Way of the Sharpshooter, critical hits give you super energy, just getting a lot of kills on top of that. Nothing else I really do aside from that.

Just discovered that this perk combos especially well with Vigilance Wing.

Ooh, now that's interesting! I'm going to have to give that a shot.

Way of the Sharpshooter, critical hits give you super energy, just getting a lot of kills on top of that. Nothing else I really do aside from that.

Just discovered that this perk combos especially well with Vigilance Wing.

However, a lot of the design of D1 PvP felt like it was "Fun First, Sweat Second" and D2 completely flipped that in some very detrimental ways. Perhaps I'll finish up my essay on my issues with D2 specifically directed toward PvP one of these days.

I wrote up a large reply and then my browser crashed. So, summary of what I wrote: Hunters are not as underpowered as people imply, they are just a class that's intended to keep moving. You have 0/7/7, my Hunter is currently rocking 4/5/6, not that much lower on recovery OR resilience, both of which is made up by the Hunter's ability to get out of situations as long as you learn to use your dodge at the right times. As far as abilities, we don't get anything crazy like devour, but they do reward maneuvering while engaging, and if you can master it you can do really well, it just plays very differently than the other two classes, both of which have abilities that literally encourage you to stand and fight head on.

Totally. I ran 7/5/1 all of IB with my Hunter, which is my worst class, and never felt like a firefight was stacked unfairly against me. I would engage, kill, and GTFO more than I would as a Warlock or Titan, sure, but most of the time it was to hit the enemy from a different angle, or to lure them to my teammates. You gotta know your class's strengths and weaknesses. Honestly, when I finally switched over to my Titan, I found myself trying to dodge over and over, since I'd come to rely on the usefulness of it. The enemy must have just thought that I was teabagging in the middle of engagements...

Oh and P.S.
I get two Golden Guns most matches with my Hunter

Same, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that I'd get to stay alive long enough to collect teammates' orbs more than I do with my other classes, thanks to the increased mobility.

In D2 they give seeking rockets really small blast radii, so Morrigan-D will rarely get you a kill in D2 unless you get close.

You know, I thought that when I settled on the Morrigan-D, it was because it was capable of the highest velocity and blast radius of the five or so rocket launchers I had in my inventory at the time. I may have latches on that that tracking perk (which has proven to be pretty terrible, even in PvE), and made velocity/blast radius the 2nd priority.

Sins of the Past is what I've had by far the best luck with for rocket launchers in PvP. Very big blast radius with cluster bombs. Even so, it still isn't as crazy good at guaranteeing kills as D1 rocket launchers, but when you get used to their quirks you can get kills most of the time.

My two IRL buddies that I run with frequently have both managed to get these from the clan raid packages and they love them. I haven't been so fortunate, yet.

In my opinion though Legend of Acrius is the best power weapon in PvP once it's upgraded :)

One of these days, I'm going to get my blind crew to all online together long enough to finally finish this stupid raid so I can start working on getting this thing :p

-Disciple

seems like there is less team shotting in the casual playlist, which is probably due to there being more randos. I do think that going to 4v4 is bad, and it was especially noticeable in iron banner. once one team gets the upper hand, they can team shot all the spawn points.

Yep. And the relatively small map sizes (in part, because of the small team sizes) in general contribute to this.

I think the game skewing towards team tactics is exactly *one* of the changes that needed to be made. It's much more satisfying to me to be able to stick with a teammate and clean up just by virtue of combined fire, than to have one really skilled player run roughshod over the map killing my team while all his clueless blueberries bumble around and occasionally do some work on the objective.

~M

The flip side of this is that, no matter how good of a player you are, you feel mostly worthless if you can't coordinate with your teammates, which essentially ruins solo queue play. I think that is very problematic.

It’s strange... I don’t disagree with 90% of the criticisms leveled against Destiny 2’s PvP game, and yet I had more fun with last week’s Iron Banner than I ever had with IB in D1. Yes, Des2ny’s crucible is punishing as hell for solo players... but let’s not pretend that D1 was any better in this regard. This single biggest difference between the two games in my estimation is that I don’t die to random BS in Des2ny nearly as often as I did in D1. If I die in Des2ny, I almost always know exactly why, and I usually have an idea of what I could have done differently. It’s a far cry from the D1 days of getting killed through walls by opponents who were already dead, or spawning into a sniper lane, or getting obliterated by super after super after super.

Really, my takeaway is that D2 Crucible is much harder than D1, but also much better.

I agree with this. The prevalence of OHKs in D1 made it full of kills that happened (or didn't happen) because of milliseconds of lag. D2 seems far more forgiving in this regard, and it's harder to die to complete garbage. I apologize if it made it sound like I thought D1 was more fun. I think D1 had more depth and a much higher skill ceiling that D2 does, but overall D2 is a big improvement. That being said, it is also far from perfect, and where D1 gave you a chance, even when you were outgunned, D2 gives nothing. That is, perhaps, as it should be, but I feel as if there's a balance to be struck where a 1v2 scenario shouldn't always be a foregone conclusion.

I think this says a lot. D1 PvP was a veteran in what it was. It had been tweaked from a lot of use. But people have to understand that D2 PvP is a new beast entirely and thus it's also brand new. It's going to take bungie a little while to tweak it to best performance. Just like D1 PvP.

I understand it's hard for us to separate D1 vs D2 PvP. Most of us thinkg of D2 PvP as just an upgraded version of D1. But as I said before it's a completely different beast that has to go through it's own refinement process like D1.

Personally, as someone who does much better as a "team player" than going lone wolf, I'm really excited for what PvP is going to become. And this is coming from someone who really, really did not like D1 PvP in general

2. Smoke grenades are still amazing and I don't care what anyone says (I know it's technically not a "grenade" but whatever)

Agreed. I actually think they lock you down more than the D1 smoke grenades, just for less time.

Warlocks and Titans are well set to take advantage of this, as they have very good health regen and abilities that complement holding positions.

This will be mitigated some eventually. There is actually a glitch in Survivalist leg armor for Hunters that causes them to not provide ANY recovery. Bungie has acknowledged the issue and is hopefully working on it. Once that's fixed Hunters should be able to reach up to 8 recovery (since right now you can reach 6 with a recovery mod on leg armor).

Sure, but you still would have a mix of agility in there. The fact of the matter is that agility is an all-or-nothing stat. You either want 0 because resilience and recovery are far more valuable, or you want 10 because you're going to make a build that completely relies on it. Being in the 2-7 agility range essentially is just wasting stat points, and this contributes to hunters feeling weak in pvp. I will also say that the hunter skill trees are not particularly synergistic from a pvp standpoint, and that hunter grenades are by and large completely worthless. All of which speaks to the value of dodge and dodge+reload or dodge+reload+invisibility because that's pretty much the only thing keeping hunters competitive.

I roll out my voidwalker and it's AMAZING how much she just feels like she was *built* for pvp. Devour is OP as hell, plus I also can do a 0/7/7 build AND I get a healing rift? Insane. And then I can also get two supers per game, which I've never done on my hunter.

I'm only somewhat saying this sarcastically, but welcome to Titans in D1 :D
It's nice to have a character that I love playing actually have decent abilities in D2, so I feel you.

Also, people really underestimate 2 things:
1. Flanking is God in PvP and Bungie has made a point of making their maps in D2 to account for this.
2. Smoke grenades are still amazing and I don't care what anyone says (I know it's technically not a "grenade" but whatever)

I don't know what it is about rockets in D2, but they seem borderline worthless to me. I can't get a kill with them. I try to go for max velocity and blast radius (using Morrigan-D), but it still seems like anything but a direct hit does no damage. Also tried Curtain Call with cluster bombs and it didn't seem any better.

I have fun with the Morrigan-D on occasion, but it's just not that effective in PvP. It would need more velocity or blast radius to be much of a contender.

In D2 they give seeking rockets really small blast radii, so Morrigan-D will rarely get you a kill in D2 unless you get close. Sins of the Past is what I've had by far the best luck with for rocket launchers in PvP. Very big blast radius with cluster bombs. Even so, it still isn't as crazy good at guaranteeing kills as D1 rocket launchers, but when you get used to their quirks you can get kills most of the time.

This has been precisely my experience.

In my opinion though Legend of Acrius is the best power weapon in PvP once it's upgraded :)

This is what I've been hoping, and I'm super close. 8/10 Raid seals in-hand. Of all the exotics I've accquired so far, this is the one I have the most anticipation about.

~M

I don't know what it is about rockets in D2, but they seem borderline worthless to me. I can't get a kill with them. I try to go for max velocity and blast radius (using Morrigan-D), but it still seems like anything but a direct hit does no damage. Also tried Curtain Call with cluster bombs and it didn't seem any better.

In D2 they give seeking rockets really small blast radii, so Morrigan-D will rarely get you a kill in D2 unless you get close. Sins of the Past is what I've had by far the best luck with for rocket launchers in PvP. Very big blast radius with cluster bombs. Even so, it still isn't as crazy good at guaranteeing kills as D1 rocket launchers, but when you get used to their quirks you can get kills most of the time.

In my opinion though Legend of Acrius is the best power weapon in PvP once it's upgraded :)

Swords, on the other hand, are amazing. Nightstalkers with invisibility and Quickfang can do some serious work if the other team isn't paying enough attention. I've gotten more kills in a single power ammo pickup with Quickfang than I have rocket kills in all of D2. You get torn to shreds if you try to rush someone across an open area, but if you can flank a team that's developed tunnel vision trying to plink away at your teammates, man, it's a beautiful thing.

-Disciple

HOW????? I have literally never gotten a 2nd super with any hunter subclass. On my warlock I do it about 30% of the time.

Way of the Sharpshooter, critical hits give you super energy, just getting a lot of kills on top of that. Nothing else I really do aside from that.

If you can get them to come to you however, they are toast. Most success I have is to have a second person firing away while I hide behind a corner. His motion will hide me on the tracker, and our opponents will assume only one person is present. This works great on control points, as the other team will jump on the point and right into sword range before they realize I'm there. I've taken out two stormcallers in their super this way.

Rockets are also easy long range weapons, but also easy to dodge.

Snipers don't do enough damage, so everyone always runs or flinches me with scouts.

Been trying fusions, but so/so. The charge time and need to aim makes them a high skill weapon. They typically have only 3-4 shots so I don't see a big advantage over other choices there.

Shotguns I abandoned for swords. Getting close almost requires a OHK and most shotguns are 2 shot.

I wrote up a large reply and then my browser crashed. So, summary of what I wrote: Hunters are not as underpowered as people imply, they are just a class that's intended to keep moving. You have 0/7/7, my Hunter is currently rocking 4/5/6, not that much lower on recovery OR resilience, both of which is made up by the Hunter's ability to get out of situations as long as you learn to use your dodge at the right times. As far as abilities, we don't get anything crazy like devour, but they do reward maneuvering while engaging, and if you can master it you can do really well, it just plays very differently than the other two classes, both of which have abilities that literally encourage you to stand and fight head on.

Oh and P.S.
I get two Golden Guns most matches with my Hunter

I currently use 8/5/2, with MIDA and StompEEs. It's very fast, and I can outrun anything. However I constantly get shot out of my super while on approach, and I don't win 1:1s unless I can get the first shot or two in. I'm not saying it can't work, but its loads easier on my 1/7/7 titan. I don't even run Uriels/MIDA/Last hope on my titan and can do work. It's just easier, and I don't need as much situational awareness or first shots.

seems like there is less team shotting in the casual playlist, which is probably due to there being more randos. I do think that going to 4v4 is bad, and it was especially noticeable in iron banner. once one team gets the upper hand, they can team shot all the spawn points.

Yep. And the relatively small map sizes (in part, because of the small team sizes) in general contribute to this.

I think the game skewing towards team tactics is exactly *one* of the changes that needed to be made. It's much more satisfying to me to be able to stick with a teammate and clean up just by virtue of combined fire, than to have one really skilled player run roughshod over the map killing my team while all his clueless blueberries bumble around and occasionally do some work on the objective.

~M

The flip side of this is that, no matter how good of a player you are, you feel mostly worthless if you can't coordinate with your teammates, which essentially ruins solo queue play. I think that is very problematic.

It’s strange... I don’t disagree with 90% of the criticisms leveled against Destiny 2’s PvP game, and yet I had more fun with last week’s Iron Banner than I ever had with IB in D1. Yes, Des2ny’s crucible is punishing as hell for solo players... but let’s not pretend that D1 was any better in this regard. This single biggest difference between the two games in my estimation is that I don’t die to random BS in Des2ny nearly as often as I did in D1. If I die in Des2ny, I almost always know exactly why, and I usually have an idea of what I could have done differently. It’s a far cry from the D1 days of getting killed through walls by opponents who were already dead, or spawning into a sniper lane, or getting obliterated by super after super after super.

Really, my takeaway is that D2 Crucible is much harder than D1, but also much better.

I agree with this. The prevalence of OHKs in D1 made it full of kills that happened (or didn't happen) because of milliseconds of lag. D2 seems far more forgiving in this regard, and it's harder to die to complete garbage. I apologize if it made it sound like I thought D1 was more fun. I think D1 had more depth and a much higher skill ceiling that D2 does, but overall D2 is a big improvement. That being said, it is also far from perfect, and where D1 gave you a chance, even when you were outgunned, D2 gives nothing. That is, perhaps, as it should be, but I feel as if there's a balance to be struck where a 1v2 scenario shouldn't always be a foregone conclusion.

I largely agree, although I would just add that D2 does give you ways to take on multiple opponents and win... they’re just more challenging to pull off. And I think I’m ok with that. I’m starting to feel like there’s a layer of depth there that was less important in D1. I’ve been playing with a Sword a lot lately, and it’s been both exciting and fascinating. Figuring out how to use a sword effectively in a game that is dominated by mid-long range combat is no simple task. But it has also lead to my longest kill streaks. There’s something to that, I think.

I wrote up a large reply and then my browser crashed. So, summary of what I wrote: Hunters are not as underpowered as people imply, they are just a class that's intended to keep moving. You have 0/7/7, my Hunter is currently rocking 4/5/6, not that much lower on recovery OR resilience, both of which is made up by the Hunter's ability to get out of situations as long as you learn to use your dodge at the right times. As far as abilities, we don't get anything crazy like devour, but they do reward maneuvering while engaging, and if you can master it you can do really well, it just plays very differently than the other two classes, both of which have abilities that literally encourage you to stand and fight head on.

FYI I main a hunter.

I run 4/7/4 on my hunter. It's fine, but my warlock feels OP in comparison.

Oh and P.S.
I get two Golden Guns most matches with my Hunter

HOW????? I have literally never gotten a 2nd super with any hunter subclass. On my warlock I do it about 30% of the time.

Oh and P.S.
I get two Golden Guns most matches with my Hunter

seems like there is less team shotting in the casual playlist, which is probably due to there being more randos. I do think that going to 4v4 is bad, and it was especially noticeable in iron banner. once one team gets the upper hand, they can team shot all the spawn points.

Yep. And the relatively small map sizes (in part, because of the small team sizes) in general contribute to this.

I think the game skewing towards team tactics is exactly *one* of the changes that needed to be made. It's much more satisfying to me to be able to stick with a teammate and clean up just by virtue of combined fire, than to have one really skilled player run roughshod over the map killing my team while all his clueless blueberries bumble around and occasionally do some work on the objective.

~M

The flip side of this is that, no matter how good of a player you are, you feel mostly worthless if you can't coordinate with your teammates, which essentially ruins solo queue play. I think that is very problematic.

It’s strange... I don’t disagree with 90% of the criticisms leveled against Destiny 2’s PvP game, and yet I had more fun with last week’s Iron Banner than I ever had with IB in D1. Yes, Des2ny’s crucible is punishing as hell for solo players... but let’s not pretend that D1 was any better in this regard. This single biggest difference between the two games in my estimation is that I don’t die to random BS in Des2ny nearly as often as I did in D1. If I die in Des2ny, I almost always know exactly why, and I usually have an idea of what I could have done differently. It’s a far cry from the D1 days of getting killed through walls by opponents who were already dead, or spawning into a sniper lane, or getting obliterated by super after super after super.

Really, my takeaway is that D2 Crucible is much harder than D1, but also much better.

I agree with this. The prevalence of OHKs in D1 made it full of kills that happened (or didn't happen) because of milliseconds of lag. D2 seems far more forgiving in this regard, and it's harder to die to complete garbage. I apologize if it made it sound like I thought D1 was more fun. I think D1 had more depth and a much higher skill ceiling that D2 does, but overall D2 is a big improvement. That being said, it is also far from perfect, and where D1 gave you a chance, even when you were outgunned, D2 gives nothing. That is, perhaps, as it should be, but I feel as if there's a balance to be struck where a 1v2 scenario shouldn't always be a foregone conclusion.

I'm not versed enough in Crucible to really be able to articulate why. I suspect it's because it feels less like bullshit. 6v6 was a chaotic hellscape, especially if the opposing team got on a super roll and grabbed power ammo. Even when I was playing well, I rarely felt like I was making much of a difference--there was just too much going on.

D2, by comparison, feels tight and controlled, and I always feel like I know exactly what is happening, which routes need to be controlled, etc. I've only played a few matches of D2 crucible solo, so that probably has a large part to do with my favorable reaction.

I don't know how true it actually is, since it's been way too long since I've played it, but D2 Crucible feels much more like Halo multiplayer than D1 did. Maybe that's just imagined on my part, but it feels like I remember Halo 2 Slayer feeling, in a lot of ways (just with less grenade spam).