The Nether confirms it - Warlock Rift is a dead ability from a dead era of Destiny

Nether is awesome.

Ya there are imbalance issues and exploits - but the restructured gameplay with health as a resource completely changes the way destiny plays and SHATTERS the meta.

Turning health into a resource has the amazing side effect of preventing encounters from being a zero-sum game: (either you obliterate the enemy instantly/outheal the enemies damage OR it kills you)....to being a game where how well you outplay the enemy results in you having more resource "health" left over at the end of it.

The most important part of this future is that outhealing the enemy isn't the primary defining quality of a build.

The problem this points out however, is that the most commonly used Warlock class ability, Rift*, is now two gameplay thesis old. In the pre 3.0 arms race of D2, rift used to be one of the few and far between sources of healing.

As power, well, crept, Rift's healing barely kept up, and it became less on-demand and less reliable than 3.0 verbs to heal. In fact, due to being locked into a long cast animation and slow healing, casting a rift only offers a marginal regen benefit (estimated 30% faster) versus a full recov Warlock just popping back into cover and hiding.

As it stands today, Rift can barely outheal damage from a small group of redbars in same-light activities. In high-light or high-density activity, being confined to a small radius circle is almost a death sentence. That alone signals need for a rework. But it's cardinal sin is not just being powercrept - it's simply doesn't match the playstyle of today.

In Nether, we're getting a distilled glimpse of the destiny of tomorrow.

It is dynamic, and kinetic (not the damage type). It's not a D2 where you sit behind a crate and use a scout rifle to plink enemies who can 1HKO you. It's a D2 where you have countless options to tackle a scenario, and the game encourages and requires you to mix it up and engage with the encounter in order to proceed.

You can't outheal it. You can't just 1HKO it. You have to outplay it. Yes, today that is just Nether - but look at the direction boss fights are going. Vespers Host lightning strikes. Witness darkness waves. Outside of "safe spots" and exploits, sitting in one space is a death sentence. Destiny wants you to move to survive.

I'm not saying that the health changes are, or should be permanent - but what I am saying is.....

In the future of Destiny, Devs do not want to reward you for sitting in a shiny, small puddle.

Why did the Devs not add healing KWs on Arc or Strand and instead give mitigation and evasion? Why are they creating healing weapon archetypes? Not because they didn't understand balance - they were crafting a long term vision of more evenly distributing healing and survivability across classes and in numerous ways. *

So - now that Warlock's class identity as the sole source of encounter survivability has been distributed, and the stationary healing puddle is a vestige of a bygone gameplay philosophy - it's time for the Warlock class ability to evolve as well.

In the coming months - I expect that D2's devs will formalize a new dynamic future for encounter design.

I hope they don't continue to leave the Warlock's main class ability behind.

*Note - while I'm mostly focused on Healing Rift...Empowering Rift is has been just as easily powercrept by readily available Surges, KW and exotics which are again, very distributed across all classes....AND still requires you to sit in a small immobile area while taking fire, making it incompatible with much of D2's evolving thesis