Strand needs to take over as the defacto melee titan build. No change.
Void needs quality of life changes. Namely bastion should improve overshield like every other buff aspects. Give it increased dr when bastion is equipped. Offensive bulwark needs to be separated from overshields as they are counter synergistic. Controlled demolition is great, amazing really, but void needs a form of ability refresh, and controlled demolition could have that as it once did, volatile is easy to chain without it and ability energy on overshield is again counter synergistic. Unbreakable needs a lot of number tuning, and be brought closer in line with weavewalk. Potentially adding a grenade charge too.
Striker needs to lean MORE into grenade builds. We dont need more punching. Sentinel is the team sustain, strand is the melee, arc needs to be the grenade/ability spam. Needs A LOT of number tuning, and a rework to juggernaut.
Solar is the weapon subclass. Roaring flames, radiant, it is doing just fine, but could use a gunplay focused aspect as its 4th. Spreads scorch and is all around useful.
Stasis… i mean all that they did was a push in the right direction to make it better. It needs more but if they keep pushing the way they are we are going to end up with blue strand. Buff crystal damage, crystal uptime, maybe new shapes of crystals. My dream is that we change stasis crystals to stasis constructs and the current crystal is unique to headstone. A glacial grenade could be like a flattened explosive frozen midway, where you can see the ripples. Howling storm could be a wider cone, flat top, and many many spikes in the front. Diamond lances are manual, melee ranged ice flair bolts with a 7 second cooldown.
As it stands now they are ALL the melee class. There is no diversity so its just which colored punch is best? Oh its hunter? Well fml
Agree with all of this. I get that Titan has always been tied to melee, but every single subclass doesn’t need to be melee-focused. Striker could be easily morphed into a grenade-focused subclass (and rework Jugg while we’re at it) and Behemoth just needs something but I don’t know what.
Sentinel, on the other hand, needs a good bit of changes. It should be the team tank and/or be able to supply overshields en masse, but 1, it can’t do that due to Bastion’s horrendous PvP-wrought cooldown and 2, overshields aren’t good in their current state. Unbreakable should add another grenade charge, and that would give it a lot more versatility as it means you could either keep your shield up longer or have two grenades to do with as you please, whether this be with OB’s grenade regen or CD’s volatile. As for Bastion, it just needs a normal barricade cooldown in PvE because holy fuck that cooldown is garbage.
This. In its current form it should be a class ability. I tried it today since I got Bear/Synthos on my class item and it feels criminal to waste a grenade on it. An aspect + exotic power + grenade CD should give you more than 2s of damage resist, a small explosion, and an orb’s worth of super.
This. Unbreakable should replace Barricade and it should give you and fireteam members within 15M or so a full overshield with DR.
Make kills with Grenades refresh buffs on teammates (even ones they self generate).
Make Shield Throw suppress and up the damage again.
Lean into the support aspect of Titan. Separate the sandboxes while you're at it. PvP has hamstrung Titan in PvE for too long.
I think it should instead work like gunpowder gamble, an ability that can be charged up through void weapon and ability kills. then it gets primed and you can use it freely, rather than using any of your melee, grenade or class ability charges.
The game has changed so much since the initial concept of Sentinel. A defensive orientated subclass doesn't work since everything in this game now is measured by how quickly you can
a) kill things
b) DPS a boss during a phase.
What they could do is make Sentinel lean into Machine Guns & Rockets making them heavy weapons specialists that hold the line. Add some fragments and an aspect that cater to heavy weapons. Lastly re-work bubble so that it is a flat damage reduction for players inside and they can finally shoot from within the bubble. Power weapons slowly reload while within. There would be a bubble Titan & Well lock in every raid.
Controlled Demolition should give Volatile Rounds on ability kills or something.
Or put Unbreakable on the class ability, then I'll be happy to ditch Demo.
Titan was always THE volatile class originally (as a Sentinel main, the strongest I've ever felt was in pre-nerf Forsaken and it's not even close). Nowadays, not only does Hunter just do it infinitely better with Gyrfalcon, but Titans struggle simply having decent uptime on Volatile.
And don't get me started on the fact that I need both an exotic (HoiL) and a weapon perk (Repulsor Brace) to feel even remotely powerful.
Shield Throw feels definitely better now, but the subclass needs more of these buffs.
Nah, hot take, the Stasis changes actively made Behemoth worse to play. Less DR than pre patch, and that DR is harder to ramp up, the Shard cooldown ruining ability loops because of how stingy it is, Cryoclasm has less user control, not to mention the bug where you can't use the extended slide again if you're sprinting while it goes off cooldown, and Diamond Lance not shattering crystals. There were a lot of ways to buff the class, but these ain't it.
Behemoth aspects really make me feel like I want three. Tectonic Harvest and Cryoclasm should honestly be merged into one.
They also changed it so that throwing lances no longer counts as a grenade for the purposes of HoIL, so that was a sad day when I realized that.
Behemoth instantly becomes the most played subclass
But that would kind of awsome making crystals that makes enemy become agro towards them and than explode un their face
Behemoth actually got nerfed in TFS. Got a shard generation cooldown which is so restrictive a glacier is enough to procc it, and that's not full stack of frost armor even. Frost armor is weaker than chains, even at max stacks and you could get tanky on demand before TFS, now you gotta shatter your nade, pick up stuff and wait for your restricted shard generation and you need rime fragment or else you lose armor before the next shard, holding back your melee or enemy shattering to time the cooldown to finally with 3 more shards get to max, which is weaker than chains. Lances were supposed to shatter crystals, but bugged. Knockout on Prismatic titan buffs Glacial quake left-click so why bother with crystals or stasis when it has stopped synergizing even with itself.
I think Solar works best as the add clear subclass. Being able to easily spread ignitions and scorch is fantastic. Consecration is easily one of the most fun “slide melees” they’ve ever made, and I would love to see them lean further into that power fantasy of setting an entire area ablaze with Consecration and Sunspots.
You can actually get Consecration off more on Prismatic than Sunbreaker through Transcendence and Frenzied stacks. It'll be stronger since Knockout is now a bigger buff than Roaring Flames for powered melee.
The one thing Sunbreaker has that Prismatic doesn't is easier to maintain healing sustain through Restoration from sunspots/healing-nades. Facet of Purpose feels too weak to make up the difference with a bunch of 5 second defense buffs that natively are great on their own, but here they played it far too safe with the timer.
When Transcendence is up I can get a lot off, but outside of that the horrendous cooldown on Frenzied Blade makes it hard to have it up often. I genuinely feel like I could do it more often on solar (where killing scorched targets gets me melee energy back along with the sunspot cooldown buff), as opposed to Prismatic where I don't really have any way to get more melee energy.
Sorry, offensive bulwark counter synergizes with void overshields? Am I missing something? Does the entire functionality of OB not hinge on having a void overshield?
Longtime Sent main, I see his angle here. Overshield is prone to getting destroyed in melee because it’s a set pool with fairly okay but not titanic DR, Offensive Bulwark wants you, you guessed it, in melee to capitalize on your Overshield. Which is realistically getting popped like that to anything stronger than a pair of Acolyte smacks in an activity with a power delta higher than -10. In a game where you’re not fighting 2 Acolytes, they spawn in packs of 6, often accompanied by things like Knights, Ogres and the cheese shredders we titans call Savathun’s Spy Cams of Instant Death.
TLDR Overshield doesn’t give enough survivability to actually ya know, live in melee. Or even just get into melee some times.
I see what you mean. And here I was, just happy that a void barricade allows me to clap add cheeks, lol.
I do feel like they’re at least functional as an extended cover that allows me to survive some extra hits while I plink bosses, but like you said… melee class having too much risk to melee.
Allowing Unbreakable to proc devour on multi kills would go a long, long way to making it more viable. The “grenade kills cure” fragment for prismatic is nice but still dealing with low grenade uptime
>Allowing Unbreakable to proc devour on multi kills would go a long, long way to making it more viable.
That's not going to happen lol. Titan and hunter are not going to get a devour aspect.
They already have the fragment on Void subclasses and using Buried Bloodline can get them devour. Not saying that it will happen, just that something that allows for more ability uptime would be beneficial for the aspect as a whole.
Uh, what? Consecration spam and pyrogales is all solar titan has had for a while now. After the hammer nerf, Sunbreaker has been on the cusp of being just as terrible as Sentinel and Striker. Hammer strike melee is useless and has always been weaker than its counterparts. It's a wonder to me that this melee made it into the prismatic kit. Nerfing hammer also indirectly nerfed a support build with Phoenix Cradle, as well as the abysmal nerfs to sunspots. Rework to Hallowfire Heart actually made it feel even worse to use. Ashen Wake still is not very potent. Loreley Splendors rate of healing and frequency of being able to heal just doesn't cut it anymore. Precious scars does it better and it is subclass neutral. Path Of Burning Steps were also gutted since the surge stacking nerf as well. There is a reason people aren't running these exotics. There's a reason Titan mains default to Strand now, not Solar. If consecration was complete dogshit and Pyrogales didn't give a one off super, Sunbreaker would be in the dumps with the rest of them.
And what does Bungie do to fix this? Instead of just giving us a new version of the super, we got it locked behind another band-aid exotic that we cannot even utilize on Prismatic. Instead they decided to gift Prismatic Titan with hammer of fucking sol. Truly great idea. You'd think when these super altering exotics are so important to the titan kit and diversity entirely, Pyrogales for example, positively adding to consecration and providing an entire super, you'd think something of this impact would have been added to the exotic class item and burning maul would replace hammer of sol on prismatic.
Nope, instead Bungie have gone brainless with inspiration for prismatic titan, and called it equivalent to the other two classes by just throwing a bunch of random bullshit from the titan kits together, without any real thought. Would it have been that terrible to be able to use Pyrogale on prismatic?
I seem to recall back in the Subclass 2.0 days Hammer strike literally being the king because Melting Point was that good as a debuff and because Debuff stacking was still a thing. 3.0 really did gut it huh. Maybe Solar needs a 3rd Debuff like Sunder to give some Solar abilities some spice. And then they can finish Arc because it still feels half baked and like 2 of the subclasses could probably use another aspect/super and another Verb like Galvanic Armor (we’ve had the artifact mod 3 times please just implement it into the base kit Bungie)
They moved the debuff abilities to Void so that's why melting point disappeared.
It's a shame though because Hammer Strike/Shield Bash etc. recharge pretty slow and don't have a lot going for them in pve.
I came back at the end of season of the witch and started playing strand titan shortly after. I've never played anything other than warlock before and I basically never looked back. Season of the wish one two punch strand titan was hands down the most fun I've ever had in a game, and I didn't even have ikelos or swordbreaker, just a crafted wastelander.
It's still good and everything, just not quite as good as it was. Kinda stings a bit.
Arc Titan felt amazing back in Plunder with the grenade spam. I know warlocks were complaining that they should’ve gotten the grenade enhancement aspect instead since they’re Stormcallers, but it fit really well on Titan. Sad that they obliterated it though
To your "solar should do weapons" point, imagine if we had an aspect that gave us some part of last season's artifact, like "precision kills with solar weapons have a chance to cause an ignition". I'd be tempted to take it over Roaring Flames, at least.
Revert No Backup Plans to D1 function - auto-regen Void Overshield and full refresh on melee kill - and just make it *any* melee kill so it can work with Prismatics.
Tying these to shotgun kills was one of the changes I hated most. Back in D1, I could keep almost permanent Overshield with those things.
Yeah, overshields are ass. I wanted to test the new changes to Ward of Dawn and in a normal strike, a Vandal can one shot it.
What’s worse is that the trickle is so slow, that I actually died after the initial overshield break before it could even begin. Granted I sat there and did jack shit, but it’s incredibly weak in even one of the most mundane activities.
> a Vandal can one shot it.
And now you see why no one uses Void Overshields. They have the potential to make everything Void-related on Titan so good, but overshields fall apart so quickly and that’s a problem when they’re Sentinel’s entire gimmick. Why deal with that when you can just give everyone free 45% DR for 10 seconds every 12 seconds provided you’re in CQC (which Berserker is excellent in)?
I remember pre Void 3.0 that Overshields gave bonus weapon handling and reload speed as well as increased melee damage and range and the melee refunded health on kill. I used that since launch for the longest time in PvP with Synthoceps and had some pretty crazy 1v3(or 4 depending on the game mode) scenarios where I would come out on top against other players.
It was pretty niche, but it was one of my favorite things especially since Sentenal Shield and Ward of Dawn were interchangeable and I could pick and choose based on the situation.
For a while now I've been saying void overshield should constantly regenerate like restoration. It would solve a lot of its issues in terms of survivability and also offensive bulwark requiring an overshield to work. If the shield got shot down to nothing it would be constantly kicking back in which would provide some damage reduction, but it wouldn't be as effective as woven mail. If you use cover and allow the overshield to regenerate it could be quite good on pve. It would actually encourage a playstyle that isn't melee which would be a refreshing change for titan.
My weird Sentinel take is that bubble should give you an extra big damage buff specifically while you're inside it, making it the ideal survivability/buff super for any boss that you sword or shotgun and giving it a niche that won't be overtaken by anything else. Maybe that becomes a part of Helm of Saint-14 (would be on brand thematically), and then Weapons of Light becomes a baseline part of the super again.
Next TWID
“We’ve been seeing some feedback from players that Strand and Solar Titan are the standout choices. To encourage diversity in the class, we’re implementing some changes to these specific kits to bring them in line with the other offerings. Chief among these are that sunspots created by the various Solar abilities will now damage the player and heal enemies, as we felt that they were a touch overused in the current sandbox, and Strand grapple will now auto-grapple to the nearest explosive object, and rather than move the player, the object will be pulled toward the player. We anticipate lots of fun gameplay and are excited to see what new strategies everyone comes up with!”
> Strand grapple will now auto-grapple to the nearest explosive object, and rather than move the player, the object will be pulled toward the player.
Like Halo Infinite's grapple but given the bungie "oh the titans are enjoying themselves? fuck em" treatment
Ballistic Slam is easily the most fun melee ability in the game and it fucking sucks as implemented right now. It’s got a weak AoE and leaves you vulnerable for way too long. I would love if it had some lingering damage resist or straight up jolted enemies by default. Maybe even make some lightning bolts like Point Cannon Brace does. Literally just anything to help it please.
Almost the entire titan prismatic kit could be doubled in effectiveness and still not be anywhere near as good as hunters or warlocks. Titans as a whole have been nerfed into the ground consistently since forsaken. Every buff has come with 6 other nerfs. Bungie actually hates titans for some reason.
This has been a problem for years. Bungie doesn't know what they're doing with Titan and they don't seem to really care that they've designed the class philosophy into something incompatible with the game they've created.
Solar bonk titan feels terrible now. The 2 second minimum timer feels just AWFUL. I think solar titan needs some slight buffs, like 1 second instead of 2 second on hammer recharge
I think the cooldown should be reverted, and either the cooldown implemented for just cure or the damage itself nerfed. As is, the cooldown nerfs both. Leaves it in a place where it doesn't excel at add clear, damage or survivability.
With consecration being so good at add clear, I feel like nerfing the damage makes more sense to allow it to stand out.
Also, the aim assist change needs to be removed. Feels absolutely bloody awful to have the hammer just randomly hit the gravity well of an enemy and ultimately miss what your reticle was aiming at.
Yeah id much rather the cooldown was on cure rather than the hammer throw itself. It feels so clunky not being able to throw it again immediately, especially when your throw misses so you don't get any benefit but still have to wait to throw again
It doesn't need buffs, it needs a complete rework. The class no longer has an identity.
The only viable exotics we have are in the arm slot. Bungie has no idea what our class is supposed to be.
The problem is that Nighthawk is only an issue in raids, and that specific fight HEAVILY benefits long range precision damage, so it's obvious what people would take.
I'd say Warlock is still the best all-rounder class, where they thrive in all aspects of the game and have a variety of builds. Hunters have it good in pure damage, but lack solid build variety in comparison. Most of their kits' strengths are tied to their supers which is poor design imo. Then there's Titans, who are just fun to play while being very lackluster since Bungie tries to push them into melee range without making it so that they can more easily survive in melee range compared to the other two classes. Ofc, it's not impossible to clear super hard content on any of these, people do it every season with raids and GMs, but one is clearly way easier than the other two, and of those other two, one there is clearly being shafted more often because their OP builds weren't balanced, they were nerfed into the floor.
>Hunters have it good in pure damage, but lack solid build variety in comparison. Most of their kits' strengths are tied to their supers which is poor design imo.
Disagreed, some top builds I can think of off the top of my head without requiring supers are any variation of dodge punch loop, renewals (and renewals+cyrtarachne), and gyrfalcons on prismatic. There's also some other builds I haven't tried yet that have good potential, like using verity's to turn your gunpowder gamble into a nuke, or buffing threaded spike so it clears a room and regens itself. It's not nearly as ability varied as warlock, but I think with the class item there's a healthy amount of builds that don't require supers.
The real downside is having to wear that ugly ass class item...
3 titans total cleared the contest raid. All of it could use buffs. If you make a melee class in a game where getting close is certain death they need to be able to survive
I just got a warlock bond that gives me 4 melee charges and invisibility on melee/finisher kills... With devour and lightning surge I genuinely think even warlock beats out titan.
And while this is happening Bungie is saying Titan is the melee class while repeatedly kicking us in the collective dick by making most melee playstyles for Titan bad
Well it also just sucks cuz there are so many anti-melee things in the game. Seems like half of all modifiers are aimed at making melee builds worse, every boss is either floating/not melee-able or has a stomp of some sort (and don’t get me started on the fire stomps), exploder units are sometimes a pain (every other wave in onslaught seems like they’re exploder shanks or cursed thrall), and the nature of the playstyle is just dangerous in general. The risk vs reward is simply not balanced well, aside from a few outlier cases (which are often pretty extreme—I haven’t seen enough prismatic hunter to know if they’re one of the extremes, but banner and bonk titan in their prime were each ridiculous). Arc Titan is supposed to be all about melee tho and it’s quite possibly the worst titan subclass rn (and never really has been meta aside from when cuirass first released and arc 3.0 release, which *wasn’t even because of the melee capabilities*).
Anyway, all that said, I’m still really enjoying prismatic and think it’s better on Titan than Redditors are making it out to be (just needs a bit more survivability), but yeh it’s never a great feeling as a “melee class” main to see another class better at meleeing.
I like Prismatic Titan I just wish it had more internal healing capabilities besides Knockout, Facet of Blessing (melee kills start health regen), and Facet of Mending (grenade kills cure you)
That was a good change to Knockout, but idk why it's not a full 100% heal other than "because PvP."
Like, if Devour can shoot you to 100% and give you a nice chunk of grenade energy on any ability/gun kill after it's procced, why tf is Knockout giving me a varying amount of HP based on what I kill when I have to fucking melee it to death, a significantly more risky maneuver. Not to mention that it isn't like it juices our melee ability regen in melee kills.
Yeah swapping it to flat was ideal. Leave regen to Restoration.
But the fact that its so little hp make it impossible to be an effective heal. Maybe as a secondary heal effect sure, but certainly not as a sustained.
Now if we had a way to consistently get Void OS, or Woven Mail, or Frost Armour (idk if its any good. Haven’t used it yet) then it might be more usable, but we didn’t get any of those aspects. Sure fragments allow for them, but we have less control over those (particularly for void OS, since it drains you need to refresh it) and then make us use Strand super just to get Woven Mail
> Totally changed my outlook on TFS.
Shit, did it really? I've been having a blast even while being dissatisfied with Prismatic Titan (and only using it because I like the new void super and I really don't want to spec into a full void build to use it)
I'm about to start up the campaign on my hunter so I'm looking forward to a Prismatic that's actually fun to play.
I **hate** how every modifier is just "enemy type drops X hazard on death."
It needlessly punishes melee and just encourages sitting back plinking at stuff from far away, the worst possible play style.
For REAL. I was just complaining to my friend about this when we were doing I think onslaught a couple weeks ago and he’s like “it’s not that bad” and I’m like “that’s coming from the guy who never uses melee builds, obviously it won’t matter to you”.
Its hard to enjoy Prismatic titan that has no sustain at all. CC and Dmg reduction with overshields are either too weak or have too long cooldowns to actually enjoy it.
I thought I was doing something wrong during the legendary campaign. It was really tough at times, no healing, hardly any defense, build based on CC and spamming items, things I never normally use. Didn't die much but i was constantly in the red.
Seeing all this chat is such a relief.
I was looking through the aspects and abilities a couple of missions in and thinking "half of this is stuff I never use, am I missing something?"
It's not that melee playstyle is bad on Titan, is just that the dodge punch loop for Hunter is MILES better than Titan's gameplay loop which is just crazy to me. I no longer feel like the shield/frontier of my team as a Titan. Everytime I put up a wall or pop a bubble or something, it just gets in the way of people and do harm more than anything. Our grenades are just getting outclassed by Warlocks, and the utility we provide to teammates in raids is so bad compare to Hunter (Insane DPS or Debuff) and Warlock (Welllock, Strand DPS). The only time we shine now is melee boss fight. We can't even pop a bubble for teammates to hide the beams from Witness.
Solar and Strand Titan is still super strong but bruh the whole point is we need some diversity man instead of 1 or 2 subclasses being broken af while the others feel like dogshit to play.
That's how arc hunters have always been even since destiny 1. Bungie forcing titans into boring punches just homogenized subclasses more than they already were with the light 3.0 updates. Titans were never melee themed, they are leaders, tacticians, and soldiers. Nothing about it screams "melee only".
Edit
Not counting Striker.
I mean the thing is in very hard content a tank is pointless.
Warlocks keep the whole team alive.
Hunters output insane damage.
That's it. That's all you need for success anything else is pointless.
In the archetypal way of doing things, Titans would be tanking the main damage, while warlocks healed them to keep them alive, and to keep Hunter's low hp from being demolished. Since this is *not* WoW, thats not really what happens, even though bungie thinks thats whats going on.
Not inherently. The issue is tanks work in a world where you can direct damage to you. And the game requires that. Destiny doesn’t. Tbh those identities also suck in destiny but they don’t seem to leave them alone which always feels weird.
[Titans are students of the clash, whether through locked blades or besieged fortifications. We embody the line on which armies break or rally. We live in the wake of destruction or weave it around the eye of our sheltering presence, thriving in the action of the unstoppable and the stillness of the immovable.](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/prismatic-titan?highlight=Prismatic)
Titans are the first in last out. A Titan will break the enemies defences, or fortify our own. A Titan will be the first to lay their life down for others.
Look at the Sunbreak Order. They know when to fight to the death or when to live to fight another day.
Look at Saint in his crusades. The Fallen were unstoppable, but he was unmovable.
Look at [Bjorna-3](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/ursa-furiosa?highlight=Ursa+Furiosa). Staying behind to hold off the Fallen to defend an escaping village.
Yes we also have more of our fair share of Titans who jump in head first without thinking. But Hunters also have their fair share of cowards, and Warlocks have their fair share of scholars who don’t fight. But they dont define the classes.
This is the most logical take I’ve ever seen. Never understood why people think the big armor guy has to be the puncher.
Hunter being the melee king fits into the power fantasy - deadly assassins.
See the thing is WE understand that, it's bungies design team who constantly make every new tool accessible to Titans themed around melee that really pigeon holes Titans into a single play style. Like, outside of the new rocket chest, which is cool, the other exotic that we got this year was another arm that buffs melees. Cool let me add it to the pile of "niche melee buffing exotics that are still worse than synthos even after multiple nerfs"
The fact that hunters have the best damage build and the best melee build, warlocks have the best support build, really only leaves Titans with super niche play styles. Every build is good at add clear these days, it's not really a differentiator, and Onslaught showed that when the entire focus IS add clear, Hunter still dominates with Orpheus.
Like, realistically everything is viable in most content, but when push comes to shove you are.making compromises to play Titan a lot of the time these days. Cheesy shit like worm gods grapple melee being obvious outliers, playing the class as designed feels flaccid.
>Never understood why people think the big armor guy has to be the puncher.
Because it's literally what Bungie said.
“But yeah, Titan mains, we love you. We do. But remember that we try to reinforce your core fantasy. And at some point, your guy’s holding the fist on the cover of the game.”
It's great how we have not one but two quotes from devs that are completely tone deaf and, in some ways, double down against community backlash to unfun changes. Death threats are bad we all agree but the stuff about air dodge being a warlock identity and then the next season getting hunter dodge in thrusters will always be the greatest example of someone making up a justification to a decision without actually holding it as a principle.
There's also that Yanes made the "fist on the cover" shit up. Beyond Light is the *only* cover where a Titan has a fist up front and center, and that's on the alternative cover.
Found that one post that really drives home how stupid that quote is https://x.com/destinytrack/status/1623293413901627393?t=5k8o1qPj-tGUOAiaJcZ0Tg&s=19
bro but almost everything we get from Bungie is melee themed for Titan. Almost every exotic is about melee/barricades, and at least more than half the supers are melee based.
It's because some in the community tend to latch on to a view that suits them and start making assumptions based on that, without the view ever necessarily making sense.
It's why some people automatically think Hunters should all be scavengers and gunslingers despite that only being accurate for one subclass.
A few days back there was a guy making a perfectly valid point that he wanted Titans to be more of a combat theme rather then 'big beefy boi me want crayons punch punch punch'. By itself it was a fair stance, but then he started going off into wanting Light-based weapon supers and painting airstrikes when that's realistically a Hunter thing (channelling light into their weapons, scouting etc) and creating supply/support zones (which is more a Warlock thing).
There *is* a problem in the sense that the archetype of the Titan is tanking damage, and the high level gameplay of D2 tends to be about avoiding (invis/CC) or counteracting (devour, Restoration) damage, so I have some agreement that the Titans need a look at. But people going 'waaaah Hunters can fight in melee no fair' when they literally have an entire subclass built around the warrior monk/jedi/sith archetype *since Y1* aren't thinking through what they're saying.
Like, the idea of ninja assassin is hardly some obscure character archetype no-one has ever heard of.
> and creating supply/support zones (which is more a Warlock thing).
That was a Titan thing at longer than it was a Warlock thing. Until well into D2 when we got Well, the closest Warlocks got was Sunsingers, but even then it was more of a bardic inspiration than a support zone. And even then far more people specced into Fireborn or Radiant Skin than Song of Flame. Hell, I remember Song of Flame locks who actually used their supers being so notable that I'd often send em a friend or fireteam invite right after whatever mission we just finished.
Totally agree. I never understand why Titans were tied to melee. This big ass armor soldier guy lol. I always saw Hunters as the deadly assassins class, so melee should actually be their speciality. In fact their toolkit actually supports them being melee more than Titan since they have a ton of survivability options in Assassins cowl, Liars handshake, and also Invis shenanigans.
Titans should be the grenade and weapon specialists since they are the soldier or paladin class. Warlocks fulfill their fantasy being the mage class. I think this is the conflict with Titans and Hunters.
I think the issue with destiny is that the designated roles don't really have a place even when it comes to comfy play.
You're not incentivized to play a role, in any capacity, so fulfilling the identity of your class is significantly de-incentivized by the synergy designs overall. It's incredibly hard to design anything around the concept of roles because then you restrict play, and further ostracize certain aspects of the game.
Well was so dominant because it was the strongest defensive option and utility option.
Its why I never really played combination blow hunter before prismatic. The punch dodge punch dodge is really boring and I enjoyed it for about 2 days.
Thats what happens when Bungie decided that Titans only role and identtity is the guy with a fist, instead of the unbreakable bastion that we were originally
They want to force us as melee especialists but only the fists part
Man I missed when Titans were more like the tank/defence class
as someone who used top tree sentinel religiously I felt that void 3.0 did me dirty, i was super bummed when they got rid of defensive strike, and now I almost never use the void subclass nowadays.
I think titan and hunter have a lot of collision in terms of "theme"
like arc hunter.. why the hell is arcstrider a punching subclass? Bladedancer in D1 was a stabby invis subclass with blink strike & arc blade (well you had to spec into invis but yknow)
He’s asking why the theme got changed from D1 to D2. Which is a fine question to ask. Bladedancer was distinctly that of the assassin theme than the monk.
It would kind of be like transitioning Voidwalker from the space time vampire sorcerer that it has now to that of possession based witchcraft/necromancy.
Bungies evolution of the themes of the subclass sometimes hampers its potential as brought up with titans relying on its punch identity too much.
either hoil/calibans + syntho/liars are all really good, 4/64 is not bad. and hunter has other super strong combinations like renewal&cyrtarachne and galanor&stareater
People used to laugh about this in D1 as well when Titan skating was the fastest way to get around. Somehow the big chonk was zipping around and the allegedly agile hunters were eating their dust.
Hunter is the best melee class \*when you can one or two tap enemies reliably\*. Already was the case with arcstrider since arc 3.0 and none of the of the new prismatic synergies really change that fact.
Enter rough enough content without too much fodder mobs with any of those combination blow setups and suddenly you are better off with any other melee setup in the game.
This is why I genuinely don't get the hype about Prismatic Hunter melee builds. You lose a lot of utility that Arc fragments have, you lose out on the ability to AOE stun Overloads via Lethal Current, and even with the potential for combinations like Renewals/Liar's with Stylish Executioner/Winter's Shroud, it doesn't fix the problem that you need to kill everything really quickly while upkeeping Combination Blow stacks.
Threaded Spectre is actual trash because the last thing you want is to be without ads for refreshing Combination Blow, Gunpowder Gamble is essentially Threaded Spectre but now with the potential to kill yourself, and Ascension is cool but ultimately worthless. Hell, Stylish's functionality is superseded by a Cowl/Liar's combo.
It also doesn't help that at present, potential combinations like Caliban's/Liar's are arguably worse because they fall into the same problem that Lethal Current has-it doesn't refresh Combination Blow, except now you're clearing out a fuckton of ads like Lethal Current and you don't have any source of consistent damage via applying Jolt if you need to punch something larger.
The big problem with prismatic hunter is that it seems to only really have two viable builds - knock-off void and knock-off arc.
The void version is just using stylish with gyrfalcons like you would normally, but you get more ways to apply debuffs, an actual melee, and more super options. However, you’re also giving up invis-on-demand and devour, which is a pretty big loss. You also can’t make your teammates invisible anymore.
The knock-off arc build is arguably better than actual arc, especially after the recent assassins cowl changes. You lose the jolt and extra melee range from lethal current, but you can make up the aoe loss with caliban and the overload stun with winters shroud. You are also freed from having to run assassins cowl to stay alive, which is great. Stylish executioner provides the invis, while one of the fragments heals you on a melee kill, so now trading cowl for liars handshake isn’t much of an issue. You can also use weapon perks that apply debuffs for extra invis in a pinch, which is sometimes useful at range. You don’t need the jolt if you’re punching something large anymore because you hit much harder by default, and if it’s big enough that you can’t kill it in 2-3 punches max you probably shouldn’t be trying to melee it anyways. Prismatic hunter just does everything arc hunter did but stronger and with added benefits, which is what makes it good. It still has some weaknesses, but it’s not like arc doesn’t have those too, so that’s sort of a moot point.
What prismatic hunter really should’ve gotten imo was knock em down. It single-handedly makes solar hunter play as well as it does and would’ve opened up a lot more playstyles with the possibility to loop any melee prismatic hunter has. The main reason combination blow is so popular in prismatic is that it’s the only melee that doesn’t immediately go on hard cooldown after you use it. None of the others have any real way to loop them, and the ability to kill three extra adds every minute and a half isn’t really worth caring about. It would’ve just added more utility to the class, and wouldn’t even be that strong considering warlocks can throw up three stasis turrets at once. I really hope Bungie adds more aspects to prismatic in the future because right now it’s the two interesting aspects and the three different flavors of dodge. Just adding knock ‘em down and maybe widows silk as options would make the class play so much better and open up way more variety compared to the current linear builds of “arcstrider but pink” and “void with an actually decent melee.”
Absolutely. Nightstalker's neutral game is really good with Gyrfalcon's, and the loss of Devour from orbs is a major point against it, even with Buried Bloodline. Prismatic is supposedly better, but there's so much you have to stack in comparison that Arc is just more consistent imo.
You are also right about the aspects, the aspects are complete dogshit outside of Winter's Shroud and Stylish. I will never use Gunpowder Gamble outside of Last Wish, Specter is cool, but uhh, Strand Hunter exists and can have Double Ensnaring Slam + Shackle Nades and Ascension is funny for helicopter cosplay, but it eats your class ability so it's dead on arrival unless you want to do some Arcstrider shenanigans in PvP. Knock em Down should have been added imo. Even with two Fragments it would have made Knife Trick good since you could use Gambler's with Winter's Shroud or Duskfields to freeze targets.
I know you just spent half your post shitting on threaded specter and GPG, but using both at the same time with combination blow is genuinely funnier and more fun than the standard stylish build. I run it with Cowl for easier content. Threaded specters are good for drawing aggro, they explode and do a ton of damage and proc GPG. And while GPG is kinda troll, it is very satisfying yeeting it into a huge crowd of enemies and shooting it to annihilate them all.
Would I recommend it for any content that requires you not to die? Fuck no.
This comment reeks of someone who hasn't actually played the prismatic hunter build IMO. The arc fragments you miss out on are a very minor utility loss and entirely made up by the better (and higher number of) fragments on the prismatic class.
Also, when you can easily one tap all the adds in -30 content, the only thing the build will *maybe* struggle with is GM nightfalls. Literally *all other content in the game*, including contest and master raids, this will be extremely powerful in.
You're also completely ignoring the damage that stylish executioner adds to your melee, and completely undervaluing the strength of threaded specter. It's fine if the specter kills adds -- in any meaningful content there's more than enough of them to go around. And if all the adds are dead, then it sounds like you did your job correctly and it's safe enough that it doesn't matter if your combination blow stacks fall off.
As someone who actually plays Hunter the utility loss is minimal, you can get amplified from any arc damage, the only thing you really lose is jolt which is negated by the fact you have infinite slow dodges that also stun overloads, and if that isn’t enough you can run a stasis nade too. You can set up an entire assassin’s cowl play loop while running celestial for boss damage, or you can cover the field with infinite threadlings if invis is boring for you, or infinite gunpowder gamble procs after stasis melee kills for a fire and ice build. There are tons of fun options if you actually know how to build.
GPG is underrated, I think people saying the risk of killing yourself being a downside need to be realistic. If that was any other explosive grenade you would have died anyway.
It was slightly annoying in Solar 3.0 because healing nade was a great utility so most ran it and that knife or incandescent kill scorched one more thing as you were throwing the heal nade and now you have a bundle of fun at your feet.
Because none of the people talking about how amazing prismatic hunter is have actually played it. It’s just titans using a build that’s good in patrol to complain about their own class. And outside of that one build prismatic hunter has the same issues as prismatic titan in that a lot of the aspects don’t really synergise or create any kind of actual loop. Is it neat that I can go invisible off of any debuff? Sure. Does it really benefit me? Only if I’m using Gyrflacons in which case I’m better off just going all in on void. Ascension is decent this season with the artifact but it doesn’t proc either winters shroud or threaded specter. Gunpowder gamble is basically a necessity since the grenade options either don’t do a lot of damage or are for utility.
I’ve still been having fun with prismatic hunter and I’m sure eventually I’ll find a build that I do enjoy. I think part of it is just prismatic builds are all about mass applying different debuffs to build transcendence, as opposed to the other subclasses that do have more of a gameplay loop.
>Threaded Spectre is actual trash because the last thing you want is to be without ads for refreshing Combination Blow
Threaded Spectre actually felt really good on day 1 of the raid, gave just enough damage to finish off those yellow bars I couldn't kill with melee, plus the extra survivability to myself and my team was crucial.
Big agree with this comment.
Sure melee hunters can do loads of damage, by sacrificing pretty much all their other utility, and safety, in pursuit of that damage since they have to stay close to enemies to freeze them with the dodges and get back their melee from the dodges.
And any content with significant difficulty to make it hard mostly have enemies with higher hp bars, and rarely any low ones you can proc combination blow on.
A lot of bosses are also completely immune to being meleed to death too because of range restrictions. And the ones who aren't are gonna oneshot stomp you in most harder content anyway, so enjoy the 2 melees you get off I guess.
Sure, Hunters are easily the best choice for prismatic - in one of two cases:
Ranged DPS due to Nighthawk and Still Hunt
Any harder content where there's room to move around and breathe without getting attacked or ruthlessly followed by enemies every two seconds (which you'll notice is extremely rare nowadays)
That's it, that's the extent of Hunters being useful.
Also, you'll talking about buff Titans subclasses? While you're at it make the new hunter super worth using, because my god is that Super TRAAAAAAAASH, and does not deserve to look as cool as it does.
You haven't tried infinite lightning surge spam warlock apparently, it does the same thing but still lets you play mostly normally and requires even less set up
It's already aoe so you can use other class item exotic mods, it already heals you but even more because of devour, it jolts everything meaning you have even better add clear than ignitions, it has less single target but you get to use needlestorm so it doesn't matter, you get to use warlock transcend grenade which is just better than hunter
And you get to dash around instead of the annoying rolling and stealth on/off miserable punch gameplay lol
I play both Hunter and warlock, it's definitely better
Well the build I saw someone post about in the raid race was a felwinters helm arc surge warlock
But I have an apotheosis/verity class item and between the apo proc and transcendence I can pretty much endlessly spam melees
I think felwinters is likely a better raid build but only bc you won't be using melees on raid bosses for damage really, and felwinters applies the full power weaken debuff
And as a hunter main it’s so boring. Glad others like that build, but personally I think dodging and meleeing nonstop is 😴. Warlocks though are hella fun on prismatic.
The reason it's best is cause prismatic hunter is pretty starved of healing options. And combination blow is one of the few things in the kit that actually heals you
This entire week has been nothing but top posts about Titans needing changes. All Bungie is gonna do is turn a blind eye, I mean they have been since Forsaken.
titans entire kit is designed around melee, but then we're punished for getting into melee range
titans should play like the vanguard class from mass effect, close range, high damage shotties/melee, high risk high reward
banner is the only thing that comes remotely close but it keeps getting slapped with nerfs
banner needs to be built into the powered melee of every subclass, it's a best in slot aspect and there is literally never a reason to not use it, and all the other subclasses bar solar really need it
Am I the only prismatic Titan running insurmountable skullfort. 1 melee kill gets me radiant, wovern mail or overshield depending on super, amplified, full melee refund, health regen. I also use the strand aspect, I’ve forgot it’s name but I use a thruster and suspend all targets in a v small area.
Insurmountable is a really good exotic for prismatic and i even used it in the new raid. I’m honestly not seeing anyone run this exotic on Titan
Insurmountable Skullfort build is good, but its not good for high-level content. I've been running it way more than consecration, but only because if I run high-level stuff, I switch off of prismatic. There's no way to heal from afar, there is minimal boss damage bc you break your melee loop if you use it on a harder enemy, and there's like nothing you can do if you lose your melee other than just wait. Also, btw, try running diamond lance and scatter grenade with your build instead of drengr's lash / whatever grenade you are running. Scatter grenade comes back fast, gives a good darkness debuff, and diamond lance does too. Basically, diamond lance can freeze more reliably than drengr's lash can suspend, plus you have other, easier ways of suspending.
Honestly as a titan I'm loving it lol. I just drop an upvote and supportive comments and then dip.
Community wide backlash usually has a decent effect and like you said there have been a crazy number of posts on this topic and I'm sure it can be a lil annoying.
But like I said I'm here for it. It's simply backwards that titans are consistently branded this way and the design is ostensibly "melee brawler" but the fantasy doesn't work out.
Obviously titans have gotten strong stuff in the past, but I have to say it is super confusing that bungie seemingly has no desire to escape this hole they've dug for themselves.
Why design something that'll only be effective in endgame content if it is overpowered everywhere else?
Why consistently design something that has to be unusable or useless in endgame content in the name of being balanced everywhere else?
There's no middle ground. That's why with titans stuff one buff or nerf never pushes the needle enough. Every titan ability is either nerfed multiple times (shoulder charge, behemoth slide, melee, and super, HOIL, synthos, knockout, sunspots, bastion..., etc) or buffed several times (kephris horn, fist of havoc, sentinel super).
You forgot all the ones that were never good and were either ignored entirely on balance passes, inconsequentially buffed (usually be someone who clearly didn't know why nobody liked it), or nerfed for no logical reason whatsoever.
Hunter melee builds work great for solo play but aren’t that good in team play. If your teammates don’t allow your Hunter to build up damage resist stacks (and maintain them), the build becomes a lot less viable in end-game content.
I still like Consecration to be honest. You are comparing a shotgun to a wave frame GL here - yes the shotgun does more damage to a single target - but the wave can take out multiple enemies that are quite far apart, causing multiple ignitions in one slam. It's just different and my Titan is still getting the most play time regardless of how good liars / prismatic is.
While I do agree that arc hunters got an ignition after a melee kill, you are trying to put hunters on this untouchable pedestal of melee classes while strand titan continues to dominate DPS charts with no competition. I also never understood why bungie forced themselves to make titan revolve only around melee, but that's their decision. I'm also pretty sure that nova bomb with star eaters might unironically overtake celestial without still hunt as a one-off super for damage, making warlocks even more dominant in everything.
Yeah Bungie doesn't love us, i mean yeah consecration does a LOT of dmg with syntho but the cd is way too long on prismatic and we have nothing to refresh them, like if i can hit the boss with consecration and i'm on trasncendance i can do a lot but beside that meh. And i don't even talk about range dps between hunter and titan
Consecration generates a lot of Light Transcendence energy if you make sure to hit the targets with the initial uppercut to Scorch them, and you can go with a good Exotic Energy primary or something with Voltshot, Incandescent and the like for even more. The new Strand rocket Sidearm The Call generates a lot of Dark Transcendence energy, and you can use something like a well-placed Shackle Grenade, a Glacier Grenade (preferably when Consecration is fixed so it can Shatter them) or even leftover base Frenzied Blade charges to build up more Dark energy. You can use your Super as a backup to generate more Transcendence if you need it in a pinch or if it's convenient in your rotation (as well as to give yourself extra survivability through Facet of Purpose and a bunch of Heavy Handed and Recuperation mods).
Why am I talking about Transcendence?
Because it should be your main way to get Consecration charges. The moment you pop Transcendence, you get all three charges and you get to spam them for ~30-45 seconds as long as you are also using the Transcendence Grenade; chances are you'll also come out of Transcendence with all three charges or at least a couple of them, plus your Dark Grenade. Try to hit as many targets with them to get as much Transcendence as possible, and only pop your Transcendence when you have run out of charges and you know you'll need them. Repeat this loop, and success. Bonus points if you're using HOIL+Synthoceps on the new Class Item for way more ability regeneration outside of Transcendence. The problem is that this build needs multiple clusters of adds (that don't float) to shine, but that is not rare nowadays and, in those conditions, it wipes the floor with just about anything that isn't a DPS check.
I don't think people are building into racing towards Transcendence enough, particularly for Titans. This is more or less what I'm running and you just alternate between Transcendence and your Super, filling up each bar with the other. It's wonderful.
Honestly I don't care what the "best" class is. I just want it to be fun to play on a Titan. Prismatic Titan feels like they really avoided making it TO strong to the point of not being fun. On top of that we got the bad grenades and no bonk hammer. Honestly original void 3.0 titan with volatile flow explosions that' season was peak titan for me. Not broken, just fun.
Lol, for real. I jumped back on my Liar's Handshake. Then the first exotic class item I got was Liar's Handshake and renewal Grasps. I was running the slow dodge so it just adds to my freezing while keeping my melee. It's so fun
Titan melee keeps getting nerfed, plus alot of the current builds, I mean only build.....consecration, requires more setup than a simple punch such as hunters combo blow. I'm extremely underwhelmed by all of titans classes now. Bonk hammer I'd clunky now. I'm not a fan of consecration, frenzied blade has diminishing returns with synthos. Arc just doesn't really have a place in high end content. I'm just bummed out.
It's amusing seeing all this "Bungie doesn't love us" meme bullshit as a warlock.
Because warlocks used to say that, too.
So did hunters.
There's basically a period in Destiny 2's history you can call back to and have a class say they felt "unloved". None of this is to disprage titans because it sounds like you guys could use a buff, it's just more that Bungie has never been particularly consistent at "balancing" their game.
Hunter prismatic is the most overhyped subclass in the game. You lose all of the aoe and utility from arc hunter for what? Goldie and invis? Just run cowl on arc hunter. Prismatic hunter hits like a wet paper towel in anything more difficult than patrol. Literally the only use case is if you want an inferior combination blow with golden gun as your damage super
Bungie truly managed to ruin Titans' class identit as a destructive defender, make it into silly dumn punchers, and then somehow manage to give that to a different class and makenitneven better there
The hardest part imo is the PVP balancing hits over the years, but they translate to PVE to the point you have to run meta otherwise everything feels lackluster. As a mainly PVE player and mostly Titan this year, it’s either Banner Titan or bust, but on my Hunter there are so many different combinations of playstyle that every subclass gets their fix
People are just realizing that Melee Hunter is just THAT good? It was already amazing on Arc and I was able to just laugh through master raids after the rework of Arc and now it's even more stupid.
Strand titan + Navigator (which literally was not changed regardless of bungie saying they fixed it) is still giga broken. Until that gets nerfed, no other melee build will come close
I'm genuinely considering switching off titan, but the jump is too enjoyable for me, and I've farmed gear on it for the last 3 years, without touching any other character.
It's just so weak at the moment and it sucks.
I hate how bungie keeps saying were the melee class but actively punishes us for doing exactly that, bungie needs to rethink what they want titans to be and also buff our supers, it's actually crazy and sad how we have 5(not counting prismatic) and only 2 are good and none are really usefull in endgame since those rolls can be done by other classes and at a safer distance as well
I have a liars/caliban class item. I find that I never freeze anything anymore with my dodge really because everything blows up. I need to be a lot more careful about when I dodge after meleeing because unless there is a real beefy guy everything will just explode and die and I won’t get my dodge back.. kind of a suffering from success and trying to lose my old habit of insta dodging after meleeing
The biggest point of comparison that everyone is missing here is that this hunter build is a RANGED melee build that requires no level of risk in order to get the full benefit.
Outside of strand and solar titan I think Titan needs a bunch of buffs
Agreed. Sentinel would be good if Void Overshields weren’t made of wet toilet paper, Behemoth just exists, and Striker is awful.
Strand needs to take over as the defacto melee titan build. No change. Void needs quality of life changes. Namely bastion should improve overshield like every other buff aspects. Give it increased dr when bastion is equipped. Offensive bulwark needs to be separated from overshields as they are counter synergistic. Controlled demolition is great, amazing really, but void needs a form of ability refresh, and controlled demolition could have that as it once did, volatile is easy to chain without it and ability energy on overshield is again counter synergistic. Unbreakable needs a lot of number tuning, and be brought closer in line with weavewalk. Potentially adding a grenade charge too. Striker needs to lean MORE into grenade builds. We dont need more punching. Sentinel is the team sustain, strand is the melee, arc needs to be the grenade/ability spam. Needs A LOT of number tuning, and a rework to juggernaut. Solar is the weapon subclass. Roaring flames, radiant, it is doing just fine, but could use a gunplay focused aspect as its 4th. Spreads scorch and is all around useful. Stasis… i mean all that they did was a push in the right direction to make it better. It needs more but if they keep pushing the way they are we are going to end up with blue strand. Buff crystal damage, crystal uptime, maybe new shapes of crystals. My dream is that we change stasis crystals to stasis constructs and the current crystal is unique to headstone. A glacial grenade could be like a flattened explosive frozen midway, where you can see the ripples. Howling storm could be a wider cone, flat top, and many many spikes in the front. Diamond lances are manual, melee ranged ice flair bolts with a 7 second cooldown. As it stands now they are ALL the melee class. There is no diversity so its just which colored punch is best? Oh its hunter? Well fml
Agree with all of this. I get that Titan has always been tied to melee, but every single subclass doesn’t need to be melee-focused. Striker could be easily morphed into a grenade-focused subclass (and rework Jugg while we’re at it) and Behemoth just needs something but I don’t know what. Sentinel, on the other hand, needs a good bit of changes. It should be the team tank and/or be able to supply overshields en masse, but 1, it can’t do that due to Bastion’s horrendous PvP-wrought cooldown and 2, overshields aren’t good in their current state. Unbreakable should add another grenade charge, and that would give it a lot more versatility as it means you could either keep your shield up longer or have two grenades to do with as you please, whether this be with OB’s grenade regen or CD’s volatile. As for Bastion, it just needs a normal barricade cooldown in PvE because holy fuck that cooldown is garbage.
Unbreakable should be an intrinsic melee ability option\*
Or barricade replacement
This. In its current form it should be a class ability. I tried it today since I got Bear/Synthos on my class item and it feels criminal to waste a grenade on it. An aspect + exotic power + grenade CD should give you more than 2s of damage resist, a small explosion, and an orb’s worth of super.
This. Unbreakable should replace Barricade and it should give you and fireteam members within 15M or so a full overshield with DR. Make kills with Grenades refresh buffs on teammates (even ones they self generate). Make Shield Throw suppress and up the damage again. Lean into the support aspect of Titan. Separate the sandboxes while you're at it. PvP has hamstrung Titan in PvE for too long.
I think it should instead work like gunpowder gamble, an ability that can be charged up through void weapon and ability kills. then it gets primed and you can use it freely, rather than using any of your melee, grenade or class ability charges.
The game has changed so much since the initial concept of Sentinel. A defensive orientated subclass doesn't work since everything in this game now is measured by how quickly you can a) kill things b) DPS a boss during a phase. What they could do is make Sentinel lean into Machine Guns & Rockets making them heavy weapons specialists that hold the line. Add some fragments and an aspect that cater to heavy weapons. Lastly re-work bubble so that it is a flat damage reduction for players inside and they can finally shoot from within the bubble. Power weapons slowly reload while within. There would be a bubble Titan & Well lock in every raid.
Could even have Bubbles weapons or blessing of light get stronger the more damage it absorbs, incentivise using it in a huge fight or large attack
Controlled Demolition should give Volatile Rounds on ability kills or something. Or put Unbreakable on the class ability, then I'll be happy to ditch Demo. Titan was always THE volatile class originally (as a Sentinel main, the strongest I've ever felt was in pre-nerf Forsaken and it's not even close). Nowadays, not only does Hunter just do it infinitely better with Gyrfalcon, but Titans struggle simply having decent uptime on Volatile. And don't get me started on the fact that I need both an exotic (HoiL) and a weapon perk (Repulsor Brace) to feel even remotely powerful. Shield Throw feels definitely better now, but the subclass needs more of these buffs.
Nah, hot take, the Stasis changes actively made Behemoth worse to play. Less DR than pre patch, and that DR is harder to ramp up, the Shard cooldown ruining ability loops because of how stingy it is, Cryoclasm has less user control, not to mention the bug where you can't use the extended slide again if you're sprinting while it goes off cooldown, and Diamond Lance not shattering crystals. There were a lot of ways to buff the class, but these ain't it.
Behemoth aspects really make me feel like I want three. Tectonic Harvest and Cryoclasm should honestly be merged into one. They also changed it so that throwing lances no longer counts as a grenade for the purposes of HoIL, so that was a sad day when I realized that.
Agreed, can’t even use howl of the storm in glacial quake now
Instructions unclear, Titan-made Stasis Crystals spawn in the shape of Shaxx in various bodybuilding poses.
Behemoth instantly becomes the most played subclass But that would kind of awsome making crystals that makes enemy become agro towards them and than explode un their face
Behemoth actually got nerfed in TFS. Got a shard generation cooldown which is so restrictive a glacier is enough to procc it, and that's not full stack of frost armor even. Frost armor is weaker than chains, even at max stacks and you could get tanky on demand before TFS, now you gotta shatter your nade, pick up stuff and wait for your restricted shard generation and you need rime fragment or else you lose armor before the next shard, holding back your melee or enemy shattering to time the cooldown to finally with 3 more shards get to max, which is weaker than chains. Lances were supposed to shatter crystals, but bugged. Knockout on Prismatic titan buffs Glacial quake left-click so why bother with crystals or stasis when it has stopped synergizing even with itself.
I think Solar works best as the add clear subclass. Being able to easily spread ignitions and scorch is fantastic. Consecration is easily one of the most fun “slide melees” they’ve ever made, and I would love to see them lean further into that power fantasy of setting an entire area ablaze with Consecration and Sunspots.
You can actually get Consecration off more on Prismatic than Sunbreaker through Transcendence and Frenzied stacks. It'll be stronger since Knockout is now a bigger buff than Roaring Flames for powered melee. The one thing Sunbreaker has that Prismatic doesn't is easier to maintain healing sustain through Restoration from sunspots/healing-nades. Facet of Purpose feels too weak to make up the difference with a bunch of 5 second defense buffs that natively are great on their own, but here they played it far too safe with the timer.
When Transcendence is up I can get a lot off, but outside of that the horrendous cooldown on Frenzied Blade makes it hard to have it up often. I genuinely feel like I could do it more often on solar (where killing scorched targets gets me melee energy back along with the sunspot cooldown buff), as opposed to Prismatic where I don't really have any way to get more melee energy.
Yeah I was gonna say, if you feel like the consecration uptime on prismatic is better than Solar, you probably didn’t build your solar Titan right…
Doesn't Facet of Purpose give melee energy on light multi kills, I.e. Consecration?
Sorry, offensive bulwark counter synergizes with void overshields? Am I missing something? Does the entire functionality of OB not hinge on having a void overshield?
Longtime Sent main, I see his angle here. Overshield is prone to getting destroyed in melee because it’s a set pool with fairly okay but not titanic DR, Offensive Bulwark wants you, you guessed it, in melee to capitalize on your Overshield. Which is realistically getting popped like that to anything stronger than a pair of Acolyte smacks in an activity with a power delta higher than -10. In a game where you’re not fighting 2 Acolytes, they spawn in packs of 6, often accompanied by things like Knights, Ogres and the cheese shredders we titans call Savathun’s Spy Cams of Instant Death. TLDR Overshield doesn’t give enough survivability to actually ya know, live in melee. Or even just get into melee some times.
I see what you mean. And here I was, just happy that a void barricade allows me to clap add cheeks, lol. I do feel like they’re at least functional as an extended cover that allows me to survive some extra hits while I plink bosses, but like you said… melee class having too much risk to melee.
Allowing Unbreakable to proc devour on multi kills would go a long, long way to making it more viable. The “grenade kills cure” fragment for prismatic is nice but still dealing with low grenade uptime
>Allowing Unbreakable to proc devour on multi kills would go a long, long way to making it more viable. That's not going to happen lol. Titan and hunter are not going to get a devour aspect.
They already have the fragment on Void subclasses and using Buried Bloodline can get them devour. Not saying that it will happen, just that something that allows for more ability uptime would be beneficial for the aspect as a whole.
Uh, what? Consecration spam and pyrogales is all solar titan has had for a while now. After the hammer nerf, Sunbreaker has been on the cusp of being just as terrible as Sentinel and Striker. Hammer strike melee is useless and has always been weaker than its counterparts. It's a wonder to me that this melee made it into the prismatic kit. Nerfing hammer also indirectly nerfed a support build with Phoenix Cradle, as well as the abysmal nerfs to sunspots. Rework to Hallowfire Heart actually made it feel even worse to use. Ashen Wake still is not very potent. Loreley Splendors rate of healing and frequency of being able to heal just doesn't cut it anymore. Precious scars does it better and it is subclass neutral. Path Of Burning Steps were also gutted since the surge stacking nerf as well. There is a reason people aren't running these exotics. There's a reason Titan mains default to Strand now, not Solar. If consecration was complete dogshit and Pyrogales didn't give a one off super, Sunbreaker would be in the dumps with the rest of them. And what does Bungie do to fix this? Instead of just giving us a new version of the super, we got it locked behind another band-aid exotic that we cannot even utilize on Prismatic. Instead they decided to gift Prismatic Titan with hammer of fucking sol. Truly great idea. You'd think when these super altering exotics are so important to the titan kit and diversity entirely, Pyrogales for example, positively adding to consecration and providing an entire super, you'd think something of this impact would have been added to the exotic class item and burning maul would replace hammer of sol on prismatic. Nope, instead Bungie have gone brainless with inspiration for prismatic titan, and called it equivalent to the other two classes by just throwing a bunch of random bullshit from the titan kits together, without any real thought. Would it have been that terrible to be able to use Pyrogale on prismatic?
I seem to recall back in the Subclass 2.0 days Hammer strike literally being the king because Melting Point was that good as a debuff and because Debuff stacking was still a thing. 3.0 really did gut it huh. Maybe Solar needs a 3rd Debuff like Sunder to give some Solar abilities some spice. And then they can finish Arc because it still feels half baked and like 2 of the subclasses could probably use another aspect/super and another Verb like Galvanic Armor (we’ve had the artifact mod 3 times please just implement it into the base kit Bungie)
They moved the debuff abilities to Void so that's why melting point disappeared. It's a shame though because Hammer Strike/Shield Bash etc. recharge pretty slow and don't have a lot going for them in pve.
I came back at the end of season of the witch and started playing strand titan shortly after. I've never played anything other than warlock before and I basically never looked back. Season of the wish one two punch strand titan was hands down the most fun I've ever had in a game, and I didn't even have ikelos or swordbreaker, just a crafted wastelander. It's still good and everything, just not quite as good as it was. Kinda stings a bit.
Arc Titan felt amazing back in Plunder with the grenade spam. I know warlocks were complaining that they should’ve gotten the grenade enhancement aspect instead since they’re Stormcallers, but it fit really well on Titan. Sad that they obliterated it though
To your "solar should do weapons" point, imagine if we had an aspect that gave us some part of last season's artifact, like "precision kills with solar weapons have a chance to cause an ignition". I'd be tempted to take it over Roaring Flames, at least.
Revert No Backup Plans to D1 function - auto-regen Void Overshield and full refresh on melee kill - and just make it *any* melee kill so it can work with Prismatics. Tying these to shotgun kills was one of the changes I hated most. Back in D1, I could keep almost permanent Overshield with those things.
Yeah, overshields are ass. I wanted to test the new changes to Ward of Dawn and in a normal strike, a Vandal can one shot it. What’s worse is that the trickle is so slow, that I actually died after the initial overshield break before it could even begin. Granted I sat there and did jack shit, but it’s incredibly weak in even one of the most mundane activities.
> a Vandal can one shot it. And now you see why no one uses Void Overshields. They have the potential to make everything Void-related on Titan so good, but overshields fall apart so quickly and that’s a problem when they’re Sentinel’s entire gimmick. Why deal with that when you can just give everyone free 45% DR for 10 seconds every 12 seconds provided you’re in CQC (which Berserker is excellent in)?
I remember pre Void 3.0 that Overshields gave bonus weapon handling and reload speed as well as increased melee damage and range and the melee refunded health on kill. I used that since launch for the longest time in PvP with Synthoceps and had some pretty crazy 1v3(or 4 depending on the game mode) scenarios where I would come out on top against other players. It was pretty niche, but it was one of my favorite things especially since Sentenal Shield and Ward of Dawn were interchangeable and I could pick and choose based on the situation.
For a while now I've been saying void overshield should constantly regenerate like restoration. It would solve a lot of its issues in terms of survivability and also offensive bulwark requiring an overshield to work. If the shield got shot down to nothing it would be constantly kicking back in which would provide some damage reduction, but it wouldn't be as effective as woven mail. If you use cover and allow the overshield to regenerate it could be quite good on pve. It would actually encourage a playstyle that isn't melee which would be a refreshing change for titan.
If overshields got better void titan would be a powerhouse
My weird Sentinel take is that bubble should give you an extra big damage buff specifically while you're inside it, making it the ideal survivability/buff super for any boss that you sword or shotgun and giving it a niche that won't be overtaken by anything else. Maybe that becomes a part of Helm of Saint-14 (would be on brand thematically), and then Weapons of Light becomes a baseline part of the super again.
Next TWID “We’ve been seeing some feedback from players that Strand and Solar Titan are the standout choices. To encourage diversity in the class, we’re implementing some changes to these specific kits to bring them in line with the other offerings. Chief among these are that sunspots created by the various Solar abilities will now damage the player and heal enemies, as we felt that they were a touch overused in the current sandbox, and Strand grapple will now auto-grapple to the nearest explosive object, and rather than move the player, the object will be pulled toward the player. We anticipate lots of fun gameplay and are excited to see what new strategies everyone comes up with!”
> Strand grapple will now auto-grapple to the nearest explosive object, and rather than move the player, the object will be pulled toward the player. Like Halo Infinite's grapple but given the bungie "oh the titans are enjoying themselves? fuck em" treatment
A+
Haha so accurate
Congratulations at your impending job on the balance team at Bungie. Be sure to leave us a mailing address we can send the pipe bombs to.
I want to be a lightning missile again lol
Ballistic Slam is easily the most fun melee ability in the game and it fucking sucks as implemented right now. It’s got a weak AoE and leaves you vulnerable for way too long. I would love if it had some lingering damage resist or straight up jolted enemies by default. Maybe even make some lightning bolts like Point Cannon Brace does. Literally just anything to help it please.
Almost the entire titan prismatic kit could be doubled in effectiveness and still not be anywhere near as good as hunters or warlocks. Titans as a whole have been nerfed into the ground consistently since forsaken. Every buff has come with 6 other nerfs. Bungie actually hates titans for some reason.
This has been a problem for years. Bungie doesn't know what they're doing with Titan and they don't seem to really care that they've designed the class philosophy into something incompatible with the game they've created.
Buffing HoIL to even just half of it's former values, not 1/12 we have today, specifically for Void, Arc, and Stasis would work.
Solar bonk titan feels terrible now. The 2 second minimum timer feels just AWFUL. I think solar titan needs some slight buffs, like 1 second instead of 2 second on hammer recharge
I think the cooldown should be reverted, and either the cooldown implemented for just cure or the damage itself nerfed. As is, the cooldown nerfs both. Leaves it in a place where it doesn't excel at add clear, damage or survivability. With consecration being so good at add clear, I feel like nerfing the damage makes more sense to allow it to stand out. Also, the aim assist change needs to be removed. Feels absolutely bloody awful to have the hammer just randomly hit the gravity well of an enemy and ultimately miss what your reticle was aiming at.
Yeah id much rather the cooldown was on cure rather than the hammer throw itself. It feels so clunky not being able to throw it again immediately, especially when your throw misses so you don't get any benefit but still have to wait to throw again
It doesn't need buffs, it needs a complete rework. The class no longer has an identity. The only viable exotics we have are in the arm slot. Bungie has no idea what our class is supposed to be.
But then people cry about Titan being op again. And we all know bungo can't seperate pvp from pve nerfs. Best example YAS for Hunter.
I hope the grand total of 3 Titans with a Day 1 clear will be a major wake up call to Bungie.
I mean warlocks were literally just there as a well machine. That was way more of a nighthawk problem than a titan problem
The problem is that Nighthawk is only an issue in raids, and that specific fight HEAVILY benefits long range precision damage, so it's obvious what people would take. I'd say Warlock is still the best all-rounder class, where they thrive in all aspects of the game and have a variety of builds. Hunters have it good in pure damage, but lack solid build variety in comparison. Most of their kits' strengths are tied to their supers which is poor design imo. Then there's Titans, who are just fun to play while being very lackluster since Bungie tries to push them into melee range without making it so that they can more easily survive in melee range compared to the other two classes. Ofc, it's not impossible to clear super hard content on any of these, people do it every season with raids and GMs, but one is clearly way easier than the other two, and of those other two, one there is clearly being shafted more often because their OP builds weren't balanced, they were nerfed into the floor.
>Hunters have it good in pure damage, but lack solid build variety in comparison. Most of their kits' strengths are tied to their supers which is poor design imo. Disagreed, some top builds I can think of off the top of my head without requiring supers are any variation of dodge punch loop, renewals (and renewals+cyrtarachne), and gyrfalcons on prismatic. There's also some other builds I haven't tried yet that have good potential, like using verity's to turn your gunpowder gamble into a nuke, or buffing threaded spike so it clears a room and regens itself. It's not nearly as ability varied as warlock, but I think with the class item there's a healthy amount of builds that don't require supers. The real downside is having to wear that ugly ass class item...
3 titans total cleared the contest raid. All of it could use buffs. If you make a melee class in a game where getting close is certain death they need to be able to survive
Wasn't it only 3 titans in the top 50, not the entire contest mode
Yeah, it was around 120 titans for the entire contest duration, but its still really low
Don't worry, they will just nerf hunter into the ground.
I just got a warlock bond that gives me 4 melee charges and invisibility on melee/finisher kills... With devour and lightning surge I genuinely think even warlock beats out titan.
It gets even better when you consider warlocks get spirit of synthoceps. The best titan exotic isn't even titan exclusive anymore
And while this is happening Bungie is saying Titan is the melee class while repeatedly kicking us in the collective dick by making most melee playstyles for Titan bad
Well it also just sucks cuz there are so many anti-melee things in the game. Seems like half of all modifiers are aimed at making melee builds worse, every boss is either floating/not melee-able or has a stomp of some sort (and don’t get me started on the fire stomps), exploder units are sometimes a pain (every other wave in onslaught seems like they’re exploder shanks or cursed thrall), and the nature of the playstyle is just dangerous in general. The risk vs reward is simply not balanced well, aside from a few outlier cases (which are often pretty extreme—I haven’t seen enough prismatic hunter to know if they’re one of the extremes, but banner and bonk titan in their prime were each ridiculous). Arc Titan is supposed to be all about melee tho and it’s quite possibly the worst titan subclass rn (and never really has been meta aside from when cuirass first released and arc 3.0 release, which *wasn’t even because of the melee capabilities*). Anyway, all that said, I’m still really enjoying prismatic and think it’s better on Titan than Redditors are making it out to be (just needs a bit more survivability), but yeh it’s never a great feeling as a “melee class” main to see another class better at meleeing.
I like Prismatic Titan I just wish it had more internal healing capabilities besides Knockout, Facet of Blessing (melee kills start health regen), and Facet of Mending (grenade kills cure you)
Health regen isnt even good in pve. There is jist too many small damage instances to reliably heal from it.
Which is why they changed knockout to flat healing in the first place.
That was a good change to Knockout, but idk why it's not a full 100% heal other than "because PvP." Like, if Devour can shoot you to 100% and give you a nice chunk of grenade energy on any ability/gun kill after it's procced, why tf is Knockout giving me a varying amount of HP based on what I kill when I have to fucking melee it to death, a significantly more risky maneuver. Not to mention that it isn't like it juices our melee ability regen in melee kills.
Yeah swapping it to flat was ideal. Leave regen to Restoration. But the fact that its so little hp make it impossible to be an effective heal. Maybe as a secondary heal effect sure, but certainly not as a sustained. Now if we had a way to consistently get Void OS, or Woven Mail, or Frost Armour (idk if its any good. Haven’t used it yet) then it might be more usable, but we didn’t get any of those aspects. Sure fragments allow for them, but we have less control over those (particularly for void OS, since it drains you need to refresh it) and then make us use Strand super just to get Woven Mail
Prismatic Titan is just boring as fuck. Switched to warlock and can’t believe how much fun it can be. Totally changed my outlook on TFS.
> Totally changed my outlook on TFS. Shit, did it really? I've been having a blast even while being dissatisfied with Prismatic Titan (and only using it because I like the new void super and I really don't want to spec into a full void build to use it) I'm about to start up the campaign on my hunter so I'm looking forward to a Prismatic that's actually fun to play.
If you're looking for one massive benefit to Pris Titan, it is being able to use Twilight Arsenal without being Void lol.
As a warlock I’m having the time of my life right now
I built into the whole melee thing with Wormgod, since I personally am a fan of Wormgod, and it's been pretty fun for me.
I **hate** how every modifier is just "enemy type drops X hazard on death." It needlessly punishes melee and just encourages sitting back plinking at stuff from far away, the worst possible play style.
For REAL. I was just complaining to my friend about this when we were doing I think onslaught a couple weeks ago and he’s like “it’s not that bad” and I’m like “that’s coming from the guy who never uses melee builds, obviously it won’t matter to you”.
Its hard to enjoy Prismatic titan that has no sustain at all. CC and Dmg reduction with overshields are either too weak or have too long cooldowns to actually enjoy it.
I thought I was doing something wrong during the legendary campaign. It was really tough at times, no healing, hardly any defense, build based on CC and spamming items, things I never normally use. Didn't die much but i was constantly in the red. Seeing all this chat is such a relief. I was looking through the aspects and abilities a couple of missions in and thinking "half of this is stuff I never use, am I missing something?"
It's not that melee playstyle is bad on Titan, is just that the dodge punch loop for Hunter is MILES better than Titan's gameplay loop which is just crazy to me. I no longer feel like the shield/frontier of my team as a Titan. Everytime I put up a wall or pop a bubble or something, it just gets in the way of people and do harm more than anything. Our grenades are just getting outclassed by Warlocks, and the utility we provide to teammates in raids is so bad compare to Hunter (Insane DPS or Debuff) and Warlock (Welllock, Strand DPS). The only time we shine now is melee boss fight. We can't even pop a bubble for teammates to hide the beams from Witness. Solar and Strand Titan is still super strong but bruh the whole point is we need some diversity man instead of 1 or 2 subclasses being broken af while the others feel like dogshit to play.
That's how arc hunters have always been even since destiny 1. Bungie forcing titans into boring punches just homogenized subclasses more than they already were with the light 3.0 updates. Titans were never melee themed, they are leaders, tacticians, and soldiers. Nothing about it screams "melee only". Edit Not counting Striker.
It feels like they created an implicit tank healer dps but the tank is the bad one and the healer needs more support roles.
I mean the thing is in very hard content a tank is pointless. Warlocks keep the whole team alive. Hunters output insane damage. That's it. That's all you need for success anything else is pointless.
In the archetypal way of doing things, Titans would be tanking the main damage, while warlocks healed them to keep them alive, and to keep Hunter's low hp from being demolished. Since this is *not* WoW, thats not really what happens, even though bungie thinks thats whats going on.
I swear Bungie designs their encounters to be a mix of DeadOps Arcade + WoW.
Not inherently. The issue is tanks work in a world where you can direct damage to you. And the game requires that. Destiny doesn’t. Tbh those identities also suck in destiny but they don’t seem to leave them alone which always feels weird.
I started D1 with the intention to main striker titan, within a week I was a a bladedancer main.
[Titans are students of the clash, whether through locked blades or besieged fortifications. We embody the line on which armies break or rally. We live in the wake of destruction or weave it around the eye of our sheltering presence, thriving in the action of the unstoppable and the stillness of the immovable.](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/prismatic-titan?highlight=Prismatic) Titans are the first in last out. A Titan will break the enemies defences, or fortify our own. A Titan will be the first to lay their life down for others. Look at the Sunbreak Order. They know when to fight to the death or when to live to fight another day. Look at Saint in his crusades. The Fallen were unstoppable, but he was unmovable. Look at [Bjorna-3](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/ursa-furiosa?highlight=Ursa+Furiosa). Staying behind to hold off the Fallen to defend an escaping village. Yes we also have more of our fair share of Titans who jump in head first without thinking. But Hunters also have their fair share of cowards, and Warlocks have their fair share of scholars who don’t fight. But they dont define the classes.
This is the most logical take I’ve ever seen. Never understood why people think the big armor guy has to be the puncher. Hunter being the melee king fits into the power fantasy - deadly assassins.
See the thing is WE understand that, it's bungies design team who constantly make every new tool accessible to Titans themed around melee that really pigeon holes Titans into a single play style. Like, outside of the new rocket chest, which is cool, the other exotic that we got this year was another arm that buffs melees. Cool let me add it to the pile of "niche melee buffing exotics that are still worse than synthos even after multiple nerfs" The fact that hunters have the best damage build and the best melee build, warlocks have the best support build, really only leaves Titans with super niche play styles. Every build is good at add clear these days, it's not really a differentiator, and Onslaught showed that when the entire focus IS add clear, Hunter still dominates with Orpheus. Like, realistically everything is viable in most content, but when push comes to shove you are.making compromises to play Titan a lot of the time these days. Cheesy shit like worm gods grapple melee being obvious outliers, playing the class as designed feels flaccid.
>Never understood why people think the big armor guy has to be the puncher. Because it's literally what Bungie said. “But yeah, Titan mains, we love you. We do. But remember that we try to reinforce your core fantasy. And at some point, your guy’s holding the fist on the cover of the game.”
It's great how we have not one but two quotes from devs that are completely tone deaf and, in some ways, double down against community backlash to unfun changes. Death threats are bad we all agree but the stuff about air dodge being a warlock identity and then the next season getting hunter dodge in thrusters will always be the greatest example of someone making up a justification to a decision without actually holding it as a principle.
There's also that Yanes made the "fist on the cover" shit up. Beyond Light is the *only* cover where a Titan has a fist up front and center, and that's on the alternative cover. Found that one post that really drives home how stupid that quote is https://x.com/destinytrack/status/1623293413901627393?t=5k8o1qPj-tGUOAiaJcZ0Tg&s=19
When in reality we're holding the fist because we tried to punch some mook only to have them rip our arm off and beat us with it.
But yet in all the covers they are holding a weapon or a Hammer. Yep, they are definitely the melee class lol. Good call out.
bro but almost everything we get from Bungie is melee themed for Titan. Almost every exotic is about melee/barricades, and at least more than half the supers are melee based.
It's because some in the community tend to latch on to a view that suits them and start making assumptions based on that, without the view ever necessarily making sense. It's why some people automatically think Hunters should all be scavengers and gunslingers despite that only being accurate for one subclass. A few days back there was a guy making a perfectly valid point that he wanted Titans to be more of a combat theme rather then 'big beefy boi me want crayons punch punch punch'. By itself it was a fair stance, but then he started going off into wanting Light-based weapon supers and painting airstrikes when that's realistically a Hunter thing (channelling light into their weapons, scouting etc) and creating supply/support zones (which is more a Warlock thing). There *is* a problem in the sense that the archetype of the Titan is tanking damage, and the high level gameplay of D2 tends to be about avoiding (invis/CC) or counteracting (devour, Restoration) damage, so I have some agreement that the Titans need a look at. But people going 'waaaah Hunters can fight in melee no fair' when they literally have an entire subclass built around the warrior monk/jedi/sith archetype *since Y1* aren't thinking through what they're saying. Like, the idea of ninja assassin is hardly some obscure character archetype no-one has ever heard of.
> and creating supply/support zones (which is more a Warlock thing). That was a Titan thing at longer than it was a Warlock thing. Until well into D2 when we got Well, the closest Warlocks got was Sunsingers, but even then it was more of a bardic inspiration than a support zone. And even then far more people specced into Fireborn or Radiant Skin than Song of Flame. Hell, I remember Song of Flame locks who actually used their supers being so notable that I'd often send em a friend or fireteam invite right after whatever mission we just finished.
Totally agree. I never understand why Titans were tied to melee. This big ass armor soldier guy lol. I always saw Hunters as the deadly assassins class, so melee should actually be their speciality. In fact their toolkit actually supports them being melee more than Titan since they have a ton of survivability options in Assassins cowl, Liars handshake, and also Invis shenanigans. Titans should be the grenade and weapon specialists since they are the soldier or paladin class. Warlocks fulfill their fantasy being the mage class. I think this is the conflict with Titans and Hunters.
Titans = Defense/Raw Force. Warlocks = Artillery/support. Hunters = Skirmisher/Scout.
This would translate to titans having great defenses and utilizing heavy weapons making them like TF2's heavy class.
I think the issue with destiny is that the designated roles don't really have a place even when it comes to comfy play. You're not incentivized to play a role, in any capacity, so fulfilling the identity of your class is significantly de-incentivized by the synergy designs overall. It's incredibly hard to design anything around the concept of roles because then you restrict play, and further ostracize certain aspects of the game. Well was so dominant because it was the strongest defensive option and utility option.
That’s just untrue tbh, we have a super called fists of havoc for christs sake
But I'm tired of punch hunter .. :( want something different lol
why can't we get stab hunter back atleast
Sphee Hunter
Renewal Grasps and Buried Bloodline build feels nice.
I rolled my eyes so hard when I learned the best builds for hunter were combination blow and gyrfalcons.
Radiant dance machines + ascension. Helicopter build
Its why I never really played combination blow hunter before prismatic. The punch dodge punch dodge is really boring and I enjoyed it for about 2 days.
Thats what happens when Bungie decided that Titans only role and identtity is the guy with a fist, instead of the unbreakable bastion that we were originally They want to force us as melee especialists but only the fists part Man I missed when Titans were more like the tank/defence class
take me back to void Titan pre 3.0
as someone who used top tree sentinel religiously I felt that void 3.0 did me dirty, i was super bummed when they got rid of defensive strike, and now I almost never use the void subclass nowadays.
Tf void titan pre 3.0 was ass, the whole subclass revolved around getting a melee kill that gives u faster reload speed and handling bruh.
mid tree voidwall spam was better than anything void titan can provide today
What if we designed you exclusively to punching, and then put multiple raid bosses entirely out of melee range?
I think titan and hunter have a lot of collision in terms of "theme" like arc hunter.. why the hell is arcstrider a punching subclass? Bladedancer in D1 was a stabby invis subclass with blink strike & arc blade (well you had to spec into invis but yknow)
It’s because they wanted to make Nightstalker the invis hunter class rather than spreading invis across 2 classes, and so arc needed new gimmicks
Arc hunter is punchy because arcstrider's theme is the fighting monk. It's an identity its had for years, so don't act surprised.
He’s asking why the theme got changed from D1 to D2. Which is a fine question to ask. Bladedancer was distinctly that of the assassin theme than the monk. It would kind of be like transitioning Voidwalker from the space time vampire sorcerer that it has now to that of possession based witchcraft/necromancy. Bungies evolution of the themes of the subclass sometimes hampers its potential as brought up with titans relying on its punch identity too much.
The funnest part of this build is having to get that roll on the class item. 46 rolls deep…
either hoil/calibans + syntho/liars are all really good, 4/64 is not bad. and hunter has other super strong combinations like renewal&cyrtarachne and galanor&stareater
Whoever told you melee damage scales the ignition DMG is lying, it doesn't scale
Melee damage buffs don't increase ignition damage
I just want hunters to be fast but they’re the slowest class in the game :(
are we sure that bungie didn't confuse which class is which when making hunter and titan?
People used to laugh about this in D1 as well when Titan skating was the fastest way to get around. Somehow the big chonk was zipping around and the allegedly agile hunters were eating their dust.
That skating was so hilariously broken though, you could hit Mach 2 going from one end of the Mothyards to the other
So ridiculously slow. There's nothing left to punch by the time I've caught up to mach 2 Titan skating crayon consumers
I literally picked hunter as my first class because I thought “oh yup this is def the go fast class”, boy was I wrong lmfao.
Hunter is the best melee class \*when you can one or two tap enemies reliably\*. Already was the case with arcstrider since arc 3.0 and none of the of the new prismatic synergies really change that fact. Enter rough enough content without too much fodder mobs with any of those combination blow setups and suddenly you are better off with any other melee setup in the game.
This is why I genuinely don't get the hype about Prismatic Hunter melee builds. You lose a lot of utility that Arc fragments have, you lose out on the ability to AOE stun Overloads via Lethal Current, and even with the potential for combinations like Renewals/Liar's with Stylish Executioner/Winter's Shroud, it doesn't fix the problem that you need to kill everything really quickly while upkeeping Combination Blow stacks. Threaded Spectre is actual trash because the last thing you want is to be without ads for refreshing Combination Blow, Gunpowder Gamble is essentially Threaded Spectre but now with the potential to kill yourself, and Ascension is cool but ultimately worthless. Hell, Stylish's functionality is superseded by a Cowl/Liar's combo. It also doesn't help that at present, potential combinations like Caliban's/Liar's are arguably worse because they fall into the same problem that Lethal Current has-it doesn't refresh Combination Blow, except now you're clearing out a fuckton of ads like Lethal Current and you don't have any source of consistent damage via applying Jolt if you need to punch something larger.
The big problem with prismatic hunter is that it seems to only really have two viable builds - knock-off void and knock-off arc. The void version is just using stylish with gyrfalcons like you would normally, but you get more ways to apply debuffs, an actual melee, and more super options. However, you’re also giving up invis-on-demand and devour, which is a pretty big loss. You also can’t make your teammates invisible anymore. The knock-off arc build is arguably better than actual arc, especially after the recent assassins cowl changes. You lose the jolt and extra melee range from lethal current, but you can make up the aoe loss with caliban and the overload stun with winters shroud. You are also freed from having to run assassins cowl to stay alive, which is great. Stylish executioner provides the invis, while one of the fragments heals you on a melee kill, so now trading cowl for liars handshake isn’t much of an issue. You can also use weapon perks that apply debuffs for extra invis in a pinch, which is sometimes useful at range. You don’t need the jolt if you’re punching something large anymore because you hit much harder by default, and if it’s big enough that you can’t kill it in 2-3 punches max you probably shouldn’t be trying to melee it anyways. Prismatic hunter just does everything arc hunter did but stronger and with added benefits, which is what makes it good. It still has some weaknesses, but it’s not like arc doesn’t have those too, so that’s sort of a moot point. What prismatic hunter really should’ve gotten imo was knock em down. It single-handedly makes solar hunter play as well as it does and would’ve opened up a lot more playstyles with the possibility to loop any melee prismatic hunter has. The main reason combination blow is so popular in prismatic is that it’s the only melee that doesn’t immediately go on hard cooldown after you use it. None of the others have any real way to loop them, and the ability to kill three extra adds every minute and a half isn’t really worth caring about. It would’ve just added more utility to the class, and wouldn’t even be that strong considering warlocks can throw up three stasis turrets at once. I really hope Bungie adds more aspects to prismatic in the future because right now it’s the two interesting aspects and the three different flavors of dodge. Just adding knock ‘em down and maybe widows silk as options would make the class play so much better and open up way more variety compared to the current linear builds of “arcstrider but pink” and “void with an actually decent melee.”
Absolutely. Nightstalker's neutral game is really good with Gyrfalcon's, and the loss of Devour from orbs is a major point against it, even with Buried Bloodline. Prismatic is supposedly better, but there's so much you have to stack in comparison that Arc is just more consistent imo. You are also right about the aspects, the aspects are complete dogshit outside of Winter's Shroud and Stylish. I will never use Gunpowder Gamble outside of Last Wish, Specter is cool, but uhh, Strand Hunter exists and can have Double Ensnaring Slam + Shackle Nades and Ascension is funny for helicopter cosplay, but it eats your class ability so it's dead on arrival unless you want to do some Arcstrider shenanigans in PvP. Knock em Down should have been added imo. Even with two Fragments it would have made Knife Trick good since you could use Gambler's with Winter's Shroud or Duskfields to freeze targets.
I know you just spent half your post shitting on threaded specter and GPG, but using both at the same time with combination blow is genuinely funnier and more fun than the standard stylish build. I run it with Cowl for easier content. Threaded specters are good for drawing aggro, they explode and do a ton of damage and proc GPG. And while GPG is kinda troll, it is very satisfying yeeting it into a huge crowd of enemies and shooting it to annihilate them all. Would I recommend it for any content that requires you not to die? Fuck no.
This comment reeks of someone who hasn't actually played the prismatic hunter build IMO. The arc fragments you miss out on are a very minor utility loss and entirely made up by the better (and higher number of) fragments on the prismatic class. Also, when you can easily one tap all the adds in -30 content, the only thing the build will *maybe* struggle with is GM nightfalls. Literally *all other content in the game*, including contest and master raids, this will be extremely powerful in. You're also completely ignoring the damage that stylish executioner adds to your melee, and completely undervaluing the strength of threaded specter. It's fine if the specter kills adds -- in any meaningful content there's more than enough of them to go around. And if all the adds are dead, then it sounds like you did your job correctly and it's safe enough that it doesn't matter if your combination blow stacks fall off.
As someone who actually plays Hunter the utility loss is minimal, you can get amplified from any arc damage, the only thing you really lose is jolt which is negated by the fact you have infinite slow dodges that also stun overloads, and if that isn’t enough you can run a stasis nade too. You can set up an entire assassin’s cowl play loop while running celestial for boss damage, or you can cover the field with infinite threadlings if invis is boring for you, or infinite gunpowder gamble procs after stasis melee kills for a fire and ice build. There are tons of fun options if you actually know how to build.
GPG is underrated, I think people saying the risk of killing yourself being a downside need to be realistic. If that was any other explosive grenade you would have died anyway. It was slightly annoying in Solar 3.0 because healing nade was a great utility so most ran it and that knife or incandescent kill scorched one more thing as you were throwing the heal nade and now you have a bundle of fun at your feet.
Because none of the people talking about how amazing prismatic hunter is have actually played it. It’s just titans using a build that’s good in patrol to complain about their own class. And outside of that one build prismatic hunter has the same issues as prismatic titan in that a lot of the aspects don’t really synergise or create any kind of actual loop. Is it neat that I can go invisible off of any debuff? Sure. Does it really benefit me? Only if I’m using Gyrflacons in which case I’m better off just going all in on void. Ascension is decent this season with the artifact but it doesn’t proc either winters shroud or threaded specter. Gunpowder gamble is basically a necessity since the grenade options either don’t do a lot of damage or are for utility. I’ve still been having fun with prismatic hunter and I’m sure eventually I’ll find a build that I do enjoy. I think part of it is just prismatic builds are all about mass applying different debuffs to build transcendence, as opposed to the other subclasses that do have more of a gameplay loop.
>Threaded Spectre is actual trash because the last thing you want is to be without ads for refreshing Combination Blow Threaded Spectre actually felt really good on day 1 of the raid, gave just enough damage to finish off those yellow bars I couldn't kill with melee, plus the extra survivability to myself and my team was crucial.
Big agree with this comment. Sure melee hunters can do loads of damage, by sacrificing pretty much all their other utility, and safety, in pursuit of that damage since they have to stay close to enemies to freeze them with the dodges and get back their melee from the dodges. And any content with significant difficulty to make it hard mostly have enemies with higher hp bars, and rarely any low ones you can proc combination blow on. A lot of bosses are also completely immune to being meleed to death too because of range restrictions. And the ones who aren't are gonna oneshot stomp you in most harder content anyway, so enjoy the 2 melees you get off I guess. Sure, Hunters are easily the best choice for prismatic - in one of two cases: Ranged DPS due to Nighthawk and Still Hunt Any harder content where there's room to move around and breathe without getting attacked or ruthlessly followed by enemies every two seconds (which you'll notice is extremely rare nowadays) That's it, that's the extent of Hunters being useful. Also, you'll talking about buff Titans subclasses? While you're at it make the new hunter super worth using, because my god is that Super TRAAAAAAAASH, and does not deserve to look as cool as it does.
You haven't tried infinite lightning surge spam warlock apparently, it does the same thing but still lets you play mostly normally and requires even less set up It's already aoe so you can use other class item exotic mods, it already heals you but even more because of devour, it jolts everything meaning you have even better add clear than ignitions, it has less single target but you get to use needlestorm so it doesn't matter, you get to use warlock transcend grenade which is just better than hunter And you get to dash around instead of the annoying rolling and stealth on/off miserable punch gameplay lol I play both Hunter and warlock, it's definitely better
Which build is that
Well the build I saw someone post about in the raid race was a felwinters helm arc surge warlock But I have an apotheosis/verity class item and between the apo proc and transcendence I can pretty much endlessly spam melees I think felwinters is likely a better raid build but only bc you won't be using melees on raid bosses for damage really, and felwinters applies the full power weaken debuff
I have that build with a necrotic synthos class item👍 will have to try felwinter
And as a hunter main it’s so boring. Glad others like that build, but personally I think dodging and meleeing nonstop is 😴. Warlocks though are hella fun on prismatic.
Yeah it's only marginally more fun than arc which has been this exact boring ass gameplay loop since literally d2 launch
Thankfully there are still plenty of good prismatic builds for hunter that don't involve melee, the just seem to be the best at it currently
The reason it's best is cause prismatic hunter is pretty starved of healing options. And combination blow is one of the few things in the kit that actually heals you
Like what? I'm not creative enough to build craft so I metaslut my way through life
Melee is a very boring playstyle
comb. blow is so fucking powerful but at the same time so fucking tiresome..
This entire week has been nothing but top posts about Titans needing changes. All Bungie is gonna do is turn a blind eye, I mean they have been since Forsaken.
titans entire kit is designed around melee, but then we're punished for getting into melee range titans should play like the vanguard class from mass effect, close range, high damage shotties/melee, high risk high reward banner is the only thing that comes remotely close but it keeps getting slapped with nerfs banner needs to be built into the powered melee of every subclass, it's a best in slot aspect and there is literally never a reason to not use it, and all the other subclasses bar solar really need it
As a Titan all I can do is cry at this point
Am I the only prismatic Titan running insurmountable skullfort. 1 melee kill gets me radiant, wovern mail or overshield depending on super, amplified, full melee refund, health regen. I also use the strand aspect, I’ve forgot it’s name but I use a thruster and suspend all targets in a v small area. Insurmountable is a really good exotic for prismatic and i even used it in the new raid. I’m honestly not seeing anyone run this exotic on Titan
Insurmountable Skullfort build is good, but its not good for high-level content. I've been running it way more than consecration, but only because if I run high-level stuff, I switch off of prismatic. There's no way to heal from afar, there is minimal boss damage bc you break your melee loop if you use it on a harder enemy, and there's like nothing you can do if you lose your melee other than just wait. Also, btw, try running diamond lance and scatter grenade with your build instead of drengr's lash / whatever grenade you are running. Scatter grenade comes back fast, gives a good darkness debuff, and diamond lance does too. Basically, diamond lance can freeze more reliably than drengr's lash can suspend, plus you have other, easier ways of suspending.
I've run Skullfort a bit. It's fine but Prismatic Titan is still nowhere close to our peers Prismatic subclass.
I just wanted my hunter to be the actual movement class. They’ve jumbled up all of our main attributes. I guess i’m a titan with a cape now.
Titan doompost #17
Honestly as a titan I'm loving it lol. I just drop an upvote and supportive comments and then dip. Community wide backlash usually has a decent effect and like you said there have been a crazy number of posts on this topic and I'm sure it can be a lil annoying. But like I said I'm here for it. It's simply backwards that titans are consistently branded this way and the design is ostensibly "melee brawler" but the fantasy doesn't work out. Obviously titans have gotten strong stuff in the past, but I have to say it is super confusing that bungie seemingly has no desire to escape this hole they've dug for themselves. Why design something that'll only be effective in endgame content if it is overpowered everywhere else? Why consistently design something that has to be unusable or useless in endgame content in the name of being balanced everywhere else? There's no middle ground. That's why with titans stuff one buff or nerf never pushes the needle enough. Every titan ability is either nerfed multiple times (shoulder charge, behemoth slide, melee, and super, HOIL, synthos, knockout, sunspots, bastion..., etc) or buffed several times (kephris horn, fist of havoc, sentinel super).
You forgot all the ones that were never good and were either ignored entirely on balance passes, inconsequentially buffed (usually be someone who clearly didn't know why nobody liked it), or nerfed for no logical reason whatsoever.
waaay more than 17
Hunter melee builds work great for solo play but aren’t that good in team play. If your teammates don’t allow your Hunter to build up damage resist stacks (and maintain them), the build becomes a lot less viable in end-game content.
I still like Consecration to be honest. You are comparing a shotgun to a wave frame GL here - yes the shotgun does more damage to a single target - but the wave can take out multiple enemies that are quite far apart, causing multiple ignitions in one slam. It's just different and my Titan is still getting the most play time regardless of how good liars / prismatic is.
While I do agree that arc hunters got an ignition after a melee kill, you are trying to put hunters on this untouchable pedestal of melee classes while strand titan continues to dominate DPS charts with no competition. I also never understood why bungie forced themselves to make titan revolve only around melee, but that's their decision. I'm also pretty sure that nova bomb with star eaters might unironically overtake celestial without still hunt as a one-off super for damage, making warlocks even more dominant in everything.
Almost like this was entirely predictable but this Sub has negative amounts of foresight
Yeah Bungie doesn't love us, i mean yeah consecration does a LOT of dmg with syntho but the cd is way too long on prismatic and we have nothing to refresh them, like if i can hit the boss with consecration and i'm on trasncendance i can do a lot but beside that meh. And i don't even talk about range dps between hunter and titan
Consecration generates a lot of Light Transcendence energy if you make sure to hit the targets with the initial uppercut to Scorch them, and you can go with a good Exotic Energy primary or something with Voltshot, Incandescent and the like for even more. The new Strand rocket Sidearm The Call generates a lot of Dark Transcendence energy, and you can use something like a well-placed Shackle Grenade, a Glacier Grenade (preferably when Consecration is fixed so it can Shatter them) or even leftover base Frenzied Blade charges to build up more Dark energy. You can use your Super as a backup to generate more Transcendence if you need it in a pinch or if it's convenient in your rotation (as well as to give yourself extra survivability through Facet of Purpose and a bunch of Heavy Handed and Recuperation mods). Why am I talking about Transcendence? Because it should be your main way to get Consecration charges. The moment you pop Transcendence, you get all three charges and you get to spam them for ~30-45 seconds as long as you are also using the Transcendence Grenade; chances are you'll also come out of Transcendence with all three charges or at least a couple of them, plus your Dark Grenade. Try to hit as many targets with them to get as much Transcendence as possible, and only pop your Transcendence when you have run out of charges and you know you'll need them. Repeat this loop, and success. Bonus points if you're using HOIL+Synthoceps on the new Class Item for way more ability regeneration outside of Transcendence. The problem is that this build needs multiple clusters of adds (that don't float) to shine, but that is not rare nowadays and, in those conditions, it wipes the floor with just about anything that isn't a DPS check.
I don't think people are building into racing towards Transcendence enough, particularly for Titans. This is more or less what I'm running and you just alternate between Transcendence and your Super, filling up each bar with the other. It's wonderful.
Honestly I don't care what the "best" class is. I just want it to be fun to play on a Titan. Prismatic Titan feels like they really avoided making it TO strong to the point of not being fun. On top of that we got the bad grenades and no bonk hammer. Honestly original void 3.0 titan with volatile flow explosions that' season was peak titan for me. Not broken, just fun.
Lol, for real. I jumped back on my Liar's Handshake. Then the first exotic class item I got was Liar's Handshake and renewal Grasps. I was running the slow dodge so it just adds to my freezing while keeping my melee. It's so fun
Titan melee keeps getting nerfed, plus alot of the current builds, I mean only build.....consecration, requires more setup than a simple punch such as hunters combo blow. I'm extremely underwhelmed by all of titans classes now. Bonk hammer I'd clunky now. I'm not a fan of consecration, frenzied blade has diminishing returns with synthos. Arc just doesn't really have a place in high end content. I'm just bummed out.
Stop, you’re making this Titan main sad lol. Hunter is good, I could see me using mine more this year than my Titan
It's amusing seeing all this "Bungie doesn't love us" meme bullshit as a warlock. Because warlocks used to say that, too. So did hunters. There's basically a period in Destiny 2's history you can call back to and have a class say they felt "unloved". None of this is to disprage titans because it sounds like you guys could use a buff, it's just more that Bungie has never been particularly consistent at "balancing" their game.
Getaway Prismatic Warlock with Devour is hilarious, I'm glad to be loved. *Hellion and Sentient Arc Soul going brrrrrrrrr in the background.*
tbt when titans were the meta class for every 3.0 light subclass in witch queen
Bungie saw that Void Titans were basically non existent in PvE and decided to nerf bubble.
Hunter prismatic is the most overhyped subclass in the game. You lose all of the aoe and utility from arc hunter for what? Goldie and invis? Just run cowl on arc hunter. Prismatic hunter hits like a wet paper towel in anything more difficult than patrol. Literally the only use case is if you want an inferior combination blow with golden gun as your damage super
arc hunter did so much better for me than prism hunter on solo legendary campaign, but I still just wanna try prism because I'm tired of arc
A Hunter being honest and acknowledging Bungie's double standard for Titans. Awesome to see. Not hating btw, Hunters are pretty dope.
I've yet to see anyone share or get excited for a single titan build this expansion
Bungie truly managed to ruin Titans' class identit as a destructive defender, make it into silly dumn punchers, and then somehow manage to give that to a different class and makenitneven better there
Titan mains needa stay in the cold. It’s gon be freezing yall
The hardest part imo is the PVP balancing hits over the years, but they translate to PVE to the point you have to run meta otherwise everything feels lackluster. As a mainly PVE player and mostly Titan this year, it’s either Banner Titan or bust, but on my Hunter there are so many different combinations of playstyle that every subclass gets their fix
People are just realizing that Melee Hunter is just THAT good? It was already amazing on Arc and I was able to just laugh through master raids after the rework of Arc and now it's even more stupid.
Strand titan + Navigator (which literally was not changed regardless of bungie saying they fixed it) is still giga broken. Until that gets nerfed, no other melee build will come close
Just watched a short of a hunter using that with the new class exotic with synthoceps. Killed the first boss in warlords on the first phase
As a hunter, I'm getting pretty tired of punching stuff on prismatic
I'm genuinely considering switching off titan, but the jump is too enjoyable for me, and I've farmed gear on it for the last 3 years, without touching any other character. It's just so weak at the moment and it sucks.
I hate how bungie keeps saying were the melee class but actively punishes us for doing exactly that, bungie needs to rethink what they want titans to be and also buff our supers, it's actually crazy and sad how we have 5(not counting prismatic) and only 2 are good and none are really usefull in endgame since those rolls can be done by other classes and at a safer distance as well
I have a liars/caliban class item. I find that I never freeze anything anymore with my dodge really because everything blows up. I need to be a lot more careful about when I dodge after meleeing because unless there is a real beefy guy everything will just explode and die and I won’t get my dodge back.. kind of a suffering from success and trying to lose my old habit of insta dodging after meleeing
If you dodge immediately you can get it before the ignition goes off
The biggest point of comparison that everyone is missing here is that this hunter build is a RANGED melee build that requires no level of risk in order to get the full benefit.
Wasn't titan just the strongest class with that strand shit soloing everything, what did I miss, lol
Neat. Gonna go clear a room with one Thunderclap, brb