The Banner Falls

Plans Change

When I left work I had every intent to go home and play Iron Banner on the Titan all night long, in the hopes of getting some really awesome drops.  That didn’t exactly happen, but I did end up playing Iron Banner up until the point when I decided to go to bed a little early.  The change however was that I ended up playing on my Hunter.  There is a clear pecking order between my Destiny characters.  The Titan gets all the really good stuff… the Hunter gets the next tier of stuff… and the Warlock survives on scraps from the other two.  Since I had already gotten the Titan to Rank 5, I was curious just how fast I could get the Hunter up there in levels.  I had heard there was some sort of an alt bonus, that helped to push your second and third characters up faster, as well as now having access to both the rank 5 shader and emblem which also increase reputation gain.  I made significant progress and after a half dozen matches I was sitting at Rank 3 staring down the barrel of Rank 4.  Had I stayed up a little later I might have been able to hit Rank 5 all in one night.  The big part was that I simply did not have the skill or the time to be able to complete the “brown” bounties on the Hunter since they take a lot of repeated effort.  In theory next Iron Banner I might work on the daily bounties for both the Titan and the Hunter each day, and by the end of the week I should have enough progress to turn in those weekly bounties.

The huge positive however is that thanks to the gear that managed to drop while running matches, I can now hit 302 on the Hunter.  In total I managed to pick up both a chest piece at 306 and a set of arms at 285… the later I will probably push up whenever the infusion changes happen.  I really like the Iron Banner armor look, and I have a feeling that before long that is what my characters will be decked out in.  However the upcoming taken look stuff, will probably be what I put on my Hunter since of the three looks that is the one I like the best.  Honestly of the Taken  gear the only one that I really don’t like is the Titan, and that is largely because of the dumb helmet.  The horns on that helmet look like the radar array off of a cruise ship or something.  This gets into a complaint I have with Destiny as a whole.  It is MMOish but only sorta… and the thing I wish it offered was a true cosmetic system where you could actually customize your appearance without changing your gear.  That is one of the things I like the most about The Division is the ability to change my look and have it largely be independent of what I happen to be wearing.  Sure there your only options are various pieces of clothing, but in Destiny you could create some really unique armor sets.  However I guess with the lossless infusion system, it will make customizing your appearance significantly easier.

Ponytail Titan

Tonight is yet another Rookie Raid and it has become that night of the week that I really look forward to.  There is of course a certain amount of trepidation as well, namely when it comes to the damned jumping puzzles.  As I have said before Destiny manages to trip my vertigo worse than any game since Mirrors Edge.  However I push through it in order to be able to get the tasty drops.  This go around what I am really hoping for is to be able to walk out of the raid with the machine gun.  I realize that I just put a bunch of effort into pushing up my Bretomart’s Stand to make it raid viable…  but I just keep hearing that the raid machine gun is pretty much better in every way.  You get hooked on guns with the Cocoon perk, and knowing that whenever you swap weapons there will never be an awkward situation where you have to reload.  This would definitely make dps time in the light bubble on Oryx more efficient since you could swap weapons and pour shots into him while waiting on the machine gun to load itself.  Cosmetically I am going with a sort of White Knight meets Hive Knight look, and I dig it… even though I kinda wish I had the rest of the Iron Banner gear.  When the infusion changes go in I will likely be swapping over to the Iron Camelot shoulders that I picked up from Saladin.  I am hoping next go round he brings boots so I can finish out the appearance.

The only regret from this past week is that I didn’t actually connect with any of my friends to talk them into helping me finish my sword quest.  It is not like I can actually use it in the raid, since on several of the fights I actually need to use an exotic primary.  However it would just be nice to know that I am done with it.  I also missed another opportunity for the Black Spindle, because I believe that was last Friday night.  I was so focused on Iron Banner that I didn’t even notice until I got an email from another friend asking if I was around to make attempts on it.  I have a bit of a mental block now about that mission, since I have failed so many times at it.  The other side project that I would love to work on is finding someone to recruit, so that I can get those sweet sweet recruit a friend bonus items.  I absolutely want a Tron Sparrow, but unfortunately I can’t just do the World of Warcraft thing and set up a second account.  A lot of the achievement steps require you to be doing stuff together.  I’ve wondered for awhile now what it would take to get my friend Vernie hooked on this game… because I think he would absolutely like it.  The only problem is he is a die-hard keyboard and mouse guy… just like I was before the siren song of Destiny.  The thing is… all the joy I used to have playing PC shooters when we would do LAN games after work…  I am having with Destiny.