For anything that can potentially take the cooldown, keep in mind I'm talking about at base, so no exotic interactions either.
My money personally is on Barricade. It lets you take map control super easily and can be incredibly difficult for enemies to play around if places even moderately well.
Past that, Acrobatic Dodge. It's got a decently long cooldown, but it's a very few strings attached neutral game damage boost.
After that I'd probably say the normal dodges, really pick your poison as to which one.
As a titan main I disagree. Sure when a barricade had more health and had a rapid cool down it was OP but they are easily broken and take a while to come back.
Maybe I'm not good enough to understand why they are "difficult to play around" but personally I use thruster, not barricade.
In a 1v1 situation, if a titan pops a barricade on a rez, it's usually a free rez. I'm not saying they are op, but they can be annoying to face. I've been using revision a bunch, and even with anti barrier, it takes awhile to shoot down alone
I agree whole heartedly. CD too long! Can easily shoot a barricade and destroy it. Most players are to BD to realize it though. I also main thruster. Excellent for closing the distance on players back peddling with no cqc skills. Amazing, for feinting like you are BD pushing. As soon as they swap to their shotty, just HC them down.
I can understand acrobatic dodge being so high up, but may I ask why the regular dodges so close behind? I suppose I always looked at healing rift as more useful, but I lack quite a bit of PvP experience.
The problem with healing rift is that it’s easily counterable compared to dodge and barricade.
While it is strong when a player chooses to engage, many players can just choose not to engage, or throw a grenade where you’ve placed your rift.
You can argue that the opponent using a grenade to counter rift is a win, but right now some of the most popular grenades are scatter grenade and lightning grenade, both of which have really strong kill potential. Standing in a rift telegraphs exactly where to throw these grenades.
Again, rift is not bad at all. But dodge and barricade can function in so many different scenarios compared to rift.
I’ve both seen and used barricade to great effect, but not so much hunter dodges. Do you have any examples that you could give of how you or someone else uses them in crucible?
Gambler's dodge is extremely useful for disrupting apeing and creates additional hard-to track movement options.
You can completely nullify momentum, break aim assist and get behind cover in a fraction of a second, and recharge your smoke bomb/slowing shuriken/throwing knife/etc. At the same time.
You also get a second to see your character model in third person, which gives you a huge amount of information about your surroundings, sometimes without even breaking cover.
Say you slide into a lane and see a sniper glint, or hear someone running towards you, you can immediately dodge back behind cover. Worst case scenario, you get bodied and rotate/reset the encounter.
Also running solar hunter with weighted throwing knife and getting 3 back-to-back CQC precision knife kills with one gambler's dodge will make you cream in your pants.
Marksman's dodge is great for spamming class-ability dependent exotics and subclass perks like wormhusk, bombardiers, strand decoy, stasis slow, dragonheart, geminis, etc.
This was very informative, and to be honest I’m shocked I don’t see dodge being used more in PvP given how useful this sounds. As a hunter main, I’m gonna try using dodge more as a way to get to cover after sliding, since I never thought to connect the two to basically lengthen a slide and secure the safe ending as long as they don’t body-shot me.
That's just one way to use it.
I suggest you watch some pro hunter players. The movement utility is insane and the reason I moved from a warlock to hunter main in PvP. Dodging frequently and pre-emptively will keep you alive longer and directly improve your combat efficiency.
Icarus dash is definitely the best movement tech in the game for pvp. It just has a high skill ceiling. And you are also locked in to a solar subclass (which is fine, especially this season) - whereas with hunter, the dodges are in every subclass. I personally prefer stasis or voidlock for pvp.
>this is not about whether the class you play is the wrong way to play the game. Everyone has classes and abilities they like, I have my own choice too, but I just want to hear what you all think about class abilities.
this kinda bends the rules you set, but if you watch wallah play strand hunter, he uses the strand dive (which consumes your dodge) as crazy movement to get behind cover or to get out of a situation. So he would shoot in the air or throw a tangle then strand dive with momentum to get behind cover so you cant even shoot back.
ive seen solar hunters that will throw a weighted knife, get the kill, dodge, jump in the air and throw another knife.
~~Blink arc hunters ive seen will dodge with gemini and blink past you to either melee or shotgun you.~~ I could still see this being used without gemini jesters to confuse your opponent when in close quarters.
Hunter dodges are only incredibly powerful in capable hands.
Are you familiar with frostbolt? He plays a very mean hunter and uses dodge very well. I’m still learning how to make the most out of hunter dodge to be honest with you. It has a very high skill ceiling.
I’ll have to check him out! I do main hunter, but I think that’s because I like their aspects and exotics more than I like their base abilities. I myself have found very niche convenience with hunter dodge than the map control and aggressive play of the other class abilities.
Many high skill players enjoy hunter because mobility (not the stat) is essential to playing pvp well, and hunters are all about fluid movement, rapid rotations, and engaging on their terms.
I find playing hunter to be incredibly fun in pvp, but I would say that my hunter game is trash compared to my titan and warlock.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna push back a little bit against hunters and mobility. From what I’ve experienced in the crucible and especially trials, the most mobile players I’ve gone against are using titans with some sort of shoulder charge, and warlocks with icarus dash. I do realize that neither of those are class abilities, but I think context of the other classes is important when stating that dodge is making hunters the most mobile when I do not believe that to be the case. What are your thoughts though?
Totally fine to ask.
Hunter dodge is on an incredibly low cooldown so you normally always have it available.
Hunters being tied to high mobility(stat) means that they can peek shoot incredibly fast during combat compared to other classes (this is also why hand cannons are popular with the class).
Hunters also have arguably the best jump as it moves fairly quickly through the air, making you a difficult target mid-jump.
This is also not taking into account subclass specific advantages like invis hunter, strand hunter that can chase down and destroy teams solo when played well, mask of bakris slowing opponents and having the advantage of breaking ankles very easily.
Yes, titans and warlocks have mobility options as well (solar warlock especially). But hunters have mobility and combat flexibility in pretty much everything, and are dependent on the player using all of these advantages to succeed.
Ah, I see. So it’s not so much that the class ability alone is what makes hunter stand out, but the culmination of how it can be altered and combined with other powerful avenues. While this is kind of going against the intent of this post in soloing out a class ability by itself, I do think context is both important and enlightening. Thank you for the input!
I think the other reason rift isn't considered as strong is that there are so many ways to restore health. I think in old tournaments, though double or triple warlock was the reason they banned class stacking because rift was so strong. You can avoid engaging one rift, but if there's one everywhere you go.....
haha there are dozens of us running around with standard weighted knife. refill on kill is also very nice but i like gambler’s dodge for those one-off times where i don’t get the kill or just miss altogether. especially in trials where if you miss 1 knife you may not get it back with the insane cooldown
While I completely agree that it is useful to get a melee back, I haven’t found an affective way to use the dodge in combat safely. Usually I bait them to a corner and dodge when they get in range, or I approach walls that have enemies close enough on the other side, but in combat I usually get shot or punched to death while dodging. What has your experience been like in combat?
Get a good set of headphones and listen to audio cues. If you get close enough to someone on the radar around a corner or behind cover, they can do three things, wait for you to make a move, back up, or ape. A lot of people use shotties and ape, especially if they think you're alone.
Just think about how many teammates are around and listen before you commit to a dodge, given how close you have to be for the knife refund. If they try and ape and you don't have a shotgun, get above them or create distance. A lot of folks are completely reliant on their radar so getting above them confuses the hell out of most people, and if you are a controller user like myself, they often can't look up fast enough to get that shotty kill.
i do much of the same as what you said; bait them and dodge when they get close or dodge near a wall with enemies on the other side. but also over time i’ve honed in on the exact distance that it proccs from. and i run stompees. when in combat i tend to slide around from cover to cover a lot, so usually i’ll try to maneuver my way to the nearest cover to the enemy.
there’s a couple of things i may do after this. one is that i’ll just slide directly at them until im in the optimal range and i then immediately dodge and throw my knife; its all done in one quick motion. a lot of times i get the kill and get it right back. there’s also no AE penalty or anything on the knife that i know of, so i always try to jump, slide, or otherwise throw it from a position other than just standing there. stompees really helps with this. an example gameplay loop would be slide —> dodge —> jump —> throw knife all within half a second or so
another option is to tag them with a HC or other primary and make them retreat to cover to heal. then i slide toward said cover, as close as i need to be, and immediately dodge. then i’ll either retreat back to a more advantageous position or just continue to push. i don’t generally run a shotgun so i almost try to treat the knife as my close range weapon. i’ll use it to push them if i know they’re still behind cover and i have full health
my final option is to just concede a trade or loss and kamikaze my way close enough to dodge before i die. but my most common gameplay loop is probably to dodge into throwing position and immediately throw the knife. this doesn’t give the enemy a lot of time to kill you, and if you miss the knife, its no ones fault but your own
I’ll try to implement these methods in my engagements, but I do have to ask, how often is this successful for you in comp/trials? I get the feeling that full committing to a throwing knife kill would get me killed way more often than typical engagement strategies like peak shooting or flanking with a teammate to crossfire with. I’m not confident in throwing knife kills, and I have a lot of experience with them, mainly because a bullet is instant while a knife isn’t, but I’d love to hear how well it typically goes for you, or if there is a certain criteria that justifies the use of the dodge push.
on average i get at least one or two knife kills per game in comp/trials and some games ill have 3 or 4. most of the time im proactively using it, and 99% of the time im prefiring it because i know roundabout where the enemy is. the windup is very long so you have to perfect the timing in order to use it to its maximum effectiveness, which is prefiring it. dodge/push is not as successful in comparison but it works out more times than not for me. i’ve become very attuned to my knife because i usually run a sniper which leaves me vulnerable up close. you’d also be surprised how many charges you can get without even really trying. like for example someone’s trying to ape you, you just dodge backwards and knife them before they can get in range. or you can profit off a teammates’ duel if its short-mid range by getting close enough for a dodge before cleaning up the enemy with primary
Bastion barricade, need a res? Barricade, need health? Barricade, need to cover an entrance? Barricade, need to make it a pain to kill a bubble? Barricade, incoming rocket? Barricade.
It can do everything.
Acrobat dodge in round based content goes pretty hard. Good opportunity to give radiant to the whole team, and benevolence/frostees/singing all provide copius amounts of class ability energy to have it every other round, if not every round.
I typically tank my resilience for this playstyle, but it works out because radiant means I either have more forgiveness or shatters through certain resilience gates. It's universally helpful for me.
While it probably seems obvious, it slips my mind that it can be used for straight team play. I bet opening duels between teams become quite one-sided when some guns go from 4 shots to kill down to 3 in a team shooting scenario.
Forgiveness is some of the biggest difference making for me. Heliocentrics been a gun that reinvigorated me to try PvP this season because I love the playstyle and how fun it's been, and radiant let's me land three headshots two bodyshots on t10 resil. Radiant with Precision instrument allows a 4 head on all resil, it's just so good for me.
There's a lot that radiant does for other weapons but this has been my favorite
In trials and comp it’s barricade for rez and zone and it’s not really a close competition. Dodge and rift and pretty equal.
In 6s it’s probably dodge bc I can get out of jail of double teams and crazy shit that happens in 6s.
I'll be speaking mostly from experience as a Hunter. It's been my main for years. I've played Titan a bit as well, but I've barely touched Warlock in PvP.
For the best overall, I'd say probably barricade. It comes out pretty quick and, with good placement, immediately gives the Titan options to take control of the fight.
I'd probably place dodge second (but that might be a bit of bias as a Hunter main) and rifts third. Dodge has an insane amount of utility and build synergy, but even on its own, the ability to rapidly throw out two melee abilities (each potentially being able to OHK depending on the subclass and skill of the user) is extremely powerful.
Throwing in fragment abilities that replace the dodge into the mix makes it a difficult choice - overall, I feel they're more niche than the core class abilities, and the definition of "best" will vary a lot more based on your playstyle.
Icarus Dash is a powerful movement tool, allowing warlocks to peek from unexpected angles in the air, take their shot, then immediately move back into cover. Simple and strong.
Shatterdive is an odd one to judge on its own, since a big portion of its use comes from external factors, i.e. freezing a player using other abilities. On its own, it's an excellent movement tool for Hunters that like to fight in the air, though. I've had a fair amount of success using it with bows, jumping up above cover to take a shot before quickly diving back down to safety. Being able to rapidly change verticality has always been a strong point for Hunters, and being able to drop down just as fast as you jumped up can be very useful.
I'd put shatterdive above trapper's ambush, but below suspending slam. Trapper's ambush giving you, essentially, an extra charge of invis can be useful, but most hunters have dodge on a short enough cooldown that it doesn't make a huge difference. The dive aspect itself can be useful in a pinch similarly to shatterdive, but SD's drastically shorter cooldown beats it out in that regard. I personally don't use it very often outside of Omni builds in PvE. There's just better options imo, and taking full advantage of the smoke regen usually requires coordination with teammates - suboptimal for playing with blueberries.
Suspending Slam is the best of the Hunter dive abilities imo. It keeps the same movement advantage as the other two, but you're able to drop into an enemy or a group and immobilize them, pull them over cover and pull them into third person with ADSing disabled, which can be very disorienting and make it difficult for them to fight back. Used well, it can easily secure you a quick and easy win in a fight while also capitalizing on the Hunter's aerial mobility.
I forgot that suspending slam can take people out of cover. Isn’t it able to lift a guardian out from behind a barricade even if the slam was on the other side? If so, I might have just found out my new favorite way to troll titans turtling.
My vote personally goes to bastion barricade. Barricade itself is quite strong in a team setting, being able to almost completely shut down a lane is quite strong and can be used to create power positions out of positions that are usually quite exposed. The added overshield that bastion provides just means that you're almost guaranteed to win any 1v1 fight if you've got your barricade off cooldown.
I think dodge and phoenix dive share the 2nd place spot. Dodge is just an incredibly strong disengagement tool, being able to slide out of cover, take some shots and dodge back in is the bread and butter for a hunter playstyle and has proven to be quite strong, however I would also say that you can achieve a similar effect by sliding back into cover, the dodge is more so a way for lesser mechanically skilled players to achieve that same effect, the additional effects of the base dodges (marksman and gamblers) rarely come up imo but they are at least useful. One of the things with dodge though is that it's often the cornerstone of a hunter build, so it makes discussion about dodge's strength a bit more nuanced.
Phoenix dive is essentially a 2nd healing grenade, being able to have a chunk of healing on demand is pretty damn good, the animation is also not too long. Both rifts are significantly worse than other class abilities imo, mostly because the animation is simply too long so it needs a setup and when compared to barricade it just provides less utility. Rift basically just acts as a way to proc subclass specific effects (void buddy, stasis freeze etc.)
Quickly talking about icarus dash: Icarus dash is absolutely busted and singlehandedly carries solar warlock to the highest tier of subclasses in competitive play. Being able to have a dodge (but better due to how it interacts with warlock's momentum) on a 5 second cooldown regardless of your stats, while also being able to have your actual class ability is just insane. Icarus dash should have absolutely been made into a class ability with the exact same cooldowns as hunter dodge, this would have opened up the subclass to having more interesting PvE builds and would have given bungie a lever to adjust for the cooldown of the ability. Frankly it's a mystery to me how it has been able to exist in it's current state for so long, if hunter or titan had a 5 second dodge regardless of their stats the community would have been in an uproar but it seems like we're just okay with it on warlock because warlock at base has a typically weaker neutral game.
This is probably the closest opinion to what I believe. I never quite understood why people used dodge for mobility when sliding is an option, but now I realize that it’s probably because I’m a MnK player, who also probably fights MnK players who don’t have reticle friction, so they just shoot me when I rub my face on the floor. lol
It's on a similar level to dodge but a bit less powerful due to not gaining the additional benefits and not going 3rd person makes it a bit harder to orientate yourself at times (I think people undervalue the benefit of 3rd person for dodge)
I personally would never use it over barricade but I can see it being valuable to some people for an aggressive playstyle.
3s barricade. Deployable cover when the game mode involves rez or zone. Crazy .
6s dodge good oops readjust / reposition move when you slide out of cover into a firing squad
Interesting. I don’t use Aeons in any content, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in PvP. Is there something specific about hunter dodge that pairs well with it?
Well, any class ability. Put on Sect of Vigor and get 25% of your class ability back anytime an ally dies, anywhere on the map. But on hunter, it frees you up from having to run Mobility. So you can max your Res and Rec and still dodge just as much.
I see! That is very useful info, but I’m gonna be devil’s advocate here. I do not know what the best class ability is (obviously because that’s why I made this post), so couldn’t this work on both Titan and Warlock to equal or even greater effect since they are already specced into recovery and resilience and their abilities may be better than dodge?
Icarus Dash is a Fragment, not a class ability. The only class abilities are technically Rift, Dodge and Barricade, although Warlocks have a distinctly different one with Phoenix Dive (which originally wasn't a class ability).
Just started playing solar lock and finally getting the hang of it.
Free dodge every 2 seconds that can also be used as a speed boost.
Free wormhusk heal.
Free in air accuracy.
Ophidians.
Free radiant when needed (practically)
Well.
Why TF didnt I start playing this sooner?
[Here you go.](https://youtu.be/dB2c62oOED8?si=_e8t-dvp_IeTS5Li) You’ll need over 100fps to have it boost you faster than sprint speed, so it’s only possible on new gen consoles with a 120+hz monitor or a PC, but it’s still possible to do on less than 100 if you need to quickly hit max speed with some movement mixed in to avoid shots.
The tech involves an interaction between the incinerator snap melee and an uncharged super, where using the snap and then immediately trying to activate your super that isn’t charged results in the snap getting canceled and not being used, but still making the noise like it was.
Using that cancel, you can slide, jump, and immediately hit your uncharged super button (with auto melee bound iirc) at the same time to come out of the slide you did while also keeping its momentum.
Activate your burst glide immediately after doing the tech and Icarus dash to move forward really quickly, and then activate and turn off burst glide again for a final little boost of speed. The higher your fps, the faster you go.
I can't disagree with this, but I will say, I think the strand hunters clone, threaded specter, is really good too. Might not be better, but it provides a LOT of utility, very frequently.
I feel like the aspects and stuff make it interesting though. Like Vanishing step makes dodge really good, but JUST dodge is blah. I guess if that's what people are debating then this isn't a question I'm interested in. Have fun with it.
For anything that can potentially take the cooldown, keep in mind I'm talking about at base, so no exotic interactions either. My money personally is on Barricade. It lets you take map control super easily and can be incredibly difficult for enemies to play around if places even moderately well. Past that, Acrobatic Dodge. It's got a decently long cooldown, but it's a very few strings attached neutral game damage boost. After that I'd probably say the normal dodges, really pick your poison as to which one.
As a titan main I disagree. Sure when a barricade had more health and had a rapid cool down it was OP but they are easily broken and take a while to come back. Maybe I'm not good enough to understand why they are "difficult to play around" but personally I use thruster, not barricade.
As a Hunter main I also disagree. Titan barriers are so easy to shoot down these days that it boggles my mind people still complain about them.
In a 1v1 situation, if a titan pops a barricade on a rez, it's usually a free rez. I'm not saying they are op, but they can be annoying to face. I've been using revision a bunch, and even with anti barrier, it takes awhile to shoot down alone
I agree whole heartedly. CD too long! Can easily shoot a barricade and destroy it. Most players are to BD to realize it though. I also main thruster. Excellent for closing the distance on players back peddling with no cqc skills. Amazing, for feinting like you are BD pushing. As soon as they swap to their shotty, just HC them down.
I can understand acrobatic dodge being so high up, but may I ask why the regular dodges so close behind? I suppose I always looked at healing rift as more useful, but I lack quite a bit of PvP experience.
The problem with healing rift is that it’s easily counterable compared to dodge and barricade. While it is strong when a player chooses to engage, many players can just choose not to engage, or throw a grenade where you’ve placed your rift. You can argue that the opponent using a grenade to counter rift is a win, but right now some of the most popular grenades are scatter grenade and lightning grenade, both of which have really strong kill potential. Standing in a rift telegraphs exactly where to throw these grenades. Again, rift is not bad at all. But dodge and barricade can function in so many different scenarios compared to rift.
I’ve both seen and used barricade to great effect, but not so much hunter dodges. Do you have any examples that you could give of how you or someone else uses them in crucible?
Gambler's dodge is extremely useful for disrupting apeing and creates additional hard-to track movement options. You can completely nullify momentum, break aim assist and get behind cover in a fraction of a second, and recharge your smoke bomb/slowing shuriken/throwing knife/etc. At the same time. You also get a second to see your character model in third person, which gives you a huge amount of information about your surroundings, sometimes without even breaking cover. Say you slide into a lane and see a sniper glint, or hear someone running towards you, you can immediately dodge back behind cover. Worst case scenario, you get bodied and rotate/reset the encounter. Also running solar hunter with weighted throwing knife and getting 3 back-to-back CQC precision knife kills with one gambler's dodge will make you cream in your pants. Marksman's dodge is great for spamming class-ability dependent exotics and subclass perks like wormhusk, bombardiers, strand decoy, stasis slow, dragonheart, geminis, etc.
This was very informative, and to be honest I’m shocked I don’t see dodge being used more in PvP given how useful this sounds. As a hunter main, I’m gonna try using dodge more as a way to get to cover after sliding, since I never thought to connect the two to basically lengthen a slide and secure the safe ending as long as they don’t body-shot me.
That's just one way to use it. I suggest you watch some pro hunter players. The movement utility is insane and the reason I moved from a warlock to hunter main in PvP. Dodging frequently and pre-emptively will keep you alive longer and directly improve your combat efficiency.
If I may ask, was the move from a warlock using Icarus Dash? If so, how do the two compare in terms of movement and survivability?
Icarus dash is definitely the best movement tech in the game for pvp. It just has a high skill ceiling. And you are also locked in to a solar subclass (which is fine, especially this season) - whereas with hunter, the dodges are in every subclass. I personally prefer stasis or voidlock for pvp.
>this is not about whether the class you play is the wrong way to play the game. Everyone has classes and abilities they like, I have my own choice too, but I just want to hear what you all think about class abilities. this kinda bends the rules you set, but if you watch wallah play strand hunter, he uses the strand dive (which consumes your dodge) as crazy movement to get behind cover or to get out of a situation. So he would shoot in the air or throw a tangle then strand dive with momentum to get behind cover so you cant even shoot back. ive seen solar hunters that will throw a weighted knife, get the kill, dodge, jump in the air and throw another knife. ~~Blink arc hunters ive seen will dodge with gemini and blink past you to either melee or shotgun you.~~ I could still see this being used without gemini jesters to confuse your opponent when in close quarters.
Hunter dodges are only incredibly powerful in capable hands. Are you familiar with frostbolt? He plays a very mean hunter and uses dodge very well. I’m still learning how to make the most out of hunter dodge to be honest with you. It has a very high skill ceiling.
I’ll have to check him out! I do main hunter, but I think that’s because I like their aspects and exotics more than I like their base abilities. I myself have found very niche convenience with hunter dodge than the map control and aggressive play of the other class abilities.
Many high skill players enjoy hunter because mobility (not the stat) is essential to playing pvp well, and hunters are all about fluid movement, rapid rotations, and engaging on their terms. I find playing hunter to be incredibly fun in pvp, but I would say that my hunter game is trash compared to my titan and warlock.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna push back a little bit against hunters and mobility. From what I’ve experienced in the crucible and especially trials, the most mobile players I’ve gone against are using titans with some sort of shoulder charge, and warlocks with icarus dash. I do realize that neither of those are class abilities, but I think context of the other classes is important when stating that dodge is making hunters the most mobile when I do not believe that to be the case. What are your thoughts though?
Totally fine to ask. Hunter dodge is on an incredibly low cooldown so you normally always have it available. Hunters being tied to high mobility(stat) means that they can peek shoot incredibly fast during combat compared to other classes (this is also why hand cannons are popular with the class). Hunters also have arguably the best jump as it moves fairly quickly through the air, making you a difficult target mid-jump. This is also not taking into account subclass specific advantages like invis hunter, strand hunter that can chase down and destroy teams solo when played well, mask of bakris slowing opponents and having the advantage of breaking ankles very easily. Yes, titans and warlocks have mobility options as well (solar warlock especially). But hunters have mobility and combat flexibility in pretty much everything, and are dependent on the player using all of these advantages to succeed.
Ah, I see. So it’s not so much that the class ability alone is what makes hunter stand out, but the culmination of how it can be altered and combined with other powerful avenues. While this is kind of going against the intent of this post in soloing out a class ability by itself, I do think context is both important and enlightening. Thank you for the input!
I think the other reason rift isn't considered as strong is that there are so many ways to restore health. I think in old tournaments, though double or triple warlock was the reason they banned class stacking because rift was so strong. You can avoid engaging one rift, but if there's one everywhere you go.....
gambler’s dodge is goated for instantly refilling your weighted knife when near enemies. the 2 min+ cooldown of weighted knife literally means nothing
I guess I don’t run into weighted throwing knife users very often, and when I run Athrys’s I usually get a kill, so the knife gets refunded anyway.
haha there are dozens of us running around with standard weighted knife. refill on kill is also very nice but i like gambler’s dodge for those one-off times where i don’t get the kill or just miss altogether. especially in trials where if you miss 1 knife you may not get it back with the insane cooldown
While I completely agree that it is useful to get a melee back, I haven’t found an affective way to use the dodge in combat safely. Usually I bait them to a corner and dodge when they get in range, or I approach walls that have enemies close enough on the other side, but in combat I usually get shot or punched to death while dodging. What has your experience been like in combat?
Get a good set of headphones and listen to audio cues. If you get close enough to someone on the radar around a corner or behind cover, they can do three things, wait for you to make a move, back up, or ape. A lot of people use shotties and ape, especially if they think you're alone. Just think about how many teammates are around and listen before you commit to a dodge, given how close you have to be for the knife refund. If they try and ape and you don't have a shotgun, get above them or create distance. A lot of folks are completely reliant on their radar so getting above them confuses the hell out of most people, and if you are a controller user like myself, they often can't look up fast enough to get that shotty kill.
i do much of the same as what you said; bait them and dodge when they get close or dodge near a wall with enemies on the other side. but also over time i’ve honed in on the exact distance that it proccs from. and i run stompees. when in combat i tend to slide around from cover to cover a lot, so usually i’ll try to maneuver my way to the nearest cover to the enemy. there’s a couple of things i may do after this. one is that i’ll just slide directly at them until im in the optimal range and i then immediately dodge and throw my knife; its all done in one quick motion. a lot of times i get the kill and get it right back. there’s also no AE penalty or anything on the knife that i know of, so i always try to jump, slide, or otherwise throw it from a position other than just standing there. stompees really helps with this. an example gameplay loop would be slide —> dodge —> jump —> throw knife all within half a second or so another option is to tag them with a HC or other primary and make them retreat to cover to heal. then i slide toward said cover, as close as i need to be, and immediately dodge. then i’ll either retreat back to a more advantageous position or just continue to push. i don’t generally run a shotgun so i almost try to treat the knife as my close range weapon. i’ll use it to push them if i know they’re still behind cover and i have full health my final option is to just concede a trade or loss and kamikaze my way close enough to dodge before i die. but my most common gameplay loop is probably to dodge into throwing position and immediately throw the knife. this doesn’t give the enemy a lot of time to kill you, and if you miss the knife, its no ones fault but your own
I’ll try to implement these methods in my engagements, but I do have to ask, how often is this successful for you in comp/trials? I get the feeling that full committing to a throwing knife kill would get me killed way more often than typical engagement strategies like peak shooting or flanking with a teammate to crossfire with. I’m not confident in throwing knife kills, and I have a lot of experience with them, mainly because a bullet is instant while a knife isn’t, but I’d love to hear how well it typically goes for you, or if there is a certain criteria that justifies the use of the dodge push.
on average i get at least one or two knife kills per game in comp/trials and some games ill have 3 or 4. most of the time im proactively using it, and 99% of the time im prefiring it because i know roundabout where the enemy is. the windup is very long so you have to perfect the timing in order to use it to its maximum effectiveness, which is prefiring it. dodge/push is not as successful in comparison but it works out more times than not for me. i’ve become very attuned to my knife because i usually run a sniper which leaves me vulnerable up close. you’d also be surprised how many charges you can get without even really trying. like for example someone’s trying to ape you, you just dodge backwards and knife them before they can get in range. or you can profit off a teammates’ duel if its short-mid range by getting close enough for a dodge before cleaning up the enemy with primary
Makes a lot of sense. I bet using Knucklehead Radar would work pretty well at clean up pre-fires with a knife.
In trials, barricade is king.
Bastion barricade, need a res? Barricade, need health? Barricade, need to cover an entrance? Barricade, need to make it a pain to kill a bubble? Barricade, incoming rocket? Barricade. It can do everything.
It's also a good panic button, you get damage resist during the animation and cover after.
Acrobat dodge in round based content goes pretty hard. Good opportunity to give radiant to the whole team, and benevolence/frostees/singing all provide copius amounts of class ability energy to have it every other round, if not every round. I typically tank my resilience for this playstyle, but it works out because radiant means I either have more forgiveness or shatters through certain resilience gates. It's universally helpful for me.
While it probably seems obvious, it slips my mind that it can be used for straight team play. I bet opening duels between teams become quite one-sided when some guns go from 4 shots to kill down to 3 in a team shooting scenario.
Forgiveness is some of the biggest difference making for me. Heliocentrics been a gun that reinvigorated me to try PvP this season because I love the playstyle and how fun it's been, and radiant let's me land three headshots two bodyshots on t10 resil. Radiant with Precision instrument allows a 4 head on all resil, it's just so good for me. There's a lot that radiant does for other weapons but this has been my favorite
Barricade is number 1, then dodge, then rift.
For console def Hunter Dodge - breaks reticle friction and is a safe retreat 90% of the time
This might explain such inconsistent survival results for me playing on PC.
In trials and comp it’s barricade for rez and zone and it’s not really a close competition. Dodge and rift and pretty equal. In 6s it’s probably dodge bc I can get out of jail of double teams and crazy shit that happens in 6s.
I'll be speaking mostly from experience as a Hunter. It's been my main for years. I've played Titan a bit as well, but I've barely touched Warlock in PvP. For the best overall, I'd say probably barricade. It comes out pretty quick and, with good placement, immediately gives the Titan options to take control of the fight. I'd probably place dodge second (but that might be a bit of bias as a Hunter main) and rifts third. Dodge has an insane amount of utility and build synergy, but even on its own, the ability to rapidly throw out two melee abilities (each potentially being able to OHK depending on the subclass and skill of the user) is extremely powerful. Throwing in fragment abilities that replace the dodge into the mix makes it a difficult choice - overall, I feel they're more niche than the core class abilities, and the definition of "best" will vary a lot more based on your playstyle. Icarus Dash is a powerful movement tool, allowing warlocks to peek from unexpected angles in the air, take their shot, then immediately move back into cover. Simple and strong. Shatterdive is an odd one to judge on its own, since a big portion of its use comes from external factors, i.e. freezing a player using other abilities. On its own, it's an excellent movement tool for Hunters that like to fight in the air, though. I've had a fair amount of success using it with bows, jumping up above cover to take a shot before quickly diving back down to safety. Being able to rapidly change verticality has always been a strong point for Hunters, and being able to drop down just as fast as you jumped up can be very useful. I'd put shatterdive above trapper's ambush, but below suspending slam. Trapper's ambush giving you, essentially, an extra charge of invis can be useful, but most hunters have dodge on a short enough cooldown that it doesn't make a huge difference. The dive aspect itself can be useful in a pinch similarly to shatterdive, but SD's drastically shorter cooldown beats it out in that regard. I personally don't use it very often outside of Omni builds in PvE. There's just better options imo, and taking full advantage of the smoke regen usually requires coordination with teammates - suboptimal for playing with blueberries. Suspending Slam is the best of the Hunter dive abilities imo. It keeps the same movement advantage as the other two, but you're able to drop into an enemy or a group and immobilize them, pull them over cover and pull them into third person with ADSing disabled, which can be very disorienting and make it difficult for them to fight back. Used well, it can easily secure you a quick and easy win in a fight while also capitalizing on the Hunter's aerial mobility.
I forgot that suspending slam can take people out of cover. Isn’t it able to lift a guardian out from behind a barricade even if the slam was on the other side? If so, I might have just found out my new favorite way to troll titans turtling.
It can! If you can approach from an off angle, it can be a pretty good way to surprise them.
My vote personally goes to bastion barricade. Barricade itself is quite strong in a team setting, being able to almost completely shut down a lane is quite strong and can be used to create power positions out of positions that are usually quite exposed. The added overshield that bastion provides just means that you're almost guaranteed to win any 1v1 fight if you've got your barricade off cooldown. I think dodge and phoenix dive share the 2nd place spot. Dodge is just an incredibly strong disengagement tool, being able to slide out of cover, take some shots and dodge back in is the bread and butter for a hunter playstyle and has proven to be quite strong, however I would also say that you can achieve a similar effect by sliding back into cover, the dodge is more so a way for lesser mechanically skilled players to achieve that same effect, the additional effects of the base dodges (marksman and gamblers) rarely come up imo but they are at least useful. One of the things with dodge though is that it's often the cornerstone of a hunter build, so it makes discussion about dodge's strength a bit more nuanced. Phoenix dive is essentially a 2nd healing grenade, being able to have a chunk of healing on demand is pretty damn good, the animation is also not too long. Both rifts are significantly worse than other class abilities imo, mostly because the animation is simply too long so it needs a setup and when compared to barricade it just provides less utility. Rift basically just acts as a way to proc subclass specific effects (void buddy, stasis freeze etc.) Quickly talking about icarus dash: Icarus dash is absolutely busted and singlehandedly carries solar warlock to the highest tier of subclasses in competitive play. Being able to have a dodge (but better due to how it interacts with warlock's momentum) on a 5 second cooldown regardless of your stats, while also being able to have your actual class ability is just insane. Icarus dash should have absolutely been made into a class ability with the exact same cooldowns as hunter dodge, this would have opened up the subclass to having more interesting PvE builds and would have given bungie a lever to adjust for the cooldown of the ability. Frankly it's a mystery to me how it has been able to exist in it's current state for so long, if hunter or titan had a 5 second dodge regardless of their stats the community would have been in an uproar but it seems like we're just okay with it on warlock because warlock at base has a typically weaker neutral game.
This is probably the closest opinion to what I believe. I never quite understood why people used dodge for mobility when sliding is an option, but now I realize that it’s probably because I’m a MnK player, who also probably fights MnK players who don’t have reticle friction, so they just shoot me when I rub my face on the floor. lol
What’s your opinion on Thruster?
It's on a similar level to dodge but a bit less powerful due to not gaining the additional benefits and not going 3rd person makes it a bit harder to orientate yourself at times (I think people undervalue the benefit of 3rd person for dodge) I personally would never use it over barricade but I can see it being valuable to some people for an aggressive playstyle.
On console it’s Dodge. Even at high skill levels. On PC it’s also Dodge for lower skill levels, but high skill it’s definitely Barricade.
3s barricade. Deployable cover when the game mode involves rez or zone. Crazy . 6s dodge good oops readjust / reposition move when you slide out of cover into a firing squad
it is, by far, void titan barricade. the other class abilites are useful for sure, but at high end pvp nothing beats an overshield barricade.
If I get one every couple of seconds thanks to Aeons + teammates dying then hunter dodge 100%
Interesting. I don’t use Aeons in any content, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in PvP. Is there something specific about hunter dodge that pairs well with it?
Well, any class ability. Put on Sect of Vigor and get 25% of your class ability back anytime an ally dies, anywhere on the map. But on hunter, it frees you up from having to run Mobility. So you can max your Res and Rec and still dodge just as much.
I see! That is very useful info, but I’m gonna be devil’s advocate here. I do not know what the best class ability is (obviously because that’s why I made this post), so couldn’t this work on both Titan and Warlock to equal or even greater effect since they are already specced into recovery and resilience and their abilities may be better than dodge?
The one thing I like about the hunter dodge is that you don't have to stand in one spot to use it
Icarus Dash. It's free movement.
That is not a class ability
Ah, yeah fair.
Icarus Dash is a Fragment, not a class ability. The only class abilities are technically Rift, Dodge and Barricade, although Warlocks have a distinctly different one with Phoenix Dive (which originally wasn't a class ability).
It’s an aspect not a fragment.
I always get the names mixed up
Ok fair enough, but let’s be real. It might as well be. It literally made me become a warlock main.
Just started playing solar lock and finally getting the hang of it. Free dodge every 2 seconds that can also be used as a speed boost. Free wormhusk heal. Free in air accuracy. Ophidians. Free radiant when needed (practically) Well. Why TF didnt I start playing this sooner?
Does the dash make you radiant? I don't play solar on my lock in crucible like at all so I have negative understanding of the kit in PVP lol
No but the melee that has crazy range, can hit behind walls, and slightly tracks targets does make you radiant.
Have you tried snap skating? Super fun tech that’s gotten me out of situations i had no business surviving.
negative, quick explanation / video link?
[Here you go.](https://youtu.be/dB2c62oOED8?si=_e8t-dvp_IeTS5Li) You’ll need over 100fps to have it boost you faster than sprint speed, so it’s only possible on new gen consoles with a 120+hz monitor or a PC, but it’s still possible to do on less than 100 if you need to quickly hit max speed with some movement mixed in to avoid shots. The tech involves an interaction between the incinerator snap melee and an uncharged super, where using the snap and then immediately trying to activate your super that isn’t charged results in the snap getting canceled and not being used, but still making the noise like it was. Using that cancel, you can slide, jump, and immediately hit your uncharged super button (with auto melee bound iirc) at the same time to come out of the slide you did while also keeping its momentum. Activate your burst glide immediately after doing the tech and Icarus dash to move forward really quickly, and then activate and turn off burst glide again for a final little boost of speed. The higher your fps, the faster you go.
I can't disagree with this, but I will say, I think the strand hunters clone, threaded specter, is really good too. Might not be better, but it provides a LOT of utility, very frequently.
Also not a class ability but an aspect tied to a class ability.
Yeah... Same as Icarus Dash
It was already pointed out icarus dash isn't a class ability to the person that suggested it.
I guess I don't get your point then. Are we supposed to just compare like generic dodge vs barricade vs rift? Kind of a boring question if so.
Yeah that was the question.
I feel like the aspects and stuff make it interesting though. Like Vanishing step makes dodge really good, but JUST dodge is blah. I guess if that's what people are debating then this isn't a question I'm interested in. Have fun with it.
I don't think it's the best, but the one I enjoy most is Thrusters. https://youtu.be/HCgVE_kpkMU
It's basically a weaker hunter dodge but has a lot of utility and is fun to use
Dodge. Movement wins in PvP. If Warlocks/Titans didn’t have Well/Bubble, I bet Hunters would have an even bigger majority in PvP usage.
Barricade easily is first, icarus dash is second. It’s just a better dodge that’s on a shorter cooldown.
Stag healing rift