I agree with some of your points, but not all of them. I'm surprised you didn't mention the continual powercreep of guardians at all. Our weapons and abilities are the strongest they've been in years. I think that makes up for the reduced damage output for many more casual players. If there is an actual drop in the success rate of LFG raids and other pickup groups, I would actually guess it's more to do with player survivability and the nerfs to Well of Radiance than it is to player damage output- entry level raid teams wipe to mechanics failure and inopportune player deaths far more than to low DPS, at least in my experience. I don't think "just go play Master mode if you want raids to be challenging" is a fair argument. Master mode is not always available, and doesn't even exist for some of the older raids. There are many clans and fireteams in this game who participate in raids and dungeons in a relatively casual way, but still like some level of challenge- my own clan has gotten extremely bored of older content like VoG and Shattered Throne where the bosses just fall over immediately no matter what you do. The power gap being reduced made those encounters more interesting for us and got my group motivated to revisit that content now that it feels less like a patrol zone. You brought up Still Hunt with Celestial Nighthawk as an example of a build so strong that it doesn't care about surges. I think it kind of undermines your earlier argument, on why surges obligate people to make build changes without meaningfully benefiting gameplay. It makes it unclear if you're saying that surges matter too much, or don't matter at all. Personally, I would just dismiss Nighthawk Still Hunt as an outlier. Anything strong enough to ignore elemental surges is a serious balance problem that needs to be addressed. That said, I don't disagree with your conclusions. Here are some additional points I would make in your support, opposing the changes: 1) Player survivability reduction with the nerfs to things like healing, Woven Mail, and most recently Well of Radiance should have been given more time to settle before Bungie tried a change like this. Well of Radiance, in particular, is a huge deal for lower skill groups, where the Well being an effective invulnerability zone was incredibly important for keeping players alive during DPS phases. That nerf coinciding with the expansion launch power reset AND the power deficit changes to Raids are too many changes at once, and have resulted in many compounding reductions to survivability that are hard to measure the effects of individually. I don't think the Well nerf was unjustified, but it should have been given time to settle before making further changes. 2) Information communication. The power system is very confusing to new and experienced players alike. It has gotten very complicated over the past few years, especially now that we have activities that lock your power at a minimum, or a maximum, or ignore it entirely... these changes were not communicated clearly at all. Outgoing player damage is now permanently capped at -5 power in normal raids, but you can mitigate the enemy damage buffs by going up to +15 power? How does that make sense? How would anyone have known the system works like that without Bungie talking about it in the most recent TWID? This isn't communicated clearly anywhere ingame at all. They need to rethink this system. Thanks for the informative video, and to anyone who took the time to read this ridiculously long comment.
Very well-thought out comment, I appreciate your analysis! I agree that powercreep is 100% real... we are getting stronger and more resilient by the season, and yes, players definitely wipe more to mechanics/unnecessary random deaths in normal raids right now than they do to DPS, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, and this will tie into my next response about the normal vs. master situation. I probably should've clarified more on my master difficulty stance - in my opinion, normal raiding should be a space where the combat is slightly difficult (but not so much that it becomes a distraction) where the mechanics are being introduced to newer players and they are the main challenge, while master raiding serves to test your ability to survive while doing mechanics you're already familiar with. The fact that master difficulty is a rotator and feels gimmicky for a lot of players, to me, is an indictment of master mode's current implementation rather than the space both difficulties occupy in concept. As for SH + Nighthawk, both things can exist! For example, on Herald of Finality, a boss where you'd use both SH and a sword rather than just one or the other, both ideas come into play. I'm not even irritated that much by being forced to keep a bunch of swords, it's moreso a response to this idea that surges are meta-shifting, which they are not. So, to respond to your point, I will clarify that I think surges do not actually end up mattering, just that they are a small nuisance to players like me and potentially a major missed opportunity to newer players who don't have easy access to any and all weapons. I'll acknowledge that it's a difficult point to balance - you introduce 'good' powercreep through Prismatic and other changes as something to draw in player attention at an absolutely essential moment in Destiny history, and so raids either become even more easy combat-wise than they were before, or you respond by making them more difficult to match. To be honest, this is why (I've said this in other comments as well) I'm not as much against -5 as I am surges, since the amount of combat difficulty increase, especially with the universal surge changes, isn't hugely significant or majorly detrimental for prepared players, but I'm not sure if it was also really necessary rather than a more measured approach, like tuning older bosses to have more reasonable health or scaling just combatant damage for survivability purposes. Edit: I'm also going to pin this, because I think it brings up some important points and I don't want to rewrite my responses to all of them to every individual comment that brings up just one or two of them.
I'd like it if there was an intermediate level to Master level raids, but I also understand that rewards would not meaningfully change if there was. Adept weapons are cool but they're more of a status symbol than a huge functional increase in power over their base/crafted variants. There's no real design space for rewards from an intermediate level raid clear. I'm reminded of when Nightfalls could have customized difficulty/modifiers to change point scores/values. This serves two purposes: 1) You can turn on helpful modifiers, such as damage surges and improved Radar, to help teach newbies the raid. They get 1 or 2 drops at the end, but now they understand the mechanics and will be better equipped mentally to focus on combat next time. 2) This also allows groups to challenge themselves by turning the difficulty up slightly for a chance at better rewards at the end(maybe armor with more higher weighted rolls, extra drops and maybe even an Adept weapon/Artifice armor if your score is above a certain threshold), without making concrete changes that impact the whole playerbase by doing set in stone Surges for a week. This can keep Raids exciting even outside of the Raid race. I think maybe a system like that, where instead of dropping rewards every encounter, you get a set of rewards based on a point total at the end of the raid, might be fun, and maybe Bungie posts a leaderboard of the highest points scored so people are motivated to turn the difficulty up to insane levels to try for high scores, with some sort of exclusive reward if your team posted a score within the top 10% or something for a Raid at one point, like an Emblem or Shader or something, and it has a special glow if your team is currently in the Top 10%. It'd probably be a bitch to code, but maybe it even lists the full fireteam from that run if someone inspects it. THAT SAID, I do enjoy that Surges motivate players to try something that would normally be off-meta because the surge can change what works. However, I personally think the Nighthawk-Still Hunt synergy needs to be removed before we can meaningfully discuss balance. It is SO powerful, SO consistent and SO simple to do that it shuts out all other DPS options from higher level meta discussions. If you're a Hunter and you're in a Raid boss encounter, spoiler alert, 90% of the time you're using Still Hunt/Nighthawk, and if you're NOT a Hunter, your contribution to DPS almost doesn't matter in comparison.
@@perrycarters3113 This sounds like a good implementation. Sherpa runs would be so much easier if you could just make the combat a cakewalk for the newbies, even if it meant missing out on loot. It would also filter out people who just want to get carried for loot and ensure the people on your lobby want to learn the raid. Also customizable master sounds awesome. I don't want to play with no radar, but idm some spider mines lol. Cool idea for sure
@@TheAegisRelic I’m still personally not sure how much I agree on the surges not being meta-shifting. I agree that something weapon type specific would do it more effectively but as of right now there isn’t say a solar equivalent to edge transit, meaning that when a solar surge was on gjally with apex would likely be better. Now when a solar equivalent to edge gets added that will change but I think there are still some more things to explore in the exotic department and the subclass department. An arc surge might make fourth horseman the premier pick in a situation you might otherwise use merciless and solar surge doing the inverse. Agreeing with the commenter above still hunt is not staying where it is so assuming it doesn’t get nerfed into oblivion and is still viable surges might dictate whether you use still hunt or cloud strike or euphony. This does obviously apply less to subclasses as subclasses are defined mostly by can they auto reload or not in the dps meta outside of melee range (i am extremely annoyed about facet of command) but a surge might dictate whether you use strand or solar as warlock, or stasis or solar as hunter maybe (idk how buffed silence and squall with impetus compares to CNH). At the end of the day I agree that something like weapon overcharges might be better and maybe all of this should be in a separate raid difficulty but I do think surges can change a lot. I agree with your final point more than anything though. There is not enough incentive for the furthest endgame content. The issue is that I feel like much of the community would end up complaining if something truly unique and interesting was locked behind the hardest content - look at the initial backlash to dual destiny, which isn’t hard but has a barrier to entry to a very cool, unique and build-defining piece of armour.
@@Vahloksavjul Honestly, my sympathy for people complaining about their inability to participate in Dual Destiny is somewhat limited by your reasoning for the complaint. It's an MMO with a focus on cooperative content. The solo player lifestyle will only ever get you so far, and the in-game LFG is honestly pretty good. I haven't had many bad experiences with it. And I'm speaking as someone who is predominantly a solo player. I've run raids, master dungeons, GM's, and I've gone flawless, and the only one you need a mic for is raids, and honestly not even all raids. As for the few complaints I've heard that are centered around accessibility issues, ie I read a complaint from someone who is deaf-mute lamenting that they'll probably never complete Dual Destiny because it takes too long to communicate the clock-face at the end and it cycles to the next set before they can do so. And.... yeah. That really sucks. There's no real workaround for that. Like, you could group up with someone who has an extra monitor and Discord them and share your screen and they just type in which one you need to shoot, but that's a lot of setup and there's still a delay from the internet so the timing would be razor thin. Unfortunately, I don't really think there's much that can be done to alleviate that. Mechanics-heavy content that requires clear, concise and swift communication will always be inaccessible on some level to people with those sorts of disabilities, and again, in an MMO with a focus on cooperative content... that's bound to happen. Someone who is deaf-mute should probably not be tasked with reading in VoG or VoD, or to direct someone where to stand when doing Riven legit, or to take Golgoroth's gaze since they can't communicate the countdown. And that's not "Oh, people with X disability should just not play the game", that's "Yeah, whoever is able to communicate this important information to us the fastest and can quickly clarify it when we ask them to confirm what they said, I would prefer they took that role," And unfortunately in Dual Destiny, there are only two roles and both of them require fast communication. Should there be an alternative mission/method of attainment for a solo player to get the item without needing to run Dual Destiny first to unlock it? Maybe, but if they did that, NOBODY would play the duo version unless it came with some sort of increased reward, such as two perks in each "slot" on your roll or something.
Having a solo player one phase a dungeon boss is fine if said player is having to use a very optimal high skill strat (cringe mid dps loadout swaps) or a cheese strat (banner of war titan or I guess now hunters grapple nukes). Unfortunately now you have to use such techniques on bosses to not 12 phase. I’m looking at you GOTD.
This mindset literally only benefits the two minority groups of players, the highest echelon and the most casual of casuals. The middle group are the majority. They should be the ones the game is balanced around.
There's a reason rhulk is still the best raid boss we've ever had, every weapon type and super type for damage can be successfully used on him, some with more difficulty than others, but they're all usable and can be applied with the right strat. How bungie didn't recognise this and just gave us another crit spot final encounter I don't know, you want loadout variation, give us opportunities to use them.
THIS! like Rhulk was the perfect example of how to do a final raid boss! (dmg wise) you can have some people doing swords, a hunter or 2 on SH+celestial, machine guns, ability dmg, etc …. the potential is crazy. then, come to the final boss of the light and darkness saga, THE BE ALL TO THE END ALL, and it’s just a glorified Oryx fight where he does things to try to kill you. which isn’t even difficult to dodge, even while ADS. Bungie be picking the ball up and popping it with a fucking Chucky knife. it pisses me off so much😐
@@ryngoku24 Yeah, sure, Rhulk is a great fight, but saying the Witness is a bad fight is absolutely not true. Comparing the Witness to Orix is completely missing the point. Orix doesn't attack you at all. Meanwhile any attack the witness throws at you is a one-shot, so you have to be careful. Sure, to you it's not hard but for many people it is and one mistake can really fuck up a run. It only isn't "hard" if you have someone that is calling the attacks out and doesn't make any mistakes (because one mistake can lead to multiple deaths which can really fumble a run). Besides, if the only requirement for a good fight is you being able to use multiple weapons against the boss.... then Nezarec is the second best raid boss ever.
@@lordgrub12345 first, never said the witness was easy, just that it’s not hard to dodge his attacks which they aren’t. secondly, witness boss fight is literally oryx but with attacks to dodge. the boss model is exactly the same and it comes down to simply learning his attack patterns. and Rhulk isn’t good because of the different number of dmg options , it’s just a plus as to why he’s good. BUT being able to use a multitude of different dmg strats on Rhulk while still being optimal? that’s VERY rare. not to mention he actually fights you during the encounter , not just stand still for hit scan dps or a complete bullet sponge. He’s the literal final boss to a 10 year story and the best dmg strat is to stand on a plate with precision weapons? that’s a throw, A MAJOR THROW in the kind of fight we could’ve gotten from Bungie imo. P.S. : also, another thing that makes SE seem “difficult” is the rework they did for raids and dungeons. if we were leveled like pre TFS, Witness too would be a joke. While i don’t want a weak boss fight where everything absolutely slaps the witness, i also don’t want to see casuals punished for a raid that simply comes down to the limited variety presented to them for DPS on TOP OF THE VERY LINEAR boss design.
@@ryngoku24 First: No, the witness' attacks are not easy to dodge,. You saying it again does not make it true. If you are using a weapon where you need to scope, you would have to be constantly unscoping and losing damage just to dodge it. Second: No, the Witness isn't like Orix. Just because it is a big boss with a big crit spot doesn't mean it's Orix and you saying it again does not make it true. Third: Nezarec also has plenty optimal dps. Just as many as Rhulk. You are completely missing the reason why Rhulk is good. Fourth: The Witness would not be easy without the raid changes. The day one proves that. Fifth: Just because he is a big boss with a big crit spot does not instantly mean bad boss. Since you wanna compare the Witness to Orix, he was one of the most memorable bosses in raid history. Sixth: The witness is not hard because of limited boss design. Still Hunt Nighthawk, which is the best dps strat currently, is the best strategy on him and yet many people struggled on him. I'm pretty sure he was one of the longest boss fights in the game's history.
@@lordgrub12345 1) you’re comparing contest mode to actual difficulty level. that itself is invalid. most day one raids pose a difficult challenge. and most people don’t clear it on day one. 2) Witness dmg attacks are very simple to dodge , reddit forums and base players who actually attempt this raid both agree on this point. the fact that you find it difficult is a direct correlation to YOUR individual skill level. even if i used your point against you “it’s only easy if someone is calling it out” THAT RIGHT THERE is basis enough to say the difficulty isn’t that bad at all. 3) The weapon choice is strictly up to you and again, comes down to your skill level. if you really think you’re losing THAT much dmg when quickscoping still hunt or cloud strike? my boy, you need to get better at this game because your saying losing 2 frames is killing your total dmg and dps. which again, comes down to your individual skill level. 4) Take away the witness attacks and show me ONE single difference between his damage phase and Oryx’s damage phase. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. They’re the exact same. only difference is Witness actually fights back , which again, if you find difficult, comes down to your own encounter knowledge and skill level. 5) AGAIN, I didn’t say Rhulk was the ONLY boss who had good dmg strats that could be optimized , I said it’s RARE. learn to read my boy. Simply said it was a BONUS to Rhulk. NOT WHY HE WAS GOOD. (I’m all caps’n some phrases so hopefully YOU ACTUALLY READ WHAT I’M SAYING BEFORE GIVING AN OFF THE WALL RESPONSE) All in all, get better at the game. But also, Bungie is still wrong for punishing tho who want to raid by limiting their options. And you believing that a stagnant boss for a conclusion of the light and darkness saga is good is crazy work. Cause it’s not. Please think of your response before you give it. Cause if it’s off the wall again, I promise I won’t give another. Good day 🫱🏾🫲🏽
Great video. Normal mode dungeons and raids are about being able to execute mechanics and get a team together. Master mode is where you add the challenge of survivability and optimal boss damage and surge rotators on top of mechanical execution to show you've mastered the raid.
one thing i so desperately wish was that master content wasn’t time gated and put on a weekly rotator. It makes it really obnoxious to even want to approach that kind of stuff
Yup. I mean pantheon. Probably the most widely beloved endgame challenge in years was only around for 5 weeks total…. Even for me, someone with a dedicated raid team/discord/clan, it’s hard to get people together for a master raid or any other weekly rotator. And as we add more and more raids and dungeons to the rotator it’s just going to get worse. I hate having to wait literal weeks or months to play the content I want to play or need to play for titles and ranks and what not.
@@bulldogfront666to add. Pantheon being so time limited made me not want to buy Final Shape and I didn't play at all when it was released because it felt forced. I want to load up my pc and play what I want, when I want. The thought that "Oh I have to play this NOW or it's gone" really disgusts me. FOMO should not be weaponized.
nah its just to avoid the hate bandwagon that gets placed onto a specific person instead of a community/type of player. Why is it only salts fault when he is just the one who says what the rest of the top 0.1% of players are thinking or talking about in dms and not in open threads on Twitter/Reddit?
@@confiteor266most of the top 0.1% hated this change lmao. Speedrunners and day 1 runners are very different and I have never heard a single speedrunner ask for something like this.
@@confiteor266because the reason the rest of the 0.1% of players _aren’t_ talking about recommended changes based on _their_ playstyles is because they know it’s dumb to base a game around a tiny minority (you said it yourself- “0.1%”). He’s the *only* streamer with the intelligence (or lack thereof) to outwardly want changes based on the “top 0.1%”.
This was my worst fear when they announced the power changes that it would be a minute until people understood what’s going on and the barrier of entry is not something that should be high, I shouldn’t be yanking my hair out doing a raid I’ve been doing for months
“Raise the ceiling not the floor” is such a perfect and succinct way to put this. I’m all for bringing challenge to the game. Pantheon was probably the most satisfying and exciting gaming experiences I’ve ever had. But for fucks sake even us “Godslayers” just want to do a normal dungeon or raid now and then to just hang out with our friends. If you want to bring more pantheon like challenges into the game. PLEASE DO. I’d be so happy. I mean just bring back pantheon permanently or once per season or whatever. But yeah please don’t raise the floor. It makes it impossible to teach new generations of godlslayers and solo/low man players. And it makes the already least accessible but most interesting part of the game even less accessible.
My goat Aegis, since this is the first time I am this early, I just want to say thank you personally and behalf of many others in the community for your efforts in improving the understanding of endgame pve for the broader playerbase. You helped me understand and improve numerous times and your spreadsheet alone has been an incredible tool in helping my friends and myself learn about the meta and what to use! So from the bottom of my heart, thank you!!!
Also, can't wait to hear more from you about the final shape, the whole game has been shaken up and I can't wait to see your new data on the final shape and its many changes!
me and a group of friends have just started raiding regularly and have noticed these changes. One of my friends raids much more frequently and he said that every raid we had done was massively more difficult even saying he found last wish currently to be harder than how it was doing week one pantheon. He felt that it was incredibly upsetting to not have a way to introduce new players to the best activivites in the game without putting them in a pantheon level challenge.
i got a crazy idea, what if, dungeons and raids, had different difficulties, one for more casual players and one for more experienced veterans? crazy right?
What rewards would they even have to make it worth while though? They would need to be something worth doing over normal versions yet not as rewarding as master just to not overlap and make master pointless
@@ploptenado4886 Did you watch the vid? The power cap gave bosses that already had an inflated health pool an even bigger damage total to actually down. Solo dungeons are a gigantic slog.
My thoughts exactly! Raids and dungeons, despite being considered "end game" content, is still content that SHOULD be enjoyed by the wide casual player base. It's literally one of the three main selling points of expansions (story and subclass being the others). Making the barrier of entry even larger is backwards thinking that's only going to prevent more guardians from attempting raids and such.
It also makes the game way less fun for a large portion of the 1%. Ruin years of optimization and make the game significantly slower making it harder to carry for zero benefit. Most raids were hard enough for most casuals now they just made them annoying for anyone good. 4 arbalest shots for an angelic isn’t a fun power increase it’s just annoying.
ill be honest i used to love raids but with the boss hps and never really wanting/needing any of the loot that much i havent really wanted to do raids, and i love gms and dungeons and used to raid a lot. very excited for the story and all but its just not worth it
Kinda makes me miss how leviathan was handled. Get the base raid, which isn't terrible to get through on its own, then a alternate version that is harder with new mechanics for people who want the challenge. I for one have a mental disorder that makes information processing especially on the fly extremely difficult. So the more technical the raid (looking at Salvations edge) the less possible it is for me to do.
@@babytricep437as someone who teaches raids this change hurt pretty bad. i get a lot of new players who don’t have the best damage options, the surges make it harder as well as the higher boss health
I went to do a solo dungeon, didn’t notice any difference in the mob difficulty, but damn, dungeon bosses taking the extra phases to kill was so annoying Anecdotally, a lot of my friends who where just getting into “beginner” dungeons and raids have been really turned off my the damage changes because they simply don’t have that kind of weapon variety yet, or the bosses have become too arduous to be enjoyable
When I did 3 million damage to the ogre in warlords and saw that it only took away about 1/6th of his health I was like you have got to be fucking kidding me. It isn't even like that fight is difficult. It just takes FOREVER. Even if I am rushing to spawn the totems and getting 2 per spawn, we are looking at a 20 minute fight. Same load out before final shape was a tight 3 phase and a relaxed 4.
@@Tyger-vm9vu the guy I watch that does reasonably normal dps rotations (chablo91) did it in 5 last season. So I imagine it would be 8 to 9 (though the changes coming will probly drop it to 6). A prismatic Hunter with Celestial and still hunt could no doubt do these in significantly less phases but no mere mortal is going to be shooting through that amount of flinch and actually hitting crit spots. Not unless they roll back the insane amount of sniper flinch in pve. Even with triple targeting and triple unflinching I was still getting my scope sent all over the map the second the ogre touched me.
Sounds like your friends just need to get better stuff. The content should NEVER be brought down to the player level. The player needs to rise up to the content
I hope they fully revert these changes I dont want challenge when farming a normal mode raid, give me gm raids or something else to increase difficulty please bungie. It also hurts a lot of my friends, I like bringing my new light friends through raids and they dont have the build variety and gear variety to take advantage of surges. We tried to do a kingsfall and we couldn't do enough damage to war priest because they just didnt have good weapons, let alone surge matched good weapons.
How many people are you bringing in per run? I've been doing sherpas all the time since TFS dropped and while we might have to do an extra phase we're still able to complete the raid. Ir Yut for example, we had to two phase.
@@Justin_Leahy in that run, 4 And I'm working with like... Blowout/hezen vengeance, and a blue rocket as one of their best weapons. They dont play much but we've enjoyed doing the free to play raids on occasion until now
I'd argue you should let the new light grow before playing a raid. It's not endgame for nothing. Ofc you'd struggle carrying 4 people when none of them can DPS.
My problem with master is sure its more of a challenge but all i get is armor unless i want to do the challenges for each encounter which are usually not fun. They need to rework master raids before people actually want to do them outside of getting titles.
Yeah that's another problem: There is no point in engaging with the challenge difficulties, beyond the challenge itself. The rewards are awful for Master difficulty. Of course activities in a LOOTER SHOOTER are going to get low turnout if the LOOT and SHOOT are both bad.
People would probably be pissed but master might be worth it if they flipped drops such that adepts are now craftable, but red borders no longer drop from normal. Or just remove crafting from raids
Maybe bungie could make adept weapons have slightly different rolls from their normal versions. Sorta like how vorpal weapon would only drop on the sleepless rocket launcher if you got it from shattered throne back when it was initially reprised in season of the chosen
Absolutely amazing video!! I really appreciate the speed at which you talk. Lots of words but absolutely no wasted time. I love it! I'm sharing this video with a friend and subscribing
Salt made a good point on twitter too that if Still hunt is the Meta it doesnt make you change week to week when its not solar surge, it just makes you wait 3 weeks for solar surge to come back...
I think one big thing they could've done to increase the skill cap of raids is make Master mode always available and give it some bonus rewards (an exotic cipher for finishing the featured one for example). Normal mode should be the way to introduce new players to raids and should have a fairly low skill/gear requirement to ease them in.
This is something I have talked about a lot with my raid group. The top% players will always use whatever the best strategy is and will learn new things and use any technique to get an edge. On the other side most softcore and midcore raiders will usually use whatever has the best ease of use for a given activity. I am not expecting players who have never done Salvation's Edge to swap to hunter for Witness damage phase or have high DPS linears for every possible surge. Imagine a newer player going and getting the crafted Apex last season without having to do last wish only to be told when they want to raid that they need a rocket with a different element just to do reasonable damage. The normal mode raid should be a place to try wacky builds and experiment with old weapons and exotics. I wanted to try and do a all rat kings in the new raid but with the surge changes that was going to be miserable. At least now it looks more fun and I can start getting some of the less experienced raiders I know clears of the new raid.
Vanguard Ops are harder now too. -5 also applies here and it made most majors and bosses literal bullet sponges. Increasing difficulty is punishing new players from even playing the game as well, I played a bunch of strikes with some new players recently and they couldn't do anything since they weren't near the 1945 power level or hadn't gotten any good legendary or exotic gear yet. I had to carry them through but most of them gave up and quit..
Nice to hear a good breakdown of this. My clan has recently gotten back into Sherpa/ teaching runs and this just heightens unnecessary barriers to entry
My only issue with the surges is that Bungie did not add Overcharge to raids/dungeons, which on top of the recent nerf to Kinetic weapons against bosses, made running any kinetic a detriment. It doesn't matter if it has an artifact mod, an origin trait for the season or what not, those weapons will not be given any damage bonus.
surges actually apply to kinetic weapons if your super matches the surge week if I'm not mistaken. Unless it was changed in some patch notes, I thought that was a thing since forsaken.
@@ploptenado4886 this didnt apply with the dungeon raid changes, didnt even have the thing that mentioned it in the modifiers, but people tested and it didnt apply
@@ploptenado4886 This is a common misconception because Bungie made it all very confusing for no reason. The 25% kinetic damage surge from matching your super to one of the active surges requires the "Overcharged Weapons" modifier. So, for instance, if you select an activity and it has "Solar Surge" and "Stasis Surge", but no "Overcharged Weapons", your kinetics won't do extra damage even if your super matches one of the surges. It's always been annoying but it's become really silly recently with Bungie leaving out Overcharged Weapons on a lot of activities.
I completely agree, sherpa-ing has been sad and dissapointing for me this last week because I can't give raid first-timers a positive & chill experience and have to use all the cheese strats and meta builds to get through encounters. The added pressure makes it way harder for people to learn raid mechanics when they are struggling to even stay alive. The added challenge can be fun with a team that knows what they are doing but for people trying to get into raids it makes raids seem like too much work for the rewards
PLEASE KEEP THE SERIES ALIVE So many people not even players have such a poor perspective on reality they really do need to be sat down Your calm Eli5 explanations are perfect to combat some of these wild takes
This 100%. People not understanding why top tier players didn't like the activity getting harder the way that it did showed one example of our community not understanding each other. The misinformation around this game is wild, so it is very nice to have a calm, poignant source I can share when discussing this beautiful spaghetti game with other players. Another banger video Aegis.
You can trace this back even farther. Solo spire is still pretty grueling, especially with bad weapons. The first boss is such a grind on solo. Persys is pretty bad too.
Bungie’s trying to counter constant-damage-resist builds and one-phaseing every boss. The average player is just that, average, not doing those things. Taking away surges is just going to stop us using weapons we’ve had in the vault for 5 years. Dungeons and raids used to be fun and now we work our ass off on the lowest difficulty. I’ve literally watched the the amount of lfg posts for dungeons and raids decrease.
Raise the ceiling not the floor is so real, i FINALLY started trying raids again near the end of last season after being done with raids since ORIGINAL CROTA. Honestly why the hell they increased difficulty on regular content and not master is wild to me
Thank you so much for your work about this game, you make everything easier to understand and clarifyng the game. You can't imagine how much you help the community with video like this. Keep going you are the the very best gardian. All superheroes don't wear capes.
-5 power base, stillhunt has been added to the game, months prior whisper has been made craftable… DARCI must be an enemy of the rothchilds at this point
You made a really good point with the weapon surge instead of elemental surges. I hope they will introduce these more often and maybe stack them with the roll back in a small version like 5-10%
@@ploptenado4886 the thing about swords is that they're kind of an example of a situation where most of the damage types are relatively well balanced against each other. You can get Relentless+Whirlwind on an adaptive frame of any element (Stasis being hard to come by since that's on Zephyr, but Ill Omen is almost identical; and Strand not having an adaptive frame yet, you'd use Dragoncult Sickle instead) and you're basically 85% of the way there, discounting Surrounded since that isn't applicable on the most relevant sword boss right now. There are maybe 4-5 standouts outside of that I can think of--Summum Bonum, Perfect Fifth caster Ergo Sum, Goldtusk when aerial 1L1H is possible, and Falling Guillotine. (Bequest being about 10% better than a regular adaptive but only getting Vorpal if you're using it for situations other than Surrounded--maybe there's an argument for En Garde if you're doing Wolfpacks, but from messing with it myself I'm not 100% sold.) Compare that to the HGL and rocket situation, where the best HGLs outside of Edge Transit are pretty far behind it and Cataphract, and where Apex has been the best rocket launcher for a year with Cold Comfort (and later Crux, replacing Hothead/Blowout) being the only real competition. There still isn't a good strand or void rocket, or solar or stasis HGL. There are also no good LFRs period LOL
To your point on there needing to be an "intro difficulty" for raiding, I would like to see more difficulties than just Normal and Master, perhaps a mode between them, which could allow Bungie to really crank up Master mode to be something for the top 1% of players (how they would reward this, I have no idea). For example, in swtor (a game I used to raid a lot in) there were three difficulties, Story Mode (SM), Hard Mode (HM), and Nightmare Mode (NiM). SM was the mode for, well, story. It was for players that just want to experience the raid/story or begin learning HOW to raid. HM was for the people that want more of a challenge and to get better at the game. I would say the majority of the raiding community in swtor did HM progression, as it was a challenge but it didn't demand the best from people. NiM was the pinnacle, requiring extremely good damage and mechanical awareness to clear it, if you messed up once and died it usually led to a wipe. I think D2 would benefit a lot from a system like this, as it would give the super hardcore players something to grind on/show off how good they are, maybe with special emblems or ornaments or something like that.
While I mostly agree with the arguments here, I'd argue that over-leveling activities becomes problematic with new content where the only way to achieve maximum damage is with a highly-leveled artifact. If the artifact would no longer count towards out-leveling an activity, I feel like it would be a more even playing field that rewards genuine progression instead of bounty prep/farming
Tbh this take is bad considering most things in game are 1945 so outleveling any raid/dungeon is the equivalent to being 1965 aka legend campaign. Only problem I see is the -5 modifier they adopted from Pantheon for EVERYTHING..
Yet bungie made GMs 2020 this season which is another stupid change that requires you to grind +20 on artifact and pinnacle cap to be max effectiveness on GMs rather than last year needing +5 only. Makes sense...
i agree, overleveling content is kinda stupid, the rocomended light should just be the light, like if ur at that power level you should do optimal damage, i dunno why theres so many hidden layers to this
Saw the full brunt of the health changes when trying to do kings fall with a new light friend, couldn't do enough damage even when using arc weapons with the surge
The only people these changes benefitted were people who thought of themselves as ‘Elite’ who found normal Dungeons too easy but weren’t actually good enough for the higher difficulties. Huge telling-on-yourself moment.
Imagine complaining about difficulty changes and saying the players who wanted a harder game are bad. I this shit is copium and you’re the one telling on yourself
@@DaitoFoundry Imagine thinking that Destiny 2 is a game oriented toward a hardcore audience-those who can solo flawless any Souls-like game-and not toward semi-casual ‘lemme grab a beer and jump on Destiny on my PlayStation’ type of people; and then thinking that there wouldn't be a backlash from the semi-casual majority if the thing that, to their knowledge, represents the pinnacle of hardcore gameplay is made even harder. Destiny 2 is a casual game, get off your "DESTINY IS ONLY FOR SKILLED 10000000 HOURS HOBGOBLINS" copium
@@DaitoFoundry Those people already had harder difficulties to play, moron. They just weren't good enough for Master, that's why they're so elitist and eager to gatekeep Normal lmao. Use your brain.
completely unrelated question for curiosities sake, are you thinking about making a video on titans and their lack of endgame viability? i feel like its a huge topic that i havent seen many get into, i personally see it as a problem as, well, one class is basically thrown to the dust now
If a dungeon or raid doesnt meet the loot criteria it shouldnt be put under the -5 at all, im specifically speaking over GOS, VOG, and shattered throne, considering it doesnt have raid banners still, this was honestly a horrible idea as it takes the incentive over doing a quick dungeon run with a new light or a casual raid with some friends, going for the more veteran player base over people whod rather just get a cool gun. L change
One of your final points about not having challenging content hits especially hard. Speaking as someone who started the contest raid with 18 hours of sleep debt and a 3 hr nap. It’s especially demoralising the fact I have to wait another whole year to be challenged again.
Y'know, I hear complaints pretty often that there's a challenge gap between everything else and contest mode, but IMO the actual issue is that there's little reason to take on the challenges we already have. When's the last time you ran a master raid start-to-finish? A master dungeon for reasons other than somebody's exotic catalyst or other one-and-done triumph, or maybe an artifice farm on one relatively easy boss? Sure hasn't happened in my clan. My team, for one, mostly failed contest Salvation's Edge because people were dying to trash enemies on that difficulty, yet the rest of the year we never play content where dealing with trash quickly is a main part of the challenge. GMs do not count, they're so different from raids and dungeons that it's basically another game--find the safest spot in the room, stand there and plink away with long range weaponry, move on. That doesn't fly when there's a wipe timer or actual mechanics. You know what the hardest encounter for us was in Pantheon? (Aside from Rhulk where people kept dying during DPS, so we cheesed that.) It was Explicator. We had some issues hitting the DPS check to get plat, but we barely got to iterate on that for like a week because people were dead by then half the time for reasons I still don't entirely understand. Nez was similarly bad but we clicked a little faster on that.
pretty much exactly this. I'm all for doing content just for a challenge - but if I try to set up a master raid run in my clan to improve our average skill, I'm met with one word: "why?" People don't see a reason to run master - it's just not worth any hassle with it's implementation. Whenever people say "master is right there, just do those" I feel like they've either never done one themselves, or are in an environment where they're beyond even that as a challenge.
I haven't felt any need to run master raids besides for the titles, and even then it's basically running master *encounters* for the challenge and not a full run lol. My usual team doesn't want to do a full master run, LFG isn't worth the hassle for a full run, and the loot is hardly worth it either.
It’s pretty unanimous that up until this point there was no real reason to run master raids. Hopefully due the fact adept weapons have a higher than 1/47 drop chance of being the roll we want now, we should atleast have a chance of leaving the activity with an upgrade. Also they should add more spoils to master raids, playing master raids should give the most spoils, similar to pantheons triumph amount. I don’t want to have to go farm one arbitrary cp for 2 hours and then only beat the master raid final boss, for the best adept weapon odds.
What a goat, amazing analysis of the current sandbox with easy to follow explanations. Being completely honest I didn’t understand shit when I first read, so much appreciated for the helpful video ❤
Im not a person to call someome a meta slave serously and initially i thought the surges "were" nice untill this video you did a really good job breaking down why this wasnt persay healthy for change in the way players play ❤
you're actually so correct on the meta shift stuff- surges in raid and dungeons, to accomplish their original purpose, should absolutely be by weapon type and not element that's so much more interesting
Problem with raids i've found is that there's never any middle ground between the raid difficulties like there are Nightfalls. You go from being able to 2 or maybe even 1 phase bosses only being half-optimal with a semi-competent group to balls-to-the-walls dick-in-the-electric-outlet hard when jumping from regular to Master. Honestly, they should have the power delta + surge raids as a middle difficulty. And thats why im okay with this change to raids personally (power delta specifically). it helps bridge that gap between the two modes without compromising Master difficulty raids
I agree with and have voiced a lot of the same opinions presented here, my only thought is that if they are considered about the "big" advantage overleveling gave (wasnt all that much really) then just lock us at power and don't level overleveling be a thing. If the RPL if 1950, make us just equivalent the whole way through. They could even keep the defense scaling like they are now so players have a safer and more comfortable time in normal modes. Changing the flavor of your gear isn't a shift in anyway as stated, but the surges not only don't address outliers they actively enforcing harder "meta use" by keeping just the -5. If i'm doing less damage why the hell wouldn't i just always use the absolute best things to make it smoother and quicker? Incentivizes always trying to max what you can instead of letting people do weird and goofy fun shit. when you are constantly doing 15% less damage no one is gonna be like "Let's all do some dumb like 6 rat king" it just always becomes "Ergo + Guillotine here, and grab your Still Hunts". I really hope they make the move to eliminate the power negative cause it just makes content both unfun and unintuitive (double arby shot to break Simmumah anyone?) but we will see what the future hold.
He has spoken. Mostly my thoughts in the first place. We need more people playing the endgame, not less. Though I do like how enemies don’t just fall over. Old raids were kind of a “turn your brain off” activity which I didn’t get much enjoyment from after a month.
I personally only minded raids because the game is telling me what's optimal. If Bungie wants me to do Arc damage, it shouldn't be an arbitrary 25% modifier, it should give me more compelling Supers, heavies, exotics, etc etc that do Arc. Currently a majority of top damage options in all those aspects are Solar, Void, and a little Strand. In dungeons though, this completely killed my desire to run them. I really like how you pointed out the artificial difficulty thing, because i don't want a boss that, no matter how optimal i am, I'm probably taking three phases to kill, *with a team*. And then this is ludicrously amplified on solo runs, because now a vast majority of players are going to need several phases to beat it, when that was already an issue present before the changes.
I was so excited to tackle warlords ruin solo with prismatic. But they really gave the ogre 12 million health. I would really love them to dial in the campaign team scaler to apply to dungeons.
If they increased difficulty AND rewards reception to this change would be much less sour. Pantheon proved people happily will jump through a bunch of hoops if the payout is worth their time
Well Pantheon is a special mode designed to be a challenge, so naturally it makes sense to make it difficult, my main criticism is they changed what is the lowest/default mode of raid/dungeon content when it shouldn't be treated that way from a design standpoint
Bungie has consistently proven that they struggle understanding the difference between challenging vs frustrating. Challenging is healthy for the game but making things more frustrating only serves to hurt the game. The vast majority of players in any given game are the casuals. Casuals dont mind being challenged but when things seem impossible or impractical then there's always better more fun things to do and that ultimately leads to dwindling playerbase. If it takes half a day to throw a raid team together and another half a day wondering why you cant 1 phase the first boss encounter anymore then thats your whole 1 day off for that week filled with frustration. Do you think that same player is likely to log in next week on his day off? Or will he go play something fun and productive?
The casual raiding group in my clan has gone from being excited and confident enough to try Petra’s Runs to giving up on even trying Salvations Edge on normal, it’s harder to organise a raid night now than during the great layoffs last year despite having like twice as many active players.
As a relatively casual player that has done a few raids but wanted to get serious into grinding raids regularly, these changes don’t motivate me to jump in. I already found normal raids to be challenging, so I didn’t really need added challenges as an incentive…
My issue is that there seems to never be any middle ground when it comes to this game, and everything is always seen through the lens of literal beginner vs no lifer. The difference between a normal mode and master mode raid was somewhere in the realm of a 50 power delta before. 50! That's just far too much and doesn't leave any kind of middle ground. I've got a group of people I play the game with, we've got contest clears for every raid since DSC, but a lot of the people in my group just aren't interested in this huge difficulty increase Master has to offer, which leaves me in a situation where I'm just running normal raids, and they're designed in such a way that people who have literally just downloaded the game can run them and succeed. For me at least, -5 helps bridge that gap. We ran a crota last night and for the first time in almost a year people actually had to think about how they approached killing the Gatekeepers on the far side of the bridge, because spamming heavy attack wouldn't stunlock them anymore. I've been appreciating having at least some level of mental engagement in standard endgame content again.
Master mode has always been pinnacle +10 which is pretty easy to reach in a week or so of grinding especially this and least season which are both 3+ months long.
@@ZiranD2 it's not the actual power level that was the problem, it was the huge jump in difficulty of going from +20 over the activity to -25 (-20? I don't remember the exact number) under
I'm in a similar boat as you are where my clan only really runs normal mode raids and a -5 is a nice challenge. However normal mode raids should be for everyone and a -5 really hurts people who are just starting out who cant take advantage of +25% to certain elements because they just don't have the weapons and builds that people playing the game for years have. In normal mode what should be killing teams is mechanics not enemies and if I'm teaching who has just started raiding I want them to enjoy the challenge of learning the mechanics not having trouble killing enemies because they haven't played the game as much as me.
Could someone test the gatekeeper encounter challenge in VoG for me and let me know. Tried to finally go for the title and the relic super wouldn't one shot the praetorians. It'd take them down to about quarter health. Feel like that might have to do with the -5 change.
Id like a -5 option to remain open as a bridge between normal and master. Maybe it could give higher exotic and red box drop chances as well as an extra red border for a full clear.
I appreciate this new series you’re doing greatly. The sandbox gets spoken about in piecemeal on Twitter (X) and Reddit but no one consolidates thoughts too often in video format. Personally, I think the sandbox was already getting stale and this didn’t help it really. Looking forward to whenever you make the next one. :)
some people i know were also complaining about how this affects low manning endgame content but i'm not too educated on the topic itself so idk if their complaints were valid or not
I knew ppl enjoy hating things but man these comments are crazy. None of you actually read the surge changes. All u saw was that they are moving the buffs. But didn’t pay attention to the adjustments to which everything will now have the same increase without the verbiage of “surge” making the damage baseline. so u can have freedom to use what u want and still put out
Fantastic analysis, there was so much confusion out there. LFG have been pretty toxic this season as players generally didn’t understand why they weren’t getting 1/2 phases anymore and blaming other players. I had two groups get hard stuck at War Priest last week where we were just dumping heavy ammo into the boss and barely making a dent.
Totally agree that surges should be tied to weapon types and not their elements, but I think it’d also be cool to have broader “damage type” affinities baked into bosses directly (make some bosses weak to explosions, some to melee weapons, and others to precision damage) Also, master difficulty shouldn’t only be available for raids and dungeons while they’re the rotator for the week. Working around multiple schedules is hard enough already when you’re not restricted to only certain weeks.
As a solo player it really hurt dungeon solo dps. Cant find a good dps loadout for the last boss in ghost of the deep. Cant stand having to do more then 5 or 6 phases it takes way way too long.
Such a well thought out video and the comment section having genuine feedback about not only the video but topic itself is so refreshing. I agree surges are more restricting than they are helpful but i mostly like the -5 to raids and dungeons, it makes me think more about my build and postioning than just throwing on whatever i feel like. My biggest complaint is with solo dungeons, i bo no means am the best at the game but i consider myself up there and i struggled with solo dungeons before and i havent even attempted any this season but i did a duo run of warlords ruin with my friend and it felt way more difficult than before
All i know is that lfg is unbearable now. People suck at both mechanics and dps now, and the worst part is I'm on a new account and i need to regrind certain guns that were essentially my daily drivers and i used them every single day. F this.
I agree. They should keep the surge rotators to master and grandmaster content. These harder activities should also have better loot to entice more players to try them. As a causal player, there's just not much draw to farming master raids.
I am less incentivised to carry because ppl without meta/matching weapons will lag behind even more now. For crota's, someone was reluctant to use lament because it wasn't a "matching surge" and instead used his eager edge cold steel slammer.
The people who complained about raids being harder are those who participated in speed runs. Knowing that it basically ruins all speedrun data. What really bothered me is they hid behind the veil of "accessibility" when 99% of those same people don't play with _anyone_ who is new. They're not in the Sherpa business. They are just upset their speedruns now basically have a line drawn that sets them in their own era. I will argue that a LARGE % of people who don't play raids do so because of not wanting to play with people they don't know, or social anxiety - NOT because it's difficult content. It's almost exclusively because they don't want to talk to strangers or interact with people they don't know. But hey, none of it means anything to me. I've done low man runs. Speed runs. I've done it all in some capacity. But mostly retired from those and just casually raid with friends.
I think some people are definitely, as another comment put it, "virtue signaling" using new players as a criticism of this change, but if you know me and this channel well enough, you're probably aware that that isn't the case here, and I hope my reasoning in the video is clear and rational enough that it stands alone even outside of that context
my biggest problem with surges is that not all elements are created equal, arc and stasis have very little, void has edge transit and levi, solar has everything else
Changing meta would be old prestige modifier on raids that locked you to a specific loadout type like fusion in kinetic slot sidearm in energy gl in heavy, that kind of stuff, our make that and not lock people but give 25% bonus to that weapons in that slot
I am sold on this style of content. If you are able to make these types of videos consistently, it would be a huge benefit to the Destiny community. Please feel encouraged to continue doing this series.
I think you made some really good points especially regarding how this change reduces the space for challenge-run/low-mans of raids through the increased difficulty floor and how this experience is available to those who want it with master raids (ignoring the problems of dealing with a pretty long rotation and minimal rewards over doing it normal). The point about the meta on the other hand I don't totally agree with. For one I think Crota was kind of a bad example since the developers explicitly want you to use swords against him for what seems to be lore reasons but against a more standard boss I can see a world where in the current sandbox (excluding the outlier that is Still Hunt) the decision to run rockets or GLs could change depending on the surge (Apex during Solar surge given the lack of strong Solar GLs). But beyond that the discussion about meta ignores the fact that the meta at the highest level of play is different than it is at lower levels of play (similar to what is seen in other games like LoL, or fighting games). Exotic power weapons may not be meta at the highest level but at lower levels of play where execution is a limiting factor simple options like Sleeper/Whisper, Leviathans Breath, and Thunderlord are much more prevalent and so surges would definitely have an impact on the meta which we saw pretty clearly with pantheon where popular damage strategies changed fairly significantly week to week at lower levels of play. Whether that expansion of the meta at lower skill levels is worth the potential downsides of this change at higher skill levels is worth discussing but I don't think that was well captured here (which is fair since you obviously have the perspective of a top level pve player). I also don't think that the raising barrier to entry is worth too much discussion either since its purely anecdotal, and in my experience what's stopping people from raiding is not combat difficulty but needing to get a team of 6 people together so I don't think the combat change would have much of an impact at all on accessibility of the raids (but again that's purely anecdotal since only Bungie would really have the numbers on this). I suspect in general a lot of these changes came after the perhaps unexpected success of Pantheon which may have shown them that the average player (in particular someone who doesn't raid much) is plenty capable of dealing with -5 + rotating surges if the reward is good enough (which is a separate but related issue).
During week three Pantheon, our group brought out Grand Overture for Arc Week and crushed Caretaker with it. Something we never would've done if there were no surges.
Pretty much voicing my exact gripes with the points - and this whole discussion in general - so I was happy I came across your comment on it. There's a lot of hypothesis stated as almost factual, to a point where the best word I can think of for it is 'virtue signaling' for lower skill players. Across multiple MMOs the issue of "majority of players don't raid (read: touch endgame)" is a thing, and I don't think any change to the difficulty is any part of that. Even LFR in WoW don't get touched by the majority, even though it's specifically dumbing down the raid encounters for that sake.
I still think weapon surges would be better. It would have the same effect (people would experiment with things like grand overture on machine gun surge) but also shake things like Crota up, who might see a meta shift from swords from week to week.
Choosing between running edge transit or apex week by week imo does not make for an interesting mix-up in gameplay, an easy solution is to add weapon based surges instead of elemental ones, as was mentioned in the video.
I mention in the video that a major barrier to entry for RAD content is finding a team, what I'm saying is that this unnecessarily adds on top of that when IMO a normal difficulty tier should be specifically about what makes a raid different from other content (cooperative mechanics, revive tokens, 6 man add density, meaningful boss DPS). However, I'm not as against -5 as I am against surges, for some of the reasons you stated. If you're interested in my more specific thoughts, I responded to the pinned comment with more details.
ive been putting up with surges and -5 in lfg ever since the day 1, my only real complaint is that some surges are overloaded with great dps options (e.g. solar) while darkness surges have almost nothing. strand has cataphract, which is great, dont get me wrong but in reality thats really it. and stasis actually has NOTHING. the only endgame relevant dps options are cold comfort and the slammer works i guess. but realistically speaking, maybe 1/6 people in your fireteam have the cold comfort godroll when you might as well not even run rockets in the current meta. while im accepting of the idea of -5 and the need to comply with surges, the newer damage types are just not ready for that sort of thing.
I agree with some of your points, but not all of them.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the continual powercreep of guardians at all. Our weapons and abilities are the strongest they've been in years. I think that makes up for the reduced damage output for many more casual players. If there is an actual drop in the success rate of LFG raids and other pickup groups, I would actually guess it's more to do with player survivability and the nerfs to Well of Radiance than it is to player damage output- entry level raid teams wipe to mechanics failure and inopportune player deaths far more than to low DPS, at least in my experience.
I don't think "just go play Master mode if you want raids to be challenging" is a fair argument. Master mode is not always available, and doesn't even exist for some of the older raids. There are many clans and fireteams in this game who participate in raids and dungeons in a relatively casual way, but still like some level of challenge- my own clan has gotten extremely bored of older content like VoG and Shattered Throne where the bosses just fall over immediately no matter what you do. The power gap being reduced made those encounters more interesting for us and got my group motivated to revisit that content now that it feels less like a patrol zone.
You brought up Still Hunt with Celestial Nighthawk as an example of a build so strong that it doesn't care about surges. I think it kind of undermines your earlier argument, on why surges obligate people to make build changes without meaningfully benefiting gameplay. It makes it unclear if you're saying that surges matter too much, or don't matter at all. Personally, I would just dismiss Nighthawk Still Hunt as an outlier. Anything strong enough to ignore elemental surges is a serious balance problem that needs to be addressed.
That said, I don't disagree with your conclusions. Here are some additional points I would make in your support, opposing the changes:
1) Player survivability reduction with the nerfs to things like healing, Woven Mail, and most recently Well of Radiance should have been given more time to settle before Bungie tried a change like this. Well of Radiance, in particular, is a huge deal for lower skill groups, where the Well being an effective invulnerability zone was incredibly important for keeping players alive during DPS phases. That nerf coinciding with the expansion launch power reset AND the power deficit changes to Raids are too many changes at once, and have resulted in many compounding reductions to survivability that are hard to measure the effects of individually. I don't think the Well nerf was unjustified, but it should have been given time to settle before making further changes.
2) Information communication. The power system is very confusing to new and experienced players alike. It has gotten very complicated over the past few years, especially now that we have activities that lock your power at a minimum, or a maximum, or ignore it entirely... these changes were not communicated clearly at all. Outgoing player damage is now permanently capped at -5 power in normal raids, but you can mitigate the enemy damage buffs by going up to +15 power? How does that make sense? How would anyone have known the system works like that without Bungie talking about it in the most recent TWID? This isn't communicated clearly anywhere ingame at all. They need to rethink this system.
Thanks for the informative video, and to anyone who took the time to read this ridiculously long comment.
Very well-thought out comment, I appreciate your analysis! I agree that powercreep is 100% real... we are getting stronger and more resilient by the season, and yes, players definitely wipe more to mechanics/unnecessary random deaths in normal raids right now than they do to DPS, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, and this will tie into my next response about the normal vs. master situation.
I probably should've clarified more on my master difficulty stance - in my opinion, normal raiding should be a space where the combat is slightly difficult (but not so much that it becomes a distraction) where the mechanics are being introduced to newer players and they are the main challenge, while master raiding serves to test your ability to survive while doing mechanics you're already familiar with. The fact that master difficulty is a rotator and feels gimmicky for a lot of players, to me, is an indictment of master mode's current implementation rather than the space both difficulties occupy in concept.
As for SH + Nighthawk, both things can exist! For example, on Herald of Finality, a boss where you'd use both SH and a sword rather than just one or the other, both ideas come into play. I'm not even irritated that much by being forced to keep a bunch of swords, it's moreso a response to this idea that surges are meta-shifting, which they are not. So, to respond to your point, I will clarify that I think surges do not actually end up mattering, just that they are a small nuisance to players like me and potentially a major missed opportunity to newer players who don't have easy access to any and all weapons.
I'll acknowledge that it's a difficult point to balance - you introduce 'good' powercreep through Prismatic and other changes as something to draw in player attention at an absolutely essential moment in Destiny history, and so raids either become even more easy combat-wise than they were before, or you respond by making them more difficult to match. To be honest, this is why (I've said this in other comments as well) I'm not as much against -5 as I am surges, since the amount of combat difficulty increase, especially with the universal surge changes, isn't hugely significant or majorly detrimental for prepared players, but I'm not sure if it was also really necessary rather than a more measured approach, like tuning older bosses to have more reasonable health or scaling just combatant damage for survivability purposes.
Edit: I'm also going to pin this, because I think it brings up some important points and I don't want to rewrite my responses to all of them to every individual comment that brings up just one or two of them.
I'd like it if there was an intermediate level to Master level raids, but I also understand that rewards would not meaningfully change if there was.
Adept weapons are cool but they're more of a status symbol than a huge functional increase in power over their base/crafted variants. There's no real design space for rewards from an intermediate level raid clear.
I'm reminded of when Nightfalls could have customized difficulty/modifiers to change point scores/values. This serves two purposes:
1) You can turn on helpful modifiers, such as damage surges and improved Radar, to help teach newbies the raid. They get 1 or 2 drops at the end, but now they understand the mechanics and will be better equipped mentally to focus on combat next time.
2) This also allows groups to challenge themselves by turning the difficulty up slightly for a chance at better rewards at the end(maybe armor with more higher weighted rolls, extra drops and maybe even an Adept weapon/Artifice armor if your score is above a certain threshold), without making concrete changes that impact the whole playerbase by doing set in stone Surges for a week. This can keep Raids exciting even outside of the Raid race.
I think maybe a system like that, where instead of dropping rewards every encounter, you get a set of rewards based on a point total at the end of the raid, might be fun, and maybe Bungie posts a leaderboard of the highest points scored so people are motivated to turn the difficulty up to insane levels to try for high scores, with some sort of exclusive reward if your team posted a score within the top 10% or something for a Raid at one point, like an Emblem or Shader or something, and it has a special glow if your team is currently in the Top 10%. It'd probably be a bitch to code, but maybe it even lists the full fireteam from that run if someone inspects it.
THAT SAID, I do enjoy that Surges motivate players to try something that would normally be off-meta because the surge can change what works. However, I personally think the Nighthawk-Still Hunt synergy needs to be removed before we can meaningfully discuss balance. It is SO powerful, SO consistent and SO simple to do that it shuts out all other DPS options from higher level meta discussions. If you're a Hunter and you're in a Raid boss encounter, spoiler alert, 90% of the time you're using Still Hunt/Nighthawk, and if you're NOT a Hunter, your contribution to DPS almost doesn't matter in comparison.
@@perrycarters3113 This sounds like a good implementation. Sherpa runs would be so much easier if you could just make the combat a cakewalk for the newbies, even if it meant missing out on loot. It would also filter out people who just want to get carried for loot and ensure the people on your lobby want to learn the raid. Also customizable master sounds awesome. I don't want to play with no radar, but idm some spider mines lol. Cool idea for sure
@@TheAegisRelic I’m still personally not sure how much I agree on the surges not being meta-shifting. I agree that something weapon type specific would do it more effectively but as of right now there isn’t say a solar equivalent to edge transit, meaning that when a solar surge was on gjally with apex would likely be better. Now when a solar equivalent to edge gets added that will change but I think there are still some more things to explore in the exotic department and the subclass department.
An arc surge might make fourth horseman the premier pick in a situation you might otherwise use merciless and solar surge doing the inverse. Agreeing with the commenter above still hunt is not staying where it is so assuming it doesn’t get nerfed into oblivion and is still viable surges might dictate whether you use still hunt or cloud strike or euphony.
This does obviously apply less to subclasses as subclasses are defined mostly by can they auto reload or not in the dps meta outside of melee range (i am extremely annoyed about facet of command) but a surge might dictate whether you use strand or solar as warlock, or stasis or solar as hunter maybe (idk how buffed silence and squall with impetus compares to CNH).
At the end of the day I agree that something like weapon overcharges might be better and maybe all of this should be in a separate raid difficulty but I do think surges can change a lot.
I agree with your final point more than anything though. There is not enough incentive for the furthest endgame content. The issue is that I feel like much of the community would end up complaining if something truly unique and interesting was locked behind the hardest content - look at the initial backlash to dual destiny, which isn’t hard but has a barrier to entry to a very cool, unique and build-defining piece of armour.
@@Vahloksavjul Honestly, my sympathy for people complaining about their inability to participate in Dual Destiny is somewhat limited by your reasoning for the complaint.
It's an MMO with a focus on cooperative content. The solo player lifestyle will only ever get you so far, and the in-game LFG is honestly pretty good. I haven't had many bad experiences with it. And I'm speaking as someone who is predominantly a solo player. I've run raids, master dungeons, GM's, and I've gone flawless, and the only one you need a mic for is raids, and honestly not even all raids.
As for the few complaints I've heard that are centered around accessibility issues, ie I read a complaint from someone who is deaf-mute lamenting that they'll probably never complete Dual Destiny because it takes too long to communicate the clock-face at the end and it cycles to the next set before they can do so.
And.... yeah. That really sucks. There's no real workaround for that. Like, you could group up with someone who has an extra monitor and Discord them and share your screen and they just type in which one you need to shoot, but that's a lot of setup and there's still a delay from the internet so the timing would be razor thin.
Unfortunately, I don't really think there's much that can be done to alleviate that. Mechanics-heavy content that requires clear, concise and swift communication will always be inaccessible on some level to people with those sorts of disabilities, and again, in an MMO with a focus on cooperative content... that's bound to happen.
Someone who is deaf-mute should probably not be tasked with reading in VoG or VoD, or to direct someone where to stand when doing Riven legit, or to take Golgoroth's gaze since they can't communicate the countdown. And that's not "Oh, people with X disability should just not play the game", that's "Yeah, whoever is able to communicate this important information to us the fastest and can quickly clarify it when we ask them to confirm what they said, I would prefer they took that role," And unfortunately in Dual Destiny, there are only two roles and both of them require fast communication.
Should there be an alternative mission/method of attainment for a solo player to get the item without needing to run Dual Destiny first to unlock it? Maybe, but if they did that, NOBODY would play the duo version unless it came with some sort of increased reward, such as two perks in each "slot" on your roll or something.
you might say this here, but the fact shattered throne got a -5 deficit and still does not have rally flags is crazy.
No flags is dumb but the bosses are wet paper so it truly doesnt matter
@@mutantraze3681 ^
it would be nice but do we really need rally flags for shattered throne lmao
@@s4bugs maybe we don't, but can you imagine just how much harder that dungeon got for players who could barely do it before
Bruh u need 1 dubious volley shot 😂
Mistaking guillotine for a hive relic and trying to break the green orbs during the overthrow made me laugh way too hard
lol whats the timestamp?
@@Kunai969:32
@@Kunai96 9:02? Looks like the usual buggy pickup prompt.
The sword is stasis. I’m 100% sure it’s the slammer from vanguard since FG doesn’t have osmosis or permeability.
sometimes you're on autopilot and don't realize these things lol
"Raise the ceiling, not the floor" couldn't agree more
👏🏻
Having a solo player one phase a dungeon boss is fine if said player is having to use a very optimal high skill strat (cringe mid dps loadout swaps) or a cheese strat (banner of war titan or I guess now hunters grapple nukes).
Unfortunately now you have to use such techniques on bosses to not 12 phase. I’m looking at you GOTD.
This mindset literally only benefits the two minority groups of players, the highest echelon and the most casual of casuals.
The middle group are the majority. They should be the ones the game is balanced around.
There's a reason rhulk is still the best raid boss we've ever had, every weapon type and super type for damage can be successfully used on him, some with more difficulty than others, but they're all usable and can be applied with the right strat. How bungie didn't recognise this and just gave us another crit spot final encounter I don't know, you want loadout variation, give us opportunities to use them.
THIS! like Rhulk was the perfect example of how to do a final raid boss! (dmg wise) you can have some people doing swords, a hunter or 2 on SH+celestial, machine guns, ability dmg, etc …. the potential is crazy. then, come to the final boss of the light and darkness saga, THE BE ALL TO THE END ALL, and it’s just a glorified Oryx fight where he does things to try to kill you. which isn’t even difficult to dodge, even while ADS. Bungie be picking the ball up and popping it with a fucking Chucky knife. it pisses me off so much😐
@@ryngoku24 Yeah, sure, Rhulk is a great fight, but saying the Witness is a bad fight is absolutely not true. Comparing the Witness to Orix is completely missing the point. Orix doesn't attack you at all. Meanwhile any attack the witness throws at you is a one-shot, so you have to be careful. Sure, to you it's not hard but for many people it is and one mistake can really fuck up a run. It only isn't "hard" if you have someone that is calling the attacks out and doesn't make any mistakes (because one mistake can lead to multiple deaths which can really fumble a run). Besides, if the only requirement for a good fight is you being able to use multiple weapons against the boss.... then Nezarec is the second best raid boss ever.
@@lordgrub12345 first, never said the witness was easy, just that it’s not hard to dodge his attacks which they aren’t. secondly, witness boss fight is literally oryx but with attacks to dodge. the boss model is exactly the same and it comes down to simply learning his attack patterns. and Rhulk isn’t good because of the different number of dmg options , it’s just a plus as to why he’s good. BUT being able to use a multitude of different dmg strats on Rhulk while still being optimal? that’s VERY rare. not to mention he actually fights you during the encounter , not just stand still for hit scan dps or a complete bullet sponge. He’s the literal final boss to a 10 year story and the best dmg strat is to stand on a plate with precision weapons? that’s a throw, A MAJOR THROW in the kind of fight we could’ve gotten from Bungie imo.
P.S. : also, another thing that makes SE seem “difficult” is the rework they did for raids and dungeons. if we were leveled like pre TFS, Witness too would be a joke. While i don’t want a weak boss fight where everything absolutely slaps the witness, i also don’t want to see casuals punished for a raid that simply comes down to the limited variety presented to them for DPS on TOP OF THE VERY LINEAR boss design.
@@ryngoku24 First: No, the witness' attacks are not easy to dodge,. You saying it again does not make it true. If you are using a weapon where you need to scope, you would have to be constantly unscoping and losing damage just to dodge it. Second: No, the Witness isn't like Orix. Just because it is a big boss with a big crit spot doesn't mean it's Orix and you saying it again does not make it true. Third: Nezarec also has plenty optimal dps. Just as many as Rhulk. You are completely missing the reason why Rhulk is good. Fourth: The Witness would not be easy without the raid changes. The day one proves that. Fifth: Just because he is a big boss with a big crit spot does not instantly mean bad boss. Since you wanna compare the Witness to Orix, he was one of the most memorable bosses in raid history. Sixth: The witness is not hard because of limited boss design. Still Hunt Nighthawk, which is the best dps strat currently, is the best strategy on him and yet many people struggled on him. I'm pretty sure he was one of the longest boss fights in the game's history.
@@lordgrub12345
1) you’re comparing contest mode to actual difficulty level. that itself is invalid. most day one raids pose a difficult challenge. and most people don’t clear it on day one.
2) Witness dmg attacks are very simple to dodge , reddit forums and base players who actually attempt this raid both agree on this point. the fact that you find it difficult is a direct correlation to YOUR individual skill level. even if i used your point against you “it’s only easy if someone is calling it out” THAT RIGHT THERE is basis enough to say the difficulty isn’t that bad at all.
3) The weapon choice is strictly up to you and again, comes down to your skill level. if you really think you’re losing THAT much dmg when quickscoping still hunt or cloud strike? my boy, you need to get better at this game because your saying losing 2 frames is killing your total dmg and dps. which again, comes down to your individual skill level.
4) Take away the witness attacks and show me ONE single difference between his damage phase and Oryx’s damage phase. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. They’re the exact same. only difference is Witness actually fights back , which again, if you find difficult, comes down to your own encounter knowledge and skill level.
5) AGAIN, I didn’t say Rhulk was the ONLY boss who had good dmg strats that could be optimized , I said it’s RARE. learn to read my boy. Simply said it was a BONUS to Rhulk. NOT WHY HE WAS GOOD. (I’m all caps’n some phrases so hopefully YOU ACTUALLY READ WHAT I’M SAYING BEFORE GIVING AN OFF THE WALL RESPONSE)
All in all, get better at the game. But also, Bungie is still wrong for punishing tho who want to raid by limiting their options. And you believing that a stagnant boss for a conclusion of the light and darkness saga is good is crazy work. Cause it’s not. Please think of your response before you give it. Cause if it’s off the wall again, I promise I won’t give another. Good day 🫱🏾🫲🏽
Great video. Normal mode dungeons and raids are about being able to execute mechanics and get a team together. Master mode is where you add the challenge of survivability and optimal boss damage and surge rotators on top of mechanical execution to show you've mastered the raid.
one thing i so desperately wish was that master content wasn’t time gated and put on a weekly rotator. It makes it really obnoxious to even want to approach that kind of stuff
Yup. I mean pantheon. Probably the most widely beloved endgame challenge in years was only around for 5 weeks total…. Even for me, someone with a dedicated raid team/discord/clan, it’s hard to get people together for a master raid or any other weekly rotator. And as we add more and more raids and dungeons to the rotator it’s just going to get worse. I hate having to wait literal weeks or months to play the content I want to play or need to play for titles and ranks and what not.
@@bulldogfront666to add. Pantheon being so time limited made me not want to buy Final Shape and I didn't play at all when it was released because it felt forced. I want to load up my pc and play what I want, when I want.
The thought that "Oh I have to play this NOW or it's gone" really disgusts me. FOMO should not be weaponized.
5:05 aegis avoiding sayings salts name like hes voldemort
I thought I was the only one noticed that lol
nah its just to avoid the hate bandwagon that gets placed onto a specific person instead of a community/type of player. Why is it only salts fault when he is just the one who says what the rest of the top 0.1% of players are thinking or talking about in dms and not in open threads on Twitter/Reddit?
he-who-shall-not-be-salted
@@confiteor266most of the top 0.1% hated this change lmao. Speedrunners and day 1 runners are very different and I have never heard a single speedrunner ask for something like this.
@@confiteor266because the reason the rest of the 0.1% of players _aren’t_ talking about recommended changes based on _their_ playstyles is because they know it’s dumb to base a game around a tiny minority (you said it yourself- “0.1%”).
He’s the *only* streamer with the intelligence (or lack thereof) to outwardly want changes based on the “top 0.1%”.
This was my worst fear when they announced the power changes that it would be a minute until people understood what’s going on and the barrier of entry is not something that should be high, I shouldn’t be yanking my hair out doing a raid I’ve been doing for months
“Raise the ceiling not the floor” is such a perfect and succinct way to put this. I’m all for bringing challenge to the game. Pantheon was probably the most satisfying and exciting gaming experiences I’ve ever had. But for fucks sake even us “Godslayers” just want to do a normal dungeon or raid now and then to just hang out with our friends. If you want to bring more pantheon like challenges into the game. PLEASE DO. I’d be so happy. I mean just bring back pantheon permanently or once per season or whatever. But yeah please don’t raise the floor. It makes it impossible to teach new generations of godlslayers and solo/low man players. And it makes the already least accessible but most interesting part of the game even less accessible.
Yeah Pantheon was awesome
My goat Aegis, since this is the first time I am this early, I just want to say thank you personally and behalf of many others in the community for your efforts in improving the understanding of endgame pve for the broader playerbase. You helped me understand and improve numerous times and your spreadsheet alone has been an incredible tool in helping my friends and myself learn about the meta and what to use! So from the bottom of my heart, thank you!!!
Also, can't wait to hear more from you about the final shape, the whole game has been shaken up and I can't wait to see your new data on the final shape and its many changes!
me and a group of friends have just started raiding regularly and have noticed these changes.
One of my friends raids much more frequently and he said that every raid we had done was massively more difficult even saying he found last wish currently to be harder than how it was doing week one pantheon.
He felt that it was incredibly upsetting to not have a way to introduce new players to the best activivites in the game without putting them in a pantheon level challenge.
i got a crazy idea, what if, dungeons and raids, had different difficulties, one for more casual players and one for more experienced veterans? crazy right?
only if their was adept and master raids... what a life that would be
I don't know why people are acting like -5 is such a big deal, like genuinely. It's 5 light lower than what strikes are right now.
What rewards would they even have to make it worth while though? They would need to be something worth doing over normal versions yet not as rewarding as master just to not overlap and make master pointless
@@ploptenado4886 i think it's more about surges, i personally hate when the game tells me to run X or Y because there's a champion or something
@@ploptenado4886 Did you watch the vid? The power cap gave bosses that already had an inflated health pool an even bigger damage total to actually down. Solo dungeons are a gigantic slog.
My thoughts exactly! Raids and dungeons, despite being considered "end game" content, is still content that SHOULD be enjoyed by the wide casual player base. It's literally one of the three main selling points of expansions (story and subclass being the others). Making the barrier of entry even larger is backwards thinking that's only going to prevent more guardians from attempting raids and such.
It also makes the game way less fun for a large portion of the 1%. Ruin years of optimization and make the game significantly slower making it harder to carry for zero benefit. Most raids were hard enough for most casuals now they just made them annoying for anyone good. 4 arbalest shots for an angelic isn’t a fun power increase it’s just annoying.
Yes cater to the BABIES who whine when they have to work for something! Great idea!
ill be honest i used to love raids but with the boss hps and never really wanting/needing any of the loot that much i havent really wanted to do raids, and i love gms and dungeons and used to raid a lot. very excited for the story and all but its just not worth it
Kinda makes me miss how leviathan was handled. Get the base raid, which isn't terrible to get through on its own, then a alternate version that is harder with new mechanics for people who want the challenge.
I for one have a mental disorder that makes information processing especially on the fly extremely difficult. So the more technical the raid (looking at Salvations edge) the less possible it is for me to do.
@@babytricep437as someone who teaches raids this change hurt pretty bad. i get a lot of new players who don’t have the best damage options, the surges make it harder as well as the higher boss health
I went to do a solo dungeon, didn’t notice any difference in the mob difficulty, but damn, dungeon bosses taking the extra phases to kill was so annoying
Anecdotally, a lot of my friends who where just getting into “beginner” dungeons and raids have been really turned off my the damage changes because they simply don’t have that kind of weapon variety yet, or the bosses have become too arduous to be enjoyable
When I did 3 million damage to the ogre in warlords and saw that it only took away about 1/6th of his health I was like you have got to be fucking kidding me. It isn't even like that fight is difficult. It just takes FOREVER. Even if I am rushing to spawn the totems and getting 2 per spawn, we are looking at a 20 minute fight. Same load out before final shape was a tight 3 phase and a relaxed 4.
@@ryanmolloy5421my solo flawless ghost took 9 phases for the final boss back in season of the deep i wonder how many will it take now xd
@@Tyger-vm9vu the guy I watch that does reasonably normal dps rotations (chablo91) did it in 5 last season. So I imagine it would be 8 to 9 (though the changes coming will probly drop it to 6). A prismatic Hunter with Celestial and still hunt could no doubt do these in significantly less phases but no mere mortal is going to be shooting through that amount of flinch and actually hitting crit spots. Not unless they roll back the insane amount of sniper flinch in pve. Even with triple targeting and triple unflinching I was still getting my scope sent all over the map the second the ogre touched me.
@@ryanmolloy5421honestly, flinch hurts so much on snipers, it’s the main reason I don’t normally use snipers in PvE.
Sounds like your friends just need to get better stuff. The content should NEVER be brought down to the player level. The player needs to rise up to the content
I hope they fully revert these changes
I dont want challenge when farming a normal mode raid, give me gm raids or something else to increase difficulty please bungie.
It also hurts a lot of my friends, I like bringing my new light friends through raids and they dont have the build variety and gear variety to take advantage of surges. We tried to do a kingsfall and we couldn't do enough damage to war priest because they just didnt have good weapons, let alone surge matched good weapons.
On Tuesday they’re reversing the surge change I think. Idk if they’re still keeping the -5 power cap though
@@beepboop2803 yup, I heard, it's a good first step but I really hope they go all the way
How many people are you bringing in per run? I've been doing sherpas all the time since TFS dropped and while we might have to do an extra phase we're still able to complete the raid. Ir Yut for example, we had to two phase.
@@Justin_Leahy in that run, 4
And I'm working with like... Blowout/hezen vengeance, and a blue rocket as one of their best weapons. They dont play much but we've enjoyed doing the free to play raids on occasion until now
I'd argue you should let the new light grow before playing a raid. It's not endgame for nothing. Ofc you'd struggle carrying 4 people when none of them can DPS.
My problem with master is sure its more of a challenge but all i get is armor unless i want to do the challenges for each encounter which are usually not fun. They need to rework master raids before people actually want to do them outside of getting titles.
Yeah that's another problem: There is no point in engaging with the challenge difficulties, beyond the challenge itself. The rewards are awful for Master difficulty. Of course activities in a LOOTER SHOOTER are going to get low turnout if the LOOT and SHOOT are both bad.
People would probably be pissed but master might be worth it if they flipped drops such that adepts are now craftable, but red borders no longer drop from normal. Or just remove crafting from raids
Maybe bungie could make adept weapons have slightly different rolls from their normal versions. Sorta like how vorpal weapon would only drop on the sleepless rocket launcher if you got it from shattered throne back when it was initially reprised in season of the chosen
Absolutely amazing video!! I really appreciate the speed at which you talk. Lots of words but absolutely no wasted time. I love it! I'm sharing this video with a friend and subscribing
Salt made a good point on twitter too that if Still hunt is the Meta it doesnt make you change week to week when its not solar surge, it just makes you wait 3 weeks for solar surge to come back...
I think one big thing they could've done to increase the skill cap of raids is make Master mode always available and give it some bonus rewards (an exotic cipher for finishing the featured one for example). Normal mode should be the way to introduce new players to raids and should have a fairly low skill/gear requirement to ease them in.
100%
The amount of health every raid boss has right now is hilarious. Warpriest and Oryx are especially hilarious right now.
The nerf to Well of Radiance already made raids harder for a lot of players without adding this shit that nobody asked for.
This is something I have talked about a lot with my raid group. The top% players will always use whatever the best strategy is and will learn new things and use any technique to get an edge. On the other side most softcore and midcore raiders will usually use whatever has the best ease of use for a given activity. I am not expecting players who have never done Salvation's Edge to swap to hunter for Witness damage phase or have high DPS linears for every possible surge. Imagine a newer player going and getting the crafted Apex last season without having to do last wish only to be told when they want to raid that they need a rocket with a different element just to do reasonable damage. The normal mode raid should be a place to try wacky builds and experiment with old weapons and exotics. I wanted to try and do a all rat kings in the new raid but with the surge changes that was going to be miserable. At least now it looks more fun and I can start getting some of the less experienced raiders I know clears of the new raid.
Bro did NOT fall off.
Vanguard Ops are harder now too. -5 also applies here and it made most majors and bosses literal bullet sponges.
Increasing difficulty is punishing new players from even playing the game as well, I played a bunch of strikes with some new players recently and they couldn't do anything since they weren't near the 1945 power level or hadn't gotten any good legendary or exotic gear yet. I had to carry them through but most of them gave up and quit..
Nice to hear a good breakdown of this. My clan has recently gotten back into Sherpa/ teaching runs and this just heightens unnecessary barriers to entry
My only issue with the surges is that Bungie did not add Overcharge to raids/dungeons, which on top of the recent nerf to Kinetic weapons against bosses, made running any kinetic a detriment. It doesn't matter if it has an artifact mod, an origin trait for the season or what not, those weapons will not be given any damage bonus.
surges actually apply to kinetic weapons if your super matches the surge week if I'm not mistaken. Unless it was changed in some patch notes, I thought that was a thing since forsaken.
@@ploptenado4886 this didnt apply with the dungeon raid changes, didnt even have the thing that mentioned it in the modifiers, but people tested and it didnt apply
@@ploptenado4886That only applies when there’s a weapon overcharge in the activity
@@ploptenado4886 This is a common misconception because Bungie made it all very confusing for no reason. The 25% kinetic damage surge from matching your super to one of the active surges requires the "Overcharged Weapons" modifier. So, for instance, if you select an activity and it has "Solar Surge" and "Stasis Surge", but no "Overcharged Weapons", your kinetics won't do extra damage even if your super matches one of the surges. It's always been annoying but it's become really silly recently with Bungie leaving out Overcharged Weapons on a lot of activities.
@@ploptenado4886 Only if overcharge is active on the modifier list.
Unbelievably well-spoken, and with information you couldn't pay me to lab out to back it up. Incredible video.
I completely agree, sherpa-ing has been sad and dissapointing for me this last week because I can't give raid first-timers a positive & chill experience and have to use all the cheese strats and meta builds to get through encounters. The added pressure makes it way harder for people to learn raid mechanics when they are struggling to even stay alive. The added challenge can be fun with a team that knows what they are doing but for people trying to get into raids it makes raids seem like too much work for the rewards
PLEASE KEEP THE SERIES ALIVE
So many people not even players have such a poor perspective on reality they really do need to be sat down
Your calm Eli5 explanations are perfect to combat some of these wild takes
This 100%. People not understanding why top tier players didn't like the activity getting harder the way that it did showed one example of our community not understanding each other. The misinformation around this game is wild, so it is very nice to have a calm, poignant source I can share when discussing this beautiful spaghetti game with other players.
Another banger video Aegis.
6:02 the "sand bags of health" was referring to the boss of the Ghosts of the Deep dungeon by any chance?
Most bosses that can't be one-phased would fall into this category imo
yep
You can trace this back even farther. Solo spire is still pretty grueling, especially with bad weapons. The first boss is such a grind on solo. Persys is pretty bad too.
@@duchoang5410persys imo is less or an issue than the first boss since you can get to damage phase fairly quicker compared to it
@@duchoang5410why solo with bad weapons?
Bungie’s trying to counter constant-damage-resist builds and one-phaseing every boss. The average player is just that, average, not doing those things.
Taking away surges is just going to stop us using weapons we’ve had in the vault for 5 years.
Dungeons and raids used to be fun and now we work our ass off on the lowest difficulty. I’ve literally watched the the amount of lfg posts for dungeons and raids decrease.
Raise the ceiling not the floor is so real, i FINALLY started trying raids again near the end of last season after being done with raids since ORIGINAL CROTA. Honestly why the hell they increased difficulty on regular content and not master is wild to me
Thank you so much for your work about this game, you make everything easier to understand and clarifyng the game. You can't imagine how much you help the community with video like this. Keep going you are the the very best gardian. All superheroes don't wear capes.
Appreciate it!
my jaw dropped when you said we're hitting at about 70% of what we were doing pre TFS, no wonder everything feels horrible
-5 power base, stillhunt has been added to the game, months prior whisper has been made craftable…
DARCI must be an enemy of the rothchilds at this point
You made a really good point with the weapon surge instead of elemental surges. I hope they will introduce these more often and maybe stack them with the roll back in a small version like 5-10%
I really don't think he did; if a solar surge isn't going to make you take off swords for crota, is a sidearm buff really going to?
@@ploptenado4886 Plus for a raid like Kings Fall, are you really going to bring out swords if there's a sword surge.
@@ploptenado4886 the thing about swords is that they're kind of an example of a situation where most of the damage types are relatively well balanced against each other. You can get Relentless+Whirlwind on an adaptive frame of any element (Stasis being hard to come by since that's on Zephyr, but Ill Omen is almost identical; and Strand not having an adaptive frame yet, you'd use Dragoncult Sickle instead) and you're basically 85% of the way there, discounting Surrounded since that isn't applicable on the most relevant sword boss right now.
There are maybe 4-5 standouts outside of that I can think of--Summum Bonum, Perfect Fifth caster Ergo Sum, Goldtusk when aerial 1L1H is possible, and Falling Guillotine. (Bequest being about 10% better than a regular adaptive but only getting Vorpal if you're using it for situations other than Surrounded--maybe there's an argument for En Garde if you're doing Wolfpacks, but from messing with it myself I'm not 100% sold.)
Compare that to the HGL and rocket situation, where the best HGLs outside of Edge Transit are pretty far behind it and Cataphract, and where Apex has been the best rocket launcher for a year with Cold Comfort (and later Crux, replacing Hothead/Blowout) being the only real competition. There still isn't a good strand or void rocket, or solar or stasis HGL. There are also no good LFRs period LOL
Solid video essay, Aegis.
Appreciate all the time/effort you put into the damage testing in Destiny 2.
To your point on there needing to be an "intro difficulty" for raiding, I would like to see more difficulties than just Normal and Master, perhaps a mode between them, which could allow Bungie to really crank up Master mode to be something for the top 1% of players (how they would reward this, I have no idea). For example, in swtor (a game I used to raid a lot in) there were three difficulties, Story Mode (SM), Hard Mode (HM), and Nightmare Mode (NiM). SM was the mode for, well, story. It was for players that just want to experience the raid/story or begin learning HOW to raid. HM was for the people that want more of a challenge and to get better at the game. I would say the majority of the raiding community in swtor did HM progression, as it was a challenge but it didn't demand the best from people. NiM was the pinnacle, requiring extremely good damage and mechanical awareness to clear it, if you messed up once and died it usually led to a wipe. I think D2 would benefit a lot from a system like this, as it would give the super hardcore players something to grind on/show off how good they are, maybe with special emblems or ornaments or something like that.
While I mostly agree with the arguments here, I'd argue that over-leveling activities becomes problematic with new content where the only way to achieve maximum damage is with a highly-leveled artifact. If the artifact would no longer count towards out-leveling an activity, I feel like it would be a more even playing field that rewards genuine progression instead of bounty prep/farming
the raid is recommended like 1965 or something, not even close to the powerful cap, give it like a week and you'll easily be +20
Thats why there was a cap to how much you can over level with how the game is now light means nothing and should just be removed all together
Tbh this take is bad considering most things in game are 1945 so outleveling any raid/dungeon is the equivalent to being 1965 aka legend campaign. Only problem I see is the -5 modifier they adopted from Pantheon for EVERYTHING..
Yet bungie made GMs 2020 this season which is another stupid change that requires you to grind +20 on artifact and pinnacle cap to be max effectiveness on GMs rather than last year needing +5 only. Makes sense...
i agree, overleveling content is kinda stupid, the rocomended light should just be the light, like if ur at that power level you should do optimal damage, i dunno why theres so many hidden layers to this
Saw the full brunt of the health changes when trying to do kings fall with a new light friend, couldn't do enough damage even when using arc weapons with the surge
Really appreciate your thoughts on this and look forward to the next in this series
The only people these changes benefitted were people who thought of themselves as ‘Elite’ who found normal Dungeons too easy but weren’t actually good enough for the higher difficulties. Huge telling-on-yourself moment.
Imagine complaining about difficulty changes and saying the players who wanted a harder game are bad. I this shit is copium and you’re the one telling on yourself
@@DaitoFoundry Imagine thinking that Destiny 2 is a game oriented toward a hardcore audience-those who can solo flawless any Souls-like game-and not toward semi-casual ‘lemme grab a beer and jump on Destiny on my PlayStation’ type of people; and then thinking that there wouldn't be a backlash from the semi-casual majority if the thing that, to their knowledge, represents the pinnacle of hardcore gameplay is made even harder. Destiny 2 is a casual game, get off your "DESTINY IS ONLY FOR SKILLED 10000000 HOURS HOBGOBLINS" copium
Imagine people only wanting to use one build and have it be the same meta all season.
@@DaitoFoundry Those people already had harder difficulties to play, moron. They just weren't good enough for Master, that's why they're so elitist and eager to gatekeep Normal lmao. Use your brain.
@@DaitoFoundryhey dipshit then play master mode 😂
completely unrelated question for curiosities sake, are you thinking about making a video on titans and their lack of endgame viability? i feel like its a huge topic that i havent seen many get into, i personally see it as a problem as, well, one class is basically thrown to the dust now
I'll talk about class viability at some point
@TheAegisRelic Apparently they're talking about it internally, so I'd wait to see if they announce anything Thursday
If a dungeon or raid doesnt meet the loot criteria it shouldnt be put under the -5 at all, im specifically speaking over GOS, VOG, and shattered throne, considering it doesnt have raid banners still, this was honestly a horrible idea as it takes the incentive over doing a quick dungeon run with a new light or a casual raid with some friends, going for the more veteran player base over people whod rather just get a cool gun.
L change
One of your final points about not having challenging content hits especially hard. Speaking as someone who started the contest raid with 18 hours of sleep debt and a 3 hr nap. It’s especially demoralising the fact I have to wait another whole year to be challenged again.
Y'know, I hear complaints pretty often that there's a challenge gap between everything else and contest mode, but IMO the actual issue is that there's little reason to take on the challenges we already have. When's the last time you ran a master raid start-to-finish? A master dungeon for reasons other than somebody's exotic catalyst or other one-and-done triumph, or maybe an artifice farm on one relatively easy boss? Sure hasn't happened in my clan.
My team, for one, mostly failed contest Salvation's Edge because people were dying to trash enemies on that difficulty, yet the rest of the year we never play content where dealing with trash quickly is a main part of the challenge. GMs do not count, they're so different from raids and dungeons that it's basically another game--find the safest spot in the room, stand there and plink away with long range weaponry, move on. That doesn't fly when there's a wipe timer or actual mechanics.
You know what the hardest encounter for us was in Pantheon? (Aside from Rhulk where people kept dying during DPS, so we cheesed that.) It was Explicator. We had some issues hitting the DPS check to get plat, but we barely got to iterate on that for like a week because people were dead by then half the time for reasons I still don't entirely understand. Nez was similarly bad but we clicked a little faster on that.
Yeah this whole video is, now that I think about it, more of an indictment of Master than anything
pretty much exactly this. I'm all for doing content just for a challenge - but if I try to set up a master raid run in my clan to improve our average skill, I'm met with one word: "why?"
People don't see a reason to run master - it's just not worth any hassle with it's implementation. Whenever people say "master is right there, just do those" I feel like they've either never done one themselves, or are in an environment where they're beyond even that as a challenge.
I haven't felt any need to run master raids besides for the titles, and even then it's basically running master *encounters* for the challenge and not a full run lol. My usual team doesn't want to do a full master run, LFG isn't worth the hassle for a full run, and the loot is hardly worth it either.
It’s pretty unanimous that up until this point there was no real reason to run master raids. Hopefully due the fact adept weapons have a higher than 1/47 drop chance of being the roll we want now, we should atleast have a chance of leaving the activity with an upgrade. Also they should add more spoils to master raids, playing master raids should give the most spoils, similar to pantheons triumph amount. I don’t want to have to go farm one arbitrary cp for 2 hours and then only beat the master raid final boss, for the best adept weapon odds.
Feel so sorry for the plethora of new lights. Cannot even stay alive in seasonal content, even when I set them up with 100 res and surges.
What a goat, amazing analysis of the current sandbox with easy to follow explanations. Being completely honest I didn’t understand shit when I first read, so much appreciated for the helpful video ❤
Im not a person to call someome a meta slave serously and initially i thought the surges "were" nice untill this video you did a really good job breaking down why this wasnt persay healthy for change in the way players play ❤
This is a great type of vid man... I think it's important to break it down this way and offer alternatives
you're actually so correct on the meta shift stuff- surges in raid and dungeons, to accomplish their original purpose, should absolutely be by weapon type and not element that's so much more interesting
Problem with raids i've found is that there's never any middle ground between the raid difficulties like there are Nightfalls. You go from being able to 2 or maybe even 1 phase bosses only being half-optimal with a semi-competent group to balls-to-the-walls dick-in-the-electric-outlet hard when jumping from regular to Master. Honestly, they should have the power delta + surge raids as a middle difficulty.
And thats why im okay with this change to raids personally (power delta specifically). it helps bridge that gap between the two modes without compromising Master difficulty raids
I agree with and have voiced a lot of the same opinions presented here, my only thought is that if they are considered about the "big" advantage overleveling gave (wasnt all that much really) then just lock us at power and don't level overleveling be a thing.
If the RPL if 1950, make us just equivalent the whole way through. They could even keep the defense scaling like they are now so players have a safer and more comfortable time in normal modes.
Changing the flavor of your gear isn't a shift in anyway as stated, but the surges not only don't address outliers they actively enforcing harder "meta use" by keeping just the -5.
If i'm doing less damage why the hell wouldn't i just always use the absolute best things to make it smoother and quicker?
Incentivizes always trying to max what you can instead of letting people do weird and goofy fun shit.
when you are constantly doing 15% less damage no one is gonna be like "Let's all do some dumb like 6 rat king" it just always becomes "Ergo + Guillotine here, and grab your Still Hunts".
I really hope they make the move to eliminate the power negative cause it just makes content both unfun and unintuitive (double arby shot to break Simmumah anyone?) but we will see what the future hold.
Bungie needs to raise the difficulty ceiling, not the floor.
Great video, great breakdown and reasoning. I hope Bungie sees and listens!
He has spoken. Mostly my thoughts in the first place. We need more people playing the endgame, not less. Though I do like how enemies don’t just fall over. Old raids were kind of a “turn your brain off” activity which I didn’t get much enjoyment from after a month.
I personally only minded raids because the game is telling me what's optimal. If Bungie wants me to do Arc damage, it shouldn't be an arbitrary 25% modifier, it should give me more compelling Supers, heavies, exotics, etc etc that do Arc. Currently a majority of top damage options in all those aspects are Solar, Void, and a little Strand.
In dungeons though, this completely killed my desire to run them. I really like how you pointed out the artificial difficulty thing, because i don't want a boss that, no matter how optimal i am, I'm probably taking three phases to kill, *with a team*. And then this is ludicrously amplified on solo runs, because now a vast majority of players are going to need several phases to beat it, when that was already an issue present before the changes.
I was so excited to tackle warlords ruin solo with prismatic. But they really gave the ogre 12 million health. I would really love them to dial in the campaign team scaler to apply to dungeons.
Loved this video. Very insightful. Can't wait for more!
The thing is, if you are dedicated hardcore d2 player it makes things harder. BUT, if you are just good in the game, it makes it unenjoyable to play.
If they increased difficulty AND rewards reception to this change would be much less sour. Pantheon proved people happily will jump through a bunch of hoops if the payout is worth their time
Well Pantheon is a special mode designed to be a challenge, so naturally it makes sense to make it difficult, my main criticism is they changed what is the lowest/default mode of raid/dungeon content when it shouldn't be treated that way from a design standpoint
Bungie has consistently proven that they struggle understanding the difference between challenging vs frustrating. Challenging is healthy for the game but making things more frustrating only serves to hurt the game.
The vast majority of players in any given game are the casuals. Casuals dont mind being challenged but when things seem impossible or impractical then there's always better more fun things to do and that ultimately leads to dwindling playerbase. If it takes half a day to throw a raid team together and another half a day wondering why you cant 1 phase the first boss encounter anymore then thats your whole 1 day off for that week filled with frustration. Do you think that same player is likely to log in next week on his day off? Or will he go play something fun and productive?
The casual raiding group in my clan has gone from being excited and confident enough to try Petra’s Runs to giving up on even trying Salvations Edge on normal, it’s harder to organise a raid night now than during the great layoffs last year despite having like twice as many active players.
Surges have ZERO place in normal raids. Keep the distinction between normal and master.
Id argue surges also have 0 place in master raids but thats just me
@@EburdinnI'd say the surges really should be weapon based there, if at all
As a relatively casual player that has done a few raids but wanted to get serious into grinding raids regularly, these changes don’t motivate me to jump in. I already found normal raids to be challenging, so I didn’t really need added challenges as an incentive…
My issue is that there seems to never be any middle ground when it comes to this game, and everything is always seen through the lens of literal beginner vs no lifer. The difference between a normal mode and master mode raid was somewhere in the realm of a 50 power delta before. 50! That's just far too much and doesn't leave any kind of middle ground. I've got a group of people I play the game with, we've got contest clears for every raid since DSC, but a lot of the people in my group just aren't interested in this huge difficulty increase Master has to offer, which leaves me in a situation where I'm just running normal raids, and they're designed in such a way that people who have literally just downloaded the game can run them and succeed.
For me at least, -5 helps bridge that gap. We ran a crota last night and for the first time in almost a year people actually had to think about how they approached killing the Gatekeepers on the far side of the bridge, because spamming heavy attack wouldn't stunlock them anymore. I've been appreciating having at least some level of mental engagement in standard endgame content again.
Master mode has always been pinnacle +10 which is pretty easy to reach in a week or so of grinding especially this and least season which are both 3+ months long.
@@ZiranD2 it's not the actual power level that was the problem, it was the huge jump in difficulty of going from +20 over the activity to -25 (-20? I don't remember the exact number) under
I'm in a similar boat as you are where my clan only really runs normal mode raids and a -5 is a nice challenge. However normal mode raids should be for everyone and a -5 really hurts people who are just starting out who cant take advantage of +25% to certain elements because they just don't have the weapons and builds that people playing the game for years have. In normal mode what should be killing teams is mechanics not enemies and if I'm teaching who has just started raiding I want them to enjoy the challenge of learning the mechanics not having trouble killing enemies because they haven't played the game as much as me.
@@Dumland yeah surges were an awful idea for normal mode raids, im glad they're walking back that change
Your work is so comprehensive that I am sure that bungie looks at your work and moves numbers in their internal builds
Well said and great video as always Aegis!
Could someone test the gatekeeper encounter challenge in VoG for me and let me know. Tried to finally go for the title and the relic super wouldn't one shot the praetorians. It'd take them down to about quarter health. Feel like that might have to do with the -5 change.
Thanks for clearly stating whats going on with the controversy behind raid and dungeon power changes at the high end!
Id like a -5 option to remain open as a bridge between normal and master.
Maybe it could give higher exotic and red box drop chances as well as an extra red border for a full clear.
Honestly something I've been thinking about as someone else also suggested the same thing
I appreciate this new series you’re doing greatly. The sandbox gets spoken about in piecemeal on Twitter (X) and Reddit but no one consolidates thoughts too often in video format. Personally, I think the sandbox was already getting stale and this didn’t help it really.
Looking forward to whenever you make the next one. :)
W videos, shows your wealth of knowledge, testing and great context from all perepectives
some people i know were also complaining about how this affects low manning endgame content but i'm not too educated on the topic itself so idk if their complaints were valid or not
Yeah this makes a lot of solos extremely unfun
I knew ppl enjoy hating things but man these comments are crazy. None of you actually read the surge changes. All u saw was that they are moving the buffs. But didn’t pay attention to the adjustments to which everything will now have the same increase without the verbiage of “surge” making the damage baseline. so u can have freedom to use what u want and still put out
Fantastic analysis, there was so much confusion out there. LFG have been pretty toxic this season as players generally didn’t understand why they weren’t getting 1/2 phases anymore and blaming other players. I had two groups get hard stuck at War Priest last week where we were just dumping heavy ammo into the boss and barely making a dent.
Totally agree that surges should be tied to weapon types and not their elements, but I think it’d also be cool to have broader “damage type” affinities baked into bosses directly (make some bosses weak to explosions, some to melee weapons, and others to precision damage)
Also, master difficulty shouldn’t only be available for raids and dungeons while they’re the rotator for the week. Working around multiple schedules is hard enough already when you’re not restricted to only certain weeks.
As a solo player it really hurt dungeon solo dps. Cant find a good dps loadout for the last boss in ghost of the deep. Cant stand having to do more then 5 or 6 phases it takes way way too long.
Thanks for breaking this down into an understandable way.
Such a well thought out video and the comment section having genuine feedback about not only the video but topic itself is so refreshing. I agree surges are more restricting than they are helpful but i mostly like the -5 to raids and dungeons, it makes me think more about my build and postioning than just throwing on whatever i feel like. My biggest complaint is with solo dungeons, i bo no means am the best at the game but i consider myself up there and i struggled with solo dungeons before and i havent even attempted any this season but i did a duo run of warlords ruin with my friend and it felt way more difficult than before
Yeah that was my goal, I just want people to start thinking about why sandbox changes happen and reflect on how they feel about them
This was incredibly well scripted. Excellent discussion, and level headed analysis. Cheers Aegis!
All i know is that lfg is unbearable now.
People suck at both mechanics and dps now, and the worst part is I'm on a new account and i need to regrind certain guns that were essentially my daily drivers and i used them every single day.
F this.
I agree. They should keep the surge rotators to master and grandmaster content. These harder activities should also have better loot to entice more players to try them. As a causal player, there's just not much draw to farming master raids.
Great video mate definitely keep doing this sort of thing
I am less incentivised to carry because ppl without meta/matching weapons will lag behind even more now. For crota's, someone was reluctant to use lament because it wasn't a "matching surge" and instead used his eager edge cold steel slammer.
Solo’ing dungeons was already tough for many, this -5 just makes it worse lol
The people who complained about raids being harder are those who participated in speed runs. Knowing that it basically ruins all speedrun data.
What really bothered me is they hid behind the veil of "accessibility" when 99% of those same people don't play with _anyone_ who is new. They're not in the Sherpa business. They are just upset their speedruns now basically have a line drawn that sets them in their own era.
I will argue that a LARGE % of people who don't play raids do so because of not wanting to play with people they don't know, or social anxiety - NOT because it's difficult content. It's almost exclusively because they don't want to talk to strangers or interact with people they don't know.
But hey, none of it means anything to me. I've done low man runs. Speed runs. I've done it all in some capacity. But mostly retired from those and just casually raid with friends.
I think some people are definitely, as another comment put it, "virtue signaling" using new players as a criticism of this change, but if you know me and this channel well enough, you're probably aware that that isn't the case here, and I hope my reasoning in the video is clear and rational enough that it stands alone even outside of that context
my biggest problem with surges is that not all elements are created equal, arc and stasis have very little, void has edge transit and levi, solar has everything else
Changing meta would be old prestige modifier on raids that locked you to a specific loadout type like fusion in kinetic slot sidearm in energy gl in heavy, that kind of stuff, our make that and not lock people but give 25% bonus to that weapons in that slot
I thought they are letting us overlevel to +15 defensively, but keeping that as a hidden thing for UI purposes?
Yes but the outgoing damage is still -5 which is more important than the incoming damage
I liked this style of video and agree with your points
For this absolute W take mr aegis, i will glaze you forever. W mans
Not gonna lie, i was shocked when I did POH and the boss didn’t fall over immediately from 5 rockets lol
I am sold on this style of content. If you are able to make these types of videos consistently, it would be a huge benefit to the Destiny community. Please feel encouraged to continue doing this series.
:)
I like the well nerf. Warlocks have been pigeonholed for too long.
Having tried and do a spire run. The FIRST BOSS which doesn’t have the most health and would normally take me solo 4 phases took me like 6 or 7
I think you made some really good points especially regarding how this change reduces the space for challenge-run/low-mans of raids through the increased difficulty floor and how this experience is available to those who want it with master raids (ignoring the problems of dealing with a pretty long rotation and minimal rewards over doing it normal).
The point about the meta on the other hand I don't totally agree with. For one I think Crota was kind of a bad example since the developers explicitly want you to use swords against him for what seems to be lore reasons but against a more standard boss I can see a world where in the current sandbox (excluding the outlier that is Still Hunt) the decision to run rockets or GLs could change depending on the surge (Apex during Solar surge given the lack of strong Solar GLs). But beyond that the discussion about meta ignores the fact that the meta at the highest level of play is different than it is at lower levels of play (similar to what is seen in other games like LoL, or fighting games). Exotic power weapons may not be meta at the highest level but at lower levels of play where execution is a limiting factor simple options like Sleeper/Whisper, Leviathans Breath, and Thunderlord are much more prevalent and so surges would definitely have an impact on the meta which we saw pretty clearly with pantheon where popular damage strategies changed fairly significantly week to week at lower levels of play. Whether that expansion of the meta at lower skill levels is worth the potential downsides of this change at higher skill levels is worth discussing but I don't think that was well captured here (which is fair since you obviously have the perspective of a top level pve player).
I also don't think that the raising barrier to entry is worth too much discussion either since its purely anecdotal, and in my experience what's stopping people from raiding is not combat difficulty but needing to get a team of 6 people together so I don't think the combat change would have much of an impact at all on accessibility of the raids (but again that's purely anecdotal since only Bungie would really have the numbers on this). I suspect in general a lot of these changes came after the perhaps unexpected success of Pantheon which may have shown them that the average player (in particular someone who doesn't raid much) is plenty capable of dealing with -5 + rotating surges if the reward is good enough (which is a separate but related issue).
During week three Pantheon, our group brought out Grand Overture for Arc Week and crushed Caretaker with it. Something we never would've done if there were no surges.
Pretty much voicing my exact gripes with the points - and this whole discussion in general - so I was happy I came across your comment on it.
There's a lot of hypothesis stated as almost factual, to a point where the best word I can think of for it is 'virtue signaling' for lower skill players.
Across multiple MMOs the issue of "majority of players don't raid (read: touch endgame)" is a thing, and I don't think any change to the difficulty is any part of that. Even LFR in WoW don't get touched by the majority, even though it's specifically dumbing down the raid encounters for that sake.
I still think weapon surges would be better. It would have the same effect (people would experiment with things like grand overture on machine gun surge) but also shake things like Crota up, who might see a meta shift from swords from week to week.
Choosing between running edge transit or apex week by week imo does not make for an interesting mix-up in gameplay, an easy solution is to add weapon based surges instead of elemental ones, as was mentioned in the video.
I mention in the video that a major barrier to entry for RAD content is finding a team, what I'm saying is that this unnecessarily adds on top of that when IMO a normal difficulty tier should be specifically about what makes a raid different from other content (cooperative mechanics, revive tokens, 6 man add density, meaningful boss DPS). However, I'm not as against -5 as I am against surges, for some of the reasons you stated. If you're interested in my more specific thoughts, I responded to the pinned comment with more details.
ive been putting up with surges and -5 in lfg ever since the day 1, my only real complaint is that some surges are overloaded with great dps options (e.g. solar) while darkness surges have almost nothing. strand has cataphract, which is great, dont get me wrong but in reality thats really it. and stasis actually has NOTHING. the only endgame relevant dps options are cold comfort and the slammer works i guess. but realistically speaking, maybe 1/6 people in your fireteam have the cold comfort godroll when you might as well not even run rockets in the current meta. while im accepting of the idea of -5 and the need to comply with surges, the newer damage types are just not ready for that sort of thing.
Makes no sense to work harder for the same loot. I think most people would agree. It's about respecting the players' time
Aegis you’re the raid boss to all raid bosses ❤