I'm starting to like this game a lot again TBH. It's still gorgeous and fun. Masterworks added a lot I think, even though at the end of the day the small stat boosts are basically useless. They give you something long term to grind for and that's pretty key. Plus the forge weapons give you another thing to grind around with, etc etc. Even crucible, I've been enjoying more.
You get tons and tons of loot, arguably too much. But now at least they funnel into a few rarer things. Like if you're hunting for a gun or two (Purpose scout rifle for me), the more sheer amounts of tokens you get the better. The new "gifts" of tokens at the end of strikes/crucible people can give you are super cool too, I dunno why, I just enjoy finding them in my inventory. Legendary shards are useful again just for that fated engram which is quite costly (provided you have an exotic you're chasing, which I do). Oh and The Colony is pretty great, been enjoying it, it holds so much ammo (which is what makes it competitive with a rocket launcher) and the cocoon feature is a nice cherry on top, it upends the useless grenade launcher paradigm. Just bought the exotic Ghost Shell from Eververse which I didn't know I wanted, too. It gives you more rewards for all PE's which should be pretty great! I had enough bright dust that I still haven't spent a microtransaction dime, so that feels good too. And it's neat to have an "exotic" shell.
I think HDR has made me enjoy it more too. While at times it feels gaudy and oversaturated and I long for a more realistic and understated look, OTOH the sheer amount of colors and sparks going on at times on Xbox One X (such as when everybody is DPS-ing the hell out of a boss on a heroic PE) is ridiculously impressive, even after weeks.
And in PVP I've had fun running the invis nightstalker, I stack up 3 class ability cooldowns+one grenade cooldown (+recovery hunter boots)+Graviton Forfeit.
I will say I was wrong though, Uriels IMo is significantly better than Positive Outlook. Maybe it's the perk that gives you initial accuracy? Also, I'm not big on kill clip, I honestly never can keep enough things straight in my brain to even remember it's there on a given gun.
Although people tend to view D2 as a failure, it certainly is on reddit and to streamers, but the real bottom line is money, and I suspect the game may not be a failure to Activision at all. In fact it may well be a solid success. It was the #2 selling game of the year so far behind only COD WW2 in NPD. I suspect it's actually doing well, maybe it's the Christmas rush but I've been seeing more guardians than ever while doing PE's etc.
The numbers do claim Trials and by extension I assume all PVP is way down. I'd attribute that as evidence to how watered down PVP is as I've been saying. It's still fun, though, it can both be significantly inferior to D1 and fun at the same time.
LoL.