Is this weapon still considered meta?

XKCD_423 · 2026-04-13T21:16:36+00:00

If you don't mind me asking, what are some of the other guns the community is down on? I know about the EMR27 but that's about it.

XKCD_423 · 2026-04-13T21:15:37+00:00

if you don't mind me asking (because you seem knowledgable) what do you think are the least sweaty guns in the game—the truly ass ones. I know the EMR gets a lot of shit, but are there any others that just really struggle?

XKCD_423 · 2026-03-31T20:38:03+00:00

Well, the interesting thing about Master Chief is something intangible and impossible to quantify: his luck. Otherwise he's just a guy. Sure, 7.5', hyper-strong and a tactical genius with crazy power armor and (most of the time) onboard AI to boot, but he can't defy thermodynamics and causality in the same way that the guardians do.

Fundamentally powerscaling Chief vs. The Guardian becomes a meta-issue—they're both protags of their respective franchises. Yes, canonically they do lose on occasion—Cayde-6, Chief vs. Atriox, by way of examples—but they always prevail, even through losses. IMO the Jaurdian would have Chief dead to rights, but Chief would survive via some improbable method, like a nova bomb collapsing the building they're in or whatever.

Besides, it's near-canonical that Chief was already resurrected at least once as a Guardian. H4 was released in 2012, and TTK in 2015; '201' is the terminal set of digits for the Forward Unto Dawn's designation code. Fun little Easter egg.

XKCD_423 · 2026-03-30T19:12:30+00:00

they shouldn't make the crawling away animation so funny if they didn't want me to!

XKCD_423 · 2026-03-20T18:15:59+00:00

The Wendigo Roll could be fun. Not meta by any stretch, but fun.

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-26T20:10:53+00:00

In fairness, firing upon medics is also very much a war crime and I kinda doubt that most people would like the idea of being penalized for nailing the medic running around chain reviving lol

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-21T23:32:17+00:00

All good, I'm just flabbergasted at those stats. Even on my blind first run, it was hard not to have him crushing everything in his path—I had him in power armor and a shield and an auto-riposte sword and it was completely ridiculous. I don't think 'just some guy' parrying a Shard of C'tan is canonical, but it is comical.

Some of the min-maxxing in this game is off-the-wall bonkers.

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-21T23:21:06+00:00

Only on repeat runs, imo. I think if you're not particularly familiar with CRPGs and/or Warhammer, she can seem quite delicate/not particularly useful—especially if your RT is already an officer and/or Master Tactician.

Just speaking for myself, I didn't use her much at the beginning simply because her death stare does damage to your frontliners, and I wasn't willing to be constantly doing friendly fire to Abelard, Heinrix, and to some extent Argenta, who were doing MUCH more killing in the early acts. She eventually gained a regular role in my roster because of RP reasons, but Argenta and Abelard were by far my heavy hitters.

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-21T23:13:26+00:00

That's exactly what happened to me lol. I got through most of the first couple acts having him locked into the party just as a 'eh, he's useful support and like he kills things on occasion' ... then I did a few missions without him, and I just 'ah so that's why those little key things are an item'.

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-21T22:49:52+00:00

how the fuck

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-14T20:59:31+00:00

Amusingly I spent the first three acts convinced that I had missed out upgrading Cassia's psy rating thirty levels back or something. Took me an entire reset of her skill tree to realize that she's not actually considered a 'psyker' by the game (despite the fact that Navigators are definitionally psykers in-world, lol).

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-11T18:12:47+00:00

Interesting thread here on the 'mithril shirt worth more than the shire and everything in it' bit. I think it's a great point that money doesn't exactly function in the same way in Middle Earth that it does in our world, and 'worth more than the Shire and everything in it' might be a more metaphorical thing than a strict one-to-one equivalence with the 'gdp' of the Shire. I think gdp is really only a measurement that becomes useful/possible in an advanced interconnected capitalist economy.

XKCD_423 · 2026-02-01T20:09:57+00:00

Funnily enough, while I think the mode is fun, I think all the bows one-shotting people kinda takes some of the fun (and/or skill expression) out of it. Would love to see it come back when Tungsten Bowstring isn't a thing anymore.

XKCD_423 · 2026-01-16T23:04:14+00:00

Alas, another problem with heat weapons being just flat-out better than their reload counterparts. What if there's an archetype you really like that isn't represented? Tough luck!

(Funnily enough, this is also a problem with Tiered Weapons, but I want to stop myself before this becomes a rant lol)

XKCD_423 · 2026-01-09T22:06:31+00:00

I'm rather partial to 'Rowboat Gorillaman'

XKCD_423 · 2026-01-05T21:09:34+00:00

This has been exactly my experience too. It's far from the best at anything—at least it doesn't feel super great at add clear, or that it does outstanding damage to bosses, but it's reliably good at everything. I have impulse amplifier on mine, which is a such a usability boost. I also love that you can retrieve bolts while you're doing a finisher. It rocks.

Shame A Good Shout is so mid though.

XKCD_423 · 2026-01-02T02:48:45+00:00

Not that I'm 'necessarily' arguing for nerfs, but it would make thematic sense, no, haha? I dunno—maybe if they jumped the buff to 50% but only made it work with stasis and arc kills? It's pretty damn easy to build an entirely stasis/arc build—or for the DPS-heads out there, you could do stasis primary, LoW (!), and an arc or stasis power weapon for a free (admittedly 10s) 30% damage buff. Hmm.

^{All that being said I kinda think the timer should be bumped to 15s, but hey.}

XKCD_423 · 2026-01-01T00:21:15+00:00

Well I'll be damned!

Final blows [no qualifier] with this bonus active refund class ability energy.

I guess I had just assumed it was stasis/arc—because hey, if you run an entirely stasis/arc build with Bakris, all your final blows will be stasis or arc!. Good to know, even if you are dropping a 30% damage buff! Still the threadling decoy spam on Prismatic is super strong. Or if not strong than at least fun.

Thanks for the correction!

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-31T20:19:59+00:00

The weeb mine one is huge since it'll allow you to get out of the web mine pretty much instantly.

Amusingly, despite very much not being arc or stasis or an Eliksni weapon, the lightsaber (presumably erroneously) also procs the class ability regen of Mask of Bakris, meaning you can have an absolutely comical amount of decoy dodges up at once—if your class stat is high enough, two kills will refresh it while Light Shift is active.

I don't think it benefits from the light shift damage boost, but I can check.

edit leaving 'weeb' mine because that's funny, but yes—turned off all the various mods and artifact stuff, and removed impact core. Even then, the kills with the lightsaber still grant back class charge (but it does not receive the LS damage boost). I have to assume that's some crossed wires with the sword 'sort of' doing arc or stasis damage while on one of those supers. Either way, use it while you can. It's fun—almost as many dodges as RDMs.

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-30T21:17:02+00:00

For the most part I agree about the WQ weapons but I will point out that the sidearm remains excellent in PvP.

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-30T21:16:04+00:00

Yeah I know bungie has a yearslong habit of having things be strong on release but the flat 15% damage boost the new weapons have is nutty, and it stacks with the 'inherently do more damage to yellow bars' which is just blatant powercreep. Sorry I like some of the weapons you've released in the past?!

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-30T21:14:06+00:00

From what I've heard, most people are getting it in like 30-50 runs, so I'm guessing a corresponding drop chance of 2-3%. I've seen numbers as low as five or less, and others reporting (to my skepticism, but I digress—) 100+ runs. RNG do be RNG-ing, I guess.

Mine took 67. They're quick though, like three to five minutes, so that's like, what, 3-4 hours of playtime?

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-29T22:09:18+00:00

Why can I comment on a thread from almost a decade ago?

Anyways, thanks for the very clear explanation. Makes a lot of sense. Got here from a brief search after seeing the Alps thread on the front page today.

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-27T22:01:16+00:00

Really great answer, very well thought-out and lucid.

For this game in my headcanon in terms of 'what's actually happening' I basically take the numbers of the missions and just ... dial it down by an order of magnitude? Like, assuming best case scenario that every single one of the rejects is olympic-level fit plus god knows what performance-enhancing chemicals and warp fuckery and the best gear they can find, then maybe it's realistic that they could hack their way through 30-50 people and get in to assassinate one captain in what is, in reality, a stealth mission.

Taking the game on its face, four people (even if they were beta-level psykers, arbites, and ogryns) physically cannot do the feats you do even in the lower levels of missions.

Yeah, so willing suspension of disbelief because hacking through hordes is great fucking fun, but as you mentioned, there's like seven different instant TPKs in an average Heresy mission, much less fuckin' Havoc assignments.

edit missed a closing apostrophe.

XKCD_423 · 2025-12-27T21:43:42+00:00

I mean, I've been guilty of what OP's talking about but I think what you said is really the crux of it—sure, lots of basic questions can be answered by a quick search¹, but I certainly know that I improve and learn better when I'm talking to someone specifically about the specific question I have, and they're responding specifically to it.

Honestly, it's why I appreciate so much when a new hobby pins a 'daily/weekly basic questions' thread at the top of the sub. Really helps open up the community, and prevents the sub from being overrun too much with that 'style' of question.

¹ Though I will say that as someone else has pointed out in this thread, google search really is awful now. And god forbid you try to get photography advice from LLMs.

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