Ding dong the meta’s dead, which old meta, the thorn\last word meta.

Finally 2.0 has hit, nevermind The Taken King, Rift, Nolan North, the new map\tower layout, I am no longer a crucible pariah, no longer do I have to hide in the corners, shaking and praying that I’m not spotted with my non meta weapon. Last night I played the new crucible for the first time. RIFT was gooood but what blew me away last night was I got killed by so many different primary weapons.

When Destiny first arrived, the vast majority were using autorifles, the suros regime, shadow price, galahad e, shingen C\E, grim citizen, etc. The suros was king but you still stood a chance with another AR type weapon. Handcannons were laughably pitiful, as were scouts, pulse rifles were decent, not great. Some of the uncommon and rare weapons were usable in crucible. So Bungie decided to change the meta, they tweaked and tweaked and AR’s were essentially nerfed into oblivion and handcannons were the meta. 2 handcannons stood out among them all though, The Last Word and Thorn, 2 exotics. For PS users you could add Hawkmoon, good HC but nowhere near as common as the previous 2.

Thorn started out as a really bad weapon, even bad amongst the handcannon class of weapons. Bad rate of fire, low clip count, stability was poor and the damage over time buff was negligible, add in that the exotic bounty to get it was one of the trickiest bounties and people were not interested in it at all. It kept getting buffed and buffed as other weapons got nerfed until it turned out to be one of the best and most overused weapons. It wasn’t that it was good, it was that it was so far ahead of other weapons. Pretty soon you started bumping into more thorns, bumping into more rumble matches where 2 players are hiding off in a corner, killing each other with void weapons(part of the thorn bounty). The Trial of Osiris was not nicknamed “Thorn of Osiris” for no reason. Don’t get me started on Thorn Peekaboo.

The Last Word was always good, it had an insane Time to Kill but handled like a junkie going cold turkey and using a jackhammer and according to the range stat you’d be better off throwing a wet towel at >10 feet. I don’t know when people copped on that range stat meant nothing but a lot more people started using it, learned how to handle the recoil and if you came up against anyone close to midrange who had it, it was like doing a wild west gun fight with cinder blocks tied your hand. I normally use pulse rifles, I’d have been hit 5-6 times and dead before i got anywhere near my 2nd burst of the pulse rifle fire. The Last Word wiping you out up close I could understand but some of the ranges I got obliterated at really got my goat. In the hands of a good player you were screwed if they had The Last Word.

Another effect was the rares\uncommons now were nowhere near parity with exotics and I think it scared off a lot of noobies. Before, you stood a decent chance against those with legendaries or exotics, now you were cannon fodder.

PVP was just not fun for the past 6 months, I could bring up the shotguns, but the overuse of handcannons just got tedious and boring. I found myself switching to Thorn\Last word in Iron banner because I needed the wins to level it up. It wasn’t that I chose to, I had to.

I was messing with the Fextra people on the party chat one night and made up this story. “I was playing Destiny the other night and my brother was over with my 3 year old nephew, he walked in as I was playing trials and he heard me utter “******* Thorn”, he then proceeded to run around the house laughing and shouting “******* Thorn”, he even said it to my mother, his grandmother on the phone. We were shocked, we sat him down all serious and explained to him that was a no no. It’s been 3 months gone now and thank god, he hasn’t been heard saying “Thorn” since”.

Long Live 2.0 and weapon diversity, well at least until people figure out that No Land Beyond is now uber OP and the new meta.

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