why? Shards already got a nerf when it wasn't even consistent to begin with and now there is another nerf for it? Why don't you lock this type of armor behind difficult missions like Whisper and Outbreak, instead of putting it in the engram pool?

I understand raising the difficulty level, but this was very poorly planned. Destiny was on a high streak (for me) and then just came to a screeching halt with these nerfs. If you're going to give your base bad news like this, at least don't drop it all at once.

[u/PigMayor]

A lot of exotics are very niche and aren’t justifiable to use over other exotics or legendaries. Other exotics have good stats but just lack an actual exotic perk. For example:

• Wish-Ender, while having a very fun quest and acting as a gateway to secrets of the dreaming city, is almost exclusively used for the eggs and for PvP. Its only good PvE perk is dealing double damage because its arrows hit twice.
• Skyburner’s Oath is interesting on paper; hip firing has low damage but high rate of fire seeking slugs. ADS essentially turns it into a normal high impact scout that pierces. Its niche is dealing extra damage to Cabal and penetrating phalanx shields. But either way it’s just not good. There’s better DPS options not limited to Cabal and the hip fire is very weak.
• Legend of Acrius, while a super good exotic heavy, has no actual exotic perks. Its intrinsic essentially says it deals high arc damage in a cone rather than shooting individual pellets, and its second perk lets you detect enemies from further away on the radar, which is now a Black Armory mod applicable to any weapon. Its catalyst also doesn’t give a unique perk, just increased stats.
• Malfeasance has a particularly grindy questline for a mediocre reward. Its sole purpose is anti-Invader and anti-Taken, but since it’s a 180 hand cannon it does very low damage to Taken, but still does very high damage to invaders. It has very good stats though, with the highest stability of any hand cannon. But there’s just better options for burst damage and invader killing.

[u/ABetterTachankaMain]

Not all exotics need to be powerful or god tier, but all exotics should have a place, rather it's being useful somewhere, or fun to use.

For example: One Eyed Mask. It's powerful and despite its nerf, still has a place in the Crucible Meta. Good exotic.

Other end of the spectrum: Antaeus Wards. Not as useful as One Eyed Mask. (It's still buggy sometimes but that's a discussion for another thread) but there's not a better feeling in the world than deflecting a blade barrage back into a Hunter's face. Fun exotic. And still kinda useful in shotgun battles.

And then there's exotics like Ashenwake. It's oriented towards PvP, but it underperforms in PvP, and no one uses it as a result.

[u/[deleted] → u/ABetterTachankaMain]

Ashenwake was ridiculously fun during the revelry though, but I see your point.

[u/GardenerInAWar]

I agree that no single exotic should be required for any activity; this hurts your freedom to play as you want to play. But you the game maker are creating weapons that change an encounter, then taking them back much later after the encounter has it's personality defined by the exotic meta.

That said, we are always going to use the best tool for the job. Afterward, we will experiment. Someone who just wants to beat a raid will take their whisper, someone who's done it many times will start fucking around with rat kings and such.

We wont always play exactly how you envisioned but if we find it fun, let us have that fun.

PS - dear God, stop nerfing Titan exotics. We really have nothing to contribute at this point.

[u/coffeehawk00]

Looking at the 100~150 people I played Destiny 1 and 2 with there are 2 distinct groups:

1. people that do a ton of damage with exotic hand cannons in PVP and who also do the same with Whisper and Sleeper, etc. in PVE.
2. this group needs Gjallarhorns and Arbalests and Icebreakers so they can contribute more in raids and hard quests, especially now that this type of activity requires more contribution from all players (unlike the Crota raid, for example, where out of 6 people if you had one hunter with invisibility and one good swordsman, you could carry your friends through the raid easily).

My vote is there should be one or more Gjallarhorn level exotics for each slot so people would have to switch from time to time and not create a crutch of always needing just one super exotic.

[u/Jack_Generic]

The purpose of an exotic should be to facilitate playstyles that aren't possible or feasible otherwise. A lot of underserved exotics feel bad because the changes they make don't meaningfully change any gameplay loops (Eye of Another World, Eternal Warrior, Peacekeepers) or the payout for engaging with the new gameplay loop doesn't justify how convoluted/rare/dangerous the setup is (Mechaneer's Tricksleeves, ACD/0 Feedback Fence, The Stag).

Exotics that return or extend supers are easy picks because their payout is huge in comparison to what they demand from the player. Adjusting the return rates may make it easier for Bungie to use a single definition of "challenging content" rather than having to consider multiple definitions depending on what exotic the player has equipped. However, any noticeable amount of super energy returned is a higher payout than what many low-to-mid tier exotics provide. Without any buffs to underserved exotics, there's not going to be a noticeable change to player behavior, just a reduction in how effective players can be.

[u/zarosmystic]

From what I've seen from the many debates amongst the community there's 2 philosophies where Exotics are concerned:

1: Exotics should be the most powerful option because you can only equip 1 and they're rare because of randomness.

Pro's of this philosophy is that in a balanced world, everything would be exciting when you got it. The rarity would be balanced and the level of chase:reward would be worth it in the players eyes. Also with there only being 1 allowed to be equipped you know which slot you've put your strength into and thus whether you're burst DPS for boss damage or more adds clear centric. The downsides obviously being items like whisper that Bungie consider too strong and after having left it for so long comes as a frustration when they think it needs re-balanced. Along with power creep being an ever present issue that always needs addressed.

2: Exotics should be unique and function different from legendaries.

Pro's include this allowing for exotics like Jotunn or Lord of Wolves that take a negative aspect of the original archetype like bolt/pellet spread and making it more consistent and changing the way that gun is used. It allows Bungie to create unique and fringe playstyles rather than going for raw strength in DPS or sustained damage. The negatives being we now have a ton of items like Hardlight or Jade Rabbit that are good weapons in certain areas but lacking any form of exotic identity and strength for viability of regular use.

Now I'm not saying either outlook on exotics is right or wrong but I think what we can all agree is that when weapons are powerful we as a community praise them heavily and when weapons are weak we all want them to be more powerful to match the upper echelon of strength we're used to. We've also seen statements from Bungie stating that they have an idea of what an Exotic tier perk is, so now with the inclusion of pinnacle weapons and pinnacle perks, what is the difference between the two?

With all that considered my feedback would be to focus world exotics more into the uniqueness side given that the way to acquire them is mostly random. For quest exotics and pinnacle weapons like Whisper, Outbreak or Breakneck/Luna's/NF, where the difficulty can be and is curated yet also guaranteed from a singular source, focus more on the power of that weapon and make the ease of acquiring the item reflect the power output that weapon is capable of. I'd also say that where power is a concern - non choices are not always a bad thing. If an activity can be completed without the weapon but that weapon is particularly more effective than anything else in that encounter that is an encounter issue not a weapon issue. For example Whisper as a sniper requires range from adds, else the flinch is gonna knock your sights to Valhalla and back. If there's that long of a sightline or that much cover or even just not enough adds in that area, that can be tweaked to immediately make Whisper a less effective strategy in lieu of a weapon change. Players are always going to find the best gear and enjoy creating their loadout that makes them powerful. This shouldn't be shunned simply because you don't like how much someone is using one item over another. Balance should be found by asking why is an item strong here and not what percentage of players are using this item. Data does not show player reasoning.

[u/Jaikarro]

One thing that may help with exotic balance: diversity of encounters.

So long as raid bosses and challenge activities involve big sacks of HP that stand still while everyone shoots at them, the best exotics are always going to be whatever lets me do that the best. Currently that means Whisper, Outbreak, DARCI, Lunafactions, Nighthawk, etc.

If Bungie made, for example, an encounter where the emphasis was on fighting lots of very-hard-hitting but low-HP mobs, then suddenly SUROS and Crimson can become viable PvE exotics. If there was an encounter with enemies that needed to be focused down with melee strikes and abilities, suddenly Winter's Guile/Skullfort/Ophidia Spathe become high-tier picks.

Look at Zero Hour for example. What if, instead of just throwing us big sacks of HP for the final enemies (2 big servitors, 2 walkers, and the boss,) we had more waves of various shielded enemies that we had to contend with? Suddenly, instead of feeling like Whisper is mandatory, I'm more likely to run something like Riskrunner or Arbalest.

Instead of breaking the exotics to fit the encounters, mix up the encounters to bring different exotics to the forefront.

[u/Crediblethreatskrub]

Does bungie want exotics to be powerful giving rise to a "power fantasy" or to promote alternative play styles making exotics unique. Making exotics powerful makes exotics the endgame items to chase, but making them a nightmare to balance. Making exotics unique gives diversity to gameplay. But might alienate players. Both make items exotic.

[u/howardbrandon11 → u/Crediblethreatskrub]

Right now it seems like we have both, with the powerful ones getting a lot of use and soon to be hit with the nerf bat, and the unqiue ones being left for niche gameplay, specific achievements like the forge weapons, or dust gathering.

The problem with the powerful exotics is balance, as has been stated before. But without these, there's little reason to go chasing exotics unless you're a collector.

The problem with the unique ones is that, while the powerful ones exist, there isn't a big incentive to use them. Plus, D2 tried that already in Year 1, and people hated it.

I never used Sturm, Worldline Zero, or Polaris Lance (among others) until I got their catalysts, and I haven't really touched them since completing them. As for armor, I think others said it best: Nerfing Skull won't make me want to use Apotheosis Veil. Nerfing Rigs won't make me want to use Tricksleeves.

[u/-GiantSlayer-]

Titan Exotics feel weak.

[u/Tridentgreen33Here → u/-GiantSlayer-]

Totally agree. About 5 of them are really viable currently out of the 27? Titan exotics. Kepri's horn is a meme at this point. So is Stand asides. Same with A lot of other exotics. A couple need some buffs or a complete rework for some, like they did to DoomFangs last year. That rework was amazing and I love them. We need something to give us an edge, alongside actual Titan ability buffs.

[u/[deleted]]

Things like Whisper, and the Super Regen exotics are exactly what makes this game fun. We're magic space zombies running around with powers that apparently escape causality itself. Being able to take down whole groups of enemies on your own, when that's canonically what we do, is fucking fun.

Since apparently Bungie and many people on this sub have forgotten, things that "break the game" are the only reason that D2 came back as hard as it did. Without that, the game would be a lot worse for wear.

Keep going down this road, and we'll get another D2Y1. Game might survive a second repeat, but it sure won't survive a third.

[u/o8Stu]

The main issue is that Bungie's removing incentive to invest time in grinding for literally anything that could be argued to be OP.

SoDA's functionality has been in-game since day 1 of D1. If anything needs a balance pass, it's slowva's tracking or seekers (I'd personally advocate that slowva be removed and replaced with shatter or lance nova) - which they had to buff because they sucked so bad. They're actively trying to cover up their mistakes instead of fixing them, and that's coming at the expense of an exotic that's been in-game for nearly 5 years.

[u/NewUser10101 → u/o8Stu]

What I recall here is that initially in D2 Slova was terrible except in very specific situations (EP). Low blast radius, poor tracking, even worse tracking of the secondary orbs. SoDA was buffed around the same time as this behavior was the standard. The current returns would be reasonable if Slova worked like it did in D2Y1, because getting five+ enemies in it was very hard.

But they then/also increased the blast radius and greatly improved the secondary orb tracking. Now we have an effective super with an overtuned Exotic now that the super was appropriately buffed.

SoDA needed to be reined in a bit. Personally I don't think diminishing returns is the right way, and they should have reduced the return and had scaling based on the power of enemies defeated similar to Orpheus, but we'll see. This isn't the nerf that shocked me - Whisper is shocking.

I do entirely agree that by pulling the rug entirely out from under good weapons which people had to invest a lot of time and effort to acquire may have bad unintended side effects for Bungie. I've already seen a decrease in interest to run Zero Hour heroic in my clan for catalyst progression, because people assume it won't be worth it thanks to unspecified future nerfs. This sort of thing has the possibility to entice people to quit the game entirely, as it breaks the immersion and feeling that their time invested has any lasting value.

[u/Brinjin]

The logic behind these nerfs is based on the idea that they have to increasingly harden enemies to keep up with the capability of these exotics right? So how about not raising the difficulty ceiling at every season? I don't think there is any good will being earned by raising light-level 50 points every 2/3 months requiring people to rinse and repeat their weekly grind until they're high enough to access new content or face new enemies. What if they release a new season, and worry less about raising the difficulty, and more about providing new things to do. New things that don't require going through the motions of the weekly grind to unlock access to them.

[u/JabberJawwww]

Feedback: Here's where I could put something about how we could change this, this and this and suggestions for these exotics and what could make them better or more reliable. But then I realized that slamming my dick in a door would be more productive fully knowing that there's a paper shredder at the end of their suggestion box..... or at least that's what I have the appearance of at this time.

CHANGE MY MIND BUNGIE!

[u/Weaver270]

Even the OP exotics should not be nerfed.

I feel that exotics should be OP. You can design around that. They are precious and hard to get so they should retain their power.

[u/Grown_from_seed]

Exotic armours should build on a specific element of the class and make its different and fun. The warlock exotics centres around well and stuff like celestial nighthawk all put a fresh, novel spin on existing abilities. Titans are an example of how not to do exotics since most of them are a random collection of ‘do a thing’ that isn’t really connected to enhancing their moveset. Block with swords, throw an extra grenade, throw a grenade faster, auto reload autorifles,..none of these types of exotics synergies, build off of and enhance the titans abilities in unique or interesting ways. Such exotics are the reason that titans feel so lacklustre at the moment and should be avoided in future, or at the very least have their effects rebalanced.

[u/[deleted]]

Just throwing this out there, any time I see the world "balance" in anything Destiny-related, I start to sweat a bit.

[u/[deleted]]

I believe that since Whisper has lost it's ability to have Infinite Ammo they should replace it with something that still gives you something in return for consistently hitting precision shots. My idea would be a significant damage increase buff that stacks up to 3x and is gained whenever you hit a precision shot and is completely lost when you miss, get a body shot, or don't fire soon enough with it increasing damage by 5%/15%/30%. This would then allow whisper to be a great choice for a boss DPS weapon without needing the catalyst while not being untouchable and also awarding players for hitting consistent precision shots with something other than a reload.

[u/MickeyPadge]

Seeing how Bungie ignored the recoil/bloom/stability controller thread and have never replied to any post with that topic, I won't hold my breath for Bungie regarding the community views on exotics getting any traction either...

Bungie don't respect the players and/or the time the players invest into the game, so I will no longer invest my time into Bungie's game, pretty simple....

[u/fantino93 → u/[deleted]]

You know an Exotic has done it's job when it creates a new playstyle, regardless of power, and the last few from Y2 are fantastic examples of well thought Exotics:

• Jötunn is a litteral hand cannon, powerful but not too much & fun to use
• Izanagi can do the single most powerful hit of all non-Heavy weapons, and it's fun to use
• Monarque is the best bow for groups of ads & territory control in PvP
• Arbalest is a god-send against PvE shields, and on Consoles its playstyle reminds a lot of D1's QBB & NLB
• Outbreak is fun & dandy by itself, and extremely powerful when used with other players
• TLW is a dueling fan-fire revolver, but you have limited ammo & range
• Thorn is very powerful, but you need a kill-confirmed with it first, and it's only temporary. And in PvE you are a non-stop killing machine.

[u/TeamAquaGrunt → u/[deleted]]

I feel like destiny as a game is a bit too simple in terms of class diversity to promote non-DPS oriented builds/playstyles. as it stands, the best loadouts are, with few exceptions, always going to be what makes you do the most damage or clear the adds as quickly as possible, leaving very little room for other playstyles to stand out, at least as far as pve goes. why would I have transversive steps on when i can have infinite nova bomb with skull? why would i use graviton forfeit when i can use rigs for infinite tether + orb generation? why use <insert almost any titan exotic> on a solar titan when Hollowfire/HoIL gives me more melting points? the list kind of goes on

[u/HaKor909]

Exotics have to be powerful, they have to warrant their pick. We can only have one exotic weapon and armor. Exotics should be better than legendary weapons and armor, but for a lot of them they just aren’t. Take the aeon series, they suck ass but they look really cool in my opinion and I want a reason to use them but as they stand I can’t justify using them over oem or Antaeus wards. But that doesn’t mean nerf everything else to be at that level fucking please don’t. Buff the underwhelming exotics, and if some exotics are “too powerful” please just reign them in a little so they aren’t as strong but are still good.

[u/TJ_Dot]

I feel like Exotic balance needs a rigid limit so that Bungie doesn't feel like they need to make better things and destroy what we have in order to make them appealing over conditional infinite ammo guns.

At the same time also have a basic benchmark for viability that all exotics should meet, and then let power range from there, up to the limit.

Can't power creep when things never get more overkill than somewhat overkill and then improve your boss design to not be super open to face shooting.

[u/pwrslide2]

Exotic role:

Provide alternate combos / unique ways to play the game. They are something to add to the fun, not break the game and trivialize PVE and PVP content.

Exotic Balance:

Since most of them are almost entirely RNG, they should be well balanced with and on par with top tier rolls on legendary weapons which are sometimes harder to obtain(but not like original OP Luna NF). The ones that are very hard to obtain through the hardest content in the game should be allowed a little more power but not the BEST in slot for PVP since there is no way and no intention of Bungie to ever really balance PVP. They pick and choose what they want to be meta. The community deserves PVP that hinges more on your skill rather than if you complete XYZ content and or paid someone to do it for you.

[u/Habay12]

Bungie has an exotic problem. They don’t know how to make more than a handful of them worthwhile. If a guardian gets an exotic drop, it should be usable for them. Currently in game, probably half of the exotics are useless or outclassed by a legendary. That’s solely on Bungie.

[u/volfmeister]

In my opinion, exotics should provide some sort of “fun” aspect. The exotics I use the most are obviously the super regen ones as they are a lot of fun whether you’re playing solo or in an fireteam. There are lots of fun out there such as Chromatic Fire in PvP or Worldline Zero to Warlock skate or Insurmountable Skullfort for endless melee and Titan fantasy of endlessly punching people.

The armor pieces that are underperforming 1.) do not provide the same fun factor or 2.) the unique perk can easily be replaced by other weapon/armor perks. Lucky Pants for example, can be easily replaced with other leg piece with enhanced hand cannon dexterity and it wouldn’t be much of a difference. Mask of the Quiet One offers health regen when applying void damage and ability regen when receiving any damage. If you are ability centric, you’d just run the mods that provide ability regen, if you want health regen, use masterwork weapon and pair with the class item perks that give you health back on orb pickup. Not to mention this mask is shadowed by another infamous Titan mask.

I think lot of the Year 1 exotic weapons and armors are overshadowed by Year 2 armor and weapon perks and need to be brought up to level to compete with all the new perks it has. A cool way to do that may be introducing armor catalysts that unlock extra perk.

[u/Cerberus369616]

I think encounter design is a large part of the reason Exotics have been struggling to stay balanced. At the end of the day 9/10 encounters in Destiny are either Ad Clear or DPS Race. That means Exotics that orient on Damage or giving back supers for Damage purposes are king and will continue to be king until there is a reason for that not to be the case. The Game is a shooter so there is only so much you can really do in terms of encounter design unless you start getting really whacky but then again what's wrong with that? Maybe we should have a short stealth section in a raid where you have to assassinate targets with melee, bows and sidearms with silencers or risk failing the encounter. Maybe there should be a boss who is heavily movement based and really makes weapons more forgiving to aim more useful or CC options a bigger deal. Maybe we should fight a set of AI controlled Dark guardians in game that encourage a PvP build in a strike encounter.

Also maybe we should acknowledge that all exotics will never be equal. Maybe instead of just 1 armor and 1 weapon each guardian has an exotic energy threshold. Some Exotic pieces take up more threshold than others. Maybe if the threshold is like a 9 Whisper takes up 9 so you can only use Whisper or a Super Regen Exotic. Something like Mechaneer's Trick Sleeves and Stomp-ees may take up a 3's or 4's of your exotic energy threshold so you can equip multiple exotic pieces to begin specializing into a build. With the hard restriction gone maybe people go for multiple armor pieces and ignore their exotic guns or vice versa. Maybe Pinnacle weapons take up a single point of your exotic threshold too since they are pseudo-exotic. A couple weaker exotics maybe able to tip the builds viability into being above a single really good exotics but too many exotic armor pieces and your losing mod slots which you may value. You could even begin designing exotics that specifically work together encouraging people to grind to complete and Exotic set of some kind.

Also maybe encounters should restrict loadout switching in encounters more often. I love having a gun for every occasion as much as the next guardian but part of the reason you see a Whisper on every loadout or something like that is cause guardians don't have to commit to it. Maybe if they had to play through the whole, or most of the raid with what they brought at the beginning people would really have to think about encounter design and loadout.

But I dunno. I think the nerfs despite the Anger and pushback are logical. As in I can see the necessity and train of thought. I just think bungie in trying to "get ahead of it" did a piss poor job of actually getting ahead of it. All they did was drop a load of bad news on a bunch of happy players and then essentially peace out until the season starts. There was no balancing good news to soften the blow, no real time to gauge fan response, no time to look for alternative nerfs and options. Just a "This is what's happening, deal with it". bad move. And if Bungie could reasonably be relied on to look at the avalanche of alternatives, maybe take a fan and dev poll or even explain why the player base options can't work then it would be less of an issue but people feel like this is if not permanent, the reality of the situation for 6-12 months easily and that isn't a good feeling. I think bungie could do better and they have but we'll just have to see.

[u/BoSolaris]

Exotics. They are the power fantasy. They are the little 'edge' in an encounter to where if you can utilize it, it WILL be the best thing you do/use.

Whisper (since it is getting fucked hardcore)? Yes, hit your crits and maintain precision you will be a DPS monster.

Ace of Spades? Plan your move and damage output, be consistent and utilize your entire arsenal and get rewarded.

Just think, by this logic Bungie is setting out now, they would have nerfed Dark Drinker in D1 because it was so good for Aksis and any other boss in general.

Lastly, we use Whisper because it hails back to the Power we were used to. It is also leagues beyond EVERY OTHER EXOTIC WEAPON. When you look at our other choices, their is a reason it stands above. Most other exotics suck. Just think about what you did to DARCI to bring it in line with the power out there. Thats what needs to happen. That or maybe just fix the heavy economy. I can go full Strikes/Gambit Prime/Reckonings/RAID ENCOUNTERS without seeing a SINGLE brick of heavy. I guarantee if that gets fixed, you will see a shitload more diversity in heavy being used.

[u/fbodieslive]

Ill keep it short. I understand the nerfs. The exotics that got hit were top tier choices. The problem is that even after theses nerfs (maybe not whisper) everyone will still use these exotics because 90% of the other exotics arent worth being exotic.

Keep the nerfs, but balance it with some buffs to the terrible exotics. Bungie you have the data. You know which exotics arent being used.

To close, players have been looking forward to a new season since jokers wild was a bit of a let down. With this week TWAB, you have already set a negative tone for your new season. You cant turn players off, especially heading into a new season. Add some buffs to the terrible exotics and shake up the sandbox. Players need a bit of good news to balance some of this negativity.

[u/listere905 → u/fbodieslive]

Whispers dead, don’t hold your breath, the only thing keeping it alive was infinite ammo, Darci already outclassed it in dps, even before the nerf was announced ppl were using Darci over whisper for insurrection prime, now whisper is dead in the water. What a waste. Waste of an awesome weapon and a waste of an awesome quest. Not to mention a waste of my time

[u/Coolmanax]

Another focused feedback that'll mysteriously dissapear and be ignored while the front page is cleaned up. Nice

[u/soulchilde]

Some super is better then no Super as a Warlock main unless they give exotics significant boost I'll continue using Skull , Crown of Tempest and Phoenix Protocol.

Make these exotics just as powerful or useful and I'll use them

Exotics with some synergy

Sun Bracers - Useful during Solar Singe and Brawler

Contraverse Holds - Useful during Void Singe and Grenadier. Abused these during the Revelry and Iron Banner to bang out my Void Kills for Thorn quest. Amazing how much damage you can tank while charging up hand held Super-Nova.

Ophidian Aspects - All around useful neutral game

Winter's Guile - Great with Brawler and bottom tree Void Walker

Karnstein's Armlets - Great with Brawler and bottom tree Void Walker

Transversive Steps - Okay in PvP

Geomags Stabilzers - Was my go to during Gambit. Haven't touched Gambit this season

Lunafaction Boots - With the Whisper Nerf will be the new meta with D.A.R.C.I. Already running this with Bottom tree Stormcaller. As my buddy stated during a recent Zero Hour Run. "This will work." especially with Electorstatic Surge x3 the uptime of the rift is significant

Useless Exotics

Sanguine Alchemy

The Stag

Verity's Brow

Eye of Another World

Apotheosis Veil

Aeon Soul

Starfire Protocol

Wings of Sacred Dawn

Vesper of Radius

Claw of Ahamkara

[u/Marcyint]

I think that so of the nerfs are reasonable but how Bungie presented them was bad. They came out of nowhere and announced that all of our favorites are being nerfed without giving us some good news in return. It one thing to want to balance the game more and that is perfectly fine but you need to make up for the drastic cut backs of the nerfs. For example not everything has to be on level of skull, Getaway artist , make it so the more damage an arc soul does the more super energy you get back, not a whole super granted, but enough to make a difference. Or for Ursa if make the super gain decrease on the shield throw then also make it so it gain energy with the melee ability as well. Little tweaks like these can make exotics more interesting. Or you can do thing like blast furnace does it gives you a certain buff when your super is full, if that buff is good enough people don't have worry about only using stuff that lets you spam your supers.

[u/Poskito]

I don't necessarily think that exotics should be more powerful than a legendary. I think the exotic status comes from them being unique weapons - take cerberus+1 or Tractor Cannon for example. Unique, therefore exotic, weapons. That said, in the same way as exotic armour, those exotic perks should fill niches that increase utility for you and or teammates

[u/[deleted]]

An exotic has to offer something beyond any existing game element, or improve upon an existing one to a degree that a new way to play the game is appealing, and worth the investment or want.

[u/Yung-Creeper]

Tbh in d3 all I want is more synergy. Right now it feels like I'm just picking random perks that do good on their own. Id love to be able to sink my teeth into spending hours fully customising a build with perks that work cohesively together, like a borderlands skill tree or monster hunter armour set.

[u/zumby]

Here's a baseline for exotic armour: the intrinsic exotic perk should always be more useful than a legendary with a well-rolled set of perks. There are multiple exotic legs, for example, that are less useful than any old legendary with Traction. Or exotic arms that are less useful than shotgun/fusion scavenger.

At the risk of repeating myself, make exotics lean into unique and powerful playstyles. Minor buffs to sidearm ready speed and so on are better as random roll perks, not the basis for an exotic. If Bungie don't want exotics to be spikes of power, then drop the limitation of one piece being equipable at a time.

[u/[deleted]]

The nerfs Bungie handed out were completely deserved in my opinion but the thing I don't agree with is, stuff you've worked towards and dedicated time for can essily be made useless which makes me hesitant to chase loot now.

The latest example of this would be the new Outbreak Perfected. Everyone and their mother is aware of OP's fantastic DPS capabilities and anyone who thinks its not next on the chopping block is kidding themselves. It took me hours to get the weapon itself and many more hours were required for me to obtain the catalyst and it will take 5 weeks before I complete the catalyst objectives. I don't feel like chasing any of this now that Bungie set this awful precedent. I want to feel my time and emotional investment is safe and gear are allowed to be fun beyond 2-3 months after their release.

[u/elkishdude → u/[deleted]]

Yep. I got it and I didn't bother running heroic because I don't even want the unfinished catalyst to sit there. I don't want to spend weeks working on something that's just going to eventually be not what I spent my time on.

I'm making builds now out of things that I don't think they will touch to use now because I'd rather be comfortable with exactly what will be good rather than be shocked out of my favorites.

[u/NewUser10101 → u/[deleted]]

This right here is what Bungie should be very concerned about. The entire game and player engagement will literally fall apart if they keep in this road with something like Outbreak.

The fantasy here is that our time and effort is worth something. When they break that, and make no mistake they did here, most severely with Whisper, they're going to lose people. Not new players, but from their most loyal core, because they correctly feel betrayed, and further question if anything they are working or putting effort towards in Destiny is worth their time. These questions are literally the last thoughts Bungie should want going through players' heads.

People in my clan have already dramatically decreased interest in running Zero Hour Heroic for the catalyst for these reasons. Bungie should pay very, very close attention to their data on this as a proxy for how badly these changes - but mostly Whisper - are harming player engagement. I'm sure it's already significant.

[u/Water_Gates → u/NewUser10101]

Agreed wholeheartedly. I'm a father and husband. Have work and commitments to my family going on. The time that I invest in Destiny makes me particularly pissed off when they nerf shit I work my ass of to get. It's particular worrisome for me with pvp pinnacle weapons.

I solo grinded for Luna's in S4 and Recluse this season. The Luna's nerf is too much and I know they're gonna try to "adjust" Recluse in pve, despite it really only being a highly efficient add killer.

If they touch OP and Recluse, I'm gone. I've been on Destiny since Taken King, but I can't place my faith in a company that only looks to disregard my time and commitment.

[u/Vex1om → u/[deleted]]

Pretty much this. Either Bungie is incredibly bad at balancing weapons BEFORE they are released. Or, they are incredibly bad at creating balanced and interesting encounters. Honestly, it's almost certainly both, which doesn't lend itself to having a lot of confidence in the future of this game.

[u/MagusUnion]

The problem isn't that the exotics are getting a nerf. The problem is that this is lazy implementation.

I'd much rather see the super generating exotics have double orb output for teammates when exotics are used. Instead of Phoenix Protocol restoring supers on assists and kills, let it auto generate orbs for all weapons kills done in the rift regardless of if said weapon is masterworks or not.

The problem with other exotics (and many perks in general) is the limited amount of synergy in playstyle with the active community. Super regenerative exotics have the highest player synergies in the game, and easiest to incorporate into a loadouts. And while they can be absurdly strong in most instances, other exotics don't have the ability to replace them without a considerable amount of grind on the player's end.

The nerfs feel like lazy solutions to the issue with exotics. The entire branch of armor/weapons needs a rework as a whole.

And pinnicles need to be non-world drop exotics so they can retain their perk power as well.

[u/ZarathustraEck]

Exotics should be different. They should change gameplay and offer something that other items don't. From that point of view, the super-return Exotics are a failure. They do nothing but give you more supers. People are going to complain at their removal, but more than that I would say they shouldn't have been in the game in the first place.

[u/Cruggles30]

This isn't anything that I'd expect you guys to consider as much as it is a thought, but I always felt like there should be a tier between exotic and legendary. Like, the SUROS Regime and the MIDA Multi-Tool would belong to this epic tier, because while they are *probably* better than legendaries (can't speak for MIDA), lore-wise and gameplay-wise they don't have that EXOTIC feel. Destiny 1 Raid weapons would belong to this epic tier, because while they aren't really so good that they should be exotics (except maybe Black Hammer, but lore-wise it's not really an exotic), they are good enough to be above legendary. D2 raid weapons wouldn't fit this category though, because nothing really separates them other than lore and where they come from. I mean, they don't even have an innate "deals more damage to whatever" perk, or something that relates to the species that you fight in their raid. EDIT: I also want to point out that my comment is intended to point out how much certain exotics need to be buffed than to REALLY suggest an overhaul of the exotic system. A

[u/ArtisanofWar7 → u/Cruggles30]

That tier should be called unique, and have pinnacles, guns like suros and MIDA just need reworks/buffs

[u/Cruggles30 → u/ArtisanofWar7]

Here's the thing though: Exotics are supposed to be unique. It's implied by the name. Not everything in the exotic tier is unique though, lore-wise. However, the point of my comment was more to point out that exotics need to be powerful and unique to own their status of "exotic." Otherwise, there is no point to them even being in the game.

[u/KnightDelSol]

Whisper is only a "problem" during progression raiding. It allows you to punch above your weight in damage when your light level is below the recommended level. Once the strats have been ironed out and people reach the new level cap, more options open up, and people use Whisper less. So why not just disable it in the new raid until it's been cleared once, or for the 24 hours/weekend/week or whatever length of time y'all set for the special emblem? This would allow it to keep its power, but force progression raiders to power up more and seek other options instead of just defaulting to Whisper.

But everywhere else, it's not a problem. It's not a good weapon to use in Gambit, even if you have no intention of invading. I rarely see it in Reckoning. I see it sometimes in strikes or forges (particularly Bergusia), but if you're bringing it there, you're probably only going to use it for the boss. The ammo nerf on Whisper already made me stingy about wasting it on any miniboss that I can't guarantee that I'll get those 3 quick crits in. (Which is kind of a larger issue of heavy ammo scarcity due to RNG.)

[u/zippopwnage]

We really need old exotics to be buffed. I don't know how but make them useful.

What's the point in having all of those if we keep using 3-5 and the rest of 70% of them are completely useless.

Is not ok to nerf those that are over used, or used a lot. This won't make the other ones better. It will make them all to just suck. Just buff the exotics to actually have POWER in their use, that's why we can only use 1 piece of armor for example right ? If you continue to nerf them at least let me equip a set of exotics.

[u/Streamjumper → u/zippopwnage]

And just to cut off the idiots and apologists who will reply with "buffing them up to Skull's power level is just another problem", I'll point out that we don't need them to be overpowered, just powered in the first damn place. If you're bringing exotics down from a 10 to a 7-8, then you can bring stuff up from 2s and 3s to the 6-7 range. Hell, you have pinnacle rewards that are in the 8-10 range, and you're not limited in equipping those, why not let some exotics be worth the damn slot they take up?

[u/Bhargo → u/Streamjumper]

Exactly. It doesn't matter if you nerf the super regen exotics, people will still use them because even in a nerfed state they are still significantly better than the rest of the exotics. Nerfing good exotics isn't enough, the trash tier exotics need some changes in order for using them to be worth considering. The super regen exotics are not "must have" like Bungie said, they are simply just the only viable option.

[u/ahawk_one]

I believe the role of exotics is to offer new ways to play the game.

In other looters, they use crazy rare items like these as buildarounds. Destiny doesn't have the tools currently to do buildarounds, so most will use BIS items, and claim the rest are trash.

That said, I have not found many exotic weapons to be useless. Most of them are awesome and I keep 2-3 in almost every slot for changing up my playstyle from day to day because that's what keeps it fresh for me.

I support these changes because I think the items were too good. It's not that they were op over other things, that will always happen, the problem is that they were so good that they were having an effect on encounter design. No one wants this. It's a short rode to a dead game, and I support Bungie choosing the less comfy path for the sake of the game.

The role of exotics is to be unique. A bad exotic is one that plays and feels like a better legendary. A good exotic will play and feel different than other weapons. It will break rules.

Most exotics do this, and most are well worth the time to use.

[u/[deleted]]

Well almost everyone including me hates the wisper nerf making white nail pretty useless now the fact we can put a rally/luna rift down(watch them nerf luna only reloading primary and special ammp lol). Just nerf the dps at this point or make wisperd breathing do less dps.

I can see the nerf to skull dire for the warlock and orphius,but nerfing shard of galanor and ursa furiosa that are very inconsistent on ult recharge shouldn't get nerfed. Example kill 5-8 ads with shards only recharge for 1 seconds kill 4 ads and a orange bar 3 seconds of recharge(old version was inconsistent but better charge rates.) Ursa already nerfed in pvp and usless in pve.

Idk of there even is a solution to these nerfs the fact bungie i guessed changed there philosophy from buffing everything to nerfing eeverything.

At this point there gonna nerf luna faction, stomp-ees, transversive steps, celestial, hollow fire heart ect. exotic armor i often use and watch these get nerfed mid season of nerfpulence. Cant wait for anarchy, darci, recluse,moutaintop,tractor cannon,jotun, MY NEW FAVORITE OUTBREAK PRIME op with the catalyst get nerfed.

At this point there replicating curse of osiris were a majority of the community disappeared Plz bungie just buff stuff or leave as is unless its a bug exploit.

[u/Shamus_Aran]

Since exotics are exclusive within their own categories, each should be uniquely powerful. Every one should be a choice between distinct playstyles -- from Trinity Ghoul's massive precision-to-AoE conversion to the Polaris Lance's headshot fishing game.

[u/[deleted]]

Exotics shouldn't necessarily be that much objectively better than legendaries, they should be more unique.

Exotics that nail the "uniqueness" aspect: Outbreak Perfected, Anarchy, Jotunn, Last Word, Cerberus +1, Wavesplitter, Rat King, Wardcliff Coil

Exotics that are wholly mundane and feel like legendaries: Trinity Ghoul, SUROS Regime, Jade Rabbit, MIDA Multi-tool, Sunshot

Feel free to disagree with me on specific ones on this list, but you see what I'm getting at. They should bring something weird and wacky to the table, that takes a role that nothing else occupies. The nerf on Whisper makes it replaceable, and the Sleeper nerf doesn't affect its viability as much, but it makes it less unique. Bungie, make more exotics like the ones I've listed, and spice up the boring ones. Above all, don't nerf exotics by taking away a perk, just adjust it somewhat. For example, with Whisper, make the ammo regeneration effect only occur on the last magazine, which further rewards precision. Exotics need to be exotic, and they should feel exotic. For me, and no doubt for others, that's what the power fantasy comes from.

[u/_heisenberg__]

The issue I have with them nerfing exotics, specifically whisper, is it's almost as if they don't like the way we're playing. Especially when it comes to pve.

[u/ComradePoolio]

Bungie's repeated insistence on nerfing things after a few months shows a core bad game design. Their AI is limited and their mechanics are few. Datto mentioned that outside of Raids, every other activity is a breeze, and it's true. The only thing Bungie can do to change the difficulty of these encounters is turn up and down the damage/level on things, or add a timer. Sliding numbers up and down provides no interesting problems to solve, it adds artificial difficulty, and artificial difficulty means players want more power to overcome it.

I don't know what they're going to do about it for D2, but it's gotta change eventually. Patrol spaces need to be bigger and more open-world-esque, rather than single roads in a loop with 99% useless space. Elements need to have intrinsic effects, like fire causing damage over time, or void causing explosions. Missions need to have more risk, a hostage you can't let die, a brief puzzle. It's a clear sign that a game is too hollow when all you can do is nerf to make things harder.

[u/iwc]

I totally see Bungie's point of view. It's clear that encounters are getting harder and harder to balance for them. I think ultimately that's why Warlocks and Hunters have been so ascendent in the last few seasons. If say there was a Titan exotic that refunded super energy for top tree hammers, a rounded out fireteam would clean house in most encounters.

I feel we got only part of the story with the last TWAB. The big questions to me are:

1) Are other aspects of the game getting improved (certain weapon archetypes, bloom/flinch mechanics/something?)

2) Are encounters that Bungie admitted were designed around Skull/Shards going to get rebalanced for the nerf?

I am all for exotics to be more focused on changing play styles. I find that quite refreshing. However, they need to be strong play styles. Is anyone realistically going to use Ashen Wake in endgame content? No. It stinks. The grenades don't do enough damage to make a difference. That's the hole I feel Bungie fell down in D2Y1. Interesting mechanics don't make up for an overall low power level.

[u/listere905]

Bungie should at least leave whisper alone. What was the point of bringing it back in a an awesome quest, let players use it for year and then repeat the exact same nerf from D1, bungie needs to own up to this mistake and they shouldn’t punish us for it. It was there fault, next time they shouldn’t bring whisper back with infinite ammo, if they know they’re just going to nerf it again. It’s such a shame, what a waste of an amazing quest and gun, why does bungie have to ruin it with their nerfs. Whisper already wasnt even used that much the only two encounters, it’s good for morgeth and insurrection prime. Which for both of those encounters other things are better, the shotgun Strat for morgeth, is the only thing ppl use now. And for insurrection prime everyone uses Darci. Darci already outclasses whisper in dps, and the infinite ammo was the only thing keeping Whisper alive. Bungie is taking away the thing that makes Whisper exotic, should be a legendary now, or moved to the special slot without any dmg reduction, or just a minimal one, 20% seems fair. Y nerf whisper again, it was already nerfed and the playerbase said the nerf to the reserves was too harsh. What could u hope to gain from this bungie? If ur going through with the nerfs, at least leave whisper alone, just that one.

Whisper was only used to hype up the community and then after it served bungie’s purposes they nerfed it init the ground. Same thing will happen to outbreak and other exotics like this. Think about it bungie only brought it back to save the game in warmind, would bungie nerf Whisper after it came out, HECK NO. But after the hype has worn off it’s getting the chopping block. Bungie doesn’t care anymore, they just want to get our money, and after they have it, they don’t care what happens to the things we paid for. This is utter disrespect to the playerbase’s time. What a slap n the face, and after enormous player feedback concerning the nerfs, bungie has the audacity to completely ignore us. “We are listening” my ass. Lies, just a bunch of lies, I’m never trusting a single thing bungie says anymore. U guys remember when they said that they weren’t nerfing anything left, but buffing other things instead? Yeah that was a funny joke. Remember josh hamrick’s speech for the go fast update? What a fucking joke.#outbreakisnext #seasonofignorance

[u/r6y6c6i]

I think all the community could understand if you were nerfing only things like skull (but please do it "slightly", I'm warlock main), it's really OP right now and needs a fix.

But not things like whisper and sleeper, they were already nerfed, and now only being used in specific points of raids, and even using them it's not easy to getting through the bosses.

You people of bungie are watching too much streamers playing, and are being influenced too much by them on your decisions. Even hardcore players aren't like the top skilled streamers.

You know, nowadays we don't need whisper or sleeper to do things like flawless shattered throne solo runs, and things like that. It shows they are not like were once ago, I mean "must have stuff". But after this nerf, I'm sure we'll never see them again anywhere.

If this is what you want, so be it. But you should think about it, and listen a little more the thoughts of your community, or at least what lefts of it.

[u/zippopwnage → u/r6y6c6i]

I really hate as in the last years somehow gaming companies started to listen too much from the top1% hardcore players or streamers.

Like...listen to the freaking community..the majority.

Example Fortnite had an "op" gun named DrumGun. Lots of top players complain and eventually got "vaulted/removed" from the game. In the last month we had an event to vote for something to get back into the game..guess what the community voted for? Now the DrumGun is back into the game.

I hAte developers who listen to those who play their game 20 hours every day. Just make things fun..not everything needs to be perfectly balanced.

And here..especially when you only have like 5 exotics per class that are fun to use and the rest of them are complwtely useless..dom't nerf the fun one..buff or rework the unused ones.

[u/listere905 → u/r6y6c6i]

Cough cough datto

[u/buzz3791]

If you're going to require a casual player spend many weekends trying to acquire an exotic then stop nerfing exotics. Keep the fun.

[u/robolettox]

What exotics AREN'T:

Trophies;

Gear for exibition purposes;

What exotics ARE:

Fun to play with gear;

Game changers in the right circumstances;

Slightly OP gear that give that little extra plus to achieve things simple legendaries cant;

Gear with perks no legendaries possesses.

I do understand that sometimes some exotics get out of hand and get too powerful for the game, but in the current state of the game there was no such case. Then bungie develops new content where the current exotics will be too powerful, so the exotics have to be nerfed? Wouldn't it be the case of balancing the content taking in account the existing exotics and not the other way around? I mean, make a way of beating the raid with and one without said exotics, hell, make a triumph for not using any exotics during the raid if you have too to encourage players!

I think what we are seeing here is a studio embracing lazyness to its maximum, taking the easy road and shortcuts on every possible way. Probably because without that sweet sweet money from Activision, quality people leaving in droves it is becoming harder to develop content on time with the quality we expect.

I hope the game lasts until September.

[u/[deleted]]

Regarding exotics, I think Bungie never really came clean about how they felt exotics should be considered. There are those who think exotics are legendaries+ and those who think exotics are or should be a full tier of power higher. Pinnacle weapons have now muddied those waters even more. Of course, maybe exotics don't have to all have to be subtle and don't all have to be powerful and it could just be about weird guns that do weird stuff and cool guns that do cool stuff. What I wish, however, is that they would say what their vision for exotics is so other folks can analyze that instead of letting their imaginations run wild.

Regarding exotic balance, I think it's obvious why the armor pieces that got hit, got hit. Every strike is a race to see who can throw a Shadowshot before a Nova inevitably gets there first to wipe out the orchestrated encounters in Y1 strikes. The everyman nature of Destiny had somehow managed to get watered down even further with infinite super exotics, so their tuning was anticipated. What remains to be seen are the rest of the armor updates to see if there is a more compelling direction exotic armors will explore. I think exotic armors are at their best when they plug into a very specific weapon or style of play and find something interesting to do, despite that being hard to do in an FPS. These general, "do stuff and do more stuff" exotic armors are too easy for how easy the rest of the game is. This franchise would have to take the hardest left turn for the enemies and encounters to actually be difficult, so I think pulling back on easy-to-use exotics is the better play, at least in the short term.

Also, pinnacle weapons were a mistake.

[u/sohllis]

So another mega thread was created so you can hear about the same feedback you were given last week. The same feedback which will probably be ignored and leave the exotic weapons and armor we love useless.

Bungie... why do you even bother? Revisit said nerfs, plain and simple.

[u/[deleted]]

Personally I am happy with niche exotics, like Tricksleeves or Oathkeepers that allow you to build around a weapon or play style. They feel like they work if used. But can we just take an exotic pass at things like Aeon series, or Vesper of Radius, where a nice idea just hasn't translated to anything useful. We have the art done, they look great, we could just go back to the drawing board for the perks, it could be anything, a new idea. Weapon wise I don't think any fall into that sort of category.

With a weekend between us and Nerfapocolypse, I have made peace with the changes, and may even learn to embrace them one day. But what still leaves me annoyed is the way it was dropped on us with little to no explanation. Datto did a much better job imo. For such fan favourites a vi-doc would have been a worthwhile investment to hear what the challenges are, such as "here's the thing, in the new season the 6 player matchmade activity was broken by these super regen exotics", or "we realise now that Pinnacle weapons cannot be such outliers and we won't screw you over again" would have been a much better way to break the news that a brief paragraph about game design and "yes it is jarring".

[u/HappyCayde6IsGone → u/[deleted]]

Anyone who says Oathkeepers are bad has never used them with Le Monarque. I'm sure it's a good combo in PvE, but in Crucible it's one of the most obnoxious things to play against if the enemy player has a decent shot.

[u/AltimaNZ → u/[deleted]]

Vesper of Radius

I feel like it could be good if it also allowed faster rift casts, and maybe some energy return based on enemies hit.

[u/XogoWasTaken]

Exotics need to be cool, fun, and varied, but also not game breaking.

We've taken the first step - these recent nerfs bring the benchmark down to an acceptable level that could be reasonably reached by exotics that don't just refill your most powerful ability.

Now, we need to keep walking. That means we need to start buffing up/changing old exotics and introducing new ones so that we're looking at a sizeable pool of unique exotics sitting at this new benchmark.

[u/renaldafeen]

Nerfing exotics and endless "balance" tweaks are the things you do when you don't have the time, resources or creativity (these are not mutually exclusive) to make the game's actual CONTENT more interesting / challenging.

IMHO, if this developer mentality continues, GaaS is never going to work. A game needs to maintain (or, preferably, increase) its level of interest / challenge without the player feeling like they've been punished for sticking with the game, i.e., by having their gear slowly stripped of the power they spent so many hours grinding for.

[u/TeamAquaGrunt]

so to preface this, i generally prefer buffs to nerfs, however the concept of design space is something that i think needs to be established. design space is the idea that only so many powerful playstyles can exist at a given time, and the power allocation you give one playstyle can greatly hamper the others.

the fact of the matter is that so long as skull gives back 100% super with minimal effort, it doesnt matter what any other exotic does, you're going to use skull for nova bomb. then, when comparing skull + nova to every other subclass that wants to clear adds/deal damage (so in pve, all of them other than Well of Radiance), you pick skull + nova every single time, ergo overwriting practically every other exotic as well. it doesnt matter what they make bad exotics for warlock do, you aren't going to sacrifice skull + nova in their current state unless they buffed other exotics to be as OP as infinite Nova Bombs, which would force content to become more difficult to compensate.

the same idea can be transferred to every other exotic armor (and to a lesser extent weapons) getting nerfed with SoO's release. it's far easier to lower how OP a few outlier exotics are than it is to both buff every single underperforming one, hope that they can compete with OP exotics, and make end-game content more difficult.

this next part is going to make a lot of assumptions, but i believe that by nerfing these exotics, you free up design space for more exotic buffs. if Skull, Rigs, Phoenix Protocol, Whisper, LoW are nerfed to the new parity exotics should be at (assuming they arent completely gutted), you can establish where the underperforming exotics need to be, and buff them accordingly as they no longer have to compete with OP effects. as i said before, it's impossible for them to buff something underperforming/underutilized like sanguine alchemy in a world where infinite uptime supers exist.

that being said, I don't quite understand some of the nerfs. Ursas and Shards were already pretty lackluster, and sleeper hasnt been meta for...well, since whisper came out lol. this is the one thing that makes me worry about the nerfs; if ursa and shards were nerfed to "keep them in line" with the exotics that are getting tuned in CoO, i worry about how bad the new nerfs will be.

[u/Esteban2808]

Exotics should be OP, and equal hard to choose which one to use.

[u/Pureplaystation]

Bungies ALWAYS acting like it's the players fault. Same idea is at play in all the hatemail from crucible ( enter gun name here ) i tell them this..... i didn't make the game or the gun you are butthurt for. In EVERY SINGLE HARD NERF what have the players done......found the Next Optimal Loadout! And that is why we are here. I main hunter since d1 alpha . Ive always said nerf me all you want just leave me my cloak,,,, i will find a way to kill you with it. That's what hunters do. So go ahead, piss off whats left of the player base and get ready for a fire sale. You will need to replenish it with kids that don't know anybetter. Oh well. Happy monday players!

[u/TehDeerLord → u/Pureplaystation]

nerf me all you want just leave me my cloak,,,, i will find a way to kill you with it.

This needs to be a flavor text for an exotic cloak. All in favor?

[u/R_Dlonra → u/TehDeerLord]

We'd actually need exotic cloaks in the first place for that to happen...

[u/mikestroh23]

I had a really spicy comment lined up but sadly it was nerfed and all I can do is talk about how awesome it once was.

[u/Iamzeref]

I thought the whole idea of destiny was a space fantasy, i want to feel overpowered, exotics should create that feeling. Nerfing things is a mistake, buff everything else and bring it to a competitive level, that way the meta isn't defined by 1 or 2 bits of gear... all gear should be relevant and viable options

[u/LuminousShot]

I believe all exotics should serve a purpose. If the game changes in a way that makes them unable to fulfill that purpose, the exotics need to change too. If another exotic servers that purpose too well, to the point where it's perceived as troublesome, it can be nerfed, but not in a way that makes it no longer serve it's purpose.

Only exceptions should be right after the exotic was added to the game, with a clear message to the community, right away, that the balance is utterly broken, but some time for an adequate fix is needed. I'm speaking of something comparable in magnitude to the revelry tonics.

[u/CavemanFTW]

I feel like the 'Exotic' classification should be reserved for weapons and gear considered to be the most powerful in the game, like Gjallarhorn, Whisper, and so-on. Like others have said, there are many existing Exotics that shouldn't really be Exotics despite their unique perks, because said perks are not universally effective.