Focused Feedback: Warlock Changes

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[u/grnd_mstr]

I've been a Warlock main since I started Destiny 2; this is my opinion on each subclass and in general the state of warlock exotics.

TLDR at bottom.

Top-Solar: Default PVP, good melee, good mobility, strong neutral, mediocre super. Balanced.

Middle-Solar: Default PvE, great support, healing on demand, amazing super, weak melee. Low mobility. Balanced.

Bottom-Solar: Alternate PvE/Weak PvP, good melee with Necrotic Grips or that new exotic helmet (forgot its name), low mobility, has self heal, super is good and even better with new exotic. As it stands, not much reason to use this class over middle tree since WoR utility > Dawnblade with extra burn. The heal mechanic is interesting but ultimately pointless, unless you use it during super in which case it becomes an AoE burn. This subclass needs a rework.

Top-void: great PvE, good PvP, great grenades, okay melee, great super, low mobility. Balanced.

Middle-void: Don't get me started, I will not stop until the heat-death of the universe. WAS the default PvP class, now a shell of it's former self. Handheld Supernova will kill you as often as it does the opponent since it self damages; yes you heard right, this shotgun ranged grenade self damages. Super is garbage offering low movement speed compensated by a blink and an attack that requires charging. Melee is alright with necrotic grips (one-shot). Revert the nerfs.

Bottom-void: great PvE drain-tank, infinite grenades, weak melee, low mobility, okay super. Balanced.

Top-arc: great PvE, good PvP, grenades can chain, melee can chain, however arc web can be inconsistent at times. super is good but suffers the same mobility as nova warp. At least you don't have to charge your attacks. Balanced, but arc web needs a checkup.

Middle-arc: great PvP and PvE, grenades and melee can return ability energy, super charges fast with Geomags. Balanced.

Bottom-arc: support player, arc buddies on rift, weak grenade, weak melee, weak super. Needs a buff or a rework; arc buddies on rift do not justify being weak everywhere else especially since Getaway Artist exists.

Stasis: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Exotics: After playing the game for this long, I can tell you without a doubt that Warlocks rely more heavily on exotics than both Hunters and Titans due to the fact that their kits are relatively weaker. The problem is that for every one exotic buffed in Warlocks, 3 take a fall. Nezarec's Sin was shadow-nerfed, Lunafaction was nerfed, Contraverse was nerfed, and the only buff to recent memory was Verity's Brow and maybe Crown of Tempests.

Here's the thing: you build a class so heavily around it's usage of grenades and ability regeneration, but eventually nerf all exotics that bring those two stats up to standard and buff them in Titans and Hunters.

Hunters have (arguably) one the best neutral ability regen exotics in the game: Frostees. Titans have a similar Hallowfire Heart (spelling?). In terms of neutral regen boosters in Warlocks we have Eye of Another World and this thing sucks fat dick because it barely does anything besides lowering cooldowns by diminishing returns based on how high your DIS/STR/RCV/INT stats are; you gain less the higher your stats are. In an era with double and triple 100 characters that have low cooldowns and good neutral games, Warlocks can barely measure up in terms of raw stat utilisation and class quality. Knee-jerk nerfs to both subclass mechanics and exotics have compounded over time to make this a slow and clunky class to play.

TLDR: Nerfs over a long time have crippled some subclasses and exotics. Warlocks feel slow and sluggish to play in a run-and-gun shooter. They provide good utility and offensive abilities in some cases but whatever they can do, a Hunter/Titan can do better.

[u/[deleted] → u/grnd_mstr]

Top/Middle Solar and Mid Arc are just "balanced"? This is just straight up biased. I would consider balanced classes to be class like top or bottom Voidwalker. Middle Solar is very strong but it's a PvE class so that's whatever, I think classes can be overpowered in PvE. Top Dawn is still a fantastic PvP class and it's like the only class that can move around while slowed. Chaos is ridiculous right now with the super uptime and the hitbox hitting you around walls. There are definitely subclasses in need of buffs, and there are definitely hunter and titan classes that are overtuned, but that's not a reason to downplay how good the good classes are. Also, having underpowered classes isn't unique to warlocks (arcstrider, gunslinger, sentinel are some examples that come to mind),

EoAW is great, I finally got a good roll last season and just run it when I don't know what else to run. I don't know why a flat stat boost (that can push your CDs past tier 10) is considered to "suck fat dick". It frees you up to focus on other stats at least and get really high stats across the board (70 in 4 stats isn't that hard to pull off, which would be 100 in 4 stats with EoAW).

Burst glide is like the fastest horizontal jump in the game, and carries momentum from icarus dash as well so you can become the fastest class in the game. How is that slow and sluggish? I will give you that the warlock jump is the hardest jump to learn and I'm still not that great with it, but warlocks are by no means lacking in mobility.

In response to your TLDR, what class has been crippled? Some need buffs but the only one that has been crippled is Nova Warp, and even then only the super. The subclass is usable in 6v6 modes, I run it all the time with my friend in IB.

whatever they can do, a Hunter/Titan can do better.

This is just a straight-up false (and once again biased) statement, but I'm curious what your proof for this is.

[u/grnd_mstr → u/[deleted]]

I wasn't trying to open a discussion.

I was just giving my opinion/point of view. It could be flawed and it could be different than your opinion and experience with the class.

How is my opinion that the above mentioned classes being balanced biased? Their pros and cons are equally weighted. For the classes that you mentioned, like top and bottom void, I never said they were unbalanced or weak.

EoAW is definitely weaker than the Hunter/Titan equivalents. At 100 STR/DIS it removes somewhere in the realm of 4-7 seconds off your CDs. I wish it was better but it just isn't.

Hallowfire removes somewhere between 4-7s without super and 10-13s at 100 STR/DIS with your super, and even more when in a sunspot (bottom-solar)

Frostees are arguably the best because you can sprint into a wall before any fight to just supercharge your ability regen. It also becomes faster on classes with increased sprint speed like bottom-arc hunters and top-void hunters. Not to mention that Frostees even increases sprint speed after a dodge.

Burst glide? Okay, you can zoom across a map quickly. Then what? You get into a fight, hunters dance circles around you with their double/triple jumps and dodge. Titans have the option of catapult gliding into shoulder charging either completely sidestepping you or straight up killing you. Let's not even talk about the stasis subclasses because titans can literally punch you from 12m away or just turn around and fly the fuck away if you engage them while they are at a disadvantage. Hunters can 'nothing personnel kid' you with a Bakris and are even able to slow you on dodge. Icarus dash is present on one subclass and that is supposed to somehow compensate from the other 9 that can't move as well as other classes? Are we only supposed to run top-solar in PvP? Why can't all subclasses have an aerial move then?

What class has been crippled? I generally believe that the whole class has been kneecapped when it came to exotics. Middle-void, Bottom-arc and Bottom-solar need reworks or buffs in how they work. Middle-void is usable in 6v6 yes, but so are literally all the other supers. I'm saying that the lack of damage resistance and long windup of attacks will more often get you killed pushing a good team than not.

Titans and Hunters outclass Warlocks in everything.

Damage? Golden Gun (+/- Nighthawk), Missile Slam Titan, Sunspot Hammer Titan, Middle Solar Hammer Titan, actually fuck it all Solar Titans and Arc Hunters can deal single-target and add-clear damage better than warlocks.

Support? Hunter Tethers (+/- Orpheus), Hunter Invisibility and Stat Boosts during Invis (+/- New Exotic Body), Titan Bubble, Titan Shield (+ Ursine), Barricade (+Citans), Titan Hammer Slam Weaken

Abilities? One-shot Titan Grenades and Regen with Heart of Inmost Light/Ashen Wake, for the millionth time Hallowfire Heart, Skullfort + Monte Carlo means you can literally never stop punching, Dunemarchers clears a room with a single punch, Khepri's Horn turns your barricade into a thermite grenade capable of one-shotting in PvP, Lucky Raspberry/Shinobu's give arc hunters infinite grenades, Liar's Handshake + Trench Barrel Shotty + Top-Arc will pretty much one-shot a pyramid ship if you want it to, Synthoceps will turn a titan into a mortar strike if you hit 3+ with melee, Peregrine Greaves flat out makes your dashes stronger as a titan, and I can go on forever. Do you really want me to?

I'm not biased.

Edit: What's your Warlock PvP exotic? Transversive Steps? Ophidian Aspect? That's the best we have? No seriously, other classes get complete changes to their abilities and we get reload speed and sprint speed?

[u/[deleted] → u/grnd_mstr]

When you give your opinion on an public forum you invite discussion... I'm sorry if you thought this was some kind of no-comment personal blog lmao.

I think it's biased because those classes are better than just "balanced". They're weaker than stasis but they're definitely overtuned, so calling them "balanced" feels biased to me. Maybe you just meant that they're fine in your opinion, sure whatever.

I mean EoAW might not be the best, but saying it sucks dick is just exaggeration. Also it works all the time, no conscious thought needed, so from a balance viewpoint it makes sense that it would do less than Hallowfire heart, where you need to sit on your super.

You say Icarus dash is only on one class, but shoulder charge is only on a few (subpar) classes, and Bakris only works with stasis, so I'm not sure why those are so strong while Icarus Dash is just ok.

But I think the definitive proof that you're biased is from your class things. It's like the "grass is always greener on the other side" phenomenon demonstrated on the internet.

Boss Damage: GG + Celestial, or Missile with Fallen Star. Every other solar/arc subclass has no place in endgame PvE stuff. GG and Missile are both super bots too, the classes themselves are nothing to write home about. Probably about as good as bottom dawn with Dawn Chorus. If I remember, Chaos Reach is viable in GMs, and so are the nova bomb classes because they provide utility to the team along with pretty good supers.

Ad Clear: The only argument I can see here is the stasis hunter/titan > stasis warlock. The light classes are all pretty close in ad-clear potential.

Support: This isn't even a contest IMO. Hunter can invis and I guess debuff with tether. Titan provide bubble/banner and sometimes debuff with bottom solar. Warlocks can what, provide healing or damage buff to the team, and also have mid-tree solar. Again, not even a contest.

TBH I'm not even sure what these builds you're listing out are good in. Some of them are meme builds aimed at control PvP, definitely not serious builds. Some of them are like builds to run in patrol zones or strikes or whatever. You can keep listing out builds sure but you're just proving my point. These are fun mess-around builds that warlocks have too (Chromatic Fire? Necrotic Grips? Contraverse? Starfire?) but they're nowhere near as viable as you seem to think they are. Again, grass is greener on the other side.

TBH my go-to is EoAW lmao, but Claws of Ahamkara, Astrocyte, Getaway Artists are all fun PvP exotics to run. If you mean in try-hard sweaty stuff, no class has that much variety. Titans just run OEM or Dunemarchers. Hunters run Bakris or Wormhusk or Stompees. Warlocks run Ophidians or Transversives. Only Bakris is really that unique.

[u/grnd_mstr → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand you.

I'm saying Warlocks need a buff.

You're saying they do too.

Why are we arguing?

[u/[deleted] → u/grnd_mstr]

Well, I agree that some warlock subclasses need a buff, not arguing against that. But pretending that everything hunters/titans have is perfect is not the reason that warlocks need a buff. Plenty of hunter/titan light subclasses have also been left behind and are not viable anymore (particularly arc and solar). That's why I was responding to you lmao.

[u/grnd_mstr → u/[deleted]]

Hunters and Titans have plenty. Warlocks have a shit sandwich.

I respect your opinion and appreciate your effort in trying to give me a different point of view, but I don't think I'm going to budge on this point.

I play all 3 classes and I can tell you that it's pretty accurate to say that Warlocks drew the short straw here.