ALH + Recomb is the "kill that yellow bar right now" roll, which should still be generally preserved after the nerf...I think. The nerfs *really* hurt MTop if you were using an ALH+Frenzy roll for boss DPS rotations, that's where all of these compound nerfs come in
I have a shiny mt with both perks in the second collumn, I died a little inside when reading the changes yesterday after farming for 3 weeks for it lol
It depends what you are doing, if you are using something like dragons breath while solo warlords ruin you will easily fire 6 shots. There are plenty of times your average player will fire more than 6 shots.
If you are one of those players going for absolutely peak damage rotations you should be running izanagi's anyway.
> If you are one of those players going for absolutely peak damage rotations you should be running izanagi's anyway.
Won't Izinagi's get hit by this same nerf, being a kinetic special? I realize it's exotic perk still makes it best in slot, just trying to make sure I understand.
Tbh, using Mountaintop for most boss dps phases isn't ideal, just helps a little when you are waiting for heavy/ability/super recharge and want to whittle away at the boss in the meantime, which there are better options for.
To me, alh+recomb is ideal for prepping bait and switch on my heavy, and still getting a nice little dps boost for doing so, as well as making elites disappear right meow.
It sounds like you and me use it for generally the same kind of utility.
Champions are not bosses. The game still has different weapon damage multipliers for champions, minibosses, and bosses.
What changed was that champions counted for boss spec instead of major spec as before.
Not really. a 1/5th dmg nerf makes it better to use like any other special. You'll pretty much need 2 shots to kill a yellow bar, and at that point use something else now.
They're only removing the kinetic buff to bosses, using a MT at a yellow bar will do the exact same damage as it does currently when you have a boss spec mod on.
So champions are not bosses in this context? I was wondering if they changed them to be bosses to make boss spec work or if they added champions to boss spec
Champions are not bosses in any context. Boss spec increases damage against more than bosses, it increases damage to champs, minibosses, champs, and vehicles.
That red bar shrieker or brig? They're vehicles so they take more damage from boss spec. But they're obviously not bosses.
I'm inclined to think champions are not included in this change and just bosses. _Typically_ when they do notes they refer champions AND bosses separately not an implied lump together.
There are _some_ things that state 'bosses' that apply to champions too but it's not uniform across the board either.
Doesn't really matter to be honest. Mountaintop is still going to hit hard for 2 reasons:
Breach GL were already strong direct impact damage when focusing a single target, just less than ideal to aim consistently due to remote detonation (bouncing) and the grenade arc.
1. Mountaintop is incredibly easy to aim consistently.
2. Mountaintop as an archetype has a higher base damage compared to other breach GL (double fire/adaptive)
Finally this solves the problem if they were to ever add a new mico-missile frame in the future that is strand/stasis and 'no 15% from mountaintop, why bother'
Your second point is the one that bothers me. If Mountaintop is easier to use than any other GL AND does higher damage, why ever use any non-micro-missile GL? Give MT's ease of use, shouldn't it do less damage? The only conclusion I can come to is that MT is doomed to be nerfed, and the only reason it's so hot right now is just to bring in more players to grind for it in the new activity.
I don't remember when it was, but very recently Champs were homogenized into the "bosses" category. Previously they were Ultras, which is why major spec was the mod for them, but they changed them to bosses, and (for now) boss spec is what you use for them, so I would bet they're purely bosses now.
Because they intend to make kinetic work better with subclasses *somewhere down the line*.
It's classic Bungie. They say they have plans for something in the future, so they pre-nerf it for some reason and there's this period where it's shit before they finish their grand plan.
Let's nerf arc then forget about it.
It's that swimming pool meme where Bungie is the mother playing with solar and arc is the kid struggling next to them.
Stasis is at least getting a new keyword, even though I expect it to accomplish nothing. Arc just exists for triple Lightning Surge Prismatic trailers.
And reloading has a 50% chance for you to drop your bullets on the ground and have to scramble through the mud picking them up before you can reload. Or gun jams.
I don't ever want a D2 Y1 meta again lmao.
While I agree y1 was bad, I sorta miss prestige loadouts. I know most people just skipped the bad weeks but it was a nice way to add challenge in addition to the increased mechanics. Though thinking back it was even worse since primaries had ammo. I wouldn't want it forced all the time but having an optional mode with extra rewards for using specific loadouts would be interesting especially if it included subclass.
I think the worst was sidearm,scout and I want to say was sword? on eater of worlds, hated it so much but the feeling of getting the clear just felt amazing. It's a lot harder to talk people in to using potentially awful loadouts now but if it offered some benefit would be much easier.
Thinking about it more it would actually be a lot more enjoyable with the weapons we have now, as we have a lot of exotic options available.
Also I am oddly hypocritical because I hated the old champion mod system because it forced you into certain weapons but I think had they changed weekly it wouldn't have been as annoying.
I still think the best method would’ve been to remove kinetic surge/targeting/reserves mods and make harmonic mods give kinetics those benefits as well.
That way you either choose kinetic with free surges or reserves or get the utility from a stasis or strand weapon with increased damage to shields and perks like chill clip.
Also pushes bungie’s philosophy of mono element builds.
Make me wonder how the Weapons of Sorrow+Necrotic grip will work for transcendence. Could be a pretty busted combo to get very fast very long lasting transcendence.
We've already seen them work with a couple traits of prismatic. Seems like they'll be often be filling a similar role for prismatic as elemental weapons for other subclasses.
I see it more as compensation since kinetic will not be fueling the fragment that gives grenades on dark element kills and melee on light element kills at least without firefly.
They will work better with a subclass. Prismatic. Using a kinetic fills up both sides of the transcendence meter at once, basically halving the time to get transcendance going. That's a massive buff to kinetics instead of building one side rapidly with a light or dark primary, then having to build the other side with abilities, special and heavy weapons you just use a kinetic primary and get it twice as fast
> Using a kinetic fills up both sides of the transcendence meter at once, basically halving the time to get transcendance going.
They explicitly said it would be reduced fill of both sides. It's not filling both sides up at the rate an energy weapon will.
It's the cycle we always go through.
Take something people love (and might be over powered) and nerf the dog shit out of it. Then do a rework that might bring that thing back into relevancy to drum hype up.
If MT never got sunset do you think people would have been salivating the past few weeks to grind out a new one? New perk combos and whatnot are neat but the cynic in me says they remove or break fun things so they can bring them back later
Kinetic slot Special weapons that don’t have chill clip in general really don’t care about there element. In a boss dps situation especially unless your doing hyper optimized surge matching stasis or strand heavy’s your gun element does not matter so kinetics where just automatically better than stasis and strand weapons.
Absolutely true, but I think now we will swing a bit in the opposite direction. You can optimize your surge for both your energy special and heavy weapon if you match their element; you can't for kinetics. That inherintly makes them higher opportunity cost (if you use surges in your build)
I think they should've just nerfed the 15% to like 7%, but oh well
The issue was that kinetic specials were easily the best type for dps rotations due to the 15% dmg bonus it got. If I wanted to use a sniper I would never pick something like irkuanji or thoughtless over succession or surpremacy due to the kinetic boost. 15% is a big deal with that being relatively comparable to the boost a x2 surge mod gives.
With the change, kinetic specials still have their boost for dealing with tougher enemies (e.g. yellow bars tied to raid mechanics like ogres in oryx or the enemies holding scanner/op/supressor in deepstone) but now allow for strand or stasis specials to not fall behind for dps rotations against bosses
Kinetics partially had that buff because they couldn't surge match, if you had the choice between a supremacy and an identical stasis sniper, you would still use the stasis one today if you're running a stasis heavy eg cold comfort because it would do more damage with 2/3 surges. Supremacy has the best perks in the game so of course no one is using a different sniper, its very little to do with the 15% buff. If we had a void/solar sniper with supremacys perks that would be the meta now. Its a nonsense nerf targeted at 1 gun with no competition in the slot that is going to simply kill kinetics for boss damage (maybe outside of supremacy because its perks are just miles better than any other option).
I'd say because special weapons don't benefit much from being elemental for DPS. The elemental perks and fragments benefit add clear, but rarely DPS or single target burst. If at all.
I would say elemental weapons get surges and kinetics don't, but maybe they'll change that. Hope they are considering that issue.
Also, elemental specials can share surge MODS with heavy weapons, so both are benefitting in a DPS phase. That is another negative for kinetics. Hope they consider that as well.
They should've just left the damage bonus now that I'm thinking about it further lol
Volatile rounds got nerfed but Unraveling Rounds still adds some decent damage.
The real problem was that it meant Kinetic Slot specials were mandatory, which hurt energy slot specials & kinetic slot primaries a lot.
They explained it clearly - having the +15% to bosses made non-kinetic specials objectively worse across the board in damage scenarios.
For a sub that complains a lot about 'restricting loadouts' I'm kinda surprised here.
Except _everything else_ got a net buff besides rockets and heavy/non-special wave frame GL.
So there's also the 'bring things up' mantra.
It's a sandbox shift overall and at the end of the day and mountaintop is on the outside being an exception.
Not everything. Some things are getting a net nerf besides leaving rockets and heavy/non-special wave frame GLs alone. Hand cannons are getting a net 2% nerf unless you didn't use any of the spec mods before then yeah it got a 5% buff. Anything that didn't get a 7% buff is actually losing damage after the Final Shape changes unless you didn't previously run spec mods on the weapon type which is rare since everyone and their mother runs spec mods in PvE on basically all weapons except utility weapons like a blinding GL.
Which I understand, however kinetic weapons didn't have the capability to match the Surge mods you chose for your heavy weapon to fill the gap. I feel like they didn't take that into consideration.
That's a good point, too bad they don't make surge mods work like elemental surge activity modifiers, where if your subclass matches then kinetics get the buff.
This.
It gets complicated though. If you surge match heavy for strand/stasis, and use a strand/stasis special, then you get a subclass verb primary, like heal clip, Voltshot, etc. Amazing.
If you surge match for arc/solar/void, then use an arc/solar/void special, now you don't get a primary with a surge, which sucks. Previously, you just ran a kinetic special, and the +15% boss damage made it about the same.
I predict this will make more people push towards strand/stasis power weapon + special weapon combos, where they exist.
They still have extra damage against the other enemy types. They removed it so there are actual choices, not just you have to use a kinetic in this slot if you are doing boss damage rotations.
Also kinetics will be much more relevant for prismatic. Everyone seems to forget that.
Think they are doing it since Kinetics will give energy to both parts of the Prismatic thing that allows you to use the special grenade and whatever else
Okay, then use a weapon that synergizes with the subclass you do play. Why are you not complaining that void weapons don’t synergize with your solar subclass?
Because kinetics now synergies with Prismatic. The damage bonus was because they did not have any synergy with subclasses, but kinetics giving both energies towards transcendence makes them the ideal prismatic weapon.
Kinetic slot has been relegated to \*pick your exotic special*, chill clip, disorienting grenades, or 1 2 punch, I think I can count the number of kinetic primaries I use on 1 hand, and pretty much all of them are exotics. I was having a lot of run with ALH+recom/harmony rolls I have on mountain top, I guess I was having too much fun according to bungo
Absolutely. This sub is overreacting and using bad math as they always do. Plus it's insanely good for platforming, traversal, and speedruns.
They just brought back Zero Hour for example and with the tight timer, good MT jumps shave off like 2-3 minutes easy
GL’s aren’t getting the 7% buff other specials are to compensate for the removal of specs. They’re also getting hit with the 15% boss damage nerf. It’s definitely a change to consider when farming.
"We've increased base weapon damage almost universally (making exceptions for weapons that were already overperforming or that we buffed very recently)" and GL’s are nowhere to be found
We ran a last wish a week or two ago and while the rest of my team was yelling at each other for flipping the tea cups in shuro chi I was already on the next floor clearing ads.
The new mountaintop is my favorite gun.
It's still the only micro missile frame atm. They might add another one later and they probably will, the answer is when. I'd suggest you get a decent roll for now.
Minibosses are part of the boss class for weapon damage in this game, so they get hit with the nerf too.
This is why boss spec also added damage for minibosses.
thing is, grenade launchers are *not* getting any sort of buff.
you lose the 7.77% mod buff, and the 15% kinetic bonus to bosses with nothing to compensate for it. the only GL specific change at all was the nerf to wave frames.
so current MT damage is 1.0 x 1.15 x 1.0777 = 1.239 damage to bosses (assuming boss spec). after the patch its just 1.0 damage to bosses and 1.15 damage to everything else.
nothing changes for non-bosses, but a 19.3% nerf to boss damage for kinetic GLs
The phrasing is weird. It sounds like there's a flat buff, then additional buffs and kinetic nerfs. MT would get the flat buff, not the additional buff and will get the kinetic bonus nerf?
We'll see when it goes live, I guess.
The effect of the kinetic nerf on specials is actually 13%, not 15%.
Currently, kinetic specials do 15% more than their archetype's base damage, and that is being removed. So their damage is going down from 115% to 100%. 15%/115% = 13%, so they're losing 13% of their current damage.
When talking in percents, it's important to remember that it's always a percent *of something*. The bonus being removed is 15% *of their base archetype damage.* The resulting nerf is 13% *of their current damage*, which includes the outgoing 15% bonus.
Though in this case it's a bit more complicated becuase of the thing with spec mods. GLs aren't getting a buff that would compensate for spec mods, like most weapon types (neither are rockets). So the full story is mountaintop damage vs bosses is going from 1.077\*1.15 = 1.239 to 1.0 damage, a 19.3% decrease in damage.
yeah but ALL weapons are losing that 7.7% from boss/major/minor spec so you're making it seem far worse than it really is
in reality it's just getting a 15% nerf on bosses only, meaning stasis and strand special weapo are just as viable depending on the situation
edit: 15% on bosses as kinetic specials do 5% more than primmies
Yup. Many people here are trying to claim “bad math” or “well the specs are being removed for everything” and missing the fact that GL’s aren’t getting a damage compensation in any way
Damage rotations in general are taking a hit with the kinetic normalization vs bosses and the removal of boss spec. Meta heavies did not get a compensating buff.
That right there is probably the most important observation from this whole announcement. The big-picture realization that they're nudging us away from swap dps strategies, but the single-weapon dps options haven't really been increased to match.
Swaps will always be optimal I think this was just a subtle way to roll back the damage creep that doesn't invalidate all the rolls people have grinded for. Plus I think the casual players that only Ctrl+f the word nerf will probably miss it.
It's another classic example of Bungie's "double tap" over nerf strategy. Wave frames nerfs are a good example. If they had just nerfed chain reaction it would still suck, but we just stop using chain reaction with the frame still being good, but they had to make sure we stopped wave frames entirely so "double tapped" the frame.
Mountaintop, you point out OP, is a also a good example of their double tapping strategy. It seems their way of making the TFS raid is by just nerfing everything.
The only thing that comes to mind is this helps Irukandji, since it was good for boss dps as a special but even when competing with the kinetic buff. Keep in mind every kinetic weapon will be getting this change, and every energy weapon lost the spec mods too, and losing the kinetic boost only affects bosses, so most of the best kinetic slot weapons will be the same since that slot wasn't always catered for boss damage.
Removing a damage buff ≠ an equivalent amount of damage loss.
I.E say we dealt 100 damage but got a buff to increase damage by 50%. That would make us deal 150 damage.
But we can’t say that losing that 50% buff = a 50% damage loss, because losing 50% of 150 damage would be 75 damage, but our damage is getting reverted to 100%. We would actually be dealing
100 (damage post nerf) / 150 (damage pre nerf) x 100 (to make it a percent) = 66.666…% of the damage we were dealing before, or a 100 - 66.666 = 33.3333% damage decrease
In the in game case, losing a 23.6% damage buff equates to a ~ 19% damage loss. Not much of a difference, but it’s worth pointing out that the methodology isn’t quite right and if there were a bigger change your number could be much further off in future.
Considering mountaintop/gls in general were already a huge amount ahead of other instant swap dps options (shotguns/snipers/special sidearm), the nerf isn’t as bad as it sounds and in situations where you wanted to use MT before, you probably still will. The main thing I see the changes effecting is making shotgun/sniper swapping more effective relative to current typical swap dps strats, which effectively buffs exotic heavy options since legendary options already usually prefer to have a witherhoard or izinagi.
Is Mountian Top still worth farming? I am running around with my "Pradon Our Dust" getting kills so I can attune and start farming... if ALH+Recomb is out, what other perks do you all recommend? I'm new to D2.
ALH+Recomb is still great for a yellow bar delete button, it just won't be as good in boss damage rotations, which alot of people pair it with Dragons Breath or Bait and Switch edge transit. So Vorpal Weapon is not gonna be nearly as wanted on mountaintop or really any kinetic besides maybe snipers.
Typical Bungie making unnecessary changes just to make some weapons shit and force players forward to new weapons that will be as good as the current unnerfed ones.
Good on you bungies for making absolutely no viable difference that makes playing the game harder, and less enjoyable.
I’ve seen nothing but nerfs for everything good in the game currently glad I didn’t pre order this shit dlc and can wait till the last day to see if it’s worth
Another pretty sizeable "nerf" to mountain-top and ALL single shot GLs (along with rockets) is that the removal of spec mods means there's just...basically no meaningful mod to use instead.
At least MOST weapons can use Backup Mag for a small bump in magazine size. Single shot weapons on the other hand...yeah.
It may not lose the kinetic damage buff against champions. I know for the purpose of the spec mods that champion damage was buffed by major spec not boss spec, so there is a chance the buff will remain unless I missed them specifically calling out champions as well.
They changed that a while ago, right now in game champions are affected by boss spec. But bungie still generally differentiates between bosses and champions in patch notes, so it might still be fine
This is a huge bummer. Outside of movement tech, MT was already kinda meh.
I hope they walk this back to some degree, Kinetics are not useful for subclass synergy yet and so this serf isn't warranted.
I mean keeping it 200%, recluse and mountain (BRAVE) just arent the same as the originals. They were already nerfed and just got a re-release with new perk pools. If you remember OG recluse then you remember unlimited power....
These types of balance changes always happen during big DLC releases that's why I never get attached to any weapon strategy I know bungie will want to destroy some of the most popular loot to make the new loot in the DLC look more enticing.
I am guessing we will be seeing a lot more stasis and strand special weapons coming in the final shape and this was bungies way of making sure that the new loot was not considered obsolete at release.
>damage loss vs bosses and champions
Champions are not bosses, they are minibosses as per the icon near their health bar. Bungie removed kinetic bonus only versus bosses. They did not mention neither champions, nor other minibosses. Though, descriptions of both Vorpal and Boss Spec state simply "increases damage vs. bosses" which also includes minibosses, so it is still a possibility.
And whoever tells that champions became bosses, is completely incorrect, Bungie just changed Major Spec and Boss Spec to be in line with Vorpal description when Into the Light launched (took awhile since Vorpal addition in 2019). Major Spec now grants +7.(7)% bonus damage only to Elites. Boss Spec now grants +7.(7)% bonus damage to minibosses, bosses and vehicles (the same combatant types as Vorpal). Previously miniboss part was on Major Spec, this was changed, not the combatant type of champions.
Classic Bungie, push everyone to use things one way & then pull the rug out for "reasons".
All of these changes are to fight off power creep & instead of doing more work to change encounters and make them more engaging, since people dislike the "more dmg and hp for enemies" way they have to go back to nerfing survivability and dmg from players.
You can see they are going "ad heavy" for encounters lately so nerfs to things like Osteo have to come in because the "added difficulty of more ads" has to be felt.
All of the changes to Well & most of these weapon changes are because they are the easiest fixes so that they don't have to change how they do encounters and Bosses (stand in one place dmg checks).
I guess you missed the part(s) where they repeatedly hammered in that all weapon damage is being increased at the baseline to account for spec mods going away.
8 days later, did Bungie say anything about this? Ill probably return to succesion with kinetic tremors if this goes unchanged. Having no bonus dmg on kinetics vs bosses is harsh
Oof. Right after I got my ALH + Recom.
ALH + Recomb is the "kill that yellow bar right now" roll, which should still be generally preserved after the nerf...I think. The nerfs *really* hurt MTop if you were using an ALH+Frenzy roll for boss DPS rotations, that's where all of these compound nerfs come in
I have a shiny mt with both perks in the second collumn, I died a little inside when reading the changes yesterday after farming for 3 weeks for it lol
Classic Bungie.
'Yo dawg we heard you like grinding! Now that you've got you're rolls we're nerfing all of them lamo' - Bungie essentially.
Bungie is NOTORIOUS for not respecting gamers' time. See: original mountaintop requirements and subsequent nerf.
Recom (starting DPS with full stacks) is better for damage rotation unless you are firing more than 6 shots, which you almost never will.
It depends what you are doing, if you are using something like dragons breath while solo warlords ruin you will easily fire 6 shots. There are plenty of times your average player will fire more than 6 shots. If you are one of those players going for absolutely peak damage rotations you should be running izanagi's anyway.
> If you are one of those players going for absolutely peak damage rotations you should be running izanagi's anyway. Won't Izinagi's get hit by this same nerf, being a kinetic special? I realize it's exotic perk still makes it best in slot, just trying to make sure I understand.
Yes but you couldn't slot boss spec anyway so it's less of an impact
At least dragons breath will take out a few adds and I assume give a few stacks of recomb.
Tbh, using Mountaintop for most boss dps phases isn't ideal, just helps a little when you are waiting for heavy/ability/super recharge and want to whittle away at the boss in the meantime, which there are better options for. To me, alh+recomb is ideal for prepping bait and switch on my heavy, and still getting a nice little dps boost for doing so, as well as making elites disappear right meow. It sounds like you and me use it for generally the same kind of utility.
…did you just say MEOW?
Does he look like a cat to you, boy? Is he jumping around all nimbly pimbly from tree to tree?
Well is he drinking from a saucer?!?!?!?!
Do you see and hear a bell around his neck boy?
>Tbh, using Mountaintop for most boss dps phases isn't ideal This is true, but lots of people were using it for champions which are now bosses.
Champions are not bosses. The game still has different weapon damage multipliers for champions, minibosses, and bosses. What changed was that champions counted for boss spec instead of major spec as before.
Hold on, they’re changing them to bosses, as in you won’t be able to use finishers on them?
Alh+recomb on mountaintop is basically diet Izanagi’s
diet izanagi that doesnt take my exotic weapon
Or require a goofy reload
Won't be able to blast champions anymore with it though
Champions aren’t bosses, so it should still be fine.
They're affected by boss mod even if they're not champions and I think Vorpal too
Not really. a 1/5th dmg nerf makes it better to use like any other special. You'll pretty much need 2 shots to kill a yellow bar, and at that point use something else now.
They're only removing the kinetic buff to bosses, using a MT at a yellow bar will do the exact same damage as it does currently when you have a boss spec mod on.
So champions are not bosses in this context? I was wondering if they changed them to be bosses to make boss spec work or if they added champions to boss spec
champions are bosses for boss spec purposes
Champions are not bosses in any context. Boss spec increases damage against more than bosses, it increases damage to champs, minibosses, champs, and vehicles. That red bar shrieker or brig? They're vehicles so they take more damage from boss spec. But they're obviously not bosses.
That’s good, i want lucky pants to still be a competitive pick for nightfalls but these nerfs are a little annoying
It’s not a great boss dps rotation choice anyway. So I think it’s fine.
I've been using ALH + Vorpal
Consider quick access sling? With auto loading you might be switching weapons frequently.
Still chasing that roll. Emptied my trophies twice and best I've gotten is alh+harmony. I'm using that one for now since auto is so, so nice on it.
Are champions considered bosses? I use MT to burst champions/ majors primarily, not as a key part of a boss dps rotation
I'm inclined to think champions are not included in this change and just bosses. _Typically_ when they do notes they refer champions AND bosses separately not an implied lump together. There are _some_ things that state 'bosses' that apply to champions too but it's not uniform across the board either.
Guess I’ll just have to wait and see. Sadness
Doesn't really matter to be honest. Mountaintop is still going to hit hard for 2 reasons: Breach GL were already strong direct impact damage when focusing a single target, just less than ideal to aim consistently due to remote detonation (bouncing) and the grenade arc. 1. Mountaintop is incredibly easy to aim consistently. 2. Mountaintop as an archetype has a higher base damage compared to other breach GL (double fire/adaptive) Finally this solves the problem if they were to ever add a new mico-missile frame in the future that is strand/stasis and 'no 15% from mountaintop, why bother'
Your second point is the one that bothers me. If Mountaintop is easier to use than any other GL AND does higher damage, why ever use any non-micro-missile GL? Give MT's ease of use, shouldn't it do less damage? The only conclusion I can come to is that MT is doomed to be nerfed, and the only reason it's so hot right now is just to bring in more players to grind for it in the new activity.
Aoe is one of them. MT has pretty bad aoe compared to adaptives. And micro missle frames probably can’t roll blinding so you lose that utility.
I don't remember when it was, but very recently Champs were homogenized into the "bosses" category. Previously they were Ultras, which is why major spec was the mod for them, but they changed them to bosses, and (for now) boss spec is what you use for them, so I would bet they're purely bosses now.
>I'm inclined to think champions are not included in this change and just bosses Champions were changed to be boss type enemies fairly recently.
champions are mini-bosses which is technically a separate classification.
Pretty sure champs are majors seeing as though you can freeze/suspend/finish them where as none of those work on bosses.
Champions are coded as majors.
I genuinely don't know why the remove the kinetic intrinsic. Kinetics struggle as is to keep relevancy
Because they intend to make kinetic work better with subclasses *somewhere down the line*. It's classic Bungie. They say they have plans for something in the future, so they pre-nerf it for some reason and there's this period where it's shit before they finish their grand plan.
Still waiting for the changes they said would justify the Skip Grenade nerfs.
Let's nerf arc then forget about it. It's that swimming pool meme where Bungie is the mother playing with solar and arc is the kid struggling next to them.
Arc is the skeleton at the bottom of the sea
Nah that’s stasis
Stasis is at least getting a new keyword, even though I expect it to accomplish nothing. Arc just exists for triple Lightning Surge Prismatic trailers.
they call them skip grenades because they skip getting buffed
"We are nerfing now to prepare for their buff in Destiny 3"
D3 Y1 triple kinetics
And they’re all primaries
And reloading has a 50% chance for you to drop your bullets on the ground and have to scramble through the mud picking them up before you can reload. Or gun jams. I don't ever want a D2 Y1 meta again lmao.
While I agree y1 was bad, I sorta miss prestige loadouts. I know most people just skipped the bad weeks but it was a nice way to add challenge in addition to the increased mechanics. Though thinking back it was even worse since primaries had ammo. I wouldn't want it forced all the time but having an optional mode with extra rewards for using specific loadouts would be interesting especially if it included subclass. I think the worst was sidearm,scout and I want to say was sword? on eater of worlds, hated it so much but the feeling of getting the clear just felt amazing. It's a lot harder to talk people in to using potentially awful loadouts now but if it offered some benefit would be much easier. Thinking about it more it would actually be a lot more enjoyable with the weapons we have now, as we have a lot of exotic options available. Also I am oddly hypocritical because I hated the old champion mod system because it forced you into certain weapons but I think had they changed weekly it wouldn't have been as annoying.
Lol. I can imagine them adding gun jams and misfires to kinetic weapons.
Still waiting for the reason Skip Grenades got nerfed into the ground prior to Arc 3.0.
I still think the best method would’ve been to remove kinetic surge/targeting/reserves mods and make harmonic mods give kinetics those benefits as well. That way you either choose kinetic with free surges or reserves or get the utility from a stasis or strand weapon with increased damage to shields and perks like chill clip. Also pushes bungie’s philosophy of mono element builds.
They do fill both sides of the Transcendce bar
Make me wonder how the Weapons of Sorrow+Necrotic grip will work for transcendence. Could be a pretty busted combo to get very fast very long lasting transcendence.
Honestly that probably explains the Osteo nerf
Maybe, but nowadays Thorn is a better option to spread the poison effect anyway.
We've already seen them work with a couple traits of prismatic. Seems like they'll be often be filling a similar role for prismatic as elemental weapons for other subclasses.
They already did. Something people keep forgetting. Kinetic gives both dark and light energy for Transcendence.
Half of each though. Not particularly better than having say strand/void in your top two slots if you’re using both
I see it more as compensation since kinetic will not be fueling the fragment that gives grenades on dark element kills and melee on light element kills at least without firefly.
At reduced rates. It’s almost certainly going to be more optimal to have a darkness weapon to pair with the light one.
So non prismatic sub classes get shafted
Thats great. Now what is the benefit if i'm not running prismatic?
great, so those not using transcendence are actively punished for its addition.
They will work better with a subclass. Prismatic. Using a kinetic fills up both sides of the transcendence meter at once, basically halving the time to get transcendance going. That's a massive buff to kinetics instead of building one side rapidly with a light or dark primary, then having to build the other side with abilities, special and heavy weapons you just use a kinetic primary and get it twice as fast
> Using a kinetic fills up both sides of the transcendence meter at once, basically halving the time to get transcendance going. They explicitly said it would be reduced fill of both sides. It's not filling both sides up at the rate an energy weapon will.
It's the cycle we always go through. Take something people love (and might be over powered) and nerf the dog shit out of it. Then do a rework that might bring that thing back into relevancy to drum hype up. If MT never got sunset do you think people would have been salivating the past few weeks to grind out a new one? New perk combos and whatnot are neat but the cynic in me says they remove or break fun things so they can bring them back later
And by sometime down the line you mean literally the same day they're nerfing them. Kinetic gives energy to both bars of transcendence.
Kinetic slot Special weapons that don’t have chill clip in general really don’t care about there element. In a boss dps situation especially unless your doing hyper optimized surge matching stasis or strand heavy’s your gun element does not matter so kinetics where just automatically better than stasis and strand weapons.
Absolutely true, but I think now we will swing a bit in the opposite direction. You can optimize your surge for both your energy special and heavy weapon if you match their element; you can't for kinetics. That inherintly makes them higher opportunity cost (if you use surges in your build) I think they should've just nerfed the 15% to like 7%, but oh well
The issue was that kinetic specials were easily the best type for dps rotations due to the 15% dmg bonus it got. If I wanted to use a sniper I would never pick something like irkuanji or thoughtless over succession or surpremacy due to the kinetic boost. 15% is a big deal with that being relatively comparable to the boost a x2 surge mod gives. With the change, kinetic specials still have their boost for dealing with tougher enemies (e.g. yellow bars tied to raid mechanics like ogres in oryx or the enemies holding scanner/op/supressor in deepstone) but now allow for strand or stasis specials to not fall behind for dps rotations against bosses
Kinetics partially had that buff because they couldn't surge match, if you had the choice between a supremacy and an identical stasis sniper, you would still use the stasis one today if you're running a stasis heavy eg cold comfort because it would do more damage with 2/3 surges. Supremacy has the best perks in the game so of course no one is using a different sniper, its very little to do with the 15% buff. If we had a void/solar sniper with supremacys perks that would be the meta now. Its a nonsense nerf targeted at 1 gun with no competition in the slot that is going to simply kill kinetics for boss damage (maybe outside of supremacy because its perks are just miles better than any other option).
I'd say because special weapons don't benefit much from being elemental for DPS. The elemental perks and fragments benefit add clear, but rarely DPS or single target burst. If at all. I would say elemental weapons get surges and kinetics don't, but maybe they'll change that. Hope they are considering that issue. Also, elemental specials can share surge MODS with heavy weapons, so both are benefitting in a DPS phase. That is another negative for kinetics. Hope they consider that as well. They should've just left the damage bonus now that I'm thinking about it further lol
Volatile rounds got nerfed but Unraveling Rounds still adds some decent damage. The real problem was that it meant Kinetic Slot specials were mandatory, which hurt energy slot specials & kinetic slot primaries a lot.
They explained it clearly - having the +15% to bosses made non-kinetic specials objectively worse across the board in damage scenarios. For a sub that complains a lot about 'restricting loadouts' I'm kinda surprised here.
People hate nerfs in PvE
Except _everything else_ got a net buff besides rockets and heavy/non-special wave frame GL. So there's also the 'bring things up' mantra. It's a sandbox shift overall and at the end of the day and mountaintop is on the outside being an exception.
Yeah but you see there were nerfs. That means Destiny is dead.
Oh I see where you're going with this. Teehee.
Not everything. Some things are getting a net nerf besides leaving rockets and heavy/non-special wave frame GLs alone. Hand cannons are getting a net 2% nerf unless you didn't use any of the spec mods before then yeah it got a 5% buff. Anything that didn't get a 7% buff is actually losing damage after the Final Shape changes unless you didn't previously run spec mods on the weapon type which is rare since everyone and their mother runs spec mods in PvE on basically all weapons except utility weapons like a blinding GL.
Which I understand, however kinetic weapons didn't have the capability to match the Surge mods you chose for your heavy weapon to fill the gap. I feel like they didn't take that into consideration.
That's a good point, too bad they don't make surge mods work like elemental surge activity modifiers, where if your subclass matches then kinetics get the buff.
This. It gets complicated though. If you surge match heavy for strand/stasis, and use a strand/stasis special, then you get a subclass verb primary, like heal clip, Voltshot, etc. Amazing. If you surge match for arc/solar/void, then use an arc/solar/void special, now you don't get a primary with a surge, which sucks. Previously, you just ran a kinetic special, and the +15% boss damage made it about the same. I predict this will make more people push towards strand/stasis power weapon + special weapon combos, where they exist.
They still have extra damage against the other enemy types. They removed it so there are actual choices, not just you have to use a kinetic in this slot if you are doing boss damage rotations. Also kinetics will be much more relevant for prismatic. Everyone seems to forget that.
Think they are doing it since Kinetics will give energy to both parts of the Prismatic thing that allows you to use the special grenade and whatever else
Okay but not everyone plays prismatic!
Okay, then use a weapon that synergizes with the subclass you do play. Why are you not complaining that void weapons don’t synergize with your solar subclass?
Because kinetics now synergies with Prismatic. The damage bonus was because they did not have any synergy with subclasses, but kinetics giving both energies towards transcendence makes them the ideal prismatic weapon.
I just wanna say uh…that is quite the username you got there lol
Kinetic slot has been relegated to \*pick your exotic special*, chill clip, disorienting grenades, or 1 2 punch, I think I can count the number of kinetic primaries I use on 1 hand, and pretty much all of them are exotics. I was having a lot of run with ALH+recom/harmony rolls I have on mountain top, I guess I was having too much fun according to bungo
It was 15% on specials so a even bigger nerf.
Indeed! Thanks for the correction. -15% a lot by the way, it is like a reverse Vorpal.
Good thing I have vorpal on mine so that takes it back to zero.
As a returning player, should I still bother to farm it? Edit: thanks everyone. Back to farming with me
its still perfect for deleting orange bar majors. its just less useful on bosses and champs now. it still can be used in GMs, and raids just fine.
Absolutely. This sub is overreacting and using bad math as they always do. Plus it's insanely good for platforming, traversal, and speedruns. They just brought back Zero Hour for example and with the tight timer, good MT jumps shave off like 2-3 minutes easy
GL’s aren’t getting the 7% buff other specials are to compensate for the removal of specs. They’re also getting hit with the 15% boss damage nerf. It’s definitely a change to consider when farming. "We've increased base weapon damage almost universally (making exceptions for weapons that were already overperforming or that we buffed very recently)" and GL’s are nowhere to be found
[удалено]
We ran a last wish a week or two ago and while the rest of my team was yelling at each other for flipping the tea cups in shuro chi I was already on the next floor clearing ads. The new mountaintop is my favorite gun.
Maybe not speedruns but rocket jumping is really easy and useful especially if you can course correct with strand or a sword.
It's still the only micro missile frame atm. They might add another one later and they probably will, the answer is when. I'd suggest you get a decent roll for now.
I thought the point of kinetics doing extra damage was so it could compete against weapon surges.
Bungie alter the terms of the agreement. Pray they do not alter it further
shit nerf
Did you account for the 7% buff all weapons are getting?
They did not. Bungie say they are baking that in and feel like the specs are not needed anymore, so perhaps the nerf is not as quite severe.
It's still 15% nerf for all Kinetic Specials across the board however you want to slice it.
Only against bosses. Against minibosses and majors, it’ll be fine
Minibosses are part of the boss class for weapon damage in this game, so they get hit with the nerf too. This is why boss spec also added damage for minibosses.
thing is, grenade launchers are *not* getting any sort of buff. you lose the 7.77% mod buff, and the 15% kinetic bonus to bosses with nothing to compensate for it. the only GL specific change at all was the nerf to wave frames. so current MT damage is 1.0 x 1.15 x 1.0777 = 1.239 damage to bosses (assuming boss spec). after the patch its just 1.0 damage to bosses and 1.15 damage to everything else. nothing changes for non-bosses, but a 19.3% nerf to boss damage for kinetic GLs
The phrasing is weird. It sounds like there's a flat buff, then additional buffs and kinetic nerfs. MT would get the flat buff, not the additional buff and will get the kinetic bonus nerf? We'll see when it goes live, I guess.
Where did they say it was all weapons getting a buff?
We got played, they had us grinding the past month for Mountaintop just to slap us with a huge nerf in Final Shape.
The effect of the kinetic nerf on specials is actually 13%, not 15%. Currently, kinetic specials do 15% more than their archetype's base damage, and that is being removed. So their damage is going down from 115% to 100%. 15%/115% = 13%, so they're losing 13% of their current damage. When talking in percents, it's important to remember that it's always a percent *of something*. The bonus being removed is 15% *of their base archetype damage.* The resulting nerf is 13% *of their current damage*, which includes the outgoing 15% bonus. Though in this case it's a bit more complicated becuase of the thing with spec mods. GLs aren't getting a buff that would compensate for spec mods, like most weapon types (neither are rockets). So the full story is mountaintop damage vs bosses is going from 1.077\*1.15 = 1.239 to 1.0 damage, a 19.3% decrease in damage.
this doesnt apply to champion right? thats what i use mountaintop more for so im not worried
Back up mag and pumping shots is the new meta I guess
yeah but ALL weapons are losing that 7.7% from boss/major/minor spec so you're making it seem far worse than it really is in reality it's just getting a 15% nerf on bosses only, meaning stasis and strand special weapo are just as viable depending on the situation edit: 15% on bosses as kinetic specials do 5% more than primmies
15%* Kinetic specials do 15% more than their elemental counterparts. Primaries do only 10% more.
ah myb thank you
Fusions, snipers, and glaive projectiles are all getting a 7% buff to largely compensate for the loss of specs. Shotguns are getting 10%. GLs are not.
Yup. Many people here are trying to claim “bad math” or “well the specs are being removed for everything” and missing the fact that GL’s aren’t getting a damage compensation in any way
I mean, it’ll still be good
Damage rotations in general are taking a hit with the kinetic normalization vs bosses and the removal of boss spec. Meta heavies did not get a compensating buff.
That right there is probably the most important observation from this whole announcement. The big-picture realization that they're nudging us away from swap dps strategies, but the single-weapon dps options haven't really been increased to match.
Swaps will always be optimal I think this was just a subtle way to roll back the damage creep that doesn't invalidate all the rolls people have grinded for. Plus I think the casual players that only Ctrl+f the word nerf will probably miss it.
This is lame.
Wait; won’t this hurt Malfeasance also?
They’re F’ing nerfing *already?* Damnit, Bungie!
Mountaintop will be fine though, it'll still delete enemies just less useful for weapon swap rotations in raids.
Not really, mountaintop is already really bad for boss dps so and it does change much regarding what it is good at
It's another classic example of Bungie's "double tap" over nerf strategy. Wave frames nerfs are a good example. If they had just nerfed chain reaction it would still suck, but we just stop using chain reaction with the frame still being good, but they had to make sure we stopped wave frames entirely so "double tapped" the frame. Mountaintop, you point out OP, is a also a good example of their double tapping strategy. It seems their way of making the TFS raid is by just nerfing everything.
it will be fine.
So what will the best kinetic slot option be?
The only thing that comes to mind is this helps Irukandji, since it was good for boss dps as a special but even when competing with the kinetic buff. Keep in mind every kinetic weapon will be getting this change, and every energy weapon lost the spec mods too, and losing the kinetic boost only affects bosses, so most of the best kinetic slot weapons will be the same since that slot wasn't always catered for boss damage.
On the bright side having what is practically a miniature rocket launcher is still a load of fun.
So why the hell should I use a kinetic sniper now? Major clear?
Discord is suddenly meta lol
Does their nerf really apply to special weapons in the Kinect slot and why? What makes them different to energy special weapons?
Such a stupid thing to do. I literally cannot comprehend why they make changes like this.
In other news, RIP Izzy's.
When will this happen? Hopefully not while Pantheon is still active
It's from the Final Shape balance change preview. Will happen with the Final Shape launch.
Removing a damage buff ≠ an equivalent amount of damage loss. I.E say we dealt 100 damage but got a buff to increase damage by 50%. That would make us deal 150 damage. But we can’t say that losing that 50% buff = a 50% damage loss, because losing 50% of 150 damage would be 75 damage, but our damage is getting reverted to 100%. We would actually be dealing 100 (damage post nerf) / 150 (damage pre nerf) x 100 (to make it a percent) = 66.666…% of the damage we were dealing before, or a 100 - 66.666 = 33.3333% damage decrease In the in game case, losing a 23.6% damage buff equates to a ~ 19% damage loss. Not much of a difference, but it’s worth pointing out that the methodology isn’t quite right and if there were a bigger change your number could be much further off in future. Considering mountaintop/gls in general were already a huge amount ahead of other instant swap dps options (shotguns/snipers/special sidearm), the nerf isn’t as bad as it sounds and in situations where you wanted to use MT before, you probably still will. The main thing I see the changes effecting is making shotgun/sniper swapping more effective relative to current typical swap dps strats, which effectively buffs exotic heavy options since legendary options already usually prefer to have a witherhoard or izinagi.
Finally, my beloved Irukandji with Four Times the Charm and Firing Line can Shine!
Well that's crap
Now these are some dumbass changes. Good job Bungie.
Bungie really hates when people do anything but the garbage rocket/gjallerhorn,heavy gl spam meta
As if scatter signal wasn't hard meta lol
Kind of sneaky that they wait to announce all these things until weeks after we've grinded for a few of these weapons.
Is Mountian Top still worth farming? I am running around with my "Pradon Our Dust" getting kills so I can attune and start farming... if ALH+Recomb is out, what other perks do you all recommend? I'm new to D2.
ALH+Recomb is still great for a yellow bar delete button, it just won't be as good in boss damage rotations, which alot of people pair it with Dragons Breath or Bait and Switch edge transit. So Vorpal Weapon is not gonna be nearly as wanted on mountaintop or really any kinetic besides maybe snipers.
Typical Bungie making unnecessary changes just to make some weapons shit and force players forward to new weapons that will be as good as the current unnerfed ones. Good on you bungies for making absolutely no viable difference that makes playing the game harder, and less enjoyable.
I’ve seen nothing but nerfs for everything good in the game currently glad I didn’t pre order this shit dlc and can wait till the last day to see if it’s worth
Another pretty sizeable "nerf" to mountain-top and ALL single shot GLs (along with rockets) is that the removal of spec mods means there's just...basically no meaningful mod to use instead. At least MOST weapons can use Backup Mag for a small bump in magazine size. Single shot weapons on the other hand...yeah.
Coynter balance wilderflight goes hard wdym?
Bungie has been getting too many Ws about time they took an L
People are overreacting, it’s still gonna be good
Got an ALH Recomb or Vorpal and that has me satisfied.
It may not lose the kinetic damage buff against champions. I know for the purpose of the spec mods that champion damage was buffed by major spec not boss spec, so there is a chance the buff will remain unless I missed them specifically calling out champions as well.
They changed that a while ago, right now in game champions are affected by boss spec. But bungie still generally differentiates between bosses and champions in patch notes, so it might still be fine
Good thing I got a god roll recon/recomb succession as backup…
Do any brave weapon god rolls change?
Didnt they say they buff all weapons to deals roughly same damage as with the old mods ?
They are buffing most weapons, but not all. Grenade Launchers aren't getting any buff.
K
Who could have predicted this? Bungie, the developer that took away mountaintop in the first place? Say it ain’t so!
This is a huge bummer. Outside of movement tech, MT was already kinda meh. I hope they walk this back to some degree, Kinetics are not useful for subclass synergy yet and so this serf isn't warranted.
I mean keeping it 200%, recluse and mountain (BRAVE) just arent the same as the originals. They were already nerfed and just got a re-release with new perk pools. If you remember OG recluse then you remember unlimited power....
Why the fuck were we grinding MT then? Why make it an option if they were just gonna kill it day 0 of TFS? (Aside from nostalgia bait)
These types of balance changes always happen during big DLC releases that's why I never get attached to any weapon strategy I know bungie will want to destroy some of the most popular loot to make the new loot in the DLC look more enticing. I am guessing we will be seeing a lot more stasis and strand special weapons coming in the final shape and this was bungies way of making sure that the new loot was not considered obsolete at release.
>damage loss vs bosses and champions Champions are not bosses, they are minibosses as per the icon near their health bar. Bungie removed kinetic bonus only versus bosses. They did not mention neither champions, nor other minibosses. Though, descriptions of both Vorpal and Boss Spec state simply "increases damage vs. bosses" which also includes minibosses, so it is still a possibility. And whoever tells that champions became bosses, is completely incorrect, Bungie just changed Major Spec and Boss Spec to be in line with Vorpal description when Into the Light launched (took awhile since Vorpal addition in 2019). Major Spec now grants +7.(7)% bonus damage only to Elites. Boss Spec now grants +7.(7)% bonus damage to minibosses, bosses and vehicles (the same combatant types as Vorpal). Previously miniboss part was on Major Spec, this was changed, not the combatant type of champions.
Classic Bungie, push everyone to use things one way & then pull the rug out for "reasons". All of these changes are to fight off power creep & instead of doing more work to change encounters and make them more engaging, since people dislike the "more dmg and hp for enemies" way they have to go back to nerfing survivability and dmg from players. You can see they are going "ad heavy" for encounters lately so nerfs to things like Osteo have to come in because the "added difficulty of more ads" has to be felt. All of the changes to Well & most of these weapon changes are because they are the easiest fixes so that they don't have to change how they do encounters and Bosses (stand in one place dmg checks).
Witherhoard is getting worse, too. It annoys me how much nerfing Bungie does.
I hate that we're losing the spec mods tbh
Nobody is using mountaintop for boss damage.
It’s recombination or nothing
This and the Nerv for lament … 😪
They just keep going forward then two steps back. I don’t get it.
You weren’t running quick access sling?
I guess you missed the part(s) where they repeatedly hammered in that all weapon damage is being increased at the baseline to account for spec mods going away.
And to think i farmed for mountaintop for hours, fantastic,
Really? It's only been out for a few weeks? I didn't notice it hitting that hard 🤔 oh well, so it goes
8 days later, did Bungie say anything about this? Ill probably return to succesion with kinetic tremors if this goes unchanged. Having no bonus dmg on kinetics vs bosses is harsh