Divine Intervention
Saltagreppo made the fatal mistake of sharing, on Twitter, a well thought out argument about how to improve a game he spends a lot of time playing.
Divinity is unquestionably the best “support” weapon in Destiny 2. Sustained damage to a target provides a large field around an enemy (an easier “crit” spot) and applies a 30% weaken effect (debuff).
For large targets like raid bosses with hard-to-hit crit spots, Divinity makes the damage phase a lot easier. Having a Divinity user and 5 others doing as much damage as possible is better – in practically all cases, for all teams – than not.
This is not to say raid bosses are not doable for most teams without Divinity. Anecdotally, most of my fire team’s raid completions have been without Divinity, because most of us don’t have it. That isn’t to say that Divinity wouldn’t have made those encounters easier, mind you.
On the face of it, Divinity is an ideal Raid exotic weapon. It’s very desirable because it has unique and powerful effects.
Saltagreppo believes that Divinity is too strong
removing most of the skill gap during DPS and making precision weapons way too easy to use.
forcing high risk high reward weapons such as Whisper of the Worm out of the meta, since they simply can’t be buffed, otherwise they would be S tier due to Div removing the risk aspect.
and advocates for the following changes:
What if Divinity kept giving the crit bubble but provided a 0% debuff that overrides any other debuff? So that for example using Divinity + Tether still resulted in no debuff as long as Div is applied.
Effectively, removing the debuff aspect of Divinity, but keeping the large field. The ease-of-use aspect is still there, but the “making-bosses-easier-than-without” aspect can’t be used in conjuction with Divinity. Choose either debuf by other means or Divinity for the easier crit spot.
All of this seems sensible so far, right? What’s the issue?
If you’re not aware of Saltagreppo - he’s a very skilled PvE player. His clan, Elysium, have been the world’s first Day 1 Raid Race champions for the last three raids in a row. As some would say, he’s part of the “PvE Elite”. He’s also a Destiny content creator, which means he is paid to make content about the game and plays it much more than most.
Due to this reason, his very well thought out arguments, put forward as a suggestions to the developers who follow him and would see it, was treated as malicious by a minority of Twitter users.
There were a few interesting arguments I had seen used:
“If you think it’s too strong, don’t use it”
“You’re advocating for things to be harder for regular players, so you can make more content”
“PvE Elitist”
Which always amuses me because none of this backlash addresses the content of his feedback. Instead they’re addressing him and who he is. Usually, I find people who do this aren’t interested in having a constructive discussion, and have long-since made up their mind about what they think and are not interested in having it changed.
This is a Twitter problem and is why interesting discussions almost never happens in the public, and instead is kept to private forums (Discord, group chats) where others are more likely to agree with you. I can empathise with Saltagreppo wanting a constructive conversation, but I hope he learns the lesson that it’s simply not worth it trying to have those kinds of conversations there.
For what it’s worth, I personally don’t think the changes to Divinity suggested would impact the game that much for most people. I’m willing to bet most people commenting on this drama, like myself, don’t even have Divinity and have managed to do Raids just fine. For those who haven’t managed to do a Raid, Divinity is out of reach anyway (as it requires a completion of Garden of Salvation – a not-straightforward Raid – to even obtain), so it shouldn’t affect them.
The venn diagram intersection of people who have managed to do Garden of Salvation to get Divinity but struggle with regular Raid bosses without Divinity, while I’m sure exists, sounds like it would be very small.
What it would impact is “endgame” activities like Day 1 Raid races, etc. In these, there is an expectation set that the best teams compete, and anyone can participate. These changes allow the best teams to not overly rely on one weapon, while keeping the mode challenging for those participating but not necessarily competing.
This makes sense – Saltagreppo is advocating for changes to improve the parts of the game he plays, while trying to keep the identity of the gun alive, keeping it’s unique effects, and ensuring it’s still desirable.
Salt’s changes would make Divinity less desirable for a player like me. I’ve never done Garden of Salvation, even though I own Shadowkeep. It’s one of the only Raids I haven’t done because nobody in my team knew how to teach it, and it doesn’t look that interesting.
If Salt’s changes are applied, for a player like myself who has raided but doesn’t have Divinity, the gun is completely unnecessary and there’s no need to step into Garden of Salvation. And maybe that’s fine – although I think Bungie would want me to try the Raid for the gun. I also want some motivation to try it!
This is why I personally wouldn’t globally apply Saltagreppo’s changes, and only apply it for the duration of the Raid Race or any “endgame” activities as an Activity Modifier.
Modifiers:
Lack of Judgement: The perk "Judgement" on Divinity no longer applies the weaken effect.
This keeps Divinity desirable and just that bit more “fun” in regular occurences, while keeping it in check for “endgame” activities.
Whatever the solution is, I’ve found this entire “saga” to be further proof of how it’s almost impossible to have a constructive conversation with people you disagree with on the internet.