This has been bugging me for the longest time, and after the most recent patch I feel that I have to say something. Pulse rifles in the current meta are both very good and very bad. What I mean by this is the differences between the varying archetypes of this weapon class.
You have 4 major types of pulse rifle:
1. Grasp of Malok types with the highest rates of fire and lowest impact.
2. Hawksaw and Suros PDX-45 types with slightly slower rates of fire and more impact.
3. The Villainy and Red Death types with medium rates of fire and medium impact.
4. And finally your Spare Change types with low rates of fire and high impact.
Everyone and their mother is currently using the first two types of pulse rifles I just mentioned. High rate of fire, low impact is the crucible meta currently. I'm not saying that's bad, I actually enjoy those rifles a great deal. I do however, think it's bad that the other two archetypes are completely underused. Take Red Death for example, it used to be a 2 shot kill if you landed every bullet of each burst on target. It REWARDED a skilled user. Now it, and others like it, are relegated to being 3 shot kills and no sane person uses them. They're correct in not using them. Why would you use a weapon that requires the same amount of shots to kill an enemy, but has a lower rate of fire? You would be handicapping yourself in both effectiveness and time to kill.
I think that the Red Death archetype should receive a buff so that more diversity can be achieved in the crucible. After all, doesn't Bungie want weapon diversity in their game? Please comment with your feedback or suggestions, I want this to be a discussion.
Edit 1. Glad to see most people are in agreement with this issue. To be clear however, I am NOT advocating for more nerfs, Bungie has done plenty of those and we don't want more. What I mainly want is more diversity in the crucible, and more varied gunplay.
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I agree 100 percent red death and nerwin mercy type of guns need a damage buff
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Agreed. They make a game based on diversity throughout, but then try and balance diverse weapons. You can't balance diversity.
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Evergreen (max impact) destroys all guns I've faced, it's a monster
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Red Death used to be Godly, I miss using that gun in pvp. It's just not viable at the moment and certainly need a small buff.......Spare change is truly awful in all formats, I honestly despise that gun. At the moment everyone and his dog has a Grasp of Malok thanks to the nightfall. it's a great gun to use and is bound to get a nerf when those crazy bungie madmen realise just how good it is right now.
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Lower rate of fire pulses need a range buff. That's where they are supposed to be best and they have the same range as the lower rate of fire pulses.
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Buff my nirwens mercy
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Weren't pulse rifles nerfed after taken king release?
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Agreed I've been saying the lower rate of fire pulses need a huge damage increase of you are even to compete against low ROF pulses otherwise you don't stand a fighting chance!
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Pulse rifles are jacked up because the only ones worth a damn are the ones that can roll with tight grouping. The high RoF mixed with tight bullet group is just way superior to anything else. If they limited the grouping on fast RoF and tightened it on slow RoF, people would use all of them.
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Great arguement for sure but what about hakke pulses I have the vanguard vendor one which is godly for a hakke pulse but I feel with head seeker they are kind of trash