Usually when Bungie makes changes to a subclass in Destiny, there is a shift in the subclass usage statistics. This is due to a range of facts; which includes some players using whatever subclass is best while others feeling as though they cannot use their favorite subclass as effective as before. Sometime in the early days of Destiny, Hunters were known to be the class that is “overpowered”, claiming the title of being or is Destiny best class.
Then came the release of 3 new subclass with the release of The Taken King and most of the Destiny population migrated towards the thermal Titan due to its super ability that came with high increased armor that made the player hard to kill, healing ability and very powerful hammers. So now what is Destiny best class? This has been a hot topic that started at the launch of Destiny and will go on throughout Destiny 2.
Titans and Hunters have had their fair share of buffs and nerfs since then, so now that Bungie released update 2.3.0, was there a major shift in subclass population? To answer, lets look at some statistics. If you’re interested in viewing what they changed in update 2.3.0, you can get the quick rundown here.
These statistics from Destinytracker.com shows the class breakdown from gamers who are currently playing Destiny (or at lease all the Destiny gamers registered to the site) and these stats update every 4 minutes; so these stats are definitely after update 2.3.0. This chart shows the class breakdown in PvP between Hunters, Titans and Warlocks (I’m not sure why they have “other”). The first chart shows the whole population, the second chart is the top 100 and the third shows top 10,000.
When we look at the chart that shows the full population and the chart that shows the top 10,000, you can see that all the percentages are very close to each other, but its the top 100 chart where thing get a little interesting. The top 100 chart contain some of the best player in the Destiny PvP universe. In this chart, Warlocks reign supreme with Hunter coming in second and then Titans.
So what exactly does this mean? This may be the most important chart here since the skill gap is very narrow here, but we cannot jump to conclusion and say that Warlocks are “op” just yet. In my experience of playing Destiny (been playing since launch) I know that these type of players typically like to play games that are not 6v6; like Trial of Osiris, which Sunsinger Warlocks are very popular due to their ability to come back to life after getting killed.
If we look at the usage of each subclass in each class, we can see that the Sunsinger Warlock is the favorite in that class. For the Titan, after the Sunbreaker received a nerf, most people migrated to the Striker and the Defender Titan. Hunters are fairly equal with its subclass, with the Gunslinger in the lead. I would assume that this is because of the super being a fast shooting projectile.
When judging the op-ness of a subclass, there are some factors you have consider. Those factors are:
- Who has the best grenades,
- Who has the best super
- Who has the best melee.
We can see that the Warlock Sunsinger subclass dominate in both the melee and the grenade area so maybe it was a good idea that they increased arming time by 0.2 seconds and decreased victim search radius by 1 meter on grenades and added a 0.3 second delay before the overshield activation.
But lets dig deeper into this; there are quite a few streamers on Twitch who streams and play Destiny on a daily basis and have a large portion of the Destiny community that follow them (triplewreck, Gothalion). There was one streamer, who I won’t name since I’m not sure if he’s okay with me doing that, but who gave his thought on how good/bad each class is. This streamer is actually subscribed to by tripleWreck, often plays with Gothalion and is the only streamer that I am subscribed to at this moment. This streamer also successfully carries subscribers to the lighthouse every week so he definitely plays at a high skill level. When asked about what he thinks of each class; his reply was this:
” I don’t think hunters have a strong subclass right now. I think every subclass in the hunter’s class right now is mediocre. Sunsingers for Warlocks are mediocre but Stormcallers and Voidwalkers are untouched. Titans are just….good. Titans are just chillen right now; they’re good to go”.
Can we safely agree with what he’s saying? Let compare his words to what the Destiny community is saying. I went on Twitter and typed in “Hunters are overpowered” (just to see if that’s still a thing) to see what came up. To my surprise, this is was I found:
Judging from these tweets, it would seem that most people are complaining about Warlocks and Titans. Not too many Hunter complaints are seen these days. So are Warlocks and Titans better than Hunters? As I was about to come to the end of writing this article, I received a Twitter notification telling me that Bungie had just released some very interesting statistics. These stats showed the average k/d ratio of each subclass.
So in other words, judging from this chart, it seems that Hunters actually reign supreme in PvP; or at least before the last update was released.
Now there are two ways we can look at this;
- Hunters could indeed have been the best class since we can clearly see that they hold the high k/d. This could be the reason why everyone likes using them. Like I mentioned before, everyone migrated towards the Thermal Titan when it was first released.
- People could just generally like playing Hunters. If Bungie tends to nerf classes just because everyone likes playing as that class; then lets hope everyone don’t start using Titans all at the same time. The stats I provided at the beginning of this article shows what class the community uses and those stats came after the Hunter update. We can still see people using hunters slightly more than the other classes.
But lets not get too far off topic. Since this update was primarily for Hunters it may seem more “Hunter based”. Usually when a class is overpowered, you generally see a large population of people complaining about that class, so that’s why I did some research in this particular area. My verdict is that at this moment all the subclass seem to be used equally at this moment and may vary depending on what game mode is being played. Therefore, there really isn’t a “Best” subclass in my conclusion.
Each subclass has strengths for you to use at your disposal. They also have weaknesses. Lot’s of people like Striker Titans for their ability to move fast from the boost you get from the jump of this subclass. This is called Titan Skating and it allow titans to move faster in one direction, faster than any other class. The Striker can get multi-kills with its super, but not as often as other supers.
Defender Titans has grenades that can neutralize a class super, but doesn’t have an aggressive multi-killing super.
Sunsinger Warlocks are used a lot for their Self-Res capabilities in Trials of Osiris, but their super is easy to avoid.
Stormcaller Warlocks has the longest Melee in the game, but their super doesn’t kill instantly which leave a small window for their super to be shutdown.
Bladedancers and Nightstalkers both can go invisible and take themselves off the map, which is very good since most players play with their eyes glued to their map. This ability, however, may be less effective with people who use gaming headsets since they can still hear the footsteps. Bladedancers have a good multi-killing super but you need to get in close and in open areas other classes can run or float away making you waste time on your super.
Nightstalkers has the famous “Shadestep” and they have a super that kills and neutralizes class supers. Nightstalker supers take a lot of time to execute and you could end up lining yourself up for a sniper. Also, they dont have an actual melee attack… basically just another grenade.
Gunslingers has a perk that allows them to get their super at a reduced cool down. They too have a projectile as a melee and can cause trouble in close encounters.
And those are just to name a few. Maybe you think one class should claim the title of being Destiny best class. Leave a comment below with your thoughts.
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