I am afraid that my favorite archetype of weapon has been somewhat ruined with the way player health and damage has been redesigned in Destiny 2's Crucible. I loved these guns in D1 because they took a lot of skill to use well, were punishing if you were careless, but were very rewarding if you could use them properly. They had a quick optimal time-to-kill, but required perfect aim to achieve it, and punished missed shots heavily. That is no longer the case. Even if you land 100% headshots while firing as fast as possible (which you almost certainly cannot do with any kind of consistency due to their huge recoil), you still will not kill as quickly as most other types of weapons. And though their ttk is the same as the 200 rpm model, they still demand more accuracy. Where they were once high-skill, high reward, they are now higher-skill, no-reward.
But unfortunately it seems they've landed squarely in the spot where high impact pulse rifles were after The Taken King. Killing in 4 headshots right now is just too slow, but if they were to go back to killing in 3 headshots with their current RoF, they would be objectively better than every other weapon type. They've become impossible to balance in this regard.
The first thing I would suggest is a stability buff across the board for the 150 rpm archetype. They would still be less than ideal, but it would at least make them more competitive. Or, more radically, they could have their rate of fire changed. Either you could slow them down to 120 rpm, and buff their damage so that they once again kill in 3 headshots. Or you could leave their damage where it's at, and simply increase the rate of fire to 160 rpm (with enough stability to make them usable).
As it stands right now these weapons are incredibly unrewarding for how difficult they are to use. And they could use a slight damage buff in PvE to be honest with you.
[b]EDIT:[/b] I've been doing some thinking, and I believe I've come up with a solution. I honestly don't think Bungie would ever change the RoF for these weapons. It's something they've only ever done once, and even then after months of a weapon type being unusably bad, so it's very unlikely. So if a change in their optimal time-to-kill is not probable, then they could at least be made a little bit easier to use. As of right now, they do 37 damage to the body and 52 to the head (keep in mind these numbers are technically rounded), and thus can kill any guardian with 4 headshots, or 6 body shots, both of which are painfully slow compared to most other weapon types, especially auto rifles, and arguably harder to do considering their single shot, slow-firing nature. They can also kill anyone who is using 3 resilience or less with 3 headshots and 1 body shot.
So how about this: if we increase their damage by 10%, that would bring their body shot damage up to roughly 41, and their headshot damage up to roughly 57. With this change, they would still require at minimum 4 shots to kill another guardian in the Crucible, but their headshot requirement would be decreased. They would be able to kill any guardian with 3 head shots and 1 body shot, and they could kill anyone using less than 5 or 6 resilience (depending on rounding errors) with two body shots and two headshots.
-
I miss the jade rabbit