On the Bungie forum Cosmo recently reached out to the community and asked what we thought about Primary Balance in Destiny and so I decided to think about what I would change if given the opportunity to make the next Destiny Balance Patch. I wanted to get your insight before responding to Cosmo, but this is what I have so far.

Primary Weapon Balance

Pulse Rifles

3.5% buff to High Impact Pulse (35/24), kills 199 in 5/6 Crits. (TTK 0.73/1.33, TTK Unchanged)

10% buff to Mid Impact Pulse (33/22), kills 198 in 6/6 Crits. (New TTK 0.67/1.50, Old TTK 1.00/1.50)

4% buff to Mid-Low Impact Pulse (26/18), 202 in 5/9 Crits or 194 in 4/9. (TTK 0.87/1.33, TTK Unchanged)

4.5% buff to Low Impact Pulse (24/17), 202 in 7/9 or 195 in 6/9. (TTK 0.80/1.33, TTK Unchanged)

Scout Rifles

3% buff to High Impact Scouts (76/50), 202 in 2/3 Crits. (New TTK 0.80/1.20, Old TTK 0.80/1.60)

8.5% buff to Mid Impact Scouts (66/44), kills 198 in 3/3 Crits. (New TTK 0.67/1.33, Old TTK 1.00/1.33)

*Tlaloc damage reduced during Overflow to 60/41, fire rate changed to 52. Allows it to maintain the same TTK, but easier to obtain at 2/4 rather than 3/3 and does so with 42 extra damage if 4/4 Crits. (New Overflow TTK 0.70/0.93, Old TTK 0.83/1.11)

5.5% buff to Low-Mid Impact Scouts (60/41), kills 202 in 2/4 Crits. (New TTK 0.90/1.20, Old TTK 0.90/1.50)

12% buff to Low Impact Scouts (50/33), kills 200 in 4/4 Crits. (New TTK 0.70/1.40, Old TTK 0.93/1.40)

Low Range Scouts start seeing quicker drop damage dropoff than before, but Medium to High Range stay as they are. This is to prevent Low Impact/Low Range Scouts from dominating long range engagements.

Auto Rifles

Extend Falloff damage out, by at least 20%, it is far too steep for Auto’s across the board right now.

15% Crit Multiplier added to all Auto Rifles.

High Impact Auto’s (30/21), kills 201 in 6/7 Crits. (New TTK 0.80/1.20, Old TTK 0.93/1.20)

Mid Impact Auto’s (23/16), kills 193 in 7/9 Crits. (New TTK 0.80/1.20, Old TTK 0.90/1.20)

Low Impact Auto’s (17/12), kills 194 in 10/12 Crits. (New TTK 0.74/1.07, Old TTK 0.87/1.07)

Hand Cannons

Remove Bloom or drastically reduce the effects so that shots are 100% accurate initially. Bloom should also have zero effect on Hand Cannons accuracy unless they are in Range Falloff territory.

Increase both Hipfire and Air Accuracy across the board for all Hand Cannons again.

*Change also to the perk Icarus, it now provides perfect In Air Accuracy, as if you were on the ground, on any gun, HC or otherwise.

Damage Falloff range on The Last Word is moved closer by 20% to compensate for increased accuracy from the reduction/removal of Bloom. It is also so that its Range stat more accurately reflects its actual engagement ranges.

Increase base range by 10% of Thorn.

3.5% buff to High Impact Hand Cannons (98/66), kills 196 in 2/2 Crits. (New TTK 0.50/1.50, Old TTK 1.00/1.50)

For reference, as they didn’t change Mid Impact HC’s (TTK 0.87/1.30) and Low Impact HC’s (TTK 0.80/1.20)

Special Weapon Balance

Snipers

Reduce starting strength for aim deflection (Flinch) while scoped in from 50% starting to 35%, aim deflection multiplier stays at 1.9x. Both High Caliber Rounds and Explosive Rounds stay at 50% aim deflection (I might not be stating this correctly, but basically Flinch goes back to slightly worse than before 2.4.0, with HCR and ER staying exactly as they are now).

Scope Aim Assist Values changed on Shortgaze from 0 to -5 AA, Longview SLR10 from +3 to 0 AA, and Ambush from -25 to -15 AA. This is to normalize AA between Scope choices and lower the massive discrepancy between AA on Ambush and Shortgaze and make that choice less punishing.

Fusion Rifles

Slight increase to base Range and Stability for all Fusion Rifles, hopefully an extra +5 base Range and Stability will allow more frequent 5 bolts and less 4 bolts.

Sidearms

Push Range Falloff out a few meters and make them viable at a slightly longer engagement distance. *I suspect Bloom also has a major impact on Sidearms. It’s removal will make more shots fired quickly land. Right now, Sidearms very infrequently kill in their intended 5 shot TTK, it generally takes 7-8 because shots appear to Ghost like HC’s.

Shotguns

Players will receive -2 Agility when Shotguns are the Active Weapon. Remove Slowed Ready/Stow time for Shotguns from the December 2015 patch (these are to discourage running around with a Shotgun as the Active Weapon, and promote Primary play until a Shotgun is needed, but not penalize you for pulling it out). Bring back Shotpackage, only now instead of changing the spread pattern, it becomes a Slug. Body Shots with Shotpackage only do 57% damage, just like Chaperone. 25% buff against Minions of the Darkness (PvE)

Chaperone perks Field Choke changed to Aggressive Ballistics and Snapshot changed to Hammer Forged.

Class Changes

Titan

Striker – Reduce Cone of Lightning Grenade effect from about 85 degrees to 70 degrees. Juggernaut again requires feet to be planted on the ground to activate and be maintained.

Sunbreaker – Fix Sunstrike hit registration. It still frequently burns targets without applying melee damage on hit and uses Sunstrike.

Hunter

Bladedancer – Reduce damage of bolts from 10 to 8. Improved speed of tracking slightly. Flux Grenades damage changed to match Fusion Grenades.

Nightstalker – Shadowshot 65% increase in direct impact damage (increases damage to 401 in PvP).

Gunslinger – Increase Tripmine damage by 4% (188 to 195 + 3 on trip, 198 total if hit by trip).

Warlock

Stormcaller – Reduce the Range of Amplitude by 30%.

Sunsinger – 15.5% buff to Firebolt Grenades (85 to 98 damage, 133 with Touch Ignite after 5 ticks of 7), but Gift of Sun build will only do 196. Add Fast Twitch to Sunburst on Kill, so Killing an enemy with Scorch quickly recharges it (3 seconds). Add a 12s Cooldown to Flame Shield, so that it can only be activate once every 12s. If Sunburst is activated while Flame Shield is on Cooldown it will use a Melee Charge, do the proper damage, generate an orb, but not give Flame Shield, and again charge Scorch in 3s.

Other changes…

Remove Collision effects of Ghost entirely. Dead Ghost’s shouldn’t affect the game world at all.

Goals/Effects of Changes

The goal here is to reduce overall Primary TTK, both optimally and at max, yet maintain the current equilibrium between classes of weapons. It is also to shake up the current “Meta” of weapons and shift them onto other less used tiers of those classes of weapons by making currently nonviable tiers viable again. The goal of the majority of the class changes were to remove some of the most powerful outliers that currently exist in regards to movement in Destiny, and bring those abilities more in line with all other abilities. The overarching goal here was to reduce the “closing” ability of Guardians without changing the pace of the game at all. Moving optimal TTK’s to around 0.75 from around 0.9 takes away about 4-5m of closing distance when Guardians are using Control or Boost Jumps. Making Juggernaut go back on the ground (this is just removing the change they made to it in Dec. 2015) prevents it from being used in conjunction with Titan Skating, something I wouldn’t want to touch. Reducing Amplitude melee range also removed 15m Shotgun Melee strategy and forces that playstyle down to the 11m Range (still outside Shotgun OHKO range). Reintroducing Shotpackage hopefully pushes players towards use to max OHKO range, which would now require precision shots to achieve. Another thing this would push is high Armor spec of Guardians. With a lot of low optimal TTK’s that kill mid Armor Guardians quickly, it makes players choose their Spec very carefully, something that I think is very important and makes Destiny more interesting when we have to make those hard choices between Armor/Recovery/Agility. In my opinion, these are changes that would make Destiny a much more balanced game and promote a wide variety of playstyles all at the same time.

Likely Meta weapons would include Low Impact HC’s, High/Mid/Low Impact Pulses, High/Mid/Low Impact Scouts, and Low Impact Auto’s. Primary Exotics that would be strong would be Hawkmoon, The Last Word, Thorn, Red Death, *Vex Mythoclast, *Nechrochasm, Suros Regime (Spinning Up), Khvostov (900RPM Auto),*Jade Rabbit, and Tlaloc. I also see Plan C, Trespasser, and The Chaperone being very useful Exotic’s in the Secondary slot as well. The Truth will always be top dog in the Exotic Heavy slot for PvP, that won’t change. Note: High Impact HC’s could be very deadly at first, but I think most players, if not already would start using above +8 Armor so that they wouldn’t die to 196 damage. Same thing would go for many of these Optimal TTK’s that don’t require 200+ damage (which would include the changes to abilities as well, such as Tripmines).

All TTK information obtained and calculated based on Mercules904's Massive Breakdown Spreadsheet.

Here is the link to the post I put up on Bungie.net.

No, never, no way. Fuck two shot Pulses. I fucking hate being forced to use a certain weapon type because otherwise I'm at a disadvantage. Fuck that. If two shot Pulses would be a thing, then one shot Hand Cannons should be a thing. Pulses have pretty long range for two shotting when that meta was a thing and they would beat a Hawkmoon that procced a lucky round in close quarters. Fuck that. Seriously. Let me use what I want to use without putting me at a disadvantage that is anything other than range. An Auto Rifle and Hand Cannon should win close to close-medium range engagements with a Pulse if accurate when fire is opened from both sides at the same time.

Also, either the Sunbreaker needs an armor buff, or the Stormcaller needs an armor nerf. But there is no way a Stormcaller should have more health than a Sunbreaker, which is currently the case. I can headshot Sunbreakers with one shot, can't do the same thing with Stormcallers. I have no idea why people complained about Sunbreakers a year ago, while Stormcallers are in the exact same place now.

I'm also a fan of just removing OHK grenades. It's a super cheap tactic. Either they remove the magnetism completely, where you actually have to hit someone for it to stick, or make it so far less damage. They can increase the AoE on it to compensate, which would make them still fantastic grenades if people are sticking together. Also, Skip Grenades need a huge nerf to damage. They do 20% more damage than an Axion Bolt, they track you for almost three times as long (!) and they track you much quicker. Unable to be dodged or destroyed reliably. Why exactly does a Skip Grenade need to do the amount of damage that it does compared to Arcbolt for instance? Arcbolt should get a slight damage buff and Skip Grenade should do the same amount of damage, really. Or they need to do the Axion Bolt thing, where running away from it also decreases its damage on contact. Lightning Grenades need a visual fix to match their cone of damage more accurately, but they are fine otherwise. I get killed by a Lightning Grenade only once for every 30 times I get killed by any other type of grenade. Especially stickies and Skips.

Now, while I completely get the argument to why and how Defenders can be used to good strength, I think they need a slight rework in PvP. Their grenades are good. Their melees are only good if they get a kill with them, which is currently a problem if you're not running a shotgun and No Backup Plans. The melee range of the Titan is still very short and thus getting a hit or two on someone and then charging for a kill won't work. Especially since the meta is revolved around killing people in less than a second upon sight. Their Supers are almost useless for the fact that at least someone on the opposite team always has a Super. I can only assume the people that claim 'but it's really good to put over a Capture Point' don't know how to play the game or have never experienced it in action. It gets removed 98% of the time upon sight without exaggerating. Instantly. Often killing everyone inside. It's really, really bad. I have never died to an opposing Ward of Dawn apart from in Rumble. I've also never seen one not destroyed apart from this one match I played in Iron Banner with 6 Defender Titans. Admittedly, that was hilarious. Both their Ability Modifier trees are absolutely pointless to pick anything other than one from. There is no versatility. Currently:

• Bastion - Increases the duration of Ward of Dawn by 15 seconds. Pointless, because Ward of Dawn will be removed as soon as it is spotted.
• Relentless - Increases the duration of Force Barrier by 5 seconds and adds 20 health to it. (Not even that) great if you can get it to proc without a shotgun and an Exotic armor piece, which you won't.
• Gift of the Void - If Ward of Dawn takes huge amounts of damage from enemy fire, you create three orbs. Pointless, because even two shots from a Golden Gun that completely removes it are not considered enough damage to generate them. Needless to say, nobody also stands there shooting two magazines worth of ammo at it pointlessly for it to proc.
• Untouchable - Reduces the cooldown of Ward of Dawn. This is one is good.
• Iron Harvest - Chance to create an orb with a heavy weapon kill. Since the proc chance is around 15% and you get roughly 2-3 Heavy kills per match if you manage to pick it up, I don't have to explain why this is bad.
• Illuminated - Increases Weapons of Light damage by 10% and Blessing of Light health by 20 health. No effect on Weapons since TTK is identical without it for the majority of weapons. 20 damage is often also easily overcome by overkill damage. If you required 4 crits against Blessing, you'll likely still require 4 crits against Blessing + Illuminated depending on the weapon you use.

Defender is a fantastic subclass in PvE and an argument can be made that it should remain a PvE subclass. But then why is the PvE subclass of the Hunter receiving this much attention from everyone to get buffed in PvP that hard? Currently, Nightstalkers > Defenders in PvP easily. You don't even have to question it. Their melees are actually devastating and can be used in a variety of ways. Their Supers can actually kill reliably. Their grenades are as good and complement their melees really well. Their Ability Modifiers are almost all fantastic or useful in some way. Lockdown? Shadestep? Keen Scout? They even have strictly better perks than the Defender in some cases. Light of the Pack is just Gift of the Void that actually works in practice. Predator is just Untouchable with an upside on top.

Defenders need to be more viable. Any way will do, but I suggest this:

• Increase AoE on Suppression Grenade slightly and leave a lingering suppression field for 1 second after detonation, leave damage unchanged. - Believe it or not, it's actually super hard to catch someone with it. Trust me, I've used it extensively. Often when a Bladedancer rush/slashes through the explosion it just doesn't suppress him. When a Stormcaller rushes or even blinks it just doesn't suppress him. As a Bladedancer or Sunbreaker that uses Suncharge, I get suppressed all the time by tethers, even if I'm not really close to them at all. I think this is partly because of lag and because tethers suppress indefinitely until the tether wears out, whereas Suppression Grenades have one tick of suppression.
• Ward of Dawn is harder to destroy. Super attacks now drain its duration rather than removing it outright. The intended purpose of Ward of Dawn to provide protection is reinforced. Nova Bomb and Fist of Havoc drains 15 seconds, each Gunslinger shot drains 5 seconds (30 seconds with Celestial Nighthawk), Shadow Shot drains 10 seconds or 5 seconds with Quiver, Storm Trance drains 1 second per tick, Hammer of Sol drains 3 seconds per Hammer, Razor's Edge drains 3 seconds, Showstopper drains 4 seconds. - That's right. The entire point of Ward of Dawn is to keep you safe, so why on earth is every single Super in the game a counter to that? It should be the other way around. Ward of Dawn should be a counter to other Supers. Why is it that if a Gunslinger activates his almighty Gunslinger form that shoots fire at you, you can't counter it with the only true defensive Super in the game?
• Disintegrate; Procs on special weapon precision kills in addition to melee kills. No Backup Plans still does not require a shotgun kill to be a precision hit. - OP? Maybe. But it wears out and it's not that easy to get a precision kill with special in a situation where the Force Barrier truly benefits (close quarters). This would create a kill, then rush in type approach.
• Bastion; changes to Ward of Dawn now make this an excellent perk.
• Relentless; changes to Disintegrate now make this an excellent perk.
• Gift of the Void; reduce damage required to proc. Procs on any two sources of Super damage.
• Iron Harvest; Small chance to create an orb on Special Weapon kills (10%). Large chance to create an orb on Heavy Weapon kills (50%).
• Illuminated; In addition to usual effects, adds an effect that replaces each round fired from your magazine with a round from your reserves.

There, perfect!

@zevvion: Take a real close look at these changes. Everything would be in an extremely competitive place in comparison to each other, honestly even more so than they are currently. While High and Mid Impact Pulses could two burst, they do so in .67 and .73 and not to a full 200+ Armor Guardian. Keep in mind High Impact Pulses TTK didn't change as they already do that, they would just require 5/6 Crits over 6/6 like they do now. Honestly both of those shots are very hard to come by and likely Pulses would fall out of the Meta like they are now a bit. Low-Mid Impact (Hawksaw) would become what Mid Impact Scouts are now, near guaranteed 3 bursts at 0.87 and Low Impact would be very easy to achieve a 0.8 with 7/9 or 6/9 on mid Armor. HI Scouts can 2/3 in .80, with MI Scouts hitting a possible 0.67 to 198 in 3/3. Mida becomes one of the worst Archetypes doing 2/4 Crits for 0.90 but is easy to achieve. LI Scouts start to really shine at 4/4 in 0.7, and I see them as being one of the top tier classes if this change happened. Auto Rifles become very competitive again with all of their TTK's coming way down to 0.80 for HI and MI and 0.74 on LI, all requiring 1 less Crit than needed to achieve that TTK. Now since you mentioned Hand Cannon's, here is where things get very interesting with these changes. HI HC's become the fastest TTK's coming in at 0.50 with 2/2 on 196. With the removal of Bloom Hand Cannons will be the best they have been in a long time. LI HC's have a very competitive TTK of 0.8 with 2/3 Crits and MI HC's are at 0.87 with 1/3 still. They would also get back their hipfire accuracy and added in air accuracy. Since HC's are the Dodgeball of Destiny (dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge), they allow a user to pop in and out of cover easily and land shots on the move, making them currently the best primary in mid range situations when Bloom isn't a factor. That doesn't change and actually improves. Throw into that the three big dogs of The Last Word, Hawkmoon, and Thorn and you have yourself a party ripe for success. The Last Word again become a terror within 20m like it should be, dropping a .53 TTK on 2/3 Crits. Hawkmoon comes back actually being able to hit shots again and is usable which means on a LITC proc you have a 0.44 TTK at 198 (90+108 for LITC proc) on 2/2 with Aggressive Ballistics. Thorn guarantee's a kill in 2/3 in 0.80 like all guns in it's class, but it does 81/54 with 2x4 burn per shot with Aggressive. That's a walkaway 2/2 of 194, which kills low Armor without the burn Artifact. Keep in mind Thorn also has Final Round, which ads 33% bonus damage taking it up to 108, which lands a 189+16 for 205 to kill halfway through the burn. This is an odd occurrence granted, but one that drops a walkaway 0.40 TTK. It also has a 1/3 walkaway of 0.8 doing 189+24 for 213. Make no mistake, HC's would be in a very great place, and would also not require certain perks like they do now with Rifled Barrel/Rangefinder.

Armor in Super is roughly even across the board at 50% Armor, basically doubling the Health Pool of every Guardian. What does change is the available health based on Armor rating. A Sunbreaker with Solar Armor can get to 9 Armor, or 198 health. However, every Warlock can get to 9 Armor as well, plus The Ram, which grants +3 Armor boosting you to 12 Armor, or roughly 204 Health. An Unstoppable Titan can get to 11 Armor, or 202 Health, while an Unstoppable & Eternal Warrior Titan can hit 13 Armor or 206 Health (for reference). Right now any Mid-High Impact Sniper with Barrel Upgrades running either Linear (my recommendation as it has better recoil pattern) or Accurized can hit in Super for 199. That will kill anything but a Ramlock or Max Striker. High Impact Sniper outright kill anything in 1 Crit. So I'm not sure what the issue is. Armor of Light is the only Super that carries more than a 50% Armor bonus (so does Radiant Skin at 55%, but nobody uses that at all anymore, so it's not really worth mentioning), as it sits around 75% (brings health up to about 700 from 198, as evident by being able to easily tank two direct rocket shots).

I'm going to skip a couple of your points for a bit and hit on the Defenders since I'm already there in regards to Armor of Light. Armor of Light, the go to for PvP, is incredibly strong in it's own right, probably more so than it needs to be since it's impossible to challenge right now if you don't have a Super. It grants you around 700 health... that's an insane amount of health. In comparison Blessing with Illuminated only grants you about 70 extra health. Now let that sink in. 700 vs 270. This is why the phrase "Don't come in to my Bubble" exists. It's impossible to challenge an Armor of Light Bubble. Add to that a Suppressor Grenade that can instantly take down a Super and you have a recipe for success. Take a look at The Fun Police. Fimi_Sheikh is one of the best Defenders in Destiny and he utilizes the tools at the Defenders disposal very well. Personally I'd like to see Armor of Light take a hit a bit, back down to about 550 health or 65%. But I'm not asking for that change because I completely understand how hard it is to be as good as Fimi with a Defender, and how most people rather suck with Suppressor grenades and cannot take people out of Supers before they are killed. Also, with how good Voidwalkers are right now, it is frequent, like you mentioned that you are Shattered (only Nova that can both kill Bubble and inhabitants) out of Armor of Light. Personally I love to Nova Bubble's. It's right up there with Throwing Knife Headshots. With how good Shotguns are and how fast Titans can Skate, you are highly underestimating the power of a No Back Up Plan's build right now too. It is very viable and extremely deadly in a game like Control/Rift or Supremacy. I don't think there is anything wrong at all with Defenders in PvP, especially considering, like you mentioned, they are primarily built as a PvE class. Also, like on First Light, there is the Weapons Sniper Body Shot dirty build for when your Bubble is Active. Your entire team can be Final Round Snipers the entire time the Bubble is active. It's incredibly dirty and cheap, but hey, it is a built possibility. Of all of your suggested changes for Defender the only one I agree with is the change to Gift of the Void by reducing the damage to proc orb generation (I would even add that it generates 4 orbs rather than 3 for a total of 6 or 7 with Alpha Lupi), and even that is primarily a PvE related perk that works pretty darn well for what it's supposed to do.

Ok, so back to Fusion and Flux Grenades. The head AA on them might be a bit much I agree. But the tracking to the body isn't that much, and if you've used them to any degree you would know how frequently they skip off of the target when you hit a direct stick to the body, it's at least 20% of the time. There is also the abilities of both Blink and Shadestep, both of which can either prevent damage during Immune frames or allow the Sticky Grenade to detach, of which happens pretty often. All in all, while they do OHKO at times, setup grenades like Skip/Axion/Lightning are all better choices. And don't even get me started on Wombo's, a Nightstalker Smoke+Grenade that can kill outright as well, and can do so to entire teams caught in them. As far as both Skip Grenades and Lightning goes, I advocated for Nerfs to both of those, taking down Skip damage by 20% (they have 16 ticks at 10, so 160 to 128, more in line with other grenades) and allowing them to track faster which would prevent you from having to run to the ends of the earth to get away from them. If you get killed that rarely by Lightning Grenades you are playing bad Strikers or on very open maps. Many Trials weekends if I'm playing Striker I rack up tons of Lightning Grenade kills, even against top tier teams. They cover near the entire width of a room right now where they are thrown and 15m in front of themselves. Even if they don't kill they can put and entire team at 1 shot easily, and that's on a bad throw.

Note: One of the big things to keep in mind here with all of this is both lag and Destiny's tickrate. Both of these severely impact performance of a lot of this stuff. Most people around Destiny understand lag, or players with bad, slow connections, so I'm going to explain them in as easy to understand terms as I can. Packet loss is a huge killer one of the major reason you see red bars in Crucible often. This comes when information isn't sent/received from a player and causes a delay through which they can teleport, shoot, and kill opponents while taking zero damage themselves. This is a severe problem that needs to be addressed outside of balance concerns. One of the major ways for Destiny to improve this is to more directly prioritize Connection in Matchmaking. This would more often pit players with high packet loss against each other. As much as Dedicated Servers would be great, it isn't going to happen in Destiny, and likely not in Destiny 2 because Activision is cheap. So Destiny needs to go back to the Matchmaking settings that were active in Crucible prior to December 2015 when Matchmaking at least worked to a degree, compared to where it is now. Another thing that needs to be redone is the Damage Referee. Right now it does very little. In my opinion, if you are experiencing packet loss, Damage Referee should kick in and allow all others players calculations to continue and be applied to that player with packet loss, thus punishing only the player having packet loss, and not every other player without it. The much bigger concern though is something far more sinister that most people don't understand about Destiny's PvP matchmaking system. It's something people on Reddit have been talking about for awhile called Tickrate. Tickrate is the rate at which Destiny applies the calculations it has accumulated to each encounter. Most games have a tickrate, in hz, that works in a similar fashion to the amount of frames in a 30hz or frame game like Destiny. If a game is 60fps, it should have a tickrate of 60, which means for every frame, a calculation is made that applies actions from that frame to the game. Destiny's problem is that while it runs at 30fps, it's tickrate is only 10hz. That's right, 10. That means that only 1 out of every 3 frames is actually calculating the Actions that are performed within those frames. Have you ever traded a kill with another player, that's 10 tickrate. Have you ever been shot behind a wall, 10 tickrate. Shot and killed a player, watched their body fly away, and then be stuck by a fusion grenade out of their dead body, 10 tickrate. For reference CS GO has never once had a trade on a competitive server that runs at 144hz, or both the highest monitor refresh rate and frame rate available, and the highest tickrate available. It isn't possible. Someone always wins in a gunfight, because that's how tickrate works, the slower the tickrate, the more time both players have to input actions that effect gameplay. At 10 Destiny has by far the lowest tickrate of any FPS out there. Recently fans had an outcry for both Battlefield and Overwatch. Both games ran at 60fps with a tickrate of 30hz. For players, having a tickrate at half the fps was unacceptable and both companies reluctantly agreed and updated both titles to a 60 tickrate. The fact that Destiny has held to a tickrate of 10hz since launch is nothing short of mind blowing, and it's something the engineers at Bungie should honestly be ashamed of. Alright, tickrate rant over, but seriously, it's one of the most maddening things in Destiny to me.

@hestilllives19: You know better than that. Because of the range and low accuracy loss on Pulses they would become, once again, the meta with your changes. Because they are far closer to their theoretical TTK than Hand Cannons are. They would beat two-shot HC's even in close quarters. Which is really, really stupid. I can only assume you really like Pulses so you want them to be strong. They have been strong for too long. There is no reason to make them the best primary once more. You should not be able to beat a HC user all things being equal in close and close/medium range. You currently don't even win with Eyasluna/Hawkmoon where a lucky round procced on all crits against the meta Pulses unless you definitely fired first. And this is a 3-shot Pulse meta.

The problem is there are some viable options outside of the meta always, because of Exotic nature. The Last Word, MIDA never go out of style. If you remove them you'd see Pulses are the only viable option currently on the vast majority of maps. It's pretty telling that every single streamer loadout never differs in the primary slot. It's always the go-to Pulses if those players are not Last Word players. If we go the Bungie route, we need to make everything except for Pulses better because they are currently meta. If we go the clever route, we make Pulses strong, but never, ever, put them in that slot of ultimate win. We really don't need a best primary class. I want all of them to be viable. And by viable I mean your K/D should not suffer because you're choosing one class over another. It should only suffer if you're not playing to the weapon's strengths. That is currently not the case and it will not be the case if Pulses two-shot. It doesn't matter if you decrease the TTK on everything else if you also decrease it on Pulses. That's just a meta where people kill faster and Pulses still are the best.

@zevvion: You sure you are playing the same game as me right now? What streamer do you watch that isn't always using a Hand Cannon right now? Hand Cannons are king right now, even with Ghost Bullets. Pulse Rifle are easily the 2nd choice and better choice on certain maps due to range concerns. But if a map allows you to consistently engage at ranges under 40m, HC's are just flat out better right now because you are more mobile, can dip between shots, and can take to the air with little penalty. Don't get me wrong, as I'm sure we've talked about this before, I love Hand Cannons and personally favor them as well, and also hate the way Pulse Rifles function, but I don't think my personal preference on weapons should effect how Bungie balances the game. These changes to Hand Cannons make them very strong, by removing Bloom, it allows all HC's to be viable, not just Mid Impact Rifled Rangefinder ones. Improved Hipfire back to what it was at launch and improved In Air Accuracy, at the level Icarus does now by default on HC's would be amazing. Comparing optimal TTK's across the board you have HC's at 0.50, 0.80, and 0.87 and Pulses at 0.73, 0.67, 0.87, and 0.80. All of the HI guns have hard to hit TTK's though that only occur in optimal situations. The average TTK's for those guns will look more like 1.0, 0.80, 0.87 for HC's and 1.10, 1.00, 0.87, and 0.80 for Pulses (High Impact Pulses already 2 burst, but they require 6/6, which is near impossible to hit, which is why nobody uses them). Even with Optimal TTK's across the board at around 0.70-0.80 on most guns, I don't see many of those hitting those TTK's often, rather hitting around the 0.80-0.90 mark pretty frequently though. Keep in mind Auto's will be pretty strong again as well with quick TTK's across the board. Suros with Spinning Up will have a great TTK in 0.65 range when active. Scouts will also now give Pulses a run for their money on maps with larger engagement ranges because their TTK's would actually be competitive.

When I started this I had to look at Pulses first, because of the very nature of them. Without the potential to 2 burst, Mid Impact Pulses will never be competitive. Without it being slightly easier, neither will High Impact. Since there is no other way to adjust Lower Impact Pulses I made their current TTK's slightly easier to obtain. Basically they function like Mid Impact Scouts do now, a consistent TTK that isn't optimal. Everything else was adjusted to then match those TTK's. And in my honest opinion they match up pretty favorably for some of the other weapon classes. I think Scout Rifles come out particularly strong, and stronger than they have ever been, which I kind of love. Auto's are strong, HC's are strong, and all match up well with each other, with each holding particular strength's and weaknesses. Like Auto's having the most consistent TTK from Optimal to complete Body Shots. but suffering from Range and having to be exposed the entire time they are doing damage. All guns have similar strength/weaknesses. But I would find it hard to say that this, or the current Meta has Pulses on top.

Also, you mentioned Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon currently destroys (0.44 TTK) with Aggressive Ballistics when it lands a Luck shot, like it always has. Problem is right now it has Ghost Bullets like crazy and when half of your shots dissipate into thin air, a gun is hardly worth using. Simply removing Ghost Bullets solves this issue and would make Hawkmoon a top tier Primary again.

@hestilllives19:I like Destiny but reading through this thread made me realize some people REALLY like Destiny. While I never got people that data mine games I always admired and respected that kind of dedication.

I am also a huge fan of HC. Ever since I got my year 2 Hawkmoon. However, I did get Grasp of Malok a few weeks back and fell in love with it. Since then I tried Bad JuJu and Red Death and liked them very much. I did manage to snag Thorn a few days ago and I'm thinking to give that one a try.

@hestilllives19:You're getting two things mixed up. Ghost bullets is when a shot should hit based on the game's rules for a certain weapon, but does not and seemingly disappears into thin air. Accuracy is a hidden stat that randomizes the likelyhood of a hit based on the time and position of the weapon during kickback. You're not getting 50% of your shots with Hawkmoon to be ghost bullets, you're using it 'wrong' causing accuracy debuff to remove your potential hit. You have to wait for it to re stabilize before firing again. This is exactly what I was talking about before. Yes, the theoretical TTK with Hawkmoon may be .44 seconds, but because of accuracy it gets nowhere close to that unless you literally get lucky and accuracy's randomization counts it as a hit. Because HC's kickback is the most out of any weapon in the game this is only an issue with them, really.

As for streamers, I don't know which ones you watch but literally everyone uses a Pulse. It was Grasp of Malok and the occasional Hopscotch before and now it's The Clever Dragon. I do see an Eyasluna here and there, but never for a full card really, just when switching things up.

@mordukai Thorn is not good. It received a huge nerf to range and it made it unremarkable at best. The DoT is not enough to be consistently good since that has been nerfed a while back also in both damage and time, in addition a lot of players are smart and use Silimar. As someone who's favorite class is Hand Cannons, I point you to The Lingering Song or Uffern if you like high impact ones; or Exile's Student, Eyasluna or Hawkmoon if you like those types better. There is also The Last Word of course, but that is in a league of its own.

@mordukai: Not going to lie, I'm a bit of an addict. I can generally count the days between when I've played Destiny or not. Which more often than not have been adding up lately, which is good for me, yet doesn't bode well for the game. I'm pretty much down to just doing a couple Trials cards each weekend for the fun of it now. As PvP is starting to not be as fun I'm not even going after 3 Flawless runs each weekend anymore, though I like to get at least 1 each week on my 3 attempts. This DLC, like we all assumed, has already lost it's luster and I'm pretty much just waiting for Destiny 2 and hoping for some PvP changes to get me through the rest of the Year for the 1-3 hours per week I might spend on it. I've got a ton of other games to get through though so this break will be kind of nice.

Advice you didn't ask for: Hawkmoon and Thorn both suffer pretty heavily from Range problems right now (huge falloff and bullet that don't hit their target even though you aimed correctly). I would stick to the Grasp for any form of competitive Destiny out of that bunch. But if you are just playing regular Crucible all of those guns are fun to use. Red Death is amazing in PvE though, as the health regen will save your life often. In PvP, it just has a slow TTK at the moment. But if your playing in a lower bracket due to less time in Destiny, likely TTK isn't a factor so those guns should do just fine. If you played any Iron Banner last week the Clever Dragon he sold was pretty top tier. Would be similar to a great roll on a Grasp of Malok.

How about... we nerf the shit out of Storm? Seriously, their melees are insane. Not only do they have ridiculous range, the bigger problem is that they proc instantaneously. Shotgun + melee is by far the fastest on Storms specifically and it allows them to 'shotgun' you from medium range. Not exaggerating, medium range.

Also, how about we stop having shotguns be OHK on any Super? When I use a Blade, I can't actually kill anyone that has a shotgun out without trading. When I use my Hammer, I can't use Suncharge. If shooting someone in the head with a sniper rifle doesn't kill a Super, then a bodyshot with a shotgun shouldn't either.

Reading this makes me want to redownload destiny even though I just deleted it again recently. Even though some of it went over my head (didn't know what ghost bullets were) I love getting into this stuff. The changes mentioned to mix up the defender class are all so good I wish they would implement literally any of that, defenders are complete non issues. If anything it makes it easier to kill the Titan inside with a fist of havoc (I've always played Titan). The only thing that really jumped out to me was how prevalent storm callers became and how they can melee you from like down the hall and murder you like nothing. While me, with my impotent Titan T. rex arms struggle. I don't mind the meta as it is rn besides autos still being so underpowered and useless. I wish the Thorn and Hawkmoon were better but I understand why they can't be buffed to where they used to be, I just love the aesthetic and feel of those two guns and they were two of my first exotics.

@zevvion: Shotguns don't do enough to kill Supers outright either, but a Shotgun Melee does, which often times is what you are seeing. Though honestly I don't really have a problem with this, but do think a High-Mid Impact Sniper should 1 Shot a Super too. I don't think Supers should be unkillable by regular weapons. Having 400 health (or double whatever your HP is anyways) and being nearly unstoppable by Primaries is good enough. I'd like about a 3% buff back to that archetype of Snipers to make them hit in Super for about 199, same as ones with Barrel Upgrades do now. But honestly I currently only use Snipers like But Not Forgotten and The Winged Word for this exact reason anymore so it's a bit of a non issue for me, just that my Godly 1000 Yard is pretty much trash now. As smart as players have gotten about shutting down roaming Supers, it's honestly easier to just use Defensive Supers now outside of Golden Gun, at least in my opinion, though I do still hold some affinity for my Hammers. I think me and you are two of the few players that still play Sunbreaker often, as I almost never see it used by anyone. Everyone is a Jugg Striker with a Shotgun.

I completely agree Amplitude is out of control, though Stormcaller itself is pretty fine where it is at after they nerfed the time it could be active awhile back. It's good but far from overpowered and suffers the same issues in close quarters that Bladedance does. The only reason I wouldn't nerf it too much is Warlocks are by far the slowest class, so nerfing their melee range much outside of that one ability wouldn't be very good. Bringing it down from around 15m to 10-12 would be ideal as 9m is roughly Matador OHKO Range so it wouldn't be as big of a deal anymore. It's the fact that people can easily kill 6-7m further than Shotgun range on a Stormcaller now that is a huge glaring issue, 1-3m wouldn't be as much so. On the topic of Melee though, I'd love it if they further boosted the Titan melee by 2-3m so that it would more closely resemble a Hunter melee, as that would still put it 1m short of Hunter, and 3m short of Warlock (Warlock seems to be about 8-9m, Hunter at about 6-7m, and Titan at 2-3m currently). It's why the name T-Wrex arms has become the term for Titan melees. It's especially hilarious if you compare the 2-3m of Titan to 15m of Amplitude right now.

@hestilllives19: Nah, Storms can avoid the OHK shotguns because of the range of their Super and easy to use nature of it (you don't have to aim to kill anyone). Blades more or less have to get close. I'm practicing to use Razor's Edge right now, but that is much harder to use. It's also very difficult to see which opponents you can slash and which you have to keep your distance and should Edge. That thing is way too finicky I feel like to use effectively.

I don't think you can say Blade and Storm are currently on par. Especially because Blink has been nerfed to almost unusability in tandem with the Super. The Warlock's Blink is separate and far more consistent. That fact alone makes Storms better. Then they also have the better range and easier to use from range.

I like Blades better still, but that's purely because I appreciate the style of that Super better. I do better with a Storm. That's not to say I think Storms should be nerfed, but Blades need some love somewhere in their Super. I'm telling you, math be damned, I get OHK with shotguns. I'll save the clip next time it happens.

@zevvion: That might be your problem honestly. Bladedance just flat out doesn't work with Blink anymore due to the cooldown changes you mentioned. I refuse to run Bladedance without Bones of Eao Control jump now. It give you that maneuverability that Blink use to and make you sporadic if used correctly. You can still get shutdown obviously, but I find that with Blink I always get shutdown, but with Control jump, its more like only 25%, usually the better players and in open areas using Warlock jumps to their advantage. I kind of hate the cooldown they added, not necessarily because of Bladedance but it screws me out of Suncharge the same way often, that delay if you activate in air. I've had to be very cautious and only pop Hammer on the ground instead of mid air like I use to love doing because it's much more intimidating to see Hammers popped above your head and flying towards you than running around a corner. As far as Blink on Warlock, I assume you mean the Storm Blink, not the Voidwalker Blink. As Voidwalker Blink is the exact same as Bladedance's. The Stormtrance Blink ability is different as it's a Super Perk, not just a normal Jumping ability. As far as Stormtrance not having to be in Range, that isn't entirely true, since Trance activates only at around 12m, which is darn close to Shotgun range, and takes about 0.4 seconds to kill rather than the instant kill a Bladedance is if it connects. So while different, maintaining close proximity to kill is the downfall of both, and it's why I think both are the weakest of the 4 Roaming Supers in Destiny now that explosive radius was fixed a bit on Sunbreaker. Also, while not perfect, especially since the Shoulder Charge nerf, Suncharge gives you both offensive and Super countering ability, as it can shutdown any other roaming Super. Killing Bladedancers and Stormtrances is so much fun with it. It also is great for maneuverability while getting in position to throw a Hammer while being extremely elusive, which is how I mostly use it to be honest. There is nothing more intimidating in Destiny than a Sunbreaker Suncharging towards you.