i can't walk two steps without choking on a smoke bomb and being burnt by swarm grenades

I'm going to preface this for context: Good PvP player, solo Lighthouse every week within 2-3 cards no issue. Trials is one of my favorite things. Some major issues with it though, baring subclasses and weapons is simply the lack of concern for time invested, especially if you aren't good at PvP. Passage of Persistence was a decent start, but that passage itself should be reworked to not remove a win, period, ever, that way someone can actual persist and get to 7 wins. As it stands now, with a 50% win rate, youd NEVER get that passage to 7. The population of Trials is still way lower than should be expected for a healthy thriving playlist. There needs to be better incentives getting people into the door and keeping them. End rant.

We were told over and over that the focus in pvp was going back to gunplay focused. Each time ends up being even faster ability usage than before. Guess we should accept a duck as a duck

I mean I'm addicted to PVP but the ability spam on hunters and healing on warlocks has been annoying AF. As far as rewards we're def being showered by loot that's for sure. I got like 50 SMGs this past weekend lol (regular + adept)

Jokes on you decoy, my aim is so bad I won’t lock on to you.

They seriously need to either dramatically reduce or flat out eliminate the aim assist on decoys. Being able to see my target but also be forced to fight my retical off of a target next to them is one of the most frustrating things for me in pvp in a while

As a Warlock main solo gamerdad, I got a tap/zen Incisor and will now spend my time doing something else. I've never been to the lighthouse, but there are other things that seem more rewarding to beat myself up about.

Ahhhhh the lady in the water reference..... At least someone remembers poor ol' Reggie

You had me at the Lady in the Water reference hahaha

The thing thats frustrating me is the lobby balancing, or the lack there of. There was so many times last weekend where me and my mate would be on 5 wins and have an absolute potato on our team where the enemy team has an insane player as their 3rd. This is EVEN worse in the solo queue experience where i would have very often .2/.3kd players on my team where this season was their first ever in trials. While i understand that its random it feels annoying knowing that I cant do anything to win the match when there is no team synergy.

I do think just removing the aim assist vacuum on threaded specter would go such a long way towards making them less annoying to deal with. Everything else it does feels incredibly easy to deal with if you’re paying attention, but that one feature can make it unbelievably irritating.

Even with passage of wealth we hardly get any engrams which is our main reason to purchase gear and weapons

Thanks for the review as always TV. Love hearing your opinion about the game. I havent had the chance to hit up trials yet. Still getting my power level up to be able to contend. Been doing a lot of comp, which has been interesting and fun with the new weapons and prismatic. Only reason for me to get into trials this season is to get the new god roll of shayura and maybe test my skills. But I wholeheartedly agree that pvp is feeling a little lackluster and heavily leaning into a specific build strat. Excited for whats to come in the future though 🎉

Congrats on 300K TV. Well deserved.

I've had a lot of fun in Trials in The Final Shape, but holy crap, I'm so sick of Prismatic Hunters ability spamming everywhere.

Hey TV, great vid! What do you with on your Revision Zero for those crispy no scopes?

As a Hunter that mained Balance of Power with prismatic this weekend, I agree. its definitely broken lol but i hated this map, so I wanted to get flawless over with. Especially with the swarm grenade spam. That clone taking the damage for the grenade was clutch.

Good thoughtful commentary on the playlist. I love it and I’m enjoying the pulse. Took it to the lighthouse. 99 rang with 60+ in handling and stability with threadling and zen. It feels good and I love surprising team shooting teams with 1-3 threadlings spilling out of their teammates on my strand hunter. Really can’t stand what people are doing with prismatic on any subclass. Once again a new subclass is a bit hot/cheesy. It’ll cool down though. Trials is why I play this game. Got a nice 102 range Shayura with keep away, kill clip, and target lock. 👍🏻 Probably just a vault slot. 😂 Love the pulse and going full strand with Tessellation and Cataphract.

I think we need another version of the flawless pool. I miss when playing with clan mates, we would match solos and duos. It made matches easier and made going to the lighthouse possible as a group. I think what they need to do, is when you havent gone flawless for the week, you go into a pool that matchs non flawless 3 stacks against other non flawless 3 stacks, and solo and duo flawless players. I know that once i go flawless for the week, i could care less about if i run into three stacks or if i win or loose. As long as i have a chance of winning and getting another adept drop, thats all that matters to me.

Nice gameplay. What primary are you using?

That intro clip… you’re nuts!! How many headshots do you have to hit to be able to one shot hs with revision zero??

I'm having fun as an arcstrider of all things, Ascension is just what I needed to finally enjoy the subclass. I will say when Facet of Hope starts working as intended I might go to prismatic but we'll see. The only thing really frustrating me is khovostov, my shots have never been better but it out ttks me so I keep losing, maybe I'll get better at peek shooting.

I’m a try hard so I will continue to play trials this season. But as a Titan main I am frustrated with the current sandbox balance. I hate capture the zone as well and I hate that the bulk of recent Titan nerfs have revolved around the fact this game mode is forced upon us.

don't forget hunters' new and "totally balanced" super.. jesus christ it's so OP... along with damn clones, smoke bombs and swarm grenades literally everywhere

god forbid frost hears you say titans arent a problem lmao

And the crazy thing is next time Trials comes around there will be very likely even more than 50percent of people playing Hunters because Bungie nerfed the main reason for why some people were playing Warlocks in Trials those past weeks today the Speakers Helm. I completely agree Hunters have just way to much going for them compared to the other classes and Threaded Specter especially with those new exotic boots are just to op on prismatic Hunter

I've done it last two weekends just for the pinnacle, but only one character as couldn't bring myself to do it again. Depends if I hit 2000 before the weekend for whether I play this weekend.

Trials was pretty fun this weekend, but also the map design goes a lot in to how much fun is going on. Also, you're a controller player - MnK has MUCH less of a problem than controller dealing with threaded spectre and Wallah himself even said the same. In terms of variety, I don't want to drag in any toxicity, but a controller main in the back of the map with a pulse and sidearm or the busted exotic auto was far more common than any other thing I saw this weekend and I'd prefer pulse AA get taken down a notch and maybe not allow two threaded spectres at the same time.

There were always more hunters so it makes sense there’s always more hunters and ofc people gonna use prismatic it’s new and the arc super is so good

As a pretty competitve PvP player who just hit Adept this season with Prismatic hunter and i will say that it feels like Trials has a very odd leg up on other PvP game modes for me. The outlier protection in trials somehow feels leagues better than any other PvP game mode while on my way to the light house even during the late night hours. However, once i did get my flawless card, the matchmaking quality went down significantly while seeming to favor me very heavily. Lots of demoralized enemy players by round 3 and early leavers on the enemy team lead to absolute blow outs that were not enjoyable for anyone involved. Myself included. But it was still the only play list i can throw on some comfy weapons and vibe. (I rock an old Messanger with Zen Moment/Kill Clip & Tresspasser)

Most of the player population has always been hunters its cape.

I love PVP! mostly i don't have the time to grind the most rewarding PVE activities, but lately it's been rough though

Do we think the “premier pvp content” just needs to be a whole new thing? Trials worked well in d1 because of the limited ability sandbox and focused on gunplay and positioning. Trials now boils down to ability abuse and outlier weapons.

My opinion as someone who has 24 flawlesses this season and has fun taking people to the lighthouse I think they need to focus more on gun play. This last week I went flawless on each class and I of course feel the ability spam of hunters. But I also felt the speaker helm which was nerfed thankfully. I mainly play because I am a rainbow six player who gets to champ each season and this season of R6 was lackluster so now I’m just playing trials for that competition feeling. I had done some Tekken 8 but this game is my main shooter currently.

Just wondering what the nerf would be that makes everyone happy? I am an average player and i feel like the hunter kit is finally balanced (for me) against titan free overshields and OHK melee’s.

i just played last weekend for the shayura adept and that's it, went flawless, got the rolls i wanted and that's all, not even new armor wich is a great incentive for me, so i don't think i'm gonna play it again in a few months

Honestly the main reason im suffering through the hunter ability spam each weekend is to get momentos for that sweet looking shader on my newly enhanced guns

I'm having trouble 2 bursting in trials and I can't tell if it's because of my light level. Is a 10 level difference relevant to damage?

Prismatic hunter main here. Completely agree. It’s busted. I’m bummed because I’ve loved specter since release and I feel like the strand version is going to get nuked to reign in prismatic. But they have to do something. If you face a team that is 2/3 prism hunter, it’s grotesque.

I'd like an adept scout and pulse. But I work full time and am trying to up my social life so if it comes down to doing more of the raid with clanmates or doing trials and sweating, then I know where I wanna go

Aisha’s Care is very good in PvE. Largely in part due to how good the archetype is in general. Slice/Gutshot + Hatchling/Kill Clip/Golden Tricorn Not as good as the raid one, but it’s in the top slot so it’s not competing directly

Needs to be mandatory free to play trials of osiris + mandatory weekly solo queue trials of osiris

If you are new/ back to the game, summoner and caraphract are S tier in PVE. Summoner heal clip + inc / onslaught + the foundry perk is a great ad clear sustain roll Cataphract with a mag or reload perk a cascade is a great deletion tool

All they gotta do is increase the cooldown like they did to the warlock ice turret, is that soo hard

I have leveled my hunter already and am gonna jump into PvP today. If Bungie wants an all Hunter season then so be it.

I wish people with a platform would petition bungie to ask for more PvP weapons.

To do with the prismatic Hunter kit. I am a player that consistently goes flawless on the first card of the week whether it be solo duo or trio. The way the kit plays I find can be: 1 free pick with smoke+swarm, 2 free gunfights smoke or swarm, as well as an added get away free card with clone. What makes prismatic Hunter so strong in my opinion is not that it is stacked with op abilities (although in certain builds and maps strand clone is) but that every ability as a stand-alone is strong enough to help in any gunfight

Wish you would have mentioned " balance of power " exotic. Havent touched it in trials . I was using it with rat king in platinum comp and it felt pretty busted.

Depends on the weapon that week. I’m solo and not high enough skill to go flawless, so I’m usually running the card that gives the adept post 7 total wins. I’m really only interested in Summoner for Heal clip+Incandescent and the new pulse rifle, so those are the only things I’m willing to slog through (for me personally) a terrible, Sisyphus and his boulder, uphill grind for. Other than that, I’m not stepping foot in Trials, the rank-up with Saint is incredibly slow and not worth the time investment at my skill level.

I'll probably play just to get armor to transmog and a few good weapons. I find joy in smashing an all hunter team though aa a voidlock.

i need this hunter meta to be dialed back IMMEDIATELY

I gave up on Trials before TFS even came out, when it became clear that I would have an easier time going flawless solo queueing than queueing with my friend because duo'ing can put you at the mercy of the random you get and make it much more frustrating. The meta for Trials can be stacked or suck all it wants, the gear isn't engaging enough to be worth the trouble for me anymore.

True I was a D1 player and a season 1-3 D2 player. I’m coming back to the game again now and enjoying playing but I can say the game is not the same. Obviously I’m not as good as I once was but I can say that abilities are just out of control. I can’t even go flawless anymore lol

My thoughts every weekend are: I'll play until I'm not having fun anymore. Sometimes, it takes 20 matches, but others I don't play at all depending on rewards and maps

Nice something we can agree on besides whiskey. Yet other streamers without calling names, but main hunters, are calling nerf to locks which I don't disagree with. The stats are there to show what class is OP/Meta.

I hear ricochet sounds in my sleep. *PING PFFFEW* *PINNNNG PFFFEW*

The only thing I have to do every time to determine whether I would even attempt trials was to look at Trialsreport and see what weapons and classes are at the top. 95% of the time it's something annoying, so I avoid it as the plague

I play because friends want to play. We go flawless and agres the loot is meh to chase. I agree that loadout is annoying but it didn’t bother me too much. I do like a warlock and hunter build like you mentioned.

Way, way ahead of you brother. Im already sitting out.

Pvp is pretty rough to play with ability spam right now. Hopefully they adjust it asap

Threaded specter should not have as many threadlings and it should not drag your reticle away from the real target

I am a newer trials player who doesn’t have a ton of time to play the game, and I really only care about my own improvement. However, this weekend was definitely not worth my time. I managed to get 5 wins in a row but the hunter ability spam felt really bad to play against, so I stopped halfway through the weekend and probably won’t try again until something changes.

I struggle in solo trials even with passage of persistence. I'm not a strong PVP player but it's my favorite part of the game. I guess the only way to help me would be that larger player pool to give me a higher chance of matching other less skilled players.

So far I've liked it less than pre final shape but I'll keep an open mind. Warlocks are an absolute pain to play against. The healing, the freezing, the turrets, it's all pretty rough to play against.

Post flawless wins should automatically reward an adept weapon period.

What’s your settings?

What gets me people that suck at pvp and try and play trials except to get carried and they just jump off the map

Finally someone talking about this. Bungie nerfed Speakers but not Hunter cloak or threaded specter. Hunters have ruled the crucible since D1 and anytime another class comes anywhere close to it hem they get nerfed.

Those Hunter %s are going to go up even more now that they just nerfed the Warlock Speaker helm (even though I think the nerf was valid.)

when i play solo trials I have fun. the matches are somewhat diverse and fun. when i play duo with my friend it's misserable. that's my main gripe and I'll only play when the loot is good.

If two weeks of iron banner is "the strike team doing their thing" then i think its time to fire more people.

The amount of hate I got when I said that threaded specter is every bit as repressive as void titan barriers and, frankly, do way more, was wild

Played trials the week before tfs dropped and it was a great experience. I tried last week. Wow what a horrible experience. And that VexNet map is abysmally bad.

Only thing that irked me was being in a match with a 1955 Titan who was in a duo with a warlock who was... 1990+? They did good, i wont lie but they still held back for being an easy kill. That aside, i wont lie. I do use prismatic and threaded specter but i play an aggressive playstyle that doesnt always do well. Because, its trials... and well, how can i not go for an aggressive like approach with swarm nades and cyrtarachne/ophidian cloak.

that idea of the point hiding until its up for taking is actually really good. I personally don't like dominion at all, lowers the skill ceiling to win imo way too much. Teams just sitting back with kvostovs and or speaker sight spam turrets have been so toxic, way more than the hunter spam imo.

Generally yes, but prismatic hunters are absolutely broken and need to be looked at.

Unrelated, but thanks for the HARD carry. Allowed me to get a godroll Shayura

I think the rotating loot pool kinda sucks. The idea that months, half a year even could go by before it's even possible for me to try to get a good adept roll on a specific weapon kills the motivation to even play trials for me.

I’m happy to see a content creator actually use the word “busted” and call it like it is. Most creators just dance around the word bc they don’t wanna piss people off. Also smoke bomb is stupid busted as well. Always has been and bungie went and buffed it anyway

I know this was about trials but Iron Banner STILL has no new weapons or armor either. I wish I wasn’t a PvP player.

Feels like Bungie painted themselves into a corner by making "ability spam" the whole identity of Prismatic (for Warlocks and Hunters anyway). The best thing they could do for endgame PvP IMO is to just put the Hardware modifier on Comp and Trials, and leave the rest as it is. We're never going to get a non-spammy version of Crucible that doesn't alienate casual players, so there might as well be a harder separation between weapons-focused endgame competition and quickplay chaos.

Anyone know what pulse rifles being used here?

As an average to sometimes good player my matches have been insanely tilted. One side will have 2 players in the top 5% , the other will have some bronzes and maybe a silver, it's just a crapshoot which side I get placed on to have a chance at winning. I'm not amazing enough at the game to carry a team and win 3v1s, so it's kind of disheartening when I'm consistently the best player on my team. I also believe the removal of card based matchmaking was a huge mistake, I've lost my flawless games because my teammate is on their first match of a card so they don't care and quit if we're down. And if the matchmaking is strictly connection based why am I facing people who teleport around or shoot at walls and hit me, it just feels like they gave up on the matchmaking. One of the consistent complaints of trials is that it doesn't have a very large pool of players, well it just keeps getting smaller when it's only really rewarding to the high end players. A good step in the right direction would be working on the passage of persistence because as it stands if you're at a 50% win rate you will waste hours of your life and never reach 7 wins. The passage of mercy was a nice change but it's pretty aggravating when you lose your mercy and then face the exact same team .

My motivation is its just something fun to chase

Some one at Bungie Loves threaded spectre and I want to give them a talking to. Respectfully.

I don’t feel like it it’s either hunter clone and smoke bomb spam or warlock speakers helm healing turrets and round two supers

Comp is even worst. When you get to like adept every game is time limit clash or king of the hill where you don’t have to be in the zone and just spawn trap lol.

All I play trials for now is the 1 flawless every week. Or if one of the new weapons is out that I didn’t get a good roll of

Once i got the pulse rifle with a good enough roll for me i was done. No more reason to play trials other than getting the pinnacle reward

As a titan main, who is a little demoralized to go through the entire story again on hunter or warlock, especially on the long long range maps, trials is not fun at all

Miss the podcast 😢

Unless you’re 1995 power or higher, no, last 2 weeks I went in, got my pinnacle and dipped

Skill based matchmaking has gotten 10000x worse. I don’t play enough to rank highly any more, I’m high silver low gold…. And literally 7/10 are blowout losses, matches that I never had a chance of winning. As a former PvP main… I play 3 comp matches a week then actively refuse to play crucible in any capacity

I can’t do anything or even peak without swarm grenades or threaded specters everywhere. It’s very annoying, and I played for 4-5 hours last night and I couldn’t get past 2 wins. Not even trying to go flawless. I was using the passage that rewards the adept on 7 wins and I couldn’t even get 3 wins. I’d stack up against guys who would go 13-2 or 10-5 or whatever and my team goes 0-5 or 2-5 or whatever. Just completely unbalanced. Then whenever we go down 0-2 or 1-3 my team just wipes and it’s frustrating. I’m not some “god PvP player” I’m aware. But I’m decent enough to get to 7 wins if matchmaking and ability spam doesn’t crush me. All in all my trials experience this past weekend was an F- lol it was honestly miserable.

Solo queue is so fucking hard. Its so sweaty and you have to carry the team it seems most weeks to even win. Would be nice to get more than blueberries every time I play that are wet noodles in PvP

Me honestly I won’t be playing trials. Been playing for 7 years now. And I’m burnout from the game. U covered some good topics TV. Well done.

Made it to my final match for flawless solo after using up both of my forgives. Got matched against 3 top 500 players.......im a silver 2 in comp.....

I really, really feel like hunters having threaded spectre is a bad move from bungie, best action they can do is take it out and replace is with ensnaring slam or malestrom, but i feel instead theyll just gut spectre

Being a Titan main when hunters are ability spamming and warlocks are nonstop healing sucks. We already suck in final shape. Guess it’s time to switch to my other characters

Never stepped foot into trials, can barely handle regular crucible