So I've made my case for a long time on these forums that I believe the biggest issue with in-game balancing is more beholden to players not taking personal accountability and 1) acknowledging that someone may be better than them and 2) taking time to really learn what weapons they are good with and learn map layouts and where they do best on them.
After the last week of Iron Banner and the absolutely outrageous number of nerf posts thrown up on the forums, I have no doubt that classes are about to get jacked in the near future. What I'm asking is that whatever changes are made are based on performance and not on use.
Suros and Thorn were the prime examples of getting nerfed with the reasoning that too many people were using them. That is just dumb and it ended up affecting the entire classes of ARs and Hand Cannons as a result.
Now everyone love Pulse Rifles, only the ones that everyone are raving about are no better than ones they could have had since The Dark Below. Rather than encourage people to try new weapons (as some of us did), why is the knee-jerk always to nerf? I got all hate for telling people what a death laser Coiled Hiss was and now Hawksaw and other high RoF Pulse Rifles rule the roost... and CH was the most stable of them all. These current Pulse Rifles aren't any more deadly that Coiled Hiss was last December, they're just being used now.
So now the big complaint is Hammer of Sol. I leveled both my Hunter and my Titan to rank 5 in this last Iron Banner and I can tell you from my experience that I saw zero substantial advantage between the classes overall. They all have strengths and weaknesses.
[b]Hammer of Sol[/b] as I've also said before is like Arcblade. If you time it right and the other team are spaced right, it can be a slaughter. If you time it wrong, you either run around desperately looking for people or you get killed and lose your super.
I lost more than my fair share, some with kills and some without. Mostly to Shadowshot and a few to Stormcallers, but once I switched to Cauterize, I also was OHKd by shotguns from behind twice.
[b]Fist of Havoc[/b] doesn't have the overall kill potential of HoS, but it also can't get shut down unless you just miss. I actually prefer FoH in PvP because it is Guaranteed to get kills where I had a couple HoS matches with none from popping it and dying.
[b]Shadowshot[/b] is a beast when it's used properly. I shut down 3 Hammer of Sols and 2 Stormcalllers with it as well as cleared a couple groups of 3 trying to cap zones. I will throw a caveat it's way though in that it could stand a slight buff to it's debuff potential.
Yesterday I shot a Bladedancer as they popped Arcblade and it failed to nullify their super or tether them and I also had a tethered Titan able to cast Fist of Havoc as I went in for a kill. Neither should have happened since I wasn't using Quiver.
Overall though, Shadowshot is awesome and together with Keen Scout I was loving the Nightstalker subclass the best of any of the Hunter's.
[b]So how should you go about determining the truth from the tears?[/b]
Show us stats. Real stats, not the x players used it bs you have in the past.
I want to see
1) # of kills by each Super
2) Average # of kills per cast for each super
3) # and % of deaths while using a super for each subclass
4) Average # of supers gained per match for each
5) average # of kills per game with each super
And I'm sure there are more relevant stats that aren't "a bunch of people used it so it's op".
We should be able to see most of these stats anyway. Where is the detailed breakdown of matches like we had with the Halo games? Here is the Halo 3 stat tracking which is orders of magnitude more robust that Destiny's.
[url=https://halo.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=1101219252&player=B1acki3]LINK TO HALO 3 STATS PAGE[/url]
If you're going to tell us you're trying to balance our weapons and you want us to be okay with you nerfing everythng we find that we like, you need to show us the numbers to back these nerfs.
All those real world use stats I listed need to be provided for weapons as well as Supers. I guarantee you that if you were to release the Thorn stats, they weren't as lopsided as people think.
Anyone that agrees and is tired of having your weapons, gear and abilities nerfed because other players can't adapt, strategize and learn to counter, please let Bungie know your feelings in the comments below.
Thank-you.
EDIT: a nice link from @z Anonymous for a starting point on real world numbers.
http://destinytracker.com/destiny/population
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Edited by Dingus Khan: 10/21/2015 10:53:29 PMYeah, no.... Use has a lot to do with it. If everyone is using Thorn, they aren't all using it because it looks pretty. I get what you're saying though.