Stopping just short of hanging holiday lights spelling “Titans are getting nerfed,” Bungie has now repeatedly hinted that the infamous Sunbreaker Titan subclass will be revisited in Destiny’s Crucible-oriented balance patch due next month. Not everyone is enthused over the change, especially Titans reluctant to have their monopoly torn out from under them. That makes this an excellent time to break down why Hammer of Sol, and by extension the Sunbreaker class, deserve to be toned down.
In a strange way, I’m glad Hammer of Sol came about. Before hammers started flying, the place of Destiny’s precarious Supers in Crucible had never been well framed. Undoubtedly influenced by the countless “Ults” which the MOBA genre has spawned, Supers were set up as the penultimate abilities of Guardians. You are never stronger than during your Super, whether you’re firing a Nova Bomb, nursing an eager trigger finger on a gleaming Golden Gun, or preparing for a well-placed Fist of Havoc. They’re momentous and nearly infallible, things for enemies to flee and teammates to gleefully chase after.
Supers are all absurd in their own way, but because everyone has one to turn to the system is serviceable, if a bit pell-mell. Warlocks scoff at the ease with which Bladedancers dispatch groups, and Titans lament the uselessness of the Defender’s Ward of Dawn, but Supers are accepted because they throw wrenches into the repetitive flow of multiplayer that sometimes afflicts Crucible. But when The Taken King dropped Hammer of Sol into the mix, in one fell swoop the Super shattered every accepted convention of power.
However, there is a silver lining: it also clearly pointed out what those conventions are. So before the nerf bat is swung, we’d do well to recognize just what Hammer of Sol does wrong (read: too well), if only to build a precedent for future balance debates. Let’s start by outlining the three elements of Supers: duration, vulnerability and range.
Duration
It’s fairly pointless to debate the offensive power of Supers since they all fundamentally do the same thing: kill what and whoever is unfortunate enough to be caught by them. In the right conditions, they’re all equally devastating. We can debate how likely each Super’s conditions are, but then we’ll get caught up on play style preference. You’re no more likely to survive a Fist of Havoc than a Nova Bomb, after all. Instead, we’ll deal with duration first—literally how long a Super lasts.
This does necessitate a minor division. We have instantaneous Supers like Fist of Havoc and Nova Bomb, and staggered Supers like Golden Gun and Stormtrance. Naturally, duration is irrelevant to the former group, but it’s everything to the latter. The longer a Super lasts, the more powerful it becomes. The benefits of duration are moderate for Golden Gun because it is also limited by individual shots, but for Arcblade and Stormtrance extra seconds translate directly into more opportunities to kill. Why else would we have several skills which can lengthen Supers?
Supers that push for duration do so by giving up range and accepting various vulnerabilities. Stormtrance, Arcblade and Radiance are the big three here. Crucially, all three are adept at medium- to close-range encounters and can be killed relatively easily, for example by a precision sniper or shotgun shot. Supers like Golden Gun and Nova Bomb will also eat through high-duration Supers. But because they last so long, all three are respectable despite their relative fragility.
Vulnerability
It might seem silly to call the most powerful abilities in Destiny vulnerable, but there is a hierarchy of defensive power among Supers. Stormtrance and Arcblade provide high armor, to be sure, but it’s nothing compared to the near-invincibility that Fist of Havoc and Ward of Dawn offer. With the right gear, Nova Bomb’s activation window can also become nigh-on invulnerable, along with a well-built Radiance.
The best acid test for vulnerability is Super-on-Super combat. For example, next to nothing can kill a Titan in Fist of Havoc’s animation, especially if they have the Unstoppable perk equipped. As compensation, Fist of Havoc has a duration of about one second and only a short-range AoE. Oppositely, Golden Gun provides absolutely no bonuses to survivability and leaves you highly vulnerable, even to things like a Radiance melee. To compensate, Golden Gun also has exceedingly high range and a longer duration than Fist of Havoc, though it’s still much shorter than Arcblade.
A Super’s vulnerability comes down to more than just maximum armor, however. Regenerative abilities are also important. For instance, without the Hungering Blade skill, which fully regenerates health after each kill, the Arcblade Super becomes considerably squishier.
Range
Range is fairly self-explanatory: not having to get up close makes a Super considerably more difficult to counter and, as a result, deadly. I’m going to talk about Golden Gun again, so buckle up.
Golden Gun is revered as one of the top Supers in Crucible because it can kill from virtually anywhere. Unlike Nova Bomb and Arcblade, it has no unique mechanics to factor in. You just point and shoot, often from across the entire map. You can pick enemies out of the air as easily as you can pop them off in hallways. High range is what makes Golden Gun formidable, and it’s the reason it has such a short duration and poor defense.
Nova Bomb is another high-range Super, though it performs differently than Golden Gun. Even without the Lance skill, Nova Bomb can cover more than enough distance to target specific spots. However, it’s also a one-and-done, instantaneous Super. So it gains sizeable AoE damage to up its potency.
Hammer of Sol
You may have noticed a pattern here: Supers only emphasize one of three traits. Sure, Radiance and Arcblade are much sturdier than Golden Gun, but their armor isn’t what makes them powerful. With that said, there is a bit of a gray area and things aren’t quite as black-and-white as these three qualities make them out to be. If you were to score every Super’s duration, vulnerability and range, you’d probably wind up with report cards of, “3, 2, 1” rather than “3, 1, 1.” But there is a balance, and in all cases, Supers only gain by giving up something else.
Unless you’re talking about Hammer of Sol.
Hammer of Sol provides higher armor than Nova Bomb mid-activation, regenerative abilities on par with Arcblade’s Hungering Blade, Golden Gun-rivaling range, Golden Gun-destroying kill potential (due to the quantity and AoE of hammers), and longer duration than Radiance. I defy anyone to argue that is anything but overpowered.
Hammer of Sol is a Frankenstein of bonuses in a sea of give and take. It’s nothing but positives, so it’s no surprise it outperforms the Supers which actually make tradeoffs. Thankfully, this imbalance can be corrected as easily as it can be seen by toning down some of its three qualities and bringing it line with other Supers. That leaves plenty of creative room to distinguish Hammer of Sol from other abilities without making it empirically better.
