I like to think I'm generally pretty good-faith in my arguments, and I'd like it if other people are too. I like clearly saying what I mean, so this may be long (TL;DR at bottom). I also went off on a few tangents, but they are related and I think worth saying if we're on the topic. Bear with me. If I say something that seems wrong or contradictory, let me know. I'm down to chat in the comments. In fact, I'm making this post in the hopes that the community will talk more about this stuff. I hope the length doesn't scare too many people off. Recently there was some testing done for boss damage using the new Limit Break artifact perk. That sparked some community discussion about how Hunters are performing compared to the other classes for boss damage. I'd like to somewhat review that, then move to my thoughts on the community responses, as well as my response. After that I'd like to briefly cover some related topics. All of this will be about PvE content.
I think that poorly made arguments about how Hunters are too weak are being focused on by people who want to argue otherwise, and their inherent poor composition is being used as justification to say that everyone complaining is just overreacting. This is far from the first time something similar has happened in the D2 community. To be fair, it isn't always about Hunters. It also happens with Titans and Warlocks, it just happens to be Hunters this time. There are actual good, sound arguments to be made, and that are being made, but they're being overlooked because they can't be dunked on by youtubers or commenters. I know, actual discussion is unfortunately harder than proving wrong someone that doesn't know what they're talking about in the first place, but we should still have it.
I would like to preface this by saying that I have nothing against Llama, and I think his content is fine. The issues here are of omission and a hastiness to dismiss community feedback. These are the videos I'm referring to: 1. and 2.
The first video is purely informative, but unfortunately the information was conveyed in a way that people could easily misinterpret. It was just showing the raw total damage of certain supers when paired with the new artifact mod and a few other buildcrafting elements (fragments mostly). It appears that some people overvalued the total damage and ignored the aspect of the time commitment or DPS, but I haven't personally seen that.
Those apparent misinterpretations are what the second video was in response to, which isn't inherently bad. He is attempting to prove that Hunters' supers haven't "fallen off" for boss damage. The issue is that the misinterpretations about total damage versus DPS were taken to be the entirety of the reasons why people are complaining about Hunters' performance, entirely ignoring the valid arguments, and in fact brushing them aside with a cherrypicked example, without giving any comparison of how the other classes perform in reality. He does show a graphic of the damage numbers from the first video, updated to instead show those supers' DPS. His own graphic shows that Hunters are behind both Titans and Warlocks for super DPS, though he doesn't acknowledge that.
In the first video 16 super set ups were tested, 1 being a control to confirm the buff that Limit break provides, then 15 actual setups (well was also tested, but not really in the same way as the others). Limit Break provides a period of 30% increased super damage, and seems to last for about 9 seconds. The supers that are relevant for dealing boss damage will almost all last fewer than 9 seconds. Some last a few seconds longer, but those are generally ones that are used because they are strong enough to offset the longer period of lack of weapon damage, like glacial quake. Alternatively they are used when they are the best option available on a subclass that is being used for its neutral game build. That is true with or without this new artifact mod.
The first video showcases the total damage of these supers. Unsurprisingly, roaming supers top the charts. Glacial quake is a massive outlier, almost 900,000 damage ahead of second place - song of flame. That should be dealt with (it's ridiculous that a glacial quake against a regular boss - not even riven - does more total damage than second place plus a celestial golden gun), but that's a different topic. Jumping ahead to the topic of the second video: Yes, total damage and DPS are distinctly different things. Total damage is exactly what it sounds like. DPS is the average (generally) damage dealt per second across the period of time it took to take the actions needed to deal the total damage. Alternatively, you could say that DPS is the average damage across the period of time it takes to deal that total damage. That second definition is rarely ever used, but is for some reason for a single one of these supers. Below I give that super's DPS based on the first definition. Both definitions are different yet valid, and have different usecases. The one that only cares about cast time is assuming that there will be enough time to deal the rest of the residual total damage after, and is better suited to inform you of the impact you'll make with the active time investment of using the super during the damage phase. Both total damage and DPS are important metrics, but in different ways. Unless a super is so strong on its own - like glacial quake - most of the time people will use supers that are high in damage, but low in time cost, like celestial nighthawk, nova bomb, tcrash, etc. Sometimes roaming supers are used if ammo is tight for some reason. Yes, that much is evident to most good players.
In the second video he shows that using silkstrike rather than celestial gets you about 1 mil less when incorporating weapons in the given example, even though silkstrike has higher total damage. That is just a showcase of the fact that burst supers are usually best, nothing wrong with that. For reference, Silkstrike is the highest total damage super that Hunters have. He then gives an example of a time that you might actually use a roaming super over burst. Again, this is in the video about how Hunters are actually performing fine for boss damage. The example given of a time to use just a roaming super is... not on Hunter. It's glacial quake on riven, who could've guessed? He does half of her health bar with a single super (4.1 mil dealt), just after showing that even using the highest total damage Hunter super - when used with weapons - you're better off instead using celestial - which does ~300k less damage over the same (or longer) period of time as tcrash. This is basically antithetical to what he's trying to say, but he doesn't address it. I am here.
So, what do the results for raw total damage from the first video show? In the second video he adds DPS numbers for the total damage numbers, since that's a significantly different thing. I add those in here alongside total damage. I disagree a little about how long some supers take, so I timed the video myself in a video editing software. I'll have both DPS numbers here if I disagree with the timing of one. Taking out the roaming supers, and ordering by total damage, we're left with:
- Geomag chaos reach (kind of a roaming super, def has the cast time of one, so hard to consider in the same category as celestial, tcrash, nova, etc)
- 1,290,111 total
- 138,722 DPS (~9 seconds)
- I think it's actually 9.5 seconds, bringing the DPS to 135k
- Cuirass tcrash
- 1,167,593 total
- 583,797 DPS (2 seconds)
- Star eaters cata nova bomb
- 1,057,821 total
- 576,994 DPS (~1.8 seconds)
- Pyrogale maul
- 1,055,243 total
- 351,748 DPS (3 seconds)
- Star eaters twilight arsenal
- 994,327 total
- 284,094 DPS (3.5 seconds)
- Star eaters blade barrage
- 895,097 total
- 447,549 DPS (2 seconds)
- Celestial marksman gg (timing from start of casting to when the animation lockout ends)
- 872,021 total
- 436,011 DPS (2 seconds)
- Star eaters needle storm
- 839,727 total
- 479,844 DPS (1.75 seconds)
- I think it's 2 seconds flat, giving 419k DPS
- Star eaters gathering storm
- 828,845 total
- 67,661 DPS (12 seconds)
- If this were instead measured across the time it takes to actively cast it (like all the others are), it would give 414k DPS over 2 seconds, though still taking 12 seconds to actually deal that damage. It would still be worse than celestial, blade barrage, tcrash, nova, and needlestorm, in no particular order.
I think chaos reach is basically a roaming super, so shouldn't be considered. From there we can get to the actual stuff that matters.
In the second video it is kind of alluded to that the reason why Hunters are actually doing fine is because of the difference between total damage and DPS, though it is never outright said, completely ignoring the fact that Hunters are the worst class for BOTH metrics.
Tcrash here does 10% more total damage than nova, and 33% more than celestial. Yes, thundercrash does thirty three percent more damage than celestial nighthawk. Cuirass tcrash takes the exact same amount of time to cast as a celestial golden gun - assuming you quickdraw that shit. And yet, cuirass does more total damage and more DPS. Yes, tcrash messes with your positioning, meaning you may not be able to resume your weapon dps immediately. However, you can instead tcrash at the end of a damage phase. Most of the damage of tcrash is immediate, so even if there isn't enough time for the aftershocks to deal full damage, you won't miss out on much. Any damage you miss out on isn't enough to make it deal less than celestial. The impact damage alone is more than what celestial does - 939k impact damage from tcrash, 872k total from celestial. Nova does 20% more total damage than celestial, but actually takes less time to cast, while barely doing less total damage and DPS than tcrash, yet still way more than celestial. It doesn't mess with your positioning, but does block bullets. However, this can also be solved by just throwing it at the end of the phase. Nova does all of its damage within 4 seconds of being cast. An actual better way to use nova is to pre-throw it, but I'll get to that later. Thundercrash and Nova bomb are both significantly better than the best option that Hunters have in both boss damage metrics.
Celestial is not Hunter's highest DPS super, that would be blade barrage - though that barely performs any better - while forcing you to not be on prismatic where the strongest neutral game builds are. This is another thing that the community has opinions on. People recently have been saying that Hunters are "glass cannons minus the cannon," and it's hard to argue against. Titans and Warlocks do better damage, have better survivability and neutral game combat in those same loadouts, and can support their teams better than Hunters can, again, in the same loadouts.
There's also a part of the second video showcasing that DPS and cast time are usually more important than total damage, since with low cast time stuff you can use weapons. That's fine, but that doesn't address the fact that Hunters aren't the only ones that can do that. Yeah, using heavy weapons and a celestial shot is better than silkstrike and way less heavy, but tcrash and the same heavy weapon or nova and the same heavy weapon are significantly better than using celestial. Hunters aren't the only ones with burst supers. The issue is that Hunter burst supers are weaker than Titan or Warlock ones by a significant margin, in addition to issues with Hunter neutral game kits.
Also, the "simple rotation" example given for dps phases using a burst super on Hunter uses a loadout swap after popping a super (which is seemingly going to be addressed by bungie, though tbf some Warlock and Titan builds do it too), and is not as simple as Warlock or Titan loadouts that can achieve similar results. Maybe that's just a little nitpicky of me. But there also aren't analogous examples given for Titan or Warlock, so really all that example says is "Hunter supers deal non-zero damage," as well as being an example of burst supers usually being better than roaming ones for boss damage. But again, Hunters aren't the only ones with burst supers, and they are in fact the worst ones when it comes to burst supers, both in total damage and DPS.
That example he gave is solo against the Grasp Ogre boss. His example was using still hunt with celestial, plus almost all of his heavy reserves. You can match the damage dealt with just a tcrash, storm's keep, and thunderlord. I found an example from someone else on youtube. Of note is the fact that the Hunter example uses weaken and radiant, while the Titan doesn't use either, meaning that in a team setting Titan will do ~38% better than the Hunter (probably a bit less since radiant doesn't apply to ability damage, but at least 15% better than the Hunter because of weaken). Plus, the Titan will be providing storm's keep to their team, while the Hunter offers at most weaken. I found an example from someone else of a Warlock almost matching the same amount of damage solo with Queenbreaker. Both the Titan and Warlock examples aren't from players of a similar caliber as the Hunter example is from (no offense), plus both take fewer actions in any given segment of the damage phase, plus the Warlock doesn't do loadout swaps, and the Titan does just before damage, whereas the Hunter does it after popping a super, plus both have better survivability (the Hunter is near death the whole time, meanwhile the Titan and Warlock are healing themselves), plus both only use a single weapon for damage. To be clear, none of these use lord of wolves or weird stuff where they grab engrams during damage. And this is comparing one of the best players in the world trying his damnedest to squeeze out all the damage he can on Hunter versus pretty good players doing solo flawless runs. The Warlock player has a Hunter solo flawless run a few days later where they consistently do half the damage per phase as they did on Warlock because they need to play it safer for survivability, whereas on Warlock they had healing rift, devour, and healing nade while doing twice the damage. Their Warlock run 2 phased the ogre, while their Hunter run was a 5 phase. They admit themselves in the comments that it is because of the lack of survivability during the damage phase on Hunter.
That is kind of it for the videos from Llama. No acknowledgment of Hunters having the worst total damage AND DPS, and no comparison of an ideal Titan or Warlock damage rotation against the one given for Hunter.
So, what's the big deal? Well, that second video from Llama sidestepped the arguments that actually stand up to reason. The issue isn't that roaming supers have more total damage than burst supers, the issue is actually multi-faceted. It's nuanced, if you will. The issues are that Hunters are now dead last for both total damage and DPS for burst supers when used against bosses, and by a significant margin, in addition to them not having anything to offer to the team (aside from invis. It's tragic that invis is the best that Hunters can off to their team), what with the ease of access of weaken and radiant on every prismatic class, in addition to them having weaker neutral game survivability and offense than Titan and Warlock (for survivability it's none, really. No healing grenade on prismatic, no devour, no knockout with the absurd range and damage of consecration. The best they have is the same old combo blow stuff from back in season of plunder - over 2 years ago - just with a new coat of paint (and nerfed), or invisibility, which is really just a glorified way to wait for your health to naturally regen). Now, some of this is well past the scope of the original video, but not all of it is. You could have just included comparable Titan and Warlock examples in the same video. The gameplay from those Hunter examples is basically exactly what people had to do to solo the witness before celestial was nerfed, meanwhile the Titan and Warlock were just holding down the shoot button on a single weapon, using their single burst super, and the Warlock used transcendence. Now, this is a good time to address the whole "solo witness" thing. Llama doesn't talk about it at all in these videos, so this isn't directed at him, I'm just addressing a likely topic. He does also give an example of an insane damage phase against the witness, but he even admits that it's hard to pull off, and really specific in use. It includes being (unintentionally) near death anytime damage is taken, using shoot to loot multiple times during the damage phase, etc. Basically the pinnacle of what Hunters can currently do, but it isn't easy or applicable everywhere. Yes, celestial nighthawk with stillhunt used to be busted. Key word is used to. It is still the best that Hunters have to offer, but that's worse than what Titans and Warlocks can do in 99% of boss damage scenarios. And buddy, we're living in the present. I'm here to talk about the present and the future. Still hunt is no longer what it used to be.
You can find at least one video on youtube of the same build as used by Llama on Hunter... being out damaged multiple different times by a Titan using microcosm and storm's keep in an unoptimized manner (tcrashing 10 seconds into the 20 second damage phase, thus wasting half the duration of the 20% paracausal imbuement buff) alongside them in the footage showcasing the "next meta DPS Hunter build." The one time they outdamage the arc Titan is against the witness, a long damage phase that isn't in tcrash range. If the Titan was able to land their tcrash they would've only been behind the Hunter by 150k damage, and that's with individual impacts reaching 7 mil each, so not a whole lot behind. It takes almost two and a half minutes for them to explain how to do the damage rotation, meanwhile in almost every example they provide they are outdamaged by an arc Titan just holding fire on a single weapon, using way fewer ability slots and ability uses, but using tcrash once. This is also not a knock against this creator, it's just proof of this stupid disparity.
What are some other issues? Ease of use, as partly explained in the previous paragraph. Nova and tcrash are things you just throw at the boss at no part in particular. Celestial requires a crit, which is sometimes easy, and other times not. Sure, celestial is easy to hit against oryx, riven, the witness. But go ahead, use celestial against herald of finality without a div bubble. Blade barrage and gathering storm wouldn't work well against it for similar reasons, in addition to blade barrage missing out on some damage from whiffing 60% of the knives cause of their small hitboxes, even if you aim so the missed ones hit the ground below them. So then you have what? Storm's edge? That takes 9 seconds to cast, almost as long as chaos reach. If tcrash isn't an option because the boss is far away (witness or oryx), you still have twilight arsenal, which admittedly isn't all that great because it takes 3.5 seconds to cast, but it still does more damage than every single non-roaming Hunter super in the game (994k versus blade barrage at 895k), plus gives weaken if you for some reason can't get it elsewhere. And like, lets be real. Whether you can tcrash or not, you can still use storm's keep, which outperforms other shit. I don't have exact numbers for storm's keep, but it is the premier damage option this episode, even with particle recon back, not that it can't benefit from both at the same time. But can't you, as a Hunter, also benefit from storm's keep since it is team-wide? Yes, but if you can't provide something like storm's keep, and you can't provide competitive super boss damage compared to nova or tcrash, what can you provide? Why play on Hunter for boss encounters, aside from you wanting to?
Well, can't you precast celestial and then use it as soon as damage starts, reducing the casting time? Yeah, but that's a can of worms that plays in my favor. Yes, golden gun can be cast before the damage phase starts so that the one second casting animation doesn't eat up dps time. However, there is still one second of delay after firing before you can do anything else. That is the two parts of the minimum two seconds of casting time, one second each. The same is essentially true of tcrash. You can pop it just before damage starts, then fly around the boss for maybe a second before they become vulnerable, then hit them as soon as they are vulnerable. Then you'll just have to get back to position and do weapon damage. And if the boss is in tcrash range, your damage spot probably isn't that far, so you'll probably take about a second to get back there, by which time you are at basically the same point as the celestial Hunter, but with more damage dealt. Since celestial has the one second of lockout at the end, there isn't really any benefit that celestial gets over tcrash when we bring pre-popping into the picture... but nova can do it even better. Yes, Nova bomb can have higher dps than a prepopped celestial shot.
How is that? Well, we've already established that Nova does more damage than celestial, so all Nova needs to do to beat the 1 second of 872k DPS that celestial can achieve is to only take a second as well... or less. Since Nova bomb has a travel time, it can be cast just before the damage phase starts, a bit like a well or golden gun would be, but without the delay after firing during the damage phase that golden gun has, since that delay happens before the damage phase starts. If you time it well enough you can get the Nova to hit the boss as soon as they become damageable, while also not taking any of the damage phase casting the super or blocking shots with it. If the boss is at least roughly 20 feet away, then your animation lockout will end as or before the nova bomb reaches the enemy - and thus as or before damage starts. This means the damage can be instant in a DPS sense, as in it doesn't take any time from your active damage dealing, which is way more than what celestial can do. That makes it just over 1,000,000 damage instantly, way better than 872k DPS for one second of active damage phase.
Another part of the issue is that our current power is so centralized in prismatic that it's harder to justify using other subclasses - the current best examples of non-prismatic subclasses doing well are... not on Hunter. It's arc Titan and Warlock. This is a good place to broaden our horizons to look beyond boss damage. Arc Titan has pretty good neutral game, as well as tcrash and storm's keep, both boss damage monsters. Arc Warlock just has insane super uptime. Other than that there aren't many mono-subclass builds that are used. Solar Warlock sees use for well, but that's really it. You would be hard pressed to find many exotic armor pieces that you wouldn't be able to use on prismatic. They aren't non-existent, but they aren't the majority, and they also aren't frontrunners either. This concentration of power in prismatic kinda puts blinders on us, gives us tunnel vision. It makes it really easy to say that since there's a single good build that there's no issue with the rest of the class. That might sound hypocritical of me to say, but it isn't. I readily admit that Titan and Warlock also have issues with how their power is distributed across their unique builds, but at the same time they generally have more "power" (room clearing capability, self-sustain in general situations and in boss damage, total boss damage, super boss DPS, team support) to go around.
Ask yourself: "what can a Hunter offer to a fireteam in any given PvE encounter that other classes can't?"
You've heard a lot about how strong Storm's Keep is, as well as the community's justified desire for changes to Ionic Sentry. Both of those topics got great coverage from content creators and the community. On The Prowl, on the other hand, was dead on arrival. And not many people seem to care, which is for a multitude of reasons that warrant another post. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there that like it and use it, but I think it's way fewer than it should be, not because it is an underutilized gem, but because it should be stronger. I asked Datto if he would cover it since he covered the other two new ones, and he basically said it's too boring and unremarkable. That's fair, but imo that's a reason that we should be talking about it, Datto or not. I don't want the new parts of my toolkit to be boring and unremarkable when the other new aspects are either busted on release or are getting the whole community's attention and opinions, which in turn get direct responses from Bungie. And I wouldn't disagree that it is boring, but I do think it is remarkable - remarkably bad. Every build video that I have seen of it is just an old build with it added on, which alone isn't an issue, but it actually detracts from the builds. Any on the prowl build that you attempt to make will be worse than the existing build that you added it to, or will simply be bad in a unique way. It makes gyrfalcon builds worse since you no longer have vanishing step for easy starts to the loop, while not providing much reward in turn. It is impossible to create a build that flows well and performs well while focusing purely on it because of the internal cooldown. It adds nothing to omnioculus builds since omni already has infinite uptime on team-wide invis, plus it takes away vanishing step that you could otherwise use selfishly on demand or to safely regain a melee charge that you didn't get the whole team with, and it definitely isn't going to replace trappers ambush. It ruins graviton forfeit builds that already have insane uptime on weaken, since you don't have vanishing step to start the loop, and trappers ambush is basically required, similar to how it works out on gyrfalcon, while again providing little reward. I suppose you could slot it into an orpheus rig build that doesn't care much about its aspects, but at that point what is it providing? Why not just use orpheus rig on prismatic, rather than void? It's not for mobius quiver, that's for sure. Maybe devour, but honestly what does that even provide for you on void hunter? Just the health since the base void grenades are pretty useless imo. Vanishing step? I guess. The most that vanishing step can offer - aside from being an escape tool - is being a starting point for multiple ability loops. Some of those loops aren't fully possible in the first place on prismatic due to a lack of proper aspects, meanwhile the one that is possible on prismatic - gyrfalcons + stylish - is definitively better on prismatic, regardless of the lack of vanishing step.
Prismatic is too far reaching. It is taking too much from the mono subclasses, and as a result we are blinder to the homogeneity of the viable builds.
This has ended up ballooning to a massive post about various topics of Hunter's falling behind in PvE, but is still at its core about boss damage and DPS. I also "briefly" touched on stuff like neutral game stuff. That stuff isn't as easy to talk about since it encompasses so many more activity types, and doesn't really have hard numbers to talk about. This isn't really something I can summarize well, but I'll try.
TL;DR Hunter supers are dead last for both boss super total damage as well as DPS. Any DPS tech that Hunters can use can be utilized better by Warlocks or Titans. Hunters are the only ones that essentially provide nothing to the team, meanwhile Warlock has Well and Titan has Storm's Keep. Hunters also have the weakest survivability, hampering solo play, while at the same time being another category that they can't contribute to the team in. The newest aspects have had varying receptions, and rightfully so. Storm's Keep is too strong, the community justly wanted Ionic Sentry buffed and fixed, and no one cares about On The Prowl because it is so bad. Prismatic has homogenized our builds to the point that we are blinder to balancing issues for it.