[b]Intro[/b] Hey everyone, Dukaness here with a video focused on the Gunslinger’s grenades, inspired by the June balancing update implemented by Bungie last week. The first thing I did was adapt to the Bladedancer’s changes, and you can find a video about that below. After finding a competitive Bladedancer build and adjusting to a new strategy, I’ve moved my focus to the Gunslinger. This will be a three part mini-series. The next two videos will feature Throwing Knives and their available perk options, and then a video about the other modifiers in the Gunslinger skill tree. The only focus of this video is the Gunslinger’s grenades. I will show proof of how much damage each grenade does (which includes a ninja nerf excluded from the patch notes), debunk a couple of false rumours going around in the community, and then offer suggestions for what I believe are the best ways to use each grenade. [b]Trip Mine[/b] [i]The Facts[/i] We’ll start with the Trip Mine. Take a look at this clip, where I appear to have stuck an enemy. You can tell it’s a stick because of the spastic light changes on your enemy’s body. I thought I was crazy so I tried to get another one with a better view. Sure enough, the Trip Mine hits your enemy, which activates the grenade. It then falls off the enemy and explodes as soon as it hits the ground. So, I guess technically they don’t stick, but the end result of a Trip Mine stick is unchanged. Next, I want to debunk a rumour I’ve seen on the forums that it cannot one-shot any guardian in the Crucible. This is NOT true. Take a look at this footage. I’m in Classic Free-For-All with Seizure (running max armour) and Mangos (running minimum armour). As you’re seeing, Seizure survives, but Mangos does not. So you can one-hit with a Trip Mine, but how low does their armour need to be? After testing this with different armour builds on his Warlock, Seizure and I determined that your armour needs to be about 4 or higher to survive a full Trip Mine blast. Therefore, Warlocks and Hunters will or will not be one-hit depending on their preferred Armour. A Titan will never be one-hit by a Trip Mine, as their armour cannot dip below a 5. [i]My Opinion[/i] Bungie either stated or implied that Trip Mines were intended to be used as traps. I’ve seen airplanes guided into a terminal with dimmer lights than the Trip Mine shines with, so it’s unfortunately not trapping anyone. Further, even though I always run max Recovery and Agility, I believe most people run high Armour, so you can no longer reliably expect a kill when walking away after dropping a Trip Mine because it likely won’t kill your opponent. Leaving a guy absolute across the map isn’t giving you a benefit. So now that we’ve labelled the trap method as outdated, I’ll show a couple of ways here where I still find them effective. 1) You can use Trip Mines as a last resort. We all know when we’re inevitably going to lose a gun fight, so when you’ve accepted defeat, just launch a Trip Mine at a wall next to your enemy. As long as you’ve hit them with one bullet, you’re going to trade. 2) Use them defensively. This is a clip from a Trials game. We hit one of our enemies with a grenade. Our opponent knew we were going to push, so he stuck two Trip Mines to the wall. This ended our push, because by the time we shot them out, our opponent would have recovered their health. This works if you’re being chased and need to recover, reload, or reset. 3) If you know you’ve damaged an enemy, even if it’s just one bullet from a Doctrine, and they’re hiding behind a corner, just stick a Trip Mine to a wall facing them and it’s a guaranteed kill. [b]Incendiary Grenade[/b] [i]The Facts[/i] We’ll move to Incendiary Grenades. As someone who preferred Incendiaries pre-update, when I read the balancing notes, I was thinking “okay, not so bad, looks like I’m not going to be affected”. Well, I was wrong. Despite being left out of the balancing notes, Bungie actually hit Incendiary Grenades with a ninja nerf. Pre-update, a perfectly placed Incendiary Grenade hit for 170 damage, plus 5 ticks of 7 damage, for a total of 205 damage. This was enough to one-hit any guardian with max armour. I saw a couple of posts saying they nerfed the explosive damage. As you can see in these clips with both a maximum and minimum armour guardian, the explosive damage was not changed from 170, but the burn was reduced from 7 to 4 ([b]EDIT: I woke up and saw this was a bug, not a nerf[/b]). As a result, Incendiary Grenades cannot, under any circumstance, one-hit kill a full health guardian, regardless of how low their armour build is. This is the second grenade on the Gunslinger that was stripped of one-hit capability in the same update. [i]My Opinion[/i] I am now having a hard time finding any good use for Incendiaries. Their best asset was knowing that you would be rewarded with a kill by skillfully placing them next to your opponent. Now that that’s gone, they just strike me a lackluster. There are some situational uses because they actually get a decent bounce off of the ground and walls, so you can soften someone up from behind cover and then move in for the kill. Also, their explosive radius is actually pretty wide, which makes them ideal to place on Control Points. You just have to remember that in all scenarios, you will need to lay at least one bullet of damage down to secure a kill. [b]Swarm Grenades[/b] [i]The Facts[/i] Lastly, we’ll discuss the Swarm Grenade which received a bit of a buff to the tracking radius and damage. The first thing I tested was the damage of a full tag. As you can see here, a full tag does about 130 damage, give or take, depending on the Armour build. [i]My Opinion[/i] After seeing this, I was ecstatic, thinking the Swarm Grenade had become some slight variation of the Skip Grenade. Unfortunately, it’s a lot better on paper than it is in practice. I’ll explain. Take a look at this clip where I catch an enemy by surprise. I throw my grenade directly at him. You would think after catching an enemy off guard, and missing very few shots with a good Hawksaw, I would have been able to win this gun fight clean, but I barely won it at all. So I changed my approach and looked into this further. Here I am, anticipating an enemy coming up the stairs, so I pre-throw my grenade close enough to activate a full tag. I know it’s hard to tell, even in slow motion, but I have time to land three shots and miss three shots from The Last Word before my enemy dies. This happens because the grenade simply doesn’t activate fast enough, nor is the tracking aggressive enough to be worth using. By the time it deals the bulk of its potential damage, you’ve already killed your enemy, or they’ve killed you. In both the Vertigo and Cauldron examples, and probably many more, I would have been better off shooting earlier or throwing a different grenade. So although the damage is great, I personally won’t be using Swarms due to the activation delay and lack of aggressive tracking. [b]Conclusion (TL;DR)[/b] Just to conclude and recap, I’ll summarize when and why I will be using the Gunslinger grenades. I think Trip Mines are the go to choice in Trials and other 3v3 playlists because of the defensive capabilities when every death is precious. You can lock down a relic or the overtime point, as well as use them to clog up choke points to buy yourself time in the event of an enemy push. I like Incendiaries in Control and some other 6v6 playlists. The big explosive radius is good for attacking control points or enemy spawns. As mentioned earlier, in my opinion, the long delay and poor tracking on the Swarm Grenade offset the benefits of the damage and radius buff. As a result, I don’t recommend using these in any playlist. [b]Outro[/b] By the way, as a side note, let me know if you have other creative ways to use the Gunslinger grenades in the comments below. Now, before I go – I gave you the facts, and I gave you suggestions on how to use these grenades. I really try and keep my videos unbiased and factually correct. But I’m also honest. So although it’s just my opinion, I really feel like the viability of the Gunslinger took a substantial hit with this update. I don’t have Bungie’s numbers and data, and they obviously had a reason to nerf the grenades. I’m not challenging them on their rationale. But as a player that uses the best tools available to remain as competitive as possible, I have to say, I’m not sure how much Gunslinger I’ll be playing in the near future. As I mentioned, I have two more videos coming out that will highlight other parts of the Gunslinger that make it more viable. I’m just unsure at this point if it’s enough to save the class. I guess time will tell. -Duke Bladedancer Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkpT5TO7KPU