I'm happy with the changes. Heck, the variety and pacing has completely changed now, making Crucible better than ever (occasional Last Word BS aside).

As someone who will give up their Last Word when it's pried from my cold, dead fingers... I say to hell with you, sir!

I stayed out of the whole Auto Rifle nerf debate a bit down the page. I hadn't really used an auto rifle in a while and didn't think I had much to contribute. Now I have and I do. I am currently having a fun time using my 307 Suros Regime on my level 31 hunter in Iron Banner. It's not an instant win gun like maybe it was when people liked it, but I'm certainly not suffering for using it. I've been going my usual 1.0+ to 2.5+ K/D. There's been a couple of unfair games and a situation here and there that I'd wished I had my Red Death or The Last Word, but by and large I do not understand what all the fuss is about. I am winning vs Red Deaths and Coiled Hisses and various other guns. I lose to them too a bit... but not more than I win. I'm finding the Suros Regime's faster hip fire particularly interesting for those "oh crap" moments in the same way I'd hold down the trigger on The Last Word. Beat a couple of shotgun sliders that way!

So yeah. I thought the arguments against the viability of Auto Rifles and the overpowering nature of Pulse Rifles was largely confirmation bias. Tell people that you're nerfing their favorite gun and buffing the type of gun that Xur sells a couple weeks later and there's sure to be at least a bit of bias in there! And now, after a couple of hours rockin' the Suros Regime... I think I just might have been right! Red Death is a great gun. I was singing the praises of things like Fair and Square and Three Little Words before the 9.7% damage buff. But as far as the Suros Regime goes... It is certainly a lot better than a fancy airsoft gun shooting marshmallows or whatever. Similarly, I'd guess that the auto rifles I thought of as good in the past (like my 3rd eyed Up For Anything) are still very viable.

As far as I'm concerned.... things are feeling pretty solidly balanced. :)

I've had Auto Rifles wreck me in Crucible this week. In particular was a "For The People" that chewed me up at range. People have panicked and jumped ship, so Auto Rifles are definitely a rare sight now, but you can definitely feel their presence when they're around.

I'm happy with the changes. Heck, the variety and pacing has completely changed now, making Crucible better than ever (occasional Last Word BS aside).

So yeah. I thought the arguments against the viability of Auto Rifles and the overpowering nature of Pulse Rifles was largely confirmation bias. Tell people that you're nerfing their favorite gun and buffing the type of gun that Xur sells a couple weeks later and there's sure to be at least a bit of bias in there! And now, after a couple of hours rockin' the Suros Regime... I think I just might have been right! Red Death is a great gun. I was singing the praises of things like Fair and Square and Three Little Words before the 9.7% damage buff. But as far as the Suros Regime goes... It is certainly a lot better than a fancy airsoft gun shooting marshmallows or whatever. Similarly, I'd guess that the auto rifles I thought of as good in the past (like my 3rd eyed Up For Anything) are still very viable.

As far as I'm concerned.... things are feeling pretty solidly balanced. :)

We would lose horribly, but it would become LEGEND!

The existence of the Vanquisher/Shadow Price archetype has broken crucible for some time; full auto lazer beams that are more stable than SR's and fire fast enough to kill in near the same time. I thought they'd needed a range nerf and a damage boost back when we had this conversation after 1.1.0.4(? I think) (it was this one. echo chamber), and I think it still is the best solution.

The FR range nerf has been a huge success that nobodies talking about, so Bungie can clearly do range nerfs. The Shotty buff is clearly a PvE win. Smash those two all over the AR's head.

I agree. I was surprised that Bungie decided to nerf the entire AR family when I think it's just long range ARs that need to be nerfed. I think they could have even just increased the spread of all ARs and maybe even slightly increased dmg. Thus making them more of a chancy gun, but better as you get closer.

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Perhaps it does, but I honestly think a good player who is using a Suros will lose in a fight to a good player using nearly any hand cannon, most of the time.

My K/D last night says otherwise :)

As I said in another thread, Hand Canons are certainly more effective than ARs if used with 100% efficiency. But they're also more punishing when you miss shots. One of the reasons I have a hard time using HCs is because I side-step like a madman. I twitch and juke all over the place. This makes it very difficult for me to land headshots with a HC, but it also makes it difficult for other people to hit me. So for my playstyle, painting my crosshair in the general area of my target's head and holding down the trigger with my AR works really well. I'll out-duel most HC users I come across.

I think where we started in this madness was more to the point of giving players who prefer AR-centric playstyles a fair shake. Think of the Dr. Nope lovers! That thing needs some love. Look at the steaming pile of the Nechrocasm. There's absolutely no reward for it. I can't honestly say how it's playing in IB but I played a fair amount of plain old fashioned crucible post-patch, and there was pity in my heart for the Atheon's Epilogue users. I might not be a good example either because personally, for me, the Thorn and Last Word are very up my alley. I wasn't losing many gunfights, and I was beating the Suros consistently, which is abnormal. Usually it's more 50/50 with me, and it felt more 75/25.

(Obligatory "moot 'till they give us some data!" comment :/)

The problem with both Atheon's Epilogue and Necrochasm is they're high rate of fire/low impact. ARs like that are typically not very effective in Crucible. Weapons like Suros Regime (when zoomed in) are effective because they're lower RoF, higher impact. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect Abyss Defiant would actually be quite good in Crucible as well.

* Just to be clear, about 99% of my Suros kills are scored while ADS. Hip-firing Auto Rifles is all but useless, IMO.

This is where I think Bungie could change up their approach (this thread is in danger of becoming sentient at this point). You could really help those +RoF/-Impact rifles, and maybe solve the Vanquisher/Suros problem, by making them more effective for short range and less effective at Scout Rifle range.

(As an aside: it is nice to see someone who still enjoys them in here!)

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Perhaps it does, but I honestly think a good player who is using a Suros will lose in a fight to a good player using nearly any hand cannon, most of the time.

My K/D last night says otherwise :)

As I said in another thread, Hand Canons are certainly more effective than ARs if used with 100% efficiency. But they're also more punishing when you miss shots. One of the reasons I have a hard time using HCs is because I side-step like a madman. I twitch and juke all over the place. This makes it very difficult for me to land headshots with a HC, but it also makes it difficult for other people to hit me. So for my playstyle, painting my crosshair in the general area of my target's head and holding down the trigger with my AR works really well. I'll out-duel most HC users I come across.

I think where we started in this madness was more to the point of giving players who prefer AR-centric playstyles a fair shake. Think of the Dr. Nope lovers! That thing needs some love. Look at the steaming pile of the Nechrocasm. There's absolutely no reward for it. I can't honestly say how it's playing in IB but I played a fair amount of plain old fashioned crucible post-patch, and there was pity in my heart for the Atheon's Epilogue users. I might not be a good example either because personally, for me, the Thorn and Last Word are very up my alley. I wasn't losing many gunfights, and I was beating the Suros consistently, which is abnormal. Usually it's more 50/50 with me, and it felt more 75/25.

(Obligatory "moot 'till they give us some data!" comment :/)

The problem with both Atheon's Epilogue and Necrochasm is they're high rate of fire/low impact. ARs like that are typically not very effective in Crucible. Weapons like Suros Regime (when zoomed in) are effective because they're lower RoF, higher impact. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect Abyss Defiant would actually be quite good in Crucible as well.

* Just to be clear, about 99% of my Suros kills are scored while ADS. Hip-firing Auto Rifles is all but useless, IMO.

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Perhaps it does, but I honestly think a good player who is using a Suros will lose in a fight to a good player using nearly any hand cannon, most of the time.

My K/D last night says otherwise :)

As I said in another thread, Hand Canons are certainly more effective than ARs if used with 100% efficiency. But they're also more punishing when you miss shots. One of the reasons I have a hard time using HCs is because I side-step like a madman. I twitch and juke all over the place. This makes it very difficult for me to land headshots with a HC, but it also makes it difficult for other people to hit me. So for my playstyle, painting my crosshair in the general area of my target's head and holding down the trigger with my AR works really well. I'll out-duel most HC users I come across.

I think where we started in this madness was more to the point of giving players who prefer AR-centric playstyles a fair shake. Think of the Dr. Nope lovers! That thing needs some love. Look at the steaming pile of the Nechrocasm. There's absolutely no reward for it. I can't honestly say how it's playing in IB but I played a fair amount of plain old fashioned crucible post-patch, and there was pity in my heart for the Atheon's Epilogue users. I might not be a good example either because personally, for me, the Thorn and Last Word are very up my alley. I wasn't losing many gunfights, and I was beating the Suros consistently, which is abnormal. Usually it's more 50/50 with me, and it felt more 75/25.

(Obligatory "moot 'till they give us some data!" comment :/)

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Perhaps it does, but I honestly think a good player who is using a Suros will lose in a fight to a good player using nearly any hand cannon, most of the time.

My K/D last night says otherwise :)

As I said in another thread, Hand Canons are certainly more effective than ARs if used with 100% efficiency. But they're also more punishing when you miss shots. One of the reasons I have a hard time using HCs is because I side-step like a madman. I twitch and juke all over the place. This makes it very difficult for me to land headshots with a HC, but it also makes it difficult for other people to hit me. So for my playstyle, painting my crosshair in the general area of my target's head and holding down the trigger with my AR works really well. I'll out-duel most HC users I come across.

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Perhaps it does, but I honestly think a good player who is using a Suros will lose in a fight to a good player using nearly any hand cannon, most of the time.

I think this may all be moot until we get some post-patch numbers on the player base. I'm not seeing many anecdotes from people saying they're still content to run AR's in this thread.

A lot of good players, and myself, abandoned ARs long ago and never looked back. That's why I am utterly baffled by this nerf, since after their first nerf way back when, they lost their effectiveness over other weapons. I'm not saying they were BAD then; you could certainly do well with them, but they were by no means imbalanced or overpowered, or even the best choice most of the time. In fact, I would say they were probably in a good place.

I was there in the Alpha when they were actually considerably overpowering any of the other primaries, in both PvE and PvP. I know what that looked like, and the ARs of a month ago were extremely far from that.

The fact that a bunch of people chose to use them is simply because they are a low skill weapon, and is not indicative of their power necessarily.

Now they are simply useless in PvE and PvP if your aim is to perform.

I went on a total rampage with Suros Regime last night. Granted, Suros is THE BEST Auto Rifle in the game, but I still think it's unfair to call them "useless". I do far better with Suros than I do with Red Death or Hawkmoon. A lot of it comes down to personal playstyle and skill set.

Sure, it sounds like that. So I'll admit that Bungie considered "who". That being said, I still think they made an incorrect interpretation of the data. The fact that so many people feel like the game still isn't balanced is empirical evidence of that incorrect interpretation.

What?

I could just as well argue that the game will be as close as possibly to perfectly balanced when absolutely no one thinks it is balanced. Even if some players, like yourself, are willing and able to actually form an opinion on the balancing by using passionless objectivity and statistical data, many other players would be reacting emotionally, seeing a nerf to their preferred gear as a negative change.

If Destiny could be perfectly balanced by a considered nerf, of varying degrees, to every item in the game, the community reaction would not reflect this. It would be overwhelmingly negative.

You're right-- it's a trust issue. Those who are convinced that Bungie is either dishonest, incompetent, or possibly both, will accept no rational explanation whatsoever for changes which are made, and will continue to hold up their armchair observations about the perfect game that could have been made if only more people would listen to them. It's been going on since the Halo 1 pistol.

Sometimes, I accept, this is just how the matchmaking is going to go. But today's St. Patrick's day. That means I've been off my face all day. And I'm still coming top of the team. Thar's not acceptable - I'm playing really badly. Really really badly, at least for me. And I'm still top of the team. That's ridiculous.

Even in your description I see a problem, which is I think Scout Rifle should be able to compete better at mid range, especially since they do tend to take just a small amount more skill to get kills effectively. I have no idea how to balance it though because I just play the game :)

Ack! The edit was too late! I tried to tell you to run before you got sucked in!

I think I've mentioned this before, partly in response to a Cody "AR's have no range" comment. Having a special that compliments your primary should theoretically make up for the weaknesses of your primaries. SR's should be paired with a FR or Shotty; you can counter snipe with the SR, and win the mid-short with your special. AR's should be paired with Snipers or stable FR's; you can gun down approaching melee-shotgun players with the AR, and kill long range opponents with your sniper. If you run around only using one or the other, that gun is the one that needs a nerf (exotic handcannons).

The existence of the Vanquisher/Shadow Price archetype has broken crucible for some time; full auto lazer beams that are more stable than SR's and fire fast enough to kill in near the same time. I thought they'd needed a range nerf and a damage boost back when we had this conversation after 1.1.0.4(? I think) (it was this one. echo chamber), and I think it still is the best solution.

The FR range nerf has been a huge success that nobodies talking about, so Bungie can clearly do range nerfs. The Shotty buff is clearly a PvE win. Smash those two all over the AR's head.