Posted April 9, 2015 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 an 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 [i]that looks awesome, hope I can get one.[/i] 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. Instead as we all know Vex was nerfed and suddenly the best, hardest to get weapon in the game was not quite as amazing. Next came Suros, which again was a great PvP weapon, but in no way was it unbeatable. At this point the snowball really started rolling with the nerf complaints. With Vex and Suros no longer being the pinnacle of PvP weapons, people started complaining about [i]everything[/i] they died to. Fusion Rifles were OP! ARs were OP! Hand Cannons were OP! Supers were OP! Abilities were OP! It became a complete joke and is to this day. Then we got 1.1.1. In my opinion it was a mixed bag. I think you got Fusion Rifles right. Honestly, I haven't seen any real drop in effective range of mine, but I also haven't had any of the deaths from so far out it made me think bullsh!t like were so common before. ARs I think you went too far with. I understood the desire to bring in their effective range because when I got Up for Anything, it made me drop MIDA because it had the same effective range but on an AR. What I don't get was the overall damage nerf. People loved their ARs and it ruined things unnecessarily for a lot of people. Damage falling off more at Scout range made sense and I think most would have groused a bit but ultimately understood. I'd actually moved to Coiled Hiss a couple weeks before 1.1.1 was initially announced, so the AR nerf didn't affect me negatively, but as we stand today I tend to agree that ARs should get their base 2.5% back. I think that would also help quell a lot of the [i]nerf Thorn[/i] and [i]nerf Felwinter's Lie[/i] posts. Again, I personally don't have a problem with either weapon (or class of weapons). We have plenty of weapons, abilities and supers at our disposal to deal with anything an enemy is using against us and we should have to be able to adapt and learn to use our own weapons and abilities as well as the environments to combat foes. We shouldn't need opponents dumbed down. Now I'm not going to go so far as to say you should roll things back to release day stats because there have been some positive improvements. The initial exotic retuning (though it did jack up a few weapons like Red Death) had some genuine positive changes, particularly to weapons like MIDA which suddenly felt like they lived up to exotic status. 1.1.1 made shotguns viable in PvE, got rid of the super cheap Fusion Rifle kills and got people to give Pulse Rifles a chance. I'm not sure Pulse Rifles needed 9%, like I said, I'd been using them for awhile at that point and I found them effective pre-patch. I honestly think just having ARs damage drop off sooner would have been enough to balance them more vs Pulse and Scouts in PvP. That said Pulse Rifles are more fun in PvE now. The real issue I always found with Pulse Rifles was the lower impact ones just didn't have a good enough RoF. When TDB brought weapons like Three Little Words and Coiled Hiss, the class was able to hold its own. So where's that leave us? As I stated before, I think ARs should get their 2.5% back and they should just be regulated by effective range and RoF. I think Suros and Vex should be brought back closer to what they were intended to be and I think that it should be okay for weapons to give an edge. Something can be good without being stupid-broken-better and I never felt either was before. The only 2 weapons I ever saw someone completely dominate a match with were Pocket Infinity and Plug One and I think that was as much player skill as weapon greatness. Again Destiny is Destiny because of carrying our own weapons, because of supers, because of class abilities and unique class grenades. I think you should embrace that and the unique experience it provides and worry less about holding everyone's hands and babyfying your game. If you want to help people get acclimated to PvP, you should consider a way to let us experience PvP maps outside of matchmaking. The main barrier to initial success is not knowing maps and fighting people who know them backwards and forward. Beyond that I think the popular suggestion of a shooting range would help people find what weapons suit them and develop their skills with them. The initial blueprint should be the first Perfect Dark with its weapon range and challenges. Then (as much as I despise the games) you could look at something similar to CoD with challenge runs vs pop up targets. Last but not least, I think you should either give us the opportunity to reroll vendor weapons (preferably for our at this point useless piles of commendations) or the vendor stock should reset weekly with the same base stat weapons, but random perks. If we find ourselves outgunned by the Vex and Thorns of the world, it would be easier to fight back if we could find or reforge legendaries to perks that fit our play styles better. Anyway, that is my buck and change on the subject. If anyone has anything constructive to add, feel free. I hope you're listening Bungie.