Full post here.

That is a heck of a wall of text, which has some interesting bits.

The highlight, to me:

• Elysian Chests which drop vanity items (non-armor)
• Once a day Legendary mission (repeat of mainline story missions)
• General loot quantity improvements (how much is the question)
• Clarification on confusing inscription wording (I still don’t get why there are Shield Delay and Shield Refresh as separate stats)
• Many a bug fix, in particular the HP issue
• Re-balancing of javelin gear

Of this, we got new Universal MW, Elysian Caches, QoL for Forge, and Legendary missions.  No new events, strongholds, social tools, or the actual Cataclysm.

I play Storm as a main, and Colossus in spurts.  The latter scales at a ridiculous level, and deals decent enough damage.  The Storm… is like a wet tissue paper.  GM1 is fine, but past that he’s only good for lock downs.

The actual changes for the Storm appear to be a general nerf on damage – or rather, a push to have everyone run fire builds.  Because fire damage is dependent on Power Level, napkin math says the meta just took a large swing.

Storm is built upon a different mindset than the other javelins.  Gear cooldown reduction + javelin damage + elemental damage.  Weapons are not generally used, aside to provide similar buffs (Elemental Rage for example).  Other inscriptions have minimal value (‘cept maybe Gear Charges on some skills).  It’s also built on 3 elemental attacks Ice, Fire, and Lightning (can do acid with a specific MW skill).

Ice is low damage but freezes targets.  Extremely effective on groups, and teamed with a Colossus is pretty much insane lockdown.  Lightning is very high damage, and goes through shields pretty well. Fire burns through armor (yellow health bars) and does damage over time (scaling almost entirely on Power Level).

On paper, Lightning should always win – and until you get your first legendary drop, that is the case.  The boost from the first legendary though… that makes Fire do insane damage, and this patch just buffed that effect by 50%.  It will be interesting to test this out.

As for Colossus, the patch notes read as an overall buff.  Shock Treatment, Synchronized Frame, and Flamethrower all received some serious fixes.  Also, it looks like Autocannons received a boost on reload speed… so Endless Siege just became even more powerful.

I don’t play enough Interceptor or Ranger to comment on those changes.

I am very interested in seeing how the Bloodlust MW component works out.  A 75% boost to melee damage means that Interceptors and Colossus have a major (if not outright ridiculous) boost to damage output when facing groups.

Overall, there’s a lot of changes here.  Plenty of pages, showing a lot of hard work to get the “quick wins” out the door.  Legendary missions are a decent content addition, and will be immediately compared to Legendary contracts with guaranteed drops and stronghold with guaranteed chests.  Elysian chests… ok I guess.  They were oversold, but are an interesting first step.

There still remains the fundamental issue of gear acquisition (both in terms of quantity and quality) that is at the heart of a looter/shooter.  Maybe it’s better with this patch.  If there isn’t a marked change… then I guess I’m moving on until things get better.  Moment to moment is still a ton of fun, but the days of Space Invaders are long gone, and my game library is aching for some play time.