Prismatic Proves Old Subclasses Need Buffs

I know this is kind of a hot topic so if you felt I treated the subject fairly a share with a friend would be appreciated!

"replace 3 shot goldie with 6 shot goldie" Ok officer arrest this man and put him in the physch ward. He shouldve said blade barrage

Bungie: We hear you, we’ll be nerfing prismatic titan.

The worst thing about the MIDA-multitool is that it has troll smashing capabilities but we only have ogres to shoot at.

I think the largest issue at its core was pulling aspects from other classes wholesale instead of creating distinct versions of them like they did with fragments

I understand the transcendence change, but if the rest of changes were implemented I’d never touch prismatic. Having a class with all of the worst abilities… why would anyone use it? Niche abilities is what it’s meant for, but bad abilities that don’t synergies would just feel bad

Bungie said themselves they wanted Prismatic to feel broken

While I somewhat agree with the sentiment, I respectfully disagree with most of the subclass related changes you suggest. Speaking strictly from a PvE standpoint: Making Transcendence harder to get is... fine but if it were to to be only when your super were active would severely impact the gameplay loop of prismatic and make it feel terrible. Buffing prismatic to compensate would just make the problem worse as, seeing how powerful it is right now would only work to make powercreep worse Prismatic Hunter: 3 shot Goldie is NOT soloing the witness, That's celestial nighthawk and Still Hunt doing most of the work (which got nerfed recently) Changing the prismatic super to 6 shot Goldie would basically put in the same spot as Stormtrance on prismatic warlock. It would be completely unused. The changes to mono subclasses you mention are fine but honestly wouldn't move the needle too much. Arcstrider is currently completely overshadowed by Pris Hunter so changing combo blow to disorienting blow seems like a valid change, but this comes with the problem of making winter's shroud obsolete (least used aspect on stasis hunter in PvE) Prismatic Warlock: The reason people play Voidwalker is not for cataclysm nova, it's for devour. (or blink :) ) What makes cataclysm so strong on Pris Warlock is the Star-eater on your exotic class item. The best DPS on mono warlock is Needle storm with evolution and ascent. What makes Pris Warlock basically negate Voidwalker is the fact that it does devour better, which i guess could be brought in line by making Feed the Void only as strong as devour on titans and hunters. Stormcaller isn't as bad as people say it is. Sure the supers need help but it is the most ability spam subclass without exotics on warlock. Vesper is a GM level build and Fallen Sunstar is very noticeably potent. The strongest aspect on Stormcaller is Electrostatic mind which enables the ability spam, NOT Lightning surge which was considered the weakest until prismatic gave it devour and Synthos from the class item. Arc souls do not need significant buffs, its 50% of the reason Getaway artist is the meta build on warlock right now and it's what makes the Vesper build GM viable. Sure you could buff the damage slightly on the mono subclass but giving it jolting explosions would be too much. Prismatic Titan: Adding into the fray would be fine if it weren't for knockout existing. Each of the Prismatic Kits has 1 aspect for sustain, Feed the Void, Stylish Executioner and Knockout. Adding into the fray would be redundant since it would be a less potent version of knockout since it requires you to have tangles, (making it work with any elemental pickup would be busted) and make it dead on arrival. Class Items: Having the exotics only have the weakest part of their host exotics would completely negate the point of them in the first place. The "spirit" of the exotic is to add a bit of the core gameplay loop of their originals. The example of Spirit of Star-Eaters is actually a good argument against this. its the ONLY way a warlock or titan can keep their burst supers in competition with Celestial or Star-Eaters on Hunters. Overall, while I agree that mono subclasses shouldn't be left behind I feel you should take a step back and look at how the individual aspects of the subclass work with each other before coming to conclusions of what needs to be changed. Nerfing, buffing and swapping things individually might seem fine, until you take a step back. The problems with prismatic and mono subclasses are more nuanced than nerfs and buffs and come down to the main design philosophy behind them which has its problems, Prismatic titans being a great example.

I still make frequent use of non-Prismatic classes on my hunter. Prismatic doesn't give me double grapples or shackle grenades that reload my weapons on use like Strand does. Prismatic doesn't give me healing grenades to assist my allies with and a strong damage and ad clear super that I can get back up in a matter of seconds with the right setup (blade barrage + shards) like Solar does. Prismatic doesn't give me incredibly high invis up time without the need of a kill like Void does (and it can be helpful in harder content like GMs to be able to go invis at will rather than needing a weak enemy neaby to proc invis off of, which isn't always available). So there are plenty of answers to the question, "Why not prismatic?" These are all builds I still rotate between depending on what I'm doing, alongside my prismatic builds.

what reason is there to run non-prismatic classes? fun, that’s the reason prismatic can’t use heat rises, prismatic can’t use blade barrage, prismatic can’t shatter skate, prismatic can’t give all the homies a lil arc buddy deal breaker, i wanna play like an absolute goblin and if that means playing suboptimally then so be it

I am of the opinion that prismatic was overall not the best choice for the “new subclass” for final shape. This video shows and explains a lot of the reasons for that. I honestly feel like a 3rd darkness subclass, while not carrying the same weight in terms of story, would have been better for the game overall.

As one of the only eternal warrior titan players, i wholeheartedly agree with swapping thundercrash for fists of havoc on prismatic.

Players have been complaining about feeling weak for years. Don’t nerf prismatic. Buff the other subclasses.

It's a simple fix, it does not require a lot of actual work: Just make the aspects and traits and gameplay of the original classes more specializes and give them more benefit for being that single class. That's all you have to do. PRismatic is fine. Just make the other classes better to use in their unique playstyles.

I remember there being a Vidoc or something where they said there would eventually be "no subclasses," instead you just pick whatever abilities you want. Prismatic feels like a limited version of this, so I've been thinking it's a trial run to see how the community likes it, get some data to see what needs to be buffed/nerfed when used with one another, etc. So either pure subclasses need a buff to their damage outputs, or we need to roll it all into one "Infinite Prismatic" and allow the selection of all abilities and Aspects, plus add in new fragments to add in all the perks that don't yet exist in Prismatic base.

They need a transcendent type ability for example on a solar subclass getting solar/kinetic kills fills up a similar bar but instead of 50/50 it’s 1 bar to fill and you get the same benefits like increased ability energy and a little dmg buff

If they just bumped the fragment slots on the original 5, it would close the gap a lot. The only thing stopping me from continuing to main Voidlock is that I can even have serviceability. Or I can have maximum purple goo. I don’t want prismatic nerfed. Prismatic feels good. GMs being dangerous but able to be completed in 12 to 25 minutes with a solid team feels good. I want the other classes brought up.

Just wanted to point out that facet of dominance being -10 discipline while echo of undermining is -20 while also being for only one type of grenade is questionnable. Void is the subclass with the most negative stat-affecting fragment when solar which is far better all-around, also has the most positive stat fragments. Fragment stat balancing should kinda be reviewed for some classes. I'm aware this isn't a big impactful change but i feel like this could help some subclass.

I take issue with one thing. The idea that that "less than optimal is not fun." I contend that optimally doesn't make fun, it just makes it the best. To be fun it must be VIABLE. All the other subclasses are still viable to a degree. Some more so than others to the point where I say those under performers are in desperate need of a buff but I wouldn't say they're not inherently fun, especially when fun is ultimately subjective.

I know this would be a very hot take, but I had the idea of Prismatic being the only subclass (let it access ALL of the other subclass abilities for a given class). HOWEVER! Make it where the overall power of the abilities is weaker (like how exotic class items use only portions of other exotic functions). The only way to restore abilities to FULL functionality for an element is to equip all one type of ability element (like healing grenades only Curex1 until you use ALL Solar abilities, giving it restoration and whatnot). This way, Prismatic is a weaker Swiss Army knife while keeping "monochromatic subclasses" as the way to make a particular element shine.