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Xur Week Nine: 11/10/17

November 10, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

It’s that time again folks… time to go traipsing through otherwise dangerous areas in search of Xur. I am very quickly going to run out of original things to say since the limited pool of exotics seems to be generating a bunch of repeat weeks. This was a huge problem with Destiny 1 as well and made worse by the fact that they do not seem to put the exotics on a rotation of any sort. There were several that we never actually saw sold by Xur in Destiny 1 and thusfar there is a whole slew that we have yet to see sold by him in Destiny 2. You can find Xur in the Watcher’s Grave area of Nessus where he is up in a tree. You can either hop up on the ledge and hop across or run a narrow path up the side of the tree. He brought a few gems so lets check out his stock.

There are two exotic grenade launchers… one of which is good and the other is likely the worst weapon in the game. Thankfully the Prospector is the good one and probably well worth picking up. It is a bit of a weird weapon to get used to because of the Excavation exotic perk, which keeps your grenades from detonating while you are holding down the fire trigger. This has a bizarre interaction with the fact that this weapon has auto fire… allowing you to pump out an entire magazine of eight grenades without actually detonating them and then detonating them all at once. The only problem with this is that these are not sticky grenades so there is a bit of bounce when you fire them out without instantly detonating them. The blast radius is rather small as well which again leads this to be a weird option because each grenade is not going to damage a very large area. As a result this is really good when you can fire them down into some sort of enclosed area and then detonate all of them at once for a massive explosion. More often than not I simply use this as a decent single fire grenade launcher which gives me more predictable results. If you are wanting a work horse rather than a gimmick… I highly suggest checking out Berenger’s Memory or Play of the Game legendary grenade launchers instead.

I actually had yet to get an insurmountable skullfort on the PC side yet so I was happy to see this item show up. This is one of those situationally good items that allows for a slightly degenerate build. The primary interaction is between Transfusion Matrix the exotic perk and Code of the Earthshaker path for the striker titan. The perk causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration… which is actually the reversal trait from Code of the Juggernaut. This becomes a great farming build because Seismic Strike and the AOE damage it deals… means you are going to be getting back lots of melee energy from the second part of this perk, allowing you to maintain damned near 100% up time. On the battlefield what this means is that you can zoom around slamming into things rather than actually firing any weapons. There are a few things that you could do to improve the reliability like slotting two arc melee recharge time mods, but when it works… it is insanely fun. This is mostly a PVE build concept and every time I have tried to shoulder charge in the crucible I have paid a hefty price for it.

I’ve talked about this item at length several different times, so I am not sure what else I can really add. The Eye of Another World is one of those items that passively all of your abilities work better. This is the sort of set it and forget it always on item that I tend to favor, because it requires zero attention to detail. Unless you are going for a specific gimmick build… this is probably your best all purpose warlock item. If you don’t already have it I highly suggest picking it up. If you want more dialog from me on this check out one of the many other Xur posts where I have talked about it.

Similarly the Foetracer is a generally good item and I have started running it lately because it tends to help finish off mobs in Nightfalls. Relentless Tracker perk visually marks your enemies after targeting them for a short period of time and causes you to deal extra damage when they reach low health. That last bit helps and it is just enough of a change to make killing things seem faster which is always the name of the game in a Nightfall. I do however miss my constant tracking radar while using this item, but I am trying really hard to learn to live without it. Again I highly suggest picking this up, and also once again I have talked at length about this item in the past in any one of the many other times Xur has offered it.

Destiny 1

This week in Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Tower directly across from Lord Shaxx. He finally restocked his inventory and is no longer bringing the Jade Rabbit, so hopefully you Xbox players picked that up while it was still available. Interestingly Xur in Destiny 1 seems to be taking a queue from his personal in Destiny 2 because they both brought the Insurmountable Skullfort. Let’s check out his items this week.

Legacy Arm Engram – 29 Strange Coins
An Insurmountable Skullfort – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Radiant Dance Machines – Hunter Boots – 13 Strange Coins
Claws of Ahamkara – Warlock Arms – 13 Strange Coins
The Last Word – Hand Cannon – 23 Strange Coins
Dragon’s Breath and Tigershark Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Package Farming

November 9, 2017 by Belghast

Games like Destiny trigger the collector part of my brain in ways I will never fully understand. Here is an example… in Pokemon or Blizzard Pet Battles for that matter… I don’t actually like the act of battling pets. I do however love the aspect of collecting new critters and not so secretly wish there was a way to skirt all of the other aspects and just let me get shiny new pets. I feel similarly about Destiny when there is a set of armor or weapons to collect, and right now I will be grinding the Faction Rally until I catch them all. As it stands I still need the Shotgun from Dead Orbit, Sidearm from Future War Cult and both Scout Rifles from New Monarchy. At this point I have done my weeklies on the Hunter and Warlock and ground out 20 or so loot packages on each, giving me only 10 more chances to get the items I actually need. I have a similar number of chances for New Monarchy and have just started working on the Titan going through his weeklies. The thirty packages cap thing is likely put there for people like me… that would have potentially ground their fingers to the bone trying to get that last weapon. So at least on some level I am thankful that it exists… but on a totally different level I am frustrated beyond belief that I might not actually get all of the things.

The truth is however that the shotgun from Dead Orbit is horrible at least compared to Hawthorne’s… and there has never been a case post Destiny 1 that I have ever said to myself that I want to use a sidearm. In Destiny 1 I kept an assortment in the vault with various elements just so I could easily complete those kill X targets with X damage type bounties. There are a few burst and full auto sidearms that are interesting… but I have yet to see a reason why I would ever choose them over a more versatile weapon in that slot. So that mostly just leaves me with the two Scout Rifles from New Monarchy that are weapons I would actually use. It’s bizarre how the precision of the PC version of Destiny 2 has completely flipped me around from not liking Scout Rifles at all, to running with them pretty often. I am super interested in Good Counsel IX shown above because of the hip fire perk… given that hip firing weapons is actually a completely reasonable way to play on the PC version. Stat wise it looks very similar to the Frontier Justice scout I got this week and one that I already know that I like… so I am going to ultimately be extremely bummed if I wind up not getting it during this faction rally.

Song of Justice VI is a weapon that I have on the console version of Destiny 2 and like it fairly well but it always felt like it was at least under performing slightly. I am primarily interested in getting this weapon to see how different it feels with the precision of the mouse and keyboard. I cannot mention enough that the weapons feel vastly different between the console and PC platforms, and there are so many that I did not like at all on console that I know really enjoy using on PC. It is ultimately my hope that this is going to be the case with Song of Justice. Hakke weapons in general so far have worked better on PC so I am hoping this continues to that pattern. In other positive news… today is my Friday so I should be able to poke around in the game tomorrow during the day. I might even get so bold as to stream a little. I’m going through a deluge of changes right now and my natural instinct when that happens is to go into super turtle mode. Piddling around Destiny solo mode has been something I have been doing for the last three years so it is definitely comfort gaming. That said I really do need to get the Nightfall done and hopefully make some attempts on the raid. I am going to try really hard to make myself available to shenanigans tonight, but no promises. In other other news… I popped into Diablo 3 last night and cleared my mail box in prep for the season start that begins soon. They have roped me back in with more cosmetic rewards… that of course trigger that collector instinct in me.

Guiding Star

November 8, 2017 by Belghast

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.

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.

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.

Weekend Warlock

November 6, 2017 by Belghast

I had every intent of writing a post on the Battle for Azeroth announcement from Blizzcon but I still feel like I am percolating my heads into something that is more intelligible than a rant. Instead I am going to focus on my weekend spent in Destiny, which saw me finishing off leveling my Warlock and getting it properly geared. I am half convinced that there is some sort of shared internal item level spread across all of your characters, because every time I have managed to push up my third character… its initial reward cycle has been insane causing it to leap ahead of the others. This was definitely the case with the Warlock who is now sitting at 294 as compared to 291 that I can manage to hit on either my Titan or Hunter. At this point I am fairly happy with the cobbled together gear that I have on the warlock because it gives me a stat spread that I like… 3 mobility, 5 resilience, and 7 recovery. I managed to get the Nightfall done so far on both the Titan and the Warlock and am hoping that maybe I can find some folks to do it with on the Hunter this evening. There is also talk about stepping foot into the raid again as well, which I am hoping we can pull off without going too late into the night. Having half of our normal crew on Pacific time and the other half on Eastern/Central time is a pain in the ass for timing any sort of activities.

As far as the raid goes we managed to get through the bathers event and made some pretty decent progress on the doggos. Functionally I think that encounter is going to come down to simply executing everything we have done over the course of a few attempts… in a single go. I like the raid so far because it feels very much like Final Fantasy XIV… in that it is a dance and once learned you can execute it pretty rapidly. I have a feeling that at some point we will be bringing four seasoned players and two learners and getting more people in the clan some experience. Fore the moment however we are shifting bits and pieces of the same handful of people trying to push through and learn it all. I mean there are raid guides out there that we could be following, but it feels more significant when we sort out things on our own. If we do make it back tonight I feel like we are probably going to make it through the pleasure gardens… which if my math is right means we have one more encounter before we actually face Calus. In theory if things go well we might be able to actually clear the raid next week. Its funny how much of a driving force it is for me to unlock the engram for the rest of the clan.

Next week is the start of the faction rally, and I am assuming that I will do what I did last go round and support a single faction on each character. That also means I am likely going to match up the factions with the gear that I would like to see them wearing. The only bad thing about that is the fact that New Monarchy has the coolest looking gear for multiple classes. I feel like probably the Hunter set is the best looking so I will be repping them on that character. Which means I am probably going to go Dead Orbit with the Titan and Future War Cult with the Warlock because I am most likely to wear the respective armor sets. The real goal for me however is to play just as much as it takes to unlock all 12 dropped weapons and a full set of gear for the Hunter. Past that anything else is gravy, and I am pretty happy with the gear I currently have assembled on the titan and warlock. The hunter is going to get a lot of play time if for no reason other than the fact that the New Monarchy shaders are the ones I am most likely to use for weapons. Basically we have yet another extremely busy week ahead of us in Destiny 2. The icing on the top is the fact that Greysky Armada should easily hit rank 6 next week.