AOE boss stomp melees is one of the worst design decisions in Destiny. Almost all the boss fights seem designed to encourage sniper rifles and scouts/pulse from a distance. Shotgun pve damage buffs are nice but they never fixed the main issue of the boss having an unavoidable melee sphere.

I rarely die from boss stomp any more - sword swing (especially if I'm running Passive Guard) is usually enough to not only keep me alive, but also keep me from being thrown out by the stomp... though I'll admit I haven't tested it on the Reckoning bridge. :)

Doesn't really change the fact that the stomp mechanic sucks - just says they've acknowledged that we need a way around it.

Glad to see steps were taken to address it.

The stomp is actually something Bungie could work more class flavor into, what if Titans just resisted stomps more? Or enemies used more powerful but slower directional melee attacks that hunters could dodge or warlocks could blink?

It's especially frustrating given how our abilities (rift, barrier, Phoenix Dive) encourage stationary placement. more often than not, I manage to cast my rift just before I'm launched far from it.

It seems like they spend a lot of time making stuff that encourages a certain way of playing, and then going "Not like that!" when players make those ways of playing too effective.

Remember Banshees eight years ago in Mass Effect 3, which could pick you up for an insta-kill if you got too close, but it gave your teammates just enough time to do damage to her so she could drop you? Good times. Good teamwork. Fun mechanic.

I still have that game installed. We should play that again soon. I know stabbim is in.

That’s the most important thing. It feels like shit every single time it happens. It’s never the goofy-funny hilarity of getting killed by a traffic cone in Halo. It’s always at least annoying, and more often than not actually infuriating.

It might be a “good” way to encourage whatever play dynamic Bungie wants (although nerfing ranged weapons is definitely a case of mixed signals there), but in a game where almost everything feels amazing, it’s a major standout that feels completely awful in every regard.

The game would be infinitely better if Bungie replaced the stomp with interesting changes, such as the Servitor enemies teleporting you away from them. Gives you a window to do up-close damage, while also adding an element of risk that you and your teammates can account and prepare for. Also doesn't help that the stagger mechanic is wholly inconsistent (and often disabled). Honestly, the Stomp mechanic feels like a permanent issue, since Bungie is too "game dev is hard" to add even a single new combat mechanic/animation to existing enemies.

It's especially frustrating given how our abilities (rift, barrier, Phoenix Dive) encourage stationary placement. more often than not, I manage to cast my rift just before I'm launched far from it.

Remember Banshees eight years ago in Mass Effect 3, which could pick you up for an insta-kill if you got too close, but it gave your teammates just enough time to do damage to her so she could drop you? Good times. Good teamwork. Fun mechanic.

AOE boss stomp melees is one of the worst design decisions in Destiny. Almost all the boss fights seem designed to encourage sniper rifles and scouts/pulse from a distance. Shotgun pve damage buffs are nice but they never fixed the main issue of the boss having an unavoidable melee sphere.

I rarely die from boss stomp any more - sword swing (especially if I'm running Passive Guard) is usually enough to not only keep me alive, but also keep me from being thrown out by the stomp... though I'll admit I haven't tested it on the Reckoning bridge. :)

Doesn't really change the fact that the stomp mechanic sucks - just says they've acknowledged that we need a way around it.

It might be a “good” way to encourage whatever play dynamic Bungie wants (although nerfing ranged weapons is definitely a case of mixed signals there), but in a game where almost everything feels amazing, it’s a major standout that feels completely awful in every regard.

Except for that one brief moment where shotguns were good in PvE. And then immediately nerfed again. #neverforget

Nope. Only boss fights where you could reliably hit headshots for extended periods of time.

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

So why'd it get nerfed?

I can only guess it’s because of the hardcore streamers using it to melt a few raid bosses, which does influence the rest of the player base to at least imitate, even if they aren’t always as successful. It’s true that there were plenty of “must have whisper” raid posts on LFG sites. But those never go away. Nerf whisper, and those min-maxers will just switch to the next most effective weapon. They didn’t improve weapon diversity, they just ruined what was a player favourite weapon and made all the tryhards switch over to DARCI instead.

If they actually wanted to improve the situation, they should start by designing more boss encounter that don’t involve shooting a big target from long range because you can’t get close without being stomped into oblivion. It’s almost like they want us to go back to using our Scout Rifles for DPS, like we had to back when D2 first shipped. Similar to the Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten issue, they didn’t improve the underlying issue, only soured something that people enjoyed.

Nope. Only boss fights where you could reliably hit headshots for extended periods of time.

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

So why'd it get nerfed?

There’s also a huge gap between what you’d see the streamer teams pull off, vs the actual experience of the average LFG group. You could watch Glad solo the Whisper mission using Whisper to melt all 3 bosses because the guy isn’t human and never misses, but every time I tried it I’d run out of ammo before killing even 1 of the 3 bosses, and I’m pretty good at this game.

Most LFG groups would still struggle against most raid bosses, and most other encounters didn’t really favour Whisper in any meaningful way.

Is anyone here playing? Anyone make it flawless?

I don’t think they captured the excitement that it had in D1, but I haven’t played enough to definitively say that.

It feels like D1 trials which is amazing. The rewards system just blows.

Others have hit on the same topics already but I'll repeat:

• Not being able to use tokens unless you get 3 wins is dumb and kills the player pool of PvE only players who just want a weapon.
  
• Maybe allow a world drop level of rewards for people who don't make it to 3 wins?
  
• Going against players at the same spot on the card makes it extremely hard if not impossible to make it to the lighthouse when you have PvP gods that just run stacked all the time. This will only get worse later in the season.
  
• Not having adept weapons to chase is an awful call. Move the celerity perk to adept only weapons and narrow the perk pool some to get rid of shit rolls.
  
• Not being able to tie a round is infuriating when you lose even though the last two people traded kills. Since 30 frame rates and lag are a thing, this causes more issues than it solves.

With that said. There are some nice changes that were made.

• Ascendant Shards (whatever the golf ball things are) for going flawless is awesome for the PvP Focused population
  
• 3v3 is how it should be. Thank you for getting rid of 4v4
  
• It just feels like how trials should be.

I've made it to 6 wins numerous times but have yet to go flawless. Game 7 has been a nightmare due to facing god-like stacked teams every time.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries.

Adept elemental primaries haven't been a thing since D1Y1. Adepts in D1Y2-3 were the same as the normal version, except with a special skin and an extra perk that gave the gun better stats when you were the last person alive on your team. Hardly gamebreaking, cool enough to want. No change needed, Bungie makes change.

They should just narrow the perk pool slightly and move celerity to "adept" versions only.

Why is hip fire grip + box breathing even a potential drop on the Eye of Sol sniper? I'm fine with some RNG within reason but that combo should just never happen on a weapon from a 7 win card drop.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries. And if adept weapons were just kinetic and better than normal, they’d end up getting nerfed just like Not Forgotten when they begin to show up a lot. It’s the same dilemma over and over. If you make it good enough to be “worth” it, then it will just unbalance the game. Make a balanced weapon and it’s just not special to get.

Setting aside the fact that Squid pointed out in his reply (Bungie continued to feature Adept primaries in Trials long after elemental primaries went away), this whole question of balance vs desirable is one of those cases where Bungie’s words and actions just don’t line up with reality, IMO. Year 2 of D2, we were drowning in awesome, unique, POWERFUL weapons, and it was the most fun that the game has been. Then; around Season of Opumlence, the nerfs started rolling in, and the game has become progressively less enjoyable ever since.

Whisper of the Worm wasn’t a problem when we also had Sleeper Simulant, Tractor Cannon, and Legrnd of Acrius along with a bunch of other great power weapons all using the same slot. Not to mention the fact that it was an exotic that required completing a really challenging mission to acquire, then multiple weeks of mastering that mission to complete the catalyst. Let it be a little overpowered in a few niche situations. It’s fun. If Bungie can’t live with a weapon like that being a bit overpowered in a handful of PvE encounters, then why the hell bother with this kind of thing at all? But no, they nerfed it into mediocrity, and now you never see anyone use it outside of maybe 1 or 2 raid bosses. Same with Sleeper, and a bunch of the other standout weapons.

And don’t get me started on Luna’s Howl/Not Forgotten, Lol. They were never a problem over on PC, because none of the other hand cannons on PC suffered from the accuracy/recoil issues that made them so tough to use on Console (if I remember correctly, neither of those guns landed in the top 10 usage list on PC... LH might have slipped in at number 10, but barely). Basically, Luna/NF on console behaved the way all hand cannons behave on PC (in terms of their accuracy and consistency). So while one could argue that the guns needed slight toning down, they certainly didn’t warrant getting slaughtered the way they did, especially on the PvE side.

And more to my point, it’s not like the crucible is any more balanced now than it used to be. Now it’s all Hard Light and Revoker spam. There will always be a new weapon at the top of the heap. So the heavy handed nerfs didn’t really improve anything. All they did was take guns that people loved using and were excited to have, and ruined them.

The lack of adept weapons is clearly due to the phasing out of elemental primaries.

Adept elemental primaries haven't been a thing since D1Y1. Adepts in D1Y2-3 were the same as the normal version, except with a special skin and an extra perk that gave the gun better stats when you were the last person alive on your team. Hardly gamebreaking, cool enough to want. No change needed, Bungie makes change.