When I read This Week At Bungie - 9/5/2019 and the intent to change Rally Barricade, instead of panicking, I decided to keep my hopes up - "Maybe the Reload Speed for Rally Barricade will be appropriately huge like Defensive Strike's", I said to myself.
I barely feel the difference in standard reloads and Rally reloads.
Before I started playing Destiny 2, I read over the abilities available to the various classes. When I did start playing, I picked Titan, because I liked the idea of being able to throw down Rally Barricade and turn any fight into a Mounted Turret Section whenever I felt like it. As I played and got better at the game, I gravitated more towards single-shot, high-power weapons because I realized that staying mobile directly correlated with staying alive. I still kept Rally Barricade, though, because sometimes staying still and ammo dumping is what you need to do, and doing so became one of my favorite parts of playing a Titan.
"The impact of something that takes all reloading out of the equation means that other perks or effects like the Hunter’s Marksman Dodge or the Sealed Ahamkara’s Grasps can simply fall to the wayside."
This is not true.
[i]So much[/i] of Destiny 2 is balanced around staying mobile. The vast majority of PvE projectiles are slow or have some kind of windup, and player durability is tuned to not getting hit by the majority of those attacks. Marksman Dodge, Sealed Ahamkara Grasps, Frontal Assault, Transversive Steps - all of these Instant Reload effects involve performing a short action, typically one that moves you, to get your reload value. By comparison, if you want to get reload value out of Rally Barricade, you have to stay within a very small rectangle. To me, that made sense as a fair trade - increased risk (limited mobility) for increased reward (a stream of Instant Reloads instead of a one-off).
Now, I can understand why Lunafactions was changed, because Empowering Rift and Well of Radiance gave significant damage bonuses (which the instant reload made into an even bigger DPS boost) and Healing Rift and Well of Radiance gave healing and shields (which gives massive defensive bonuses regardless of where you happen to be standing within the radius). All three are large, indestructible radial effects that can easily fit an entire six-man team to melt Bosses with ease. Rifts and Wells are powerful, convenient, and Lunafactions simply makes them moreso.
Rally Barricade is none of these things. Rally Barricade gives no damage bonus, and only gives you a defensive benefit when you're crouched behind its meager cover (and only from one direction). Additionally, Rally Barricade is tiny, fitting three people at most (maybe four if you squeeze). On top of all this, Rally Barricade can be destroyed with enough damage (although I will admit that such a thing is rare outside of PvP). And now, the only thing that made it feel good to use is now gone.
Since the change, Rally Barricade has no redeeming qualities. Its defensive strength is practically nonexistent and its offensive strength is a shadow of what it once was. Rally Barricade [i]needs[/i] the Instant Reload effect or there's no reason to use it because it's too weak and restrictive. If the problem was that too many players were benefiting from Instant Reloads at once (which it seems to be), that can be solved by restricting the Instant Reload to the Titan that owns the Rally Barricade and giving allies the current Reload Speed buff.
I think that Destiny 2 is an amazing game and really I look forward to what Shadowkeep has to offer, but the change to Rally Barricade has definitely soured the experience for me. I desperately hope that it changes soon, because I'm not having nearly as much fun as I thought I would be.
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Rally barricade should at least reload the weapon you are holding when it is cast, so you are at least no worse off dps wise for casting it. Better still, if it could reload all of your weapons. Without this it is too weak to be strategically used for dps'ing, and too slow to be used in an emergency. I literally play entire sessions now without casting it, whereas it was a staple move for me before Shadowkeep. I know that Bungie collects these kind of stats, and I am certain they need to look into them to see how devastating their changes have been to this once core ability. - Its utility as a defensive ability is very poor, since on consoles and PC using Controllers it doesn't cast quickly enough to use as an oh-sh*t button. you not only have to hold crouch, but casting it also takes time. In PVP for Example you will nearly always die before it goes off, since the human reaction time, and the casting time and animation is greater than almost any weapon's time to kill. Whereas hunters still seem to be able to use their dodge effectively in PVP. - The reload speed improvement is almost negligible, and it wears off so fast that you barely make back the casting time. Sometimes I barely get one reload done before it wears off, which means that I lost more time casting it than it saved me. Add to the fact that the auto-ducking when you cast it means that you need to recenter your targeting, you basically are losing tons of dps by using it. I have been playing Destiny since Destiny 1 was in beta, and the current state of Rally Barricade is the most broken useless ability I have seen. It is literally nothing more than a way to create some extra cover, and yet, the lack of cover isn't a problem in nearly 99% of the game. You are simply better to keep moving rather than casting it.