November 2017 - Page 4 of 5 - Tales of the Aggronaut

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.

For Azeroth

November 7, 2017 by Belghast

My biggest fear about BlizzCon would be if they crank up the big dumb red vs blue narrative and give us an expansion all about faction war

— Bel 🆚 Comic Sans! (@belghast) November 3, 2017

So last weekend was BlizzCon and over the last few days I have been dealing with the announcements made there. On the morning before the festivities started… I threw out a flurry of tweets of things that I would have liked to have seen, and then one that was my nightmare scenario. Essentially… the nightmare scenario is what happened. As a result I’ve spent the last few days going through the stages of denial and have finally reached a point where I can talk about it. World of Warcraft for me is a story about being artificially cut off from a chunk of my friends regardless of the decisions I make. When the game released in 2004 we had a group of players that wanted to play Alliance and a group that wanted to play Horde, and while we attempted playing both sides after a point folks wound up greatly preferring one over the other. This was a completely foreign concept to me and felt just wrong to have choosing a side mean you were also saying goodbye to a chunk of your friends in the process. Everquest had factions but they were all personal choices, and even Dark Age of Camelot had Gaheris the Co-Op server that let us all play what we wanted together without the artificially faction boundaries.

For the last thirteen years I have carried a torch in hopes that maybe just maybe the two sides would get their shit together and realize that there is way more at stake than their own petty grievances. We have come so close so many times as we worked together with the other side to tackle the big bads of the world, but always we are artificially drawn back in to the big dumb red versus blue narrative. Battle for Azeroth is doubling down on this tired formula and apparently that is what the player base wants. I have no real faction pride because neither faction has actually done anything that I am proud of. Sure the cinematic they released for this game is epic, and there are moments I feel shivers of excitement from each side. I am just wired to be nostalgic about all of this even though it signals the death of the dream I have held for so long. The faction wall will never fall, and my friends list will always be artificially segregated. We could do so much more if we were allowed to work together, and bring our Tauren and Orc friends along with our Dwarf and Worgen friends to do awesome things. I guess that thing that frustrates me is just how tragic and pointless it always is… all it would take is some communication between the sides and we would stop killing each other and start killing things that deserve to be killed. Fuck “For the Horde” and fuck “For the Alliance”… it should be “For Azeroth”… because the planet is dying while we are fighting .

All of this said… there are a lot of things that they are talking about that do excite me, but it has been a lot of soak given the first massive blow. I love the concept of Allied races because it gives the players something that we have requested for so long… sub races. From the moment I first knew that the Dark Iron Dwarves were a thing… I wanted to play one. The only only problem is that in my perfect scenario they would have been on the Horde. In truth in my perfect scenario all of the sub races that we are getting… would have gone to the other faction. I want to see High Mountain Tauren fighting along side the Alliance and Dwarven fighting along side the Horde. I want to break down the barriers between the two factions and blend them all up together to where your faction choices are just that… choices and not something you are locked into. Basically I am down for anything that degrades the barrier between the camps of players and lets us all do things together. Unfortunately I am having to come to the realization that it will probably never happen, but in the meantime I guess I am going to be leveling a bunch of new characters to take advantage of the new races.

The biggest obstacle between me and playing the horde was the fact that I didn’t like most of the races. The reason why I didn’t like the races was the bestial hunch that the male versions of each seemed to be permanently stuck in. Apparently there is a posture system that is coming that will allow us to go to the barber shop in game and change this… and in truth that breathes new life into all of these races that I refused to play. In theory if I can get an upright Orc like the modern Thrall model… it is going to feel awesome. Similarly Trolls and Undead become perfectly viable options for me to play. The number one problem I have with Worgen is that they too suffer from this forced lurch, and I am wondering if maybe just maybe that might be a thing of the past as well. I love my Horde family, but what always ends up being a problem is the fact that I have years worth of characters on the Alliance side and a handful of false starts on the Horde. I like being self sufficient, and only on one side do I have an army of alts that can craft anything that I could ever want. In theory if I enjoy the races more… I could start working on the same on Horde side. The draw to either side is the people who play there… not the story. I am just frustrated that it seems like I will always have to choose one path over the other when I really want to do both at the same time.