I think the new direction Bungie is going in regards to elemental primaries is two giant steps backwards. This might end up long so bare with me.
What I think should've been done in the place of removing elements from primaries was to have a drop from the hard raid that allows you to put an element on any primary for a rather steep price. And in an effort to make the environment still a challenge they should've boosted enemy shields in a couple of ways. Make all shields maybe 25% stronger as well as [i]reducing[/i] the damage of using the wrong element against the shield all while keeping kinetic the same across the board. You see what I just did? I increased the value of Kinetic weapons as it could handle any and all shields the same way while using, for example a solar weapon against void shields would bring down the damage significantly. This still brings that factor of making smart choices with your weapons while still allowing for elements in a way that's not as dominant as in year 1.
I cannot shake the feeling that Bungie is scared to make the players of this game too powerful and it's a damn shame. No other game in history has seemed to have a problem with making players ridiculously strong. It's a game for goodness sake let me do crazy shit.
This has never been more obvious than with the changes made to perks in 2.0 that they kinda blindsided us with reducing all of their effectiveness. And don't even get me started with the raid gear. Those guns are god awful and have no more use than infusing into other guns. Crazy how raid weapons in year 1 were the most sought after in the game because you knew what you wanted and how you could get it and it made playing the raid worth it. I'm not playing this raid for the gear. I'm playing it for the number attached to the gear which in turn allows my character to reach a higher level, but for what exactly? So you can raise the cap again in a month and repeat the process? That's just silly and obvious that you want your players to meaninglessly grind with no true end goal other than "hey I'm the highest level possible in the game... For a week."
The main counter argument in favor of no elemental primaries is that it allows for more variety in choosing a weapon. Let me be the first to call bullcrap on that. I'm willing to bet quite a bit of money that the vast majority of players right now are using the vendor version of Hung Jury for all high level content right now. Simply because it's an [b]easy to obtain gun that packs quite a punch with perks that are really good[/b] (see year 1 raid weapons) Those who aren't using it have been blessed by RNGesus with a better gun which to be honest there simply aren't very many of. The "variety" is a total myth when there will always be a "best gun" regardless if there's an element on it or not.
TL;DR: Elemental primaries need to return in a less dominant way than in year 1. Elemental infusion is a start
Let me know what you guys think of this. I'm genuinely curious to see the results.
Happy Hunting
Edit 1: Let me use an analogy.
Say you have a product that has sales going crazy good for a year. After a year you make a change to that product without letting anyone know ahead of time. 7 hours later you find out through a poll that half of the users of this product don't like the change you made. That would be catastrophic don't you think? Some food for thought
Edit 2: The poll isn't biased because the opposition to my views still has a clear choice. Meaning the data is still accurate
Edit 3: People seem to forget that it wasn't just the burns on raid weapons that made them unique. Fatebringer was the [b]ONLY[/b] year 1 hand cannon with firefly and VoC was the only scout with full auto up until House of Wolves. The burns were just an extra to top it all off
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I respect your feelings, opinions, ideas, and the presentation of everything above, OP. That said, I think I generally agree with all your sentiments.
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Elemental I fusion should be a thing, but it only works on secondaries and heavies so you can have certain loadouts
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I'm so happy there are no elemental primaries on legendary weapons. Very happy Bungie decided not to include them in this expansion and hope they never look back. Wouldn't mind elements on exotics though.
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I don't think it's that big of a deal anymore in year 2. The only time elemental damage was important to me was during y1 nightfalls that had elemental burns that would deal a ton more damage. Now a sword can pretty much one shot anything. I haven't ran into an enemy yet where I even bothered pulling out the proper void, solar or arc weapon to take a shield down. Throw an arc frisbee from the exotic sword and down they usually go.
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They could add more variety if they allowed us to apply any elemental damage type to any weapon, including primaries.
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Don't worry, once all primary burns are eliminated, it will be like they never happened, therefore it will be the new norm, therefore, nobody will really expect a weapon to have elemental damage
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Ehh I would rather have them but I'm good.
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I was hoping maybe and end game triaals or something woUld allow you to choose 1 or your guns to elemental :///
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I can agree with this And your suggestions are really good, I wish bungie would consider this.
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They played us like a damn FIDDLE
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Ha awesome the best thing iv ever heard.
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The new armor perks that reduce random burn damage actually make kinetic primaries slightly better for crucible. Slightly
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Sorry but fate bringer vision of confluence and epilogue/ Word of crota. Got old.
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The reason people use guns like fatebringer and some of the other raid primaries was because they had good stats and good perks ( some not all ) the element was just a bonus. Honestly if they didn't come out with elemental I bet people would have still used fate bringer
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Catastrophic, lol, its only a game, chill the fck out dudr. Game is better without elemental primaries
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Your use of catastrophic is grossly misplaced
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I like the fact that exotics are now relevant again. Tbh, elemental legendaries are OP
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Zhalo supercell
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And instead of these primaries able to drop as arc void or solar, to introduce more " variety", they drop as boring kinetic.
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Edited by leroy0521: 10/24/2015 1:28:05 AMI honestly don't mind not having elemental primaries. It really bothered me at release, but now that I've gotten used to it, its a non issue. I think their reasoning behind it is good too, it keeps half the guns in the game from being crucible only guns. Very few people would've used, say, Red Death or Suros in year one PvE. But now they're completely viable.
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If you want an elemental primary, go exotic. Should be a trade off elemental exotic primary or no burn and exotic somewhere else. I don't know, say for instance zhalo.
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I really enjoy no elemental primaries actually. Thing is, once you get an elemental primary it becomes insanely rare that any other primary weapon is gonna be more worth using. Once I got a few elemental primaries in year one I never used anything else when being serious in pve. EVER
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I'll "Bare" with you *kisses*
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Edited by YaBoyJah: 10/24/2015 1:01:27 AMStop your bitching Jesus Christ it's a -blam!-ing element on a gun who cares? Other than you and a couple other dweebs
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Edited by LandowskiC: 10/24/2015 1:24:08 AMThere's still a harder mode to be released for kings fall (confirmed by Luke smith's twitter) Normal would be easy the new release would be like a normal difficulty and the final one that has yet to be released will be a true full on hard mode. This is where our elemental primarys will come. [spoiler]just kidding it's been confirmed that elements aren't coming! [/spoiler]