Destiny: Are Nothing Manacles Worthless?
By Weston Albert 26 December 2015
Destiny‘s exotic Warlock gauntlets, Nothing Manacles, have returned in Year Two, but many players are saying they are worthless after receiving a nerf.
When Destiny‘s December Update was released earlier this month, it brought with it Sparrow Racing League and new exotics. Some of those exotic weapons and armor were refreshed versions of Year One exotics, one of which was the Warlock gauntlets Nothing Manacles. While Destiny players were initially excited to hear the Nothing Manacles were returning, a slight change to their makeup has turned that excitement into disappointment.
For those who might not be familiar, the Nothing Manacles are made for the Warlock’s Voidwalker subclass and focus on its Scatter Grenades. With the Nothing Manacles equipped, Scatter Grenades gain increased tracking and players get an extra grenade charge.
However, in the transition to Year 2, Bungie nerfed the Scatter Grenade as part of their December weapon rebalancing. The patch notes say, “Slightly turned down the tracking on the scatter grenade,” but after using them, many players report that the tracking has been all but removed. There even appears to be a bug that causes some Scatter Grenades not to explode, leaving them sitting on the ground doing nothing.
Nothing Manacles were introduced in the House of Wolves expansion, and transformed a previously useless grenade into something extremely effective. Since the launch of Destiny, Voidwalkers generally used Vortex Grenades for zone control or Axion Bolt Grenades to force enemies out of cover. As a result, the Scatter Grenades were almost never used because their damage was too low and not all pieces of grenade would usually hit a target, especially in PvP where it could be outmaneuvered.
But Nothing Manacles changed that. They turned Scatter Grenades into throwable mini-Gjallarhorn rockets, which would follow targets and detonate like Wolfpack rounds. Add the fact that Nothing Manacles give Voidwalkers a second charge, which allowed them to lob two of the deadly grenades right after another, and it was the gauntlets jump to the top of Warlock’s preferred exotic list. They were effective in driving camping opponents out of cover in Trials of Osiris matches and could even get a lucky double kill if a Voidwalker was using the Bloom perk and two opponents were close to each other.
The gauntlets were effective, yes, but many players never considered them to be overpowered. For Scatter Grenades to be effective, it still required landing one right near the feet of an opponent since the range for the tracking to activate wasn’t very far. And many opponents could still survive the grenade by running or blinking out of it. So for many, the nerf seems unnecessary and has provided little reason to go back to using Nothing Manacles.
In this video, Nothing Manacles are still quite effective when thrown close enough to an enemy, but the glitch with the non-detonating grenade can also be seen at the end:
Add to it that the current PvP meta has shifted to see many players using the Bladedancer Hunter subclass and their Skip Grenades, which can track and kill from an incredible distance, and that has left a bad taste in a lot of player’s mouth. However, there are still those online who would say that the Nothing Manacles are still effective even with their reduced tracking.
What has been your experience playing Destiny with the Year Two version of Nothing Manacles?
