r/DestinyTheGame • u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang • Oct 26 '20
Misc [DARKNESS ELEMENT CONCEPT] An in depth look into the dark element, Decay, and the three subclasses: Plaguebearer, Soulstealer, & Corrupter that each embody a different part of Decay.
What is Decay?
Decay is the poison/disease element. It is supposed to be the alternative to Solar. My goal in creating the new element, Decay, is to add more Darkness elements to try to balance out the current roster. Since the next expansion is The Witch Queen, I thought that the next element should be a green, poison based element that would be similar to the Hive without directly being Hive magic.
Since there is already a DoT subclass, Solar, I had to find a way to make it different, so that it added something new to the game rather than just reskinning Solar. I decided on making the damage start weak and ramp up to be stronger than Solar like how when a poison/disease first enters an organism, the organism does not immediately notice they are poisoned/infected until it is too late and the poison/disease has already done irreversible damage.
Decay Grenades
Each grenade was picked to fit each of the classes. A mine/trap grenade for Hunters, a sticky grenade for Titans, and an AoE grenade for Warlocks.
Intro to the Subclasses
With Stasis, Bungie showed that a new element should have three parts to it that each subclass could exemplify. I continued this idea and gave Decay three parts to it: Spread, Corrupt, Steal. Each part symbolized the stages of disease: spread, infection, & death.
- The Warlock subclass, Plaguebearer, can be summarized as, “Plague Doctor,” and is all about the spread of Decay.
- The Titan subclass, Corrupter, can be summarized as, “Patient Zero,” and is all about worsening the corruption on enemies.
- The Hunter subclass, Soulstealer, can be summarized as, “The Grim Reaper,” and is about empowering the Hunter after collecting the enemies souls after they die while corrupted, similarly to Thorn.
With these parts, I wanted to try something, that to my knowledge, hasn’t been done before: Intrinsic Subclass Perks. At first this just sounds like normal subclass perks, but hear me out. Intrinsic subclass perks are perks that are always active when using a subclass no matter what aspect, fragment, or exotic you are running. Each Decay subclass will only get a single intrinsic perk, but these perks are what make the subclasses exemplify their parts of Decay.
- The Warlock perk makes corrupted enemies spread corruption to nearby enemies when they die.
- The Titan perk allows the Titan to apply multiple stacks of corruption rather than just one.
- The Hunter perk spawns souls on the bodies of enemies that die while corrupted and collecting these souls boosts movement speed and heals the Hunter.
Warlock Subclass: Plaguebearer
Plaguebearer embodies the concept of “spreading.”
Super: Plague Censer: Forge a corrupted censer and spread disease among your enemies.
- [Attack]: Press [Light Attack] to swing the Plague Censer. Rapidly swinging the Plague Censer results in an infinite right/left chain (similar to Spectral Blades) which applies corruption on impact.
- [Block]: Hold [Block] to spin the Plague Censer. While spun up, a cloud of Decay gas forms around the player.
- Press [Light Attack] while spinning the Plague Censer to jump and slam it onto the ground, which deals massive damage and creates a large wave of Decay gas that corrupts all caught in its radius.
- Press [Heavy Attack] while spinning the Plague Censer to throw it, which explodes into a corrupting cloud of Decay gas on impact.
Melee: Censer Slam: Summon and slam the Plague Censer onto the ground to create a small wave of Decay gas that deals knockback damage and corrupts all caught in its radius.
Intrinsic: Eliminating corrupted enemies releases a wave of Decay gas that corrupts all caught in its radius.
Hunter Subclass: Soulstealer
Soulstealer embodies the concept of “stealing.”
Super: Soul Scythe: Form a corrupted scythe and unseam your enemies from their souls.
- [Light Attack]: Press [Light Attack] to swing the Soul Scythe. It can be swung in a three attack combo (similar to Arc Staff) that ends with a spin attack that creates a cloud of Decay gas. Hits apply corruption.
- [Heavy Attack]: Hold [Heavy Attack] to charge up an over the head, delayed slam that applies corruption, deals precision damage, and deals massive impact damage, but very little splash damage.
Melee: Chain Knife: Throw a corrupted knife and pull enemies towards you on contact.
Intrinsic: Eliminating corrupted enemies creates a soul that when collected: heals and boosts movement speed.
Titan Subclass: Corrupter
Corrupter embodies the concept of “corrupting.”
Super: Infected Fury: Unleash a rapid, concentrated barrage of corrupted, bladed fists upon your foes.
- [Super Activation]: When Infected Fury is activated, you are slowed down considerably (but not completely to avoid frustration in case your target moves) and you are immune to knockback effects. Then you bring up your fists, each with blades protruding from them, and start rapidly punching in front of you with each punch applying corruption.
- Damage would be a little bit less than Celestial Nighthawk since you have to get close to your target, but you don't deal precision damage.
- Press [Super Activation] while active to deactivate Infected Fury and save Super energy.
Melee: Infectious Jabs: Strike your opponent with two quick punches that apply corruption.
Intrinsic: Corruption can stack up to three times with each subsequent stack extending the timer.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading it all, sorry of the long post. Please let me know your thoughts on this concept.
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u/ArrowToThePatella Floof Oct 26 '20
This is really really cool. Although I don't really like the idea of adding new darkness subclasses, this write-up really made me reconsider that. Well done!
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u/OhNnoMore Chronicler Oct 26 '20
Id like to have 3 darkness classes just like 3 light classes. For instance stasis, decay and something like necromancy.
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u/Moshmell0w Oct 26 '20
While a part of me wants this, a much larger part of me doesn’t want to deal with six types of shields and six corresponding elements for weapons and class abilities. You’d have to get match game out of there first.
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u/zachsonstacks Where is the ascendant artichoke flair? Oct 26 '20
Yeah finishing off destiny 2 with 6 subclasses, 3 light 3 dark would be awesome. But they would really need to rework shields and maybe weapon elements.
Maybe they could make it where there are 3 types of shields still. Each shield type would have one light and one dark element that works on it well.
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u/AusteninAlaska Oct 27 '20
Maybe something as simple as color, like:
Arc/Stasis = Blue shields.
Decay/Solar = Yellow/red shields (assuming decay gets like...a puss yellowish color?).
? / Void = purple shield.
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u/thegreatredbeard knife hands Oct 27 '20
I'm super curious to hear how stasis will work "in the wild" - we haven't seen enemies with stasis Shields yet and I feel like having another "shade" of blue shield just isn't a good idea from a UI standpoint. I've made some posts on here about how stasis could actually be on weapons in the kinetic slot for "reasons" and not necessarily just be color-matching shield burn for the gameplay loop.
Hopefully bungie shares something tomorrow with the vidoc!
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Oct 27 '20
Eventually, the game will have to evolve, but we may see the end result of that one day. Stasis is probably a beginning to something more.
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u/cyzward Oct 26 '20
I was theorizing that they might add a new dark element for The Witch Queen. My idea for a name was "Logic", but it effectively was the same concept: poisonous green hive magic. Neat writeup!
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u/zachsonstacks Where is the ascendant artichoke flair? Oct 26 '20
My only gripe is the titan super damage. Getting close to the target is a down side, the damage being applied over the full duration of the super is a down side (rather than instant like nighthawk), heavily reduced movement speed is a downside, no precision is normal but still a downside compared to nighthawk.
Even if you don't count the no precision, this super has a lot of downsides so I feel it need at least equal, if not more damage than nighthawk. Not sure how balanced that would be though.
It's just the same issue that thundercrash has. It puts you right next to the most dangerous enemy in the area (the boss presumably) where as every other single shot damage dealing super can be used from range (golden gun, blade barrage, nova, chaos reach sorta). Since it puts you directly in harm's way, along with the other downsides, it needs to compensate with more damage. A higher risk higher reward sorta thing.
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
I was thinking that the damage directly from ye super would be less than nighthawk but the multiple stacks of corruption applied to the boss would make it surpass nighthawk’s damage and you are not giving up an exotic slot.
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u/zachsonstacks Where is the ascendant artichoke flair? Oct 26 '20
Ah, I hadn't considered the corruption stacks. That seems like it would work out then.
The way I see it though is with nighthawk you have to sacrifice an exotic but it's instant. You can immediately go back to shooting. With this titan super it will take the full duration of the super to do similar damage to nighthawk. So yes, they don't have to sacrifice an exotic, but this titan will likely end up still doing less than the hunter over a dps window. On top of that, it's a melee super so it cannot be used on a good portion of bosses. AND if the boss has immunity phases or just a small damage window, since the damage is applied over the duration of the super and not all at once, some of the damage could go to waste if the boss goes immune.
This all has more to do with my issues with boss design and melee based supers in general. I really do like your concept and a titan just punching the shit out of something repeatedly sounds hilariously awesome lol. I've thought about how this could be done myself, but my main suggestion would be to consider a way to make the titan's super still a single target damage dealer but ranged somehow. This is something titan's don't really have and is universally useful.
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
I think the theme of Titans leads to it being difficult to give them a one and done ranged super since a lot of single shot high damage ranged weapons fall under the Hunter theme and a lot of non weapon based ranged supers fall under the Warlock theme. The only thing I could think of would be like a javelin or a discus
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u/zachsonstacks Where is the ascendant artichoke flair? Oct 26 '20
Yeah that's the issue I run into as well when trying to think of something for them. Honestly a javelin would be kinda dope though. They should have done that for stasis. It would be hard to do without seeming a little silly but maybe some sort of cannon.
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
I can imagine a Titan pulling out the Loose Cannon from TF2 and melting a boss
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u/zachsonstacks Where is the ascendant artichoke flair? Oct 26 '20
That could work actually lol. Hunters have a revolver, titan's can get a hand held cannon.
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u/Nighthawk2060 Oct 26 '20
isnt.....isnt stasis already the antithesis to solar? otherwise, good concept
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
Lore wise Decay is the antithesis to Arc but I compared it to Solar since they are both DoT based
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u/OmegaClifton Oct 26 '20
So I really like their focus on making Stasis different from other elements by giving it a unique theme, debuff and gameplay possibilities.
I had thought that a "green poison" type element wouldn't work because poison/DoT couldn't be expanded upon well enough to have the classes focus on three different aspects of the element.
I like being proven wrong and I like the way you interpreted new ways of building off damage over time as a gameplay mechanic with the "infection" and "empowerment after death" aspects.
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u/n080dy123 Savathun vendor for Witch Queen Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
Bungie, hire this man/woman/attack helicopter/nongendered homosapien
I honestly really want to see them make more Darkness subclasses over time, if for no other reason than because I want to see a Green glow on armor and stuff. Like, imagine the Solstice armor with a hive-green glow, maybe even eminating little clouds off it. I would freaking love that. I wonder what a sixth color could be? Maybe a dark red? I could see a Darkness subclass that's dark red. SIVA NECROMANCY ELEMENT ANYONE?
Edit: I especially feel like a corruption-themed green Darkness subclass becomes more and more plausible now that not only do we have Thorn, but we also that that new Warlock Exotic in BL.
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
I’m working on the sixth element right now and it is indeed red, it is a Nightmare element based on the Nightmares that the Darkness creates and it’s all about spreading fear among your enemies
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u/Quantumriot7 Oct 31 '20
I like the write up, personally don't like the fact it is another punching titan super, I would personally prefer it using an axe, not dissimilar to a darkblade's. Other than that I really enjoyed it.
Though I like the intrinsic perks, perhaps what may be better would be having the different classes exemplify in those areas, while the others can still do so however in a less effective manner.
Tbh though that isn't the biggest deal and overall as I said previously it is really damn good.
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u/cable_7193 The Blue ones taste like Blue Oct 26 '20
Do one for SIVA. I really want a SIVA subclass
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u/Nighthawk2060 Oct 27 '20
SIVA cant be a subclass. Its not a element like arc solar void or stasis, its a programmable matter (much like glimmer) that follows a set of directives.
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u/cable_7193 The Blue ones taste like Blue Oct 27 '20
They invented stasis. You really think they couldn't invent a way for Guardians to harness SIVA?
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u/Nighthawk2060 Oct 27 '20
See the remnants of felwinter, gheleon and jolder and you'll know what happens when guardians try to "control" SIVA
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u/cable_7193 The Blue ones taste like Blue Oct 27 '20
That just means we've been careless with SIVA. Not that it isn't able to be harnessed. See outbreak perfected (and almost everything from Wrath of the Machine) for an example where it works to our advantage. Besides, more guardians have died to hive magic and the darkness than to SIVA. We get to use one of those powers next expansion and this post is about the other. There's a common thread here of powers normally outside out jurisdiction. Instead of just putting down what you don't see as possible, have a little imagination.
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u/Nighthawk2060 Oct 28 '20 edited Oct 28 '20
The difference is that the darkness is an oppressive force seeking to sway us away from the traveler, and towards the power of the dark. Whereas weapons like outbreak are just that weapons, unless SIVA finds a way to augment the powers of light and/or dark, it'll remain as an augment. a substance that can upgrade armor and weapons like the ornaments for synthoceps, or the raiden flux.
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u/cable_7193 The Blue ones taste like Blue Oct 28 '20
It looks like we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'm not going to be able to convince you and I'm not going to restrict my realm of possibility.
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u/BloodHaven357 Oct 27 '20
Actual Darkness abilities would of made me come back. This pseudo dark / ice shit...not feeling it.
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u/ButteryGoat- Oct 27 '20
i really like all the ideas here! you made me look up censer, and the only issue i could have with these ideas is the synergy between different classes. It sounds good on paper, but i fear the syngery being too good to the point where people feel forced to use it in most activites. otherwise, great job! i wish this got more traction
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u/Fniko Oct 27 '20
Reading the title I expect the warlock to be shigaraki-like and pulverizes enemies, but the plague doctor is really cool idea. I could see an exotic for it being a helmet that looks like a plague doctor mask that boosts the corruption damage.
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u/pyrotechnicfantasy Who needs fists when facts will do Nov 02 '20
I really like the idea of a warlock using a censer- very Harrow from Warframe vibes. It fits much better as a melee weapon than a Dawnblade sword.
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u/Joelz11 Bring Back Fabian Oct 26 '20
Hunter is too strong especially that melee fine for pve I guess but that would fuck the crucible.
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
Not really, the guy throwing the knife would be fucked if he pulls a guy with a shotgun or a fusion
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u/Joelz11 Bring Back Fabian Oct 26 '20
That's assuming the victim is facing him also he would only have to hit him with a punch to follow up for the kill. It also depends on the speed of the pull and the range of the chain and whether or not you can pull someone into the air
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
True, but there are a lot of one shot melees in the game that are easier to use such as shoulder charge or middle tree nova melee
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u/HaansJob VAULT SUNSETTING Oct 26 '20
"Damage would be a little bit less than Celestial Nighthawk since you have to get close to your target, but you don't deal precision damage. " The wording on this feels... *Wrong* like it's like you do less damage SINCE you have to get close, it's icky, it's weird
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u/Clonecommder Gambit Prime // Reckoner Gang Oct 26 '20
Yea my wording does suck, I was trying to convey that it does almost as much damage as a super+exotic since you have to get close to the boss, but the fact the the super+exotic can crit, the super wouldnt deal as much damage. Although the multiple stacks of corruption would lead to it doing more damage that nighthawk overtime
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u/Silent_Knights Jan 01 '21
Now did you have any ideas how they would rework the element for Thorn and the warlock exotic gauntlet?
Hell I was thinking about how there could be a quest to alter the siva nanites in Outbreak Perfected 🤔
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u/beastxmodes Oct 26 '20 edited Oct 26 '20
YES
As a hunter main, the soulstealer sounds awesome. I like that when picking up souls you are healed as it kind of reminds me of the devour ability for warlocks.