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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THIS. Even if Bungie had just reverted rally barricade to what it was before, where it auto-reloaded when you ducked down behind it, it would be more useful. Unfortunately, that auto-ducking down mechanic was also bloody annoying so I was glad when they changed it so just standing on or behind the rally barricade reloaded your gun... but it was also clearly OP, as evidenced by the number of times I got accused of 'cheating' because I was mowing down in the opposing team with Sweet Business + Actium War Rig + rally barricade where I would just move down a hall as I laid down suppression fire, until I was close to the end of my magazine, and then drop down a barricade and continue. Rinse, repeat. ;P I could literally go through all my primary ammo without dying or stopping to reload, and frequently did run out of primary ammo in PvP that way. I definitely agree that at this point, dodge-reload for Hunters is way more useful because you can reload faster _and_ while dodging, whereas having to drop down a barrier and crouch, just to reload at a speed that quite frankly, doesn't seem to be faster than my guns with Outlaw+Drop Mag, or Feeding Frenzy, or the one that does fast reload when you empty the mag.