Team Buffs: Why they aren't so great. Why aren't they? (Destiny)

by Malagate , Sea of Tranquility, Tuesday, March 19, 2019, 07:47 (2094 days ago)

So I like team buffs. A lot.

The Rat King is a huge favorite of mine, and I try to get my fireteam to break it out whenever possible. So I was super pleased to hear about a Rat King catalyst in the works. But Nevin made a solid argument against it that got me thinking. I posited that the catalyst ought to extend the range of the Rat Pack perk by 5 meters or so (the inner ring of the motion tracker is 20m, right?), that that would put it in the realm where more players would pick it up, but he argued:

"I think that would make people who already enjoy it love it even more. It wouldn’t make me want to use it though, because it’s still based around the concept of your entire team moving as a single pack, and I do rarely find that to be an effective strategy. In almost every activity, I find the key to success is spreading out, overlapping lines of sight and cover-fire, flanking enemy positions. I feel like Rat King actively encourages bad teamwork in the majority of situations."

Which I really find hard to argue with, not just for Rat King, but all team buffs, for the most part. Malfeasance is the only example (aside from MAYBE Two-tailed Fox) that allows for any kind of teamwork to result in a buff at range. I've yet to play with Sunshot's marking ability to see how that applies. All other team buffs that I can think of are achieved by clustering together, which necessarily makes you a great target for explosives, AoE attacks/debuffs, and other multi-kill-style misery.

I think there are plenty of ideas for teamwork-oriented gear that don't require close proximity, but I see why the team buffs available bank on it. It just seems like none are particularly strong enough, aside from Well of Radiance, Lunafaction, and Ward of Dawn, that they get any kind of use. And those are generally only for DPS phases or outright survival.

I'd really like running Aeon armors to be a viable strategy, for example. I just feel like there's a lot of space to encourage and reward teamwork that hasn't been navigated (or at least tuned well) yet. Thoughts?