The Slow Destruction Of Destiny 2’s Least Played Class

1%. 1% of every player in the top teams in the world were titans. 1 freaking %. that is a unprecedentedly low number. This goes far beyond hunters being too good. This goes beyond Titans being Niche, if that were true they would have shared the slice with warlocks, no, This is about Titans being bad. The way top teams see it there is virtually no need for a titan anymore. Titans are obsolete. And I do not believe bungie’s current trajectory to fix prismatic would be the only needed fix. Again, if JUST prismatic titans were bad then surely other titan classes would have been represented. Right? No, I think this is more an issue of titans have a different problem other than sheer power.

The Destiny 2 Developers Most Hated Class
The Destiny 2 Titan Problem: Identity Crisis & Class Balance Analysis

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[TDTProductions]

I am hoping to start a larger discussion in the community rather than what I have seen of "Prismatic titan bad". Sharing this with your titan friends and relaying their thoughts would be appreciated. I will try to answer counter-points and such in the comments too.

[DJungleskoggs]

When there was the prismatic dev insights they described the hunter and warlock in great detail but when it came to titan they basically said “you can throw a grenade to jolt enemies and melee”

[darthspoompls]

The most frustrating thing Bungie has done to me as a titan is pinning me as the melee identity while making it damn near impossible to actually be within that range without dying by a stomp mechanic.

[tbsoffun]

I love that 70% of the enemies are IN THE FUCKING AIR where I can't punch them

[rage_of_guts]

My feelings are all over the place as titan, a warlock is defending my class....

[zefatguy]

> "The best way to play Titan is to play another class."

I don't care who the IRS sends, I am not switching to Warlock or Hunter.

[jaunks]

The worst part to me is that when titans are at their lowest, it is absolutely everything. Every type is subpar compared to what you can get out of a warlock or a hunter in almost every way.

But when titans are at their highest peak it is because of one simply busted mechanic. It's never the whole class that is at fault, in fact everything else is still just as mediocre as before. Hammer one two punch synthos? Strand one two punch grapple melee? Void one two punch shield bash? Even just arc storm grenade spam. All definitely too strong at their peak but nerfed out of existence and not replaced with anything new, leaving a power vacuum that is swept up by new hunter and warlock strats

[thorzap]

As a Warlock main who dabbles in Titan: if you ask me, Prismatic Titan should've focus on making the Titan unkillable Bastion, Juggernaut, Sol Invictus, Into the Fray (or Banner of War), Tectonic Harvest. The Titan Prismatic should've been all about stacking these buffs in disgusting ways and I think Prismatic Titan needs a fundamental rework from the ground up.

[logandraper]

I genuinely can't believe that the stasis aspect chosen wasn't howl of the storm. That would work so well with consecration. Uppercut slide scorches and freezes then the slam shatters all the crystals and ignites.

[LDSG_A_Team]

I've said for years and years that the best part of playing Titan was being both the Unstoppable Force AND the Immovable Object. I haven't had that feeling playing Titan since before Witch Queen.
The way I see it, the Titan core identity boils down to 3 things:
1. Momentum
2. Survivability
3. Area-of-effect
Titans are not a "sit in place behind cover" class, despite having barricade. Titans should be able to run in, overwhelm a group of enemies with a display of explosive power and AoE, then fluidly carry that momentum to the next fight, and the next, and the next. They should be nigh-unstoppable killing machines that are difficult to stop, and harder to kill. Playing a Titan should be an experience where as long as you maintain your MOMENTUM, you should feel unstoppable and unkillable. A Titan's barricade should be a tool for you and your allies to recover whenever your momentum is broken, so you can have a moment of safety to build it back up again.
Simultaneously, Titans should be able to lock down an area and make it completely theirs. Uninvited guests should feel very cautious when entering a Titan's space. Titans are the wall against which the darkness BREAKS, not the sand castle that disintegrates at the first sign of opposition.
Titans ought to be the fortress, the Immovable Object that anchors their allies together and creates a bastion of safety for their team. Titans ought to be the Unstoppable Force, the armored tank that pushes inevitably forward and blows through their enemies' defenses to knock them down, no matter how hard the enemy tries to stop it.

Warlocks are the Storm, the Tsunami, the Supernova, the Elder Gods, and the inevitability of entropy. Fighting them should make you feel small and powerless before a destructive phenomenon beyond your comprehension or ability to control. You can't fight them. Nothing you do will have any effect. Fighting a Warlock should feel like shooting a gun at a thundercloud or swinging a sword at the wind. Meaningless.

Hunters are, well, Hunters. You can try and fight them all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that they are the Hunters and you are their prey. You can try to run away from them, but doing so would mean falling right into their trap. You can try and fight them head-on but they know exactly how you fight and will create and exploit weaknesses that you didn't even know were there. They're faster and more agile than you, smarter than you, and deadlier than you. You exist at their mercy. Hunters can take down any foe, because they know exactly where to hit to make it REALLY count, and have the firepower to back it up. Fighting a Hunter should feel like being backed into a corner with nowhere to run or hide, and every time you try to move or lash out, you only tangle yourself further into their trap and cut yourself on their thorns. Despite knowing you're being hunted and doing your best to survive, you never saw the strike coming that finally ended your life.

Titans are the doomguy, the hungry dragons, the charging bull, the avalanche, the landslide, the meteor, and the roaring fire. Once they get going, they keep going, building momentum as they go and wrecking and consuming everything in their path. You can put up obstacles in their way, but they are either going to knock them down or just rush past as if your attempts to stop them weren't even there. You can definitely fight back, push back, try to stop them, or try and prevent them from building their momentum to begin with, but in so doing, you will find yourself unable to inflict lasting harm, and unable to keep them down forever, only delaying the inevitable. They have the resilience to take whatever attacks you can throw at them, and chances are, your attacks are just going to set them off on their path of destruction anyway. They adapt quickly to your countermeasures, and break out of any containment. Fighting a Titan should feel like trying to break down a volcanic mountain, or deflect a planet-ending meteor. You can certainly deal damage, to the mountain, but it won't change much, and you're just as likely to set off a landslide or eruption. You can, with extraordinary effort, deflect a meteor if you see it coming early enough, but it's just going to pass by, then swing around and come at you again for round 2. You can't stop them, you can't kill them, and you can't break them down in any meaningful way. Either move out of their way, or be consumed and turned into rubble. You can, in theory, wear them away little by little until they finally give in, but by the time you succeed, the damage is already done, and they sit atop of mountain of bodies so large, the effort you spent trying to kill them hurt yourself far more than it did them.

Yes, I'm a Titan, yes, I like punching things. But that was always only ever a fraction of what made me enjoy the class. Punching things is a means to an end, a tool in my belt that I can always rely on in a pinch. But it is not at all my defining characteristic. That's not what I miss about playing a Titan.
I miss that feeling of momentum and explosive power. I miss the ability to move fluidly from gunfight to gunfight, consuming all in my path and using it to fuel my fire. I miss taking on entire armies, where the enemy gives it everything they have, only to break against my shield and fall to my sword, again and again and again until there are no more enemies left to fight. I miss that feeling of being the rock to keep my team steady, and the shield behind which my friends duck for cover.
Please Bungie, for the love of the Traveler, make Titans the unstoppable armored warriors that they used to be. Give us more explosions and more momentum. I fricking love this game, and it sucks when my favorite class has its kit taken away, nerfed, and given to other classes.

[pitmaster]

I think banner of war and precious scars is an excellent class identity direction for Titans. Give every one of their subclasses a DnD-esque Paladin Aura or a TF2-esque Soldier backpack. Bastion doesn’t enhance your barricade, you as a Titan emit an over shield regenerating aura. Sunspots grant sun warrior *by default*, give Phoenix cradle a bonus effect.

[austingoodman]

The problem is that the game has three classes but not enough team roles to meaningfully distinguish them. Titans compete (and lose) with Warlocks for the role of support/survivability and with Hunters for the role of damage dealer. If tanking was a thing in D2 that could be Titans' niche, but currently there's no way to reliably pull boss aggro, and all three classes can CC.

[Forcer]

I’m just saying, the original scrapped Strand super looked like it was going to be a flamethrower/Minigun. Maybe if that was added Titans would be back on top.

[danieldragotti]

Who could have though the class that needs melee kill is bad in a game where you cant melee most enemies?

[Ruggedtoaster]

Never forget when Titans brought up the question several years ago about how being the quote “melee class” wasn’t really an identity. Bungee told us all to play to the power fantasy they envisioned for us. Which was punch things they always phrased it as be powerful, but they have never given us tools to effectively be powerful or have immediately taken them back unless it was melee oriented.

[CephalonAxii]

THANK GOD! People are finally taking the flaws in the Titan Class Identity seriously. Tuna was the first to really do it, as far as I know, but now the bigger D2 personalities are making videos talking about it, FINALLY. Bungie needs to do something, and I hope they take what we the people are saying into account and make Titans into something truely special and fun.

[JeanneDGames]

An interesting interview near the start of Lightfall highlighted one of Bungie's issues with balancing the class. A dev, responding to the complaints at the time that Berserker's super was just "Green flavored Fist of Havoc", claimed that punching was a chief part of the Titan class identity, claiming "at the end of the day, Titan players, your class is the guy clenching a fist on the cover of the game". During the Twilight Garrison debacle, Kevin Yanes (a Warlock main with deciding power at Bungie) claimed that Garrison would never return, because it was not part of Titan's identity...even though only one subclass within one class (notably the one that Yanes used all the time) had any sort of Air Superiority. It's not really part of Warlock's identity, either. Note that I, as somebody who has been a game dev myself, would never condone the harassment of another dev, but I also know as a game dev that it's difficult to ignore your own biases sometimes.

Now, if Titan's identity, as claimed by Bungie, is "the guy punching stuff", why has every attempt been made to decrease the competency of their punches over the last 3 years? My answer is that Bungie doesn't actually play their own game at a high enough level to know the flaws of the class intimately. Bungie's been caught testing at +20 in footage put out themselves, while the average player has to fight at -5 these days, with many players having to go into GMs at -40 because you need Pinnacle+20 for GMs this season, which is already -20 to start with. Bungie's encounter design and enemy design is such that, at any level of play where your build actually matters, going into melee range is borderline suicidal or outright impossible. Most enemies have spammable One-Hit-Kill Stomps that will nuke you if you aren't running 100 RES and 3x Melee Resist, and even then you'll probably still die in 2 hits since the stomps don't have any reactable delay. So, you have a case of Bungie saying that Titans should be doing one thing, then punishing them at every turn for doing that one thing.

"Class Identity" has been used by Bungie devs to win arguments online more than it has to actually balance the classes.
I think that's a failure of Bungie's designers.

[themccman]

My biggest gripe with prismatic titan is that all the other classes prismatics feel like a “best of” collection while titans is all just aspects they pulled out of the bottom of the trash can.

[SSD_Penumbra]

Titan main here.

Your assessment is 100% correct. Titans are often seen as "the melee class" purely because of the fact that Titan Melee abilities can make or break the entire subclass. That, coupled with the fact that literally *ALL* of our subclasses use some form of melee in them.

For example. Void has 3 supers; a large dome shield, a handheld shield *that you can throw* and block with or three large axes that deal damage to an enemy *and can be picked up*

2 of the 3 options for us titans on a single subclass use melee. This trend is on literally all of our subclasses, sometimes having no other options at all.

People do really tend to forget that when Arc 3.0 came out, the meta pick for titans wasn't any of the melee options. It was a grenade build. Void was the same. People hated void 3.0 because the void melee options weren't great, so people used grenades. Then Solar 3.0 came out and everyone hated the solar grenade options and instead relied on the throwing hammer (people hated consecration too, now you can't make a Prismatic build without it).

At the end of the day, us Titans need something to help us compete with the likes of Hunters and Warlocks. We either need more options for stuff to do, or we need pre-nerf melees that can melt bosses in a heartbeat. Maybe even more melee options to choose from.

And, you know, a super that is a 1-and-done and doesn't require an exotic to do well with.

[onionring]

Armamentarium absolutely needs to have one universal scavenger and reserve mod built in.
It was literally designed to buff all armaments (not just add +1 grenade) but was introduced in D2 as a shell of its former self and has never been returned to its D1 glory.