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Saltagreppo is turning into a household name for Destiny 2 players across the world. A part of Clan Elysium, Saltagreppo and his fire team managed to leave a mark on the community by winning the World's First Raid Race three times in a row in Destiny 2, something that no other clan has achieved before.
He has been vocal about the state of certain aspects of Destiny 2 gameplay as it is currently. Although the community does not always agree with what he has to say, his words do hold some weight. Moreover, it's safe to say that there aren't many players who know the game as well as he does.
In an exclusive interview with Sportskeeda Esports' Amitesh Dhar, Saltagreppo spoke about the current state of the game and Destiny 2 Lightfall.
Saltagreppo on Guardian abilities, Exotics, and Destiny 2 Lightfall
Q. Hi David, welcome back to Sportskeeda. Before we plunge into the depths of the Dreadnaught, could you please introduce yourself once again for our new readers? How did you end up discovering Destiny 2, and what are the aspects that attract you the most about this game?
Saltagreppo: Hi, I'm Saltagreppo, a 21-year-old Italian Destiny streamer. I'm part of the current B2B2B World's First Raid Team from Clan Elysium. Back in 2014, I bought my first Xbox One as a bundle with Destiny and I fell in love with the game. The fluid gameplay and the mix of space magic and fluid gunplay aren't something you can find anywhere else.
Q. From new subclass reworks to a new annual pass system, Destiny 2 has seen a lot of changes over the years. What is your opinion about these changes? Have they improved the overall quality of the game, or has Destiny 2 become more difficult for new players?
Saltagreppo: Subclass reworks have mostly been nice, but they have their flaws. I will obviously be talking from a PvE standpoint.
Void ones are good, I just wish Hunter wasn't so focused on invisibility now.
Solar is nice, but a neutral game for Warlock is now a bit less interesting (they lost the ability to decide between healing and normal nades and Benevolent Dawn getting nerfed hard). But Well of Radiance remains by far the best Super in the game and the Titans are overtuned with the mini hammer.
Arc was mostly good. Thankfully, Hunters got a much-needed new super, but unfortunately, Warlocks got the short end of the stick and are worse than before in PvE.
Overall, the changes are nice, but the main issue I see is that often many of those new subclasses are super powerful and we really feel the power creep, which often trivializes the endgame.
For new players? Not sure, honestly. They definitely have more ways to customize their build, but that also makes it less intuitive than just selecting a tree like before.
Q. Most dungeons and raids in Destiny 2 feature some complex mechanics that most players might find slightly overwhelming. What’s your opinion about the learning curve in Destiny 2?
Saltagreppo: The learning curve isn't really there, it's more of a jump. You go from strikes and seasonal activities with basically no mechanics to more complex activities like dungeons and raids. Not sure what the solution would be here, but maybe add an extra easier difficulty mode with some tutorial tooltips to teach new players? Could work.
Q. Given that all three classes have different powers and abilities, what’s the best class for someone who’s looking to start their Destiny 2 adventure?
Saltagreppo: Regarding PvE, as long as you are willing to play Well of Radiance in every activity, you can't go wrong with Warlock. It brings the most value in most activities. I think overall Titan is the most fun, but I also speak from the perspective of a Titan main XD. Hunters are probably the class the brings the least to the table for endgame PvE, but overall they are all very viable after the 3.0 updates.
Q. The community didn’t react very well to your thoughts on Divinity. Toxicity has been apparent in Destiny 2 PvP, and it’s slightly surprising to see the same with respect to PvE content as well. What do you think could be the reason behind this? And how are you feeling about the overall situation?
Saltagreppo: A fairly big and vocal part of the community will attack you no matter what as soon as you mention a nerf, no matter how necessary or warranted it is. Remember when last month GLs were doing 250% the intended damage? Well, I unironically found people that wanted them to remain that way lol. As irrational as I think that is, there are some people that want the game to be as easy as possible and hate the thought of activities that they can't clear. I guess that's the downside of playing a looter shooter.
Ultimately I don't have much to say, outside of the fact that balancing is important even in a PvE game and "if you don't like it, just don't use it" is not an argument. And yeah, I just expressed an opinion, I don't make the game, just wish people learned how to respectfully disagree with someone instead of being toxic or harassing over an opinion in a video game.
I have thick skin and I couldn't care less about a bunch of Twitter trolls, but not everyone is like this, and I don't want a community were people are scared to share opinions about the game to avoid backslash.
Q. Other than Divinity, which Exotic do you feel is unbalanced to such an extent that many might consider it to be “broken” in Destiny 2?
Saltagreppo: This isn't an Exotic, but Well of Radiance is completely broken. It makes the whole team unkillable for 30 seconds even in the highest level of content in 99% of the scenarios. That's due to the insane healing and the ~50% damage resist that it provides to players, plus a 25% damage buff, even if that's pretty irrelevant since you could get it by other means. Combat difficulty gets completely negated by the existence of this Super.
If you want to talk about Exotics, Loreley for Titan was OP, since it started healing you very fast as soon as you hit the redbar, but it thankfully got nerfed today (9/13) and now has reduced healing. Heart of Inmost Light for Titan is extremely overtuned and can easily provide an 800% ability regen plus a solid bonus damage just by using your abilities, and it currently overshadows most other Titan exotics.
Regarding weapons, Arbalest could probably see some tuning, it breaks any shield in one shot, has an anti-barrier debuff for Champions, has Disruption Break which gives 50% more damage after breaking a shield, and on top of all that, it is the best sustained damage weapon for bosses with its very high DPS and total damage. I would keep the utility untouched and adjust the DPS/Total damage on Bosses, at least.
On a final note, you can acquire a permanent 40% damage reduction by just achieving 100 resilience stats, which is also pretty easy to do. This is pretty unhealthy since they either balance the game around it, making it mandatory to survive and destroying build diverstity, or they ignore it and even the heardest activities in the game become very easy at least from the survivability aspect, which is what is happening now.
Q. The Warpriest, Golgoroth and even Oryx’s daughters were on the Dreadnaught while fighting Guardians in Destiny 2. Why do you think Orxy left the room and chose to fight by clinging onto the edges? Did he lose the keys to his own room?
Saltagreppo: He is too big, he probably couldn't pass by the door.
Q. We’ve seen some interesting snippets of Destiny 2 Lightfall. What are some of the things that you’re looking forward to in the new expansion?
Saltagreppo: As always, the thing I'm most excited about is getting a new Raid, since that's always my favorite period of the year. Outside of that, Neomuna looks awesome. Such a different environment from the classic Destiny ones, almost looks like Cyberpunk!
I'm also thrilled to try out Strand (grappling hooks!) and to finally fight Calus after so many years, such a cool antagonist!
Q. Winning two Destiny 2 raid races back-to-back is a commendable achievement, but a three-peat is something else altogether. How do you feel about Elysium’s consecutive victories?
Saltagreppo: Hard to explain, it feels awesome, almost like a dream. We did something no one else was ever able to do and I'm super proud of my team and happy to call them friends!
Q. How do you and your clan approach a raid? Is there a specific practice regimen in place?
Saltagreppo: Obviously, there is a different approach between new and reprised Raids. For the new Raids, we just discuss builds to bring in a DPS strategies, while for reprised Raids, we specifically theorycraft possible strategies/changes and ways to split the team for every encounter.
Regarding pure practice, not much really, we usually just ran one Master Raid with meta loadouts at -30 power a couple of days before, but it doesn't really do much, it’s just a little warm up. Contest mode is way harder than that.
Q. What do you think Bungie should do to improve its relations with the Destiny 2 community? Is there anything that the company can do to make the community better than what it is right now?
Saltagreppo: Not really, probably, some bad apples are present in every community. The only thing that could help is more communication and transparency on changes, together with explaining better to the community how balancing is necessary and healthy.
It would also be nice if they were less stubborn and were open to reverting poorly received changes more often. Look at the new in-air accuracy system, I understand they spent time on it, but no one likes it. Sometimes, I think it's important to take a step back. I feel like those kind of things could increase the community’s morale.
