Continued from [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/140863966]part 16: fusion rifles continued[/url] [b]the Exotic Fusions[/b] [b]Vex Mythoclast[/b] There are those who think the Vex is ruined and useless since it's been nerfed. I doubt they've actually played with it recently. It's another one of your great exotics, and feels suitably powerful and unique. While you've told us the fusion nerfs aren't supposed to affect the Vex or the Queensbreaker, this wouldn't be the first time you've screwed that up and had to fix it. Since Vex is a primarily close to medium range and with a high RoF, it'd be able to handle an accidental nerf until it was fixed. [b]Queensbreaker Bow[/b] I just got mine this weekend, and I'm already in love. As a fusion sniper hybrid, an accidental nerf to the Queensbreaker would straight up break the weapon. Dear Bungie, try to make sure your fusion rifle nerf only affects actual fusion rifles this time. [b]Pocket Infinity[/b] The Original OP... and then it was nerfed into oblivion. When's the last time you even saw someone run one? Exactly. Oh, and then there was that one time when you broke it so that it wouldn't actually fire fully automatic. The shameful part is Pocket Infinity checks all the awesome exotic boxes, except its totally useless. While you might be able to get past the horrible stats if you look at its unique perk, it has a hidden debuff. Only your first shot fires at full damage. Subsequent shots drop off significantly. Since it's a short range fusion, the incoming nerfs should have relatively little effect, leaving Pocket Infinity as little more than a novelty. Make it so that each shot hits at full damage and you just might have a fusion worth using over a shotgun or a sniper in pve. [b]Plan C[/b] One of my all time favorites, and another great exotic in every way. Only complaint is the hidden cooldown on its namesake can be a little unreliable at times, and that HoW brought weapons that shared its unique scope. As Plan C is the ultimate short range fusion rifle, I see in my future an even brighter eternal glow fueled by the vaporized remains of many an unsuspecting shotgun aficionado. [b]Weapon Stats[/b] Well, that (finally) does it for the announced weapon changes. All that remains is the evolution of your weapon stat design philosophy for the Taken King. I applaud and thank you for your transparency and for taking the time to explicitly communicate and summarize what you're trying to accomplish. Even if I may disagree with some of your choices, it feels a lot better to understand where you're coming from. While there are definitely some changes I'm skeptical of, and there are some specific weapon nerfs that have inspired me to bring the fine, high-cultured art of profanity to new levels, for the most part I like where your coming from, and I respect what you're trying to accomplish. There is one specific thing you said that I want to draw your attention to: The initial set of stat perks that have been on weapons since launch (Send it, Hammer Forged, Field Scout, Perfect Balance, etc.) all granted a pretty huge increase to their targeted stat. Not only did they spike their stat, but they never asked the player to make a meaningful trade-off for it on the weapon. You know what's the one weapon class that's exempt from this generalization? Fusion rifles. Accelerated coils and Perfect Balance could actually turn out to be effectively useless if you had a fast charging or high stability archetype, respectively, and choosing Enhanced Battery or Flared Magwell required sacrificing one of those potent mid row boosts. Yes, send it was almost always a good idea, and there were jackpot rolls, but until HoW you were pretty much stuck with what you got. Yes, Perun's fire could be rerolled but its only real stand out stats are charge rate and reload speed, it never saw widespread adoption, and the standard Crucible and Vanguard fusions were arguably stronger choices. Just pointing that out. I actually think HoW has some of the best fusions and with some of the best potential perk rolls. Hot swap and hidden hand really shine here. I also think the push to make weapons builds have more tradeoffs is a strong move as it'll lead to more unique and consequently more personal weapon builds, which should help make every weapon in our overstuffed vaults (hint, hint) feel different, useful, and special. On a side note, our Year 1 weapons will be grandfathered into Taken King, in all their unchanged glory. That's the real Year 1 reward. My final thoughts are on concerns about: 1. PVP lethality across all weapons gets exaggerated due to high performance guns that don't have any flaws or quirks – with the exception of a few specific offenders, right now I'd say you've largely worked this out. Ironically, the weapon class that used to almost uniformly fit this description was pre-nerf auto rifles and Suros Regime in particular. Pulse Rifles may be dominant right now, but they typically require mastering their firing pattern. Shotguns are the real problem child here. The incoming balance changes sound like they'll be effective. With an ever expanding arsenal, its going to be a continuous task keeping things balanced. Just try to be more timely about your updates, and don't forget Bungie, there's this little thing called PVE. 2. As you collect and grow weapons over time, they all start to feel like the same gun – there are typically only 3 weapon archetypes per class: high RoF, low impact; medium RoF, medium Impact; low RoF, high Impact. Treating these archetypes like guidelines instead of doctrines by being more flexible with weapons base stats would help, but stats alone aren't the only issue contributing to this problem. You also have to consider the roll perks play. Almost every weapon class has some clearly subpar perks that will never be worthwhile. Sometimes these perks are just bad fits for the weapon class (hot swap on scout rifles, kneepads on a fusion), sometimes they're outclassed by all the other available perks (grave robber), and sometimes they're just straight up weak perks (shoot-to-loot, icarus, battle runner, vacuum). Based off your comments about how different weapon manufacturers should have different perks and stats, it sounds like you're addressing this. But you also need to consider perk combinations as well. For most weapon classes, 3rd gen perk combinations allow for some interesting and potent choices, however, auto rifles (not that anybody uses them), hand cannons, and scout rifles all have mostly garbage first row perks and all their good perks are loaded onto the third row. This limits possibilities as you tend to have perhaps 3 worthwhile first row perks, meaning you have limited options to build a good perk synergy and create a great gun. Getting rid of the subpar perks and shuffling the perks around so that both rows have a combination of powerful and interesting yet effective niche perks helps to incentivize experimentation. There will always be people who just stick to the tried and true, but give us more interesting possible combinations and I doubt you'll be dissatisfied with the results. Well, that's it. I chose the name Nerfpocalypse Now most for its tongue-in-cheek humor value, not because I think the coming changes will ruin Destiny or anything melodramatic like that. Most of it sounds good, some of it sounds awful and I hope you reconsider those bits. Finally. For those of you who took the time to read my diatribe, thank you. I hope you found it insightful and perhaps amusing.