[quote]Quite honestly Bungie have created too much derision with the way weapon balancing has been handled and the forums are a cesspool of weapon complaints because of it. I think there have been some positive improvements to PvP, but I also think they've been outweighed by a degree by the missteps. Going back to the first month or so, the initial complaint was Vex. It seemed almost everyone who didn't have it screamed it was OP. At that point, my take was that it was supposed to be. After all, we were taking our own weapons and armor into PvP and not using generic loadouts. When I saw people with great weapons, I didn't think it wasn't fair. I thought that looks awesome, hope I can get one. I never saw Vex as unstoppable either. If someone had it, it just meant I needed to play smarter. I think at that point you should have stood behind the unique experience that you'd created. Maybe there were advantageous weapons, but it set the game apart and gave us something to strive to claim ourselves.[/quote] I wrote that last April in a plea to Bungie to re-evaluate the way in which they approach weapon balancing. Unfortunately over the course of the 8 months since, things have steadily gone from bad to worse, to where at this point the sheer amount of stupid nerf posts each day threaten to rip what’s left of this game to pieces. I got Destiny on launch day and after a few hours of playing missions, decided to try out the Crucible. When I dropped into that first match and realized that I had my PvE Scout equipped, 2 thoughts crossed my mind immediately. 1) That's awesome 2) I need to find a better weapon I held off going back in to PvP until I leveled my Hunter and got him some Legendary weapons. I have played shooters for a long time and I knew going in that Destiny was different and that I needed to practice and learn maps and find better weapons. At the end of the first IB, I was at a .65 k/d. I got SUROS going into the 2nd and at its end, I was at .89. By the 3rd IB it got to the point where I was sick of hearing everyone claim you had to have SUROS to win and so midway through, I switched to MIDA and my kills went up to the point where I was around a 1.1 by its end. Then I got Up for Anything and it became my favorite. I continued to raise my k/d and had no issues going up against VEX, SUROS or anything else that came at me. I mostly used UfA and occasionally Vanquisher until TDB dropped. That’s when I found Coiled Hiss and it instantly became my favorite weapon in the game as I pushed my overall up to 1.3 I had gone into the game and realized that it was up to me to find weapons I could play and be successful with. That it was no one’s responsibility but my own to learn maps, learn my class and to “get good”. So I played, tried different weapons and when cries went up that Suros was op, I switched and DID BETTER. When Pulse Rifles were deemed unusable, I gave them a go and they became my go-to weapons. This is how the game was supposed to be played. It wasn't balanced because there would always be better weapons to find, but it was up to me to find them and learn to excel. I started out a sub 1.0 scrub. I played every day and I got better. I leveled a Titan and found the Striker fit my play style better. I didn't need Vex. I didn't need SUROS and to this day, I believe Coiled Hiss was one of the greatest weapons ever in this game. Then 1.1.1 happened and Bungie crapped all over ARs and buffed Pulse Rifles. I said at the time I didn't feel they needed a 9% buff and it was like the SUROS experience all over. Rather than playing and getting better and slowly raising my stats on my own, Bungie were buffing my weapons and dumbing down my opponents. So when HoW dropped, I switched again and this time to Scouts. You “had” to have Thorn or TLW or you couldn't win in HoW... or at least you'd have thought that if you only ever read the forums. Funny then that each IB of HoW, my k/d's for the week went up and up. Around 2.0, then mid 2s and by the end of HoW, I was averaging over 3.0 for the week. I'd taken my overall up to a 1.6 and I'd done it all with weapons that no one would ever have called OP Up for Anything Vanquisher Coiled Hiss Hygiea Noblesse NA3D1 Salvation State I worked to get better. I saw your Thorn, TLW, VEX, SUROS, Red Death and anything else you wanted to bring and I learned to beat you. I -blam!-ing owned Thorn with Coiled Hiss and NA3D1. I'm not the best PvPer in the world and there are players with better stats and win %, but I built my stats from the ground up by accepting personal responsibility for my play and not giving two shits what my opponent had because it was up to me to stop them regardless. If someone was using Felwinter's and sliding around corners? Okay, they might get me once with that to start a match, but they were sure as hell going to get a face full of Plug One when they tried it again. Playing duck and cover with Thorn? No problem. Rolled 3rd Eye on my Scouts, so as soon as their face came out from behind a wall, I'd shoot it twice before they could get a shot off. Are the weapons in Destiny balanced? In a vacuum, no. But paired with perks that fit how we play and with classes and abilities that we bring to supplement attacks, -blam!- yes they are. If someone thought they were hot shit with Thorn or TLW, my Titan with 2 Lighting Grenades and a Full Auto Scout with 3rd Eye was going to ruin their day more often than not. And so after a year playing and slowly getting better, finding weapons that fit how I played (not that everyone said I had to use to do well) and becoming not just decent but good in the Crucible, Bungie once more kept dicking things over. TTK was bullshit in how they went about it. Some players kept their go-to weapons and armor while others were forced to completely start over. Some had their weapon classes wrecked (hello Hand Cannons) and others got better by proxy (Pulse Rifles). I lost everything. Armamentarium... Gone. NA3D1... Gone. Plug One... Gone. Gjally... Gone. After TTK dropped I struggled to find new weapons to fit how I like to play. I finally settled in on a setup of Last Extremity, Thesan FR4 and Baron's Ambition. Neither Thesan or Last Extremity are as good as NA3D1 or Plug One in their time, but LE was still 100% capable of going up against Nirwen's, Red Death, Hawksaw or any of the other supposed OP TTK weapons. And though my overall k/d had dropped back to a 1.35, I was getting a handle on what weapons I had now and I WAS GETTING BETTER WITH THEM. Only rather than me being able to prove myself, rather than overcoming the challenge of having my gear reset and starting over, Bungie once more nerfed the competition. Why be challenged, why try to find better weapons and why try to get better when some other class of weapon gets nerfed every other month? When this game launched, there was exactly one superior weapon and that was VEX and even in its most glorious heyday, it was never unstoppable. Fusion Rifles and ARs had a tad too much range, but at their worst, they were nothing compared to the discrepancies we have today. The best PvP this game has seen was from the release of TDB up until 1.1.1 and it's been one blunder after another ever since. We haven't gotten any more powerful, we've systematically had anything that could remotely be considered fun removed or gelded. I went into the Crucible last year knowing I was taking on a challenge. Knowing that I would have to work to be good, and getting there was FUN. Everything Bungie have done to weapons in this game since has been the antithesis of fun. Shotguns were never an issue until they screwed Fusion Rifles. Hand Cannons weren’t an issue until they gutted ARS. Pulse Rifles weren’t and issue until they boned Hand Cannons. Now Scouts are an issue because they wrecked Pulse Rifles. Destiny will never be balanced and the more they try to shoehorn it into some Halo version of playability, the worse they are going to keep making it. You don’t balance a game like Destiny by -blam!-ing with entire weapon classes. If you think Hand cannons are weak, you release better Hand Cannons. What you don’t do is nerf the entire class of ARs. Thank-you.