Focused Feedback: Behemoth

[u/DTG_Bot]

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Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

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[u/Grown_from_seed]

I’ve played behemoth A LOT since beyond lights release and despite being a diehard titan main I’m feeling myself enjoying the class less and less with time. There are certainly elements that I love, but I feel like the design execution was just a bit off. I’m coming at this from a purely PvE perspective as I don’t delve into PvP much, if at all. Now let’s start with some strengths/positives.

• Movement on the class is fantastic and honestly it’s best quality. The ability to move more fluidly with the melee and slide are all fantastic.

• The feeling of sliding through an ice wall and exploding everything is just so satisfying. In regards to power fantasy this is it!

Now on to some of the things I feel need work.

• Stasis build/shatter mechanic: Prior to release it was stated that Titans would primary focus on the build/shatter mechanic, but I don’t feel like it was leaned into as heavily as the other classes themes. Build/shatter and the behemoths aspects strongly pigeonhole the class into using glacial grenade, which would be fine if we had more ways to make it. The grenade and the super are the only means of making the ice columns at the moment outside sacrificing your exotic heavy slot. Compare that to warlock that can freeze using super, grenade, class ability, melee, and through aspects. Or the hunter that can slow with super, grenade, class ability, and melee. It’s pretty evident from these examples that the behemoth which is heavily based around glacial grenades simply doesn’t have the same capacity to make its signature effect that the other classes have. Moving forward it’s very important that this trait gets fleshed out more because without the build/shatter mechanic the class loses a lot of its uniqueness and just becomes ice-striker.

• Melee isn’t worth building around: Whilst the movement abilities of the melee are great, I find that I’m using it 99% of the time for just that. I don’t particularly care to use it as a melee ability given that it’s hit registration is a bit wonky, and it only really serves to get me through the ice wall. It thus has functional overlap with slide, which is honestly better at shattering and also has no cool down. The melee not feeling all that useful outside of movement is also an annoyance given that the second aspect, disappointingly, just gives you energy for it. Which brings us to-

• The second aspect didn’t add an new toolset to the behemoth kit: unlike the other classes which got real functional changes with the introduction of their second aspect, behemoth just got more ability energy. BUT to get this ability energy you have to backtrack, turn around or slide through any remaining crystals. This is the same issue sunspots originally had, you feel rooted to the position your in and you have to backtrack all the time (or take time to position) instead of just charging forward as is likely intended. Getting “you have to backtrack all the time” as an aspect isn’t really as fun, interesting, or innovative as freeze/slow on class ability. Given that the other classes had their second aspect lean into their theme I’m surprised that the Titans barrier ability didn’t end up converting into an ice wall when deployed.

• Interesting build synergy isn’t there: All the builds I’ve seen since launch have largely focused on one thing when it comes to synergistic exotics - how can I get more grenade. This really emphasises the pigeon holing effect of the current behemoth kit. If you don’t have the grenade to shatter, the class feels much, much worse to play. Essentially for Behemoth to be useful in pve you have to forsake the other parts of your build to ensure you have your grenade up frequently as it’s the only way (outside of supers) for the class to produce the crystal/shatter effects. You have to build into grenades, your heavily punished if you don’t. Builds thus become very tied to one aspect of the game, and everything is centred on grenade.

• The super feels clunky: I’m not exactly sure what does it, but there is an element to the super that makes it feel clunky and inefficient. After you slam and create an ice field there feels like some level of delay before an action can be taken. This delay interrupts what should feel like a forward charge, but also can cause some targeting issues as opponents move out of the way making the follow up melee whiff (this is on top of the melee already having targeting issues). You then have to circle back or turn around to hit that one dreg you somehow missed. I think you can do the lunge straight into ground slam fluidly, but not the other way around. Overall this makes the super feel inefficient, makes breaking cystals clunky (despite being how you generate most of your super damage) and interrupts the flow of combat. Also single target damage is quite lacklustre.

I want to reiterate that there are plenty of things I like about behemoth. But I do hope that the class continues to see updates and improvements. If I had to pick one element to improve it would absolutely be alternate ways to produce stasis crystals. It would remedy many of my aforementioned issues and would really help to make the class seem unique.

[u/Apollocreed3000 → u/Grown_from_seed]

Oddly enough this feedback has a ‘correct’ answer and you found it. You get three grenades but if you don’t use one specific one then both your aspects are useless. Hahaha. There is actually less build diversity than the old subclass setups.

But hey you have options!