Guiding Star

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This morning I wanted to take a moment to talk about a few weapons.  Right now the Faction Rally is going on and this time around the various faction merchants seem to have a much deeper stock of items.  It appears like they are offering the original four weapons in addition to more more that include the weapon that was the faction reward last time.  In theory this is probably a bit of a catch up mechanic since they stated that the weapons would be changing with the move to Season 2 starting around the December 5th time frame.  As a result this may be your only chance to get some of these items because I am not sure if the entire loot table is changing, or if there might be a chance that some of the weapons will show up later.  Whatever the case I have taken this notion to heart and have begun grinding to get everything I cared about.  The chief concern this time was the Guiding Star which is a Scathelocke look alike that Dead Orbit is offering.  It took me twenty one packages before I saw one of these, and in the process of getting it managed to get at least one of every other item.  This gun is extremely interesting because it is functionally an extremely high rate of fire variant of the Scathelocke that manages to still keep high-caliber rounds.  I have a feeling this is going to be brutal in the Crucible, but have not given it much of a test because I am still fixated on getting faction packages.  It does however do a phenomenal job of melting mobs out in the world.

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Next up is the Heart of Time pulse rifle that I was ultimately hoping we would get last Faction Rally.  I was extremely happy when I saw this among the list of possible drops this time so I could at least see how well I liked it.  On a base level this appears to be a reskinned Agenda-5 with a handful of tweaks here or there.  The great weakness of the weapon seems to be its horrible range statistic, but if you are using this gun you are using it for the dragonfly perk.  It feels fun enough, but it also feels outshined by a whole slew of pulse rifles that seem to kill things faster.  I have no clue what this feels like on the console because it has a ton of aim assistance, so in theory the experience might be completely different.  On the PC I am way more likely to use one of the slightly slower RPM weapons that packs a bigger punch.  Oddly enough I have gotten to where I like the Eystein-D…  which is a complete trash weapon on console that I shard the second I get, but have found works insanely well with the better mouse and keyboard controls.

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The last weapon I wanted to talk about this morning is Frontier Justice, which honestly is not part of the faction rally at all.  One of the things about grinding packages is that it means you are going to get a lot of duplicate weapons.  As a result I wind up with tons of gunsmith materials, and considering there are still a few super rare weapons that I am after I keep turning them in with the side benefit of getting mods.  One of those extremely rare weapons is the Frontier Justice scout rifle, which I never actually managed to get on the console and honestly have only seen a few times in the wild.  This is an extremely high impact, high range, and slow rate of fire weapon and I have to say I am liking it.  It packs an insane punch and given the slow rate of fire is extremely stable to use.  There is a weapon on I believe this same archetype available from New Monarchy and now that I have gotten most everything I want from both Future War Cult and Dead Orbit I plan on starting that grind proper tonight.  Faction Rally for me at least is all about the weapons and I’ve been super happy to get a bunch of my favorite weapons from the first faction rally on PC side.  Faction Rally and the return of Iron Banner will ultimately take away any minor pangs of remorse about losing some of my favorite weapons, because in theory I will be able to get them again.  The PC has become my platform of choice and now I am getting back all of those trinkets that I missed switching from console.