d1 Archives - Page 8 of 9 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Lowering the Banner

October 17, 2017 by Belghast

The first Iron Banner of Destiny 2 is officially over, and in spite of my comments yesterday… I did legitimately enjoy myself for a good part of it. It was only towards the end when things started to really grate on my nerves. Last night for example was a really bad night where a combination of my general fatigue, my left index finger being sliced, and the fact that somehow I had gotten into what Destiny Tracker calls the platinum bracket… served to lead to a series of not so fun matches. I had every intent to grind out the daily milestone on each of the three characters, but in the end only managed to complete it on the hunter. I am a little disappointed that I never got the Hand Cannon, but from what I am seeing my luck was considerably better than most players. Here is my final haul for the 60 matches of Iron Banner I played over the course of last week…

7 or 8 Unique Weapons – lots of dupes dropped
5 piece set of Titan armor – lots of dupes dropped
2 of 5 pieces of the Hunter armor set

All in all that really isn’t too bad of a haul for the very first running of Iron Banner. This ultimately gives me the entire set of Warlock gear and most of a set of Hunter gear to get next go round. Additionally there is still the chase for the Hand Cannon. That is way more useful loot than I tended to get from several months worth of Iron Banner during Destiny 1. Sure it was interesting to get a bunch of different weapon rolls… but ultimately most of those wound up being trash. The likelihood of me getting that god roll weapon was pretty limited, and in truth I think I like having a fixed point to focus on rather than not only hoping to get an item… but hoping it isn’t a garbage fire stat wise. There are still a significant number of legendary drops that I have never seen. For example I am still chasing the Jiangshi AR4 from the Gunsmith, and its not just a collector thing… I really want to play with it because I loved the green version I got while leveling.

As far as the weapons go… I am not sure if I really have it in me to do a review of them all. I spent some time last night while grinding out Io tokens playing with them all… and most of them are completely reasonable. I realize that is not exactly a glowing review, but in many cases I already have a weapon I just like better in that slot. The Time-Worn Spire is a really solid pulse rifle, in an era when that entire class of weapons seems to be outclassed by practically anything else. I’ve become a huge fan of the Forward Path auto rifle as well, but it has some pretty stiff competition for my time with the Origin Story and Ghost Primus. The real breakout weapon for me shockingly is the Wizened Rebuke, if for no reason other than the fact that you can hit 100 impact with it if you so choose. That said I feel like the weapon performs better if you are outfitting it for 95 impact… which still makes it significantly harder hitting than all but the Shock and Awe in my vault. Sure it has insanely slow recharge rate, but if I am going to use a Fusion it is likely going to be in a PVE situation where the charge time isn’t that big of a problem. Essentially this just became my legendary fusion of choice when I cannot for whatever reason use Merciless as my exotic.

The other weapon that I found myself shocked to actually enjoy is Guiding Sight the Scout Rifle. This lives in the same archetype group as Does Not Compute, Song of Justice VI and Haunted Earth… and in truth it felt better to use than any of those. When I use a scout rifle, I want something with really good impact and range because I am effectively using it as a surrogate sniper rifle. This fits that bill nicely because it will one shot a Vandal and has armor-piercing rounds to help with shields a bit… though I feel like that perk needs a buff significantly. Sure it will drop a shield faster than a normal kinetic weapon, but it still feels horrible as compared to even an unmatched elemental type energy weapon. I’ve said this over and over… that I am not really a fan of scout rifles as a whole, however when I do use one I want something along the lines of this weapon. Between Guiding Sight and Manannan SR4… I feel like I am set as far as scout rifles go. Basically at the beginning of the week I had a good deal of time collecting loot in the Iron Banner, but as we wound down… it started to feel like a house guest that overstayed its welcome. I opened around thirty packages in total and in the future I really need to tag out significantly earlier when I am still enjoying myself rather than trying to force a grind I was no longer enjoying.

Iron Banner Issues

October 16, 2017 by Belghast

This past week for me at least has been all about the Iron Banner 2.0 event happening in Destiny 2. If Destiny Tracker is to be believed, I have played fifty Iron Banner matches over the last four days. That was enough to turn in 24 Iron Banner packages so far… aka the equivalent of 480 tokens. At this point I managed to pull a complete set of gear for my Titan and have collected all but one of the weapons available. The Hand Cannon is eluding me but I still have faith that I might manage to get it when I run through my daily milestones for Iron Banner today. To say I have a high tolerance for grinding is an understatement, and the more impressive stat is that every single bit of this has been solo. I will get into more about that later but suffice to say I feel like I experienced everything that is to be seen in the new Iron Banner. This month the game mode of choice was Control… which used to be my favorite mode for Iron Banner but in the 4 player crucible I seem to now favor Supremacy.

What Changed?

Traditionally the Crucible is an event that does some level synchronization to make sure every player is on a level field. Iron Banner however in Destiny 1 was one of the un-synced events that took into consideration what your gear level was. In truth however this didn’t really play a heavy role other than maybe dealing a few extra points of damage to someone significantly under your gear level. The entire event functioned based on the Iron Banner reputation that would reset to zero before the start of a new event. The ultimate goal was to level from 1 to rank 5, which then allowed you to purchase gear that was available from Lord Saladin. This generally consisted of two armor slots and two weapons, and then the same items were available as rewards at the end of matches. In my experience one in five to ten matches rewarded gear at the end.

Now Iron Banner is governed by a token based system much as is the case with all factions in Destiny 2. Additionally it relies on the same level synchronization that occurs in the Crucible so no more gear level advantages. Previously the only way to gain progress was to either complete a bounty or win the match. This meant if you had some really bad luck you could have a long streak of loses where you did not move your reputation forward at all. This time around you get 2 tokens for a loss and 5 tokens for a win, and it takes 20 tokens in total to get a package. The packages themselves contain 1 Iron Banner specific item, and on item from a long list of other miscellaneous weapons and armor. I should have taken much better care in opening my packages and tracked the items I got in each, but I will just say there were a significant number of duplicates.

The Problems

The issue with Iron Banner is a very nuanced one, that requires you to understand some of the base states of the game to understand how we got here. In Destiny 1 there was a constant refrain from players lashing out against skill based match making, and complaining about the number of “red bar” players with poor connections that they kept encountering. With Destiny 2 it feels like they stepped away from a lot of the intelligence that attempted to make decent matches for players. One of these is that the game no longer attempts to match teams of players against other teams, which is where the issue happens. Most of the weekend I spent time matched against partial or complete teams of players, and as a result had to fight a very uphill battle to get my wins.

The games seemed to be really hit or miss, I could go from being steamrolled one moment to being the odd man out on a team of three players that queued and in turn rolling over another team. In the rare instance when I got matched with a bunch of other random players… I did good. Like for example the above screenshot is one I think I will never be able to duplicate where I somehow ended up with a 6.4 efficiency rating…. which is their version of Kda. This is an issue because it ends up giving players a very uneven feeling experience, to go from ruling the world to succumbing to it… within the course of a single matching. The folks that managed to gather up a team, and were on voice chat however seemed to completely decimate all comers.

Problems With The Grind

Iron Banner was one of those events that I looked forward to each month, not necessarily because I loved the PVP but because it was an opportunity to move up in the world. What I mean by that is that in Destiny 1 there were a limited number of events that you could participate that scaled all the way to the level cap, Iron Banner was one of them. As a result I spent my weekends grinding away at Iron Banner incrementally improving my light level so that I could hang with the big dogs… but keep my relatively solitary play style. With Destiny 2 this concept is toast. Gear drops at the same item level that any other Legendary drop does, which means there is no real way to advance your power level through Iron Banner drops. Sure there is the random chance of getting an exotic to drop, but that is a once a night sort of event and even then you need some serious luck to get anything that will move the bar forward.

Now the meaningful grind is about the collection of available loot, but I fear this is going to be a very short lived process. I said earlier in the post that I have collected all but one weapon at this point, and a full set of gear for my titan. Additionally I have a few items for my hunter now, so currently there are ten items that I have not seen. Given that it is highly unlikely that we see an influx of new items before the next Iron Banner, then it means that my drive to keep participating is going to be less each time as I whittle down that list of needed items. Now were I able to keep using Iron Banner as a means to incrementally increase my power level, then more than likely I would continue to participate and even look forward to the event.

The Future

I’ve tried to remain largely positive about Destiny 2 because in a few weeks we will be starting the process all over again with the launch of the PC version. There are however issues here and there that sort of stick out as annoyances. The core problem with Destiny 2 is that more than anything it is a direct sequel to Destiny 1. What I mean by that is in some ways it feels like we took a step backwards to a world where everything that happened in Taken King and Rise of Iron never existed. It makes me wonder if this project was launched before the release of Taken King, and they simply never applied the good parts of years two and three before launch. I was a die-hard Destiny 1 player, and I watched that game improve in so many ways over the three years since release. Similarly I have all the faith in the world that a lot of these rough spots will get ironed out as we move forward. Destiny 2 is a much better starting point than Destiny 1 ever could have been, but much like I feel sometimes with World of Warcraft… I get a little wistful when I think about what could have been had we taken all of the good from TTK and ROI into the new game.

Autos and Grenades

October 12, 2017 by Belghast

Apart from the recent jaunts back into Final Fantasy XIV brought on by our amazing Free Company house… I have been spending most of my time this week with the Iron Banner. There are a whole lot of things that have changed from Destiny 1… most of which for the better. For me at least in D1 Iron Banner was this holiday event in part because I knew that I could get gear that would help bump my light level up. Unfortunately that is not the case with D2, and this is all part of a larger discussion I want to have at some point about the general problems with the way progression feels. In D1 the only way you made progress through the ranks of the Iron Banner reputation was by winning, which meant that if you hit a frustrating unlucky streak you could stall out complete. Gear drops were rewarded as part of bounties that you could get on each character, and as random drops at the end of matches. On average I seemed to get a new piece of gear every three or four matches… but you also had dry spells where you could go upwards of ten games without seeing anything. In D2 this situation is largely resolved by shifting everything to token based loot. It takes 20 tokens to get a package with one iron banner exclusive item and then the potential of getting a random filler legendary and/or some shaders. You gain 2 tokens for a loss and 5 tokens for a win, so if you can manage to get on a streak you can rack up several packages in a row. Additionally there are challenges that can be completed each day and turning those back in to Lord Saladin rewards 15 faction tokens.

My goal so far has been to earn at least 2 packages a day, and in part this is only because I cannot really handle a bunch of crucible in a row. So far in Destiny 2 the length of time I can reasonably play crucible matches back to back lines up almost perfectly with the amount required to get the Call to Arms engram. My biggest problem is that I need a breather every so many matches because I notice that my own abilities start to wain greatly as the stress and anxiety sort of catch up with me. As a result I notice that I am completely all over the map when it comes to my ability. I also have certain maps that I am just not good at, or do not fit whatever it is that my play style actually is and as a result my Destiny tracker profile is a mess. The biggest problem for me is that the core reason why I spent so much time playing Iron Banner was the overarching goal of increasing my viability in the game by getting more powerful gear and infusing it into stuff. With this gone… some of my drive to keep playing is largely toast and at this point my goal is to get 10 packages so I can unlock whatever it is that I earn by doing so. Right now I have opened five packages and gotten the same auto rifle twice… which admittedly was the primary weapon I was interested in… as well as helm, chest and a grenade launcher. I thought I would take a moment this morning and talk about the two weapons I have seen so far.

The Forward Path looks like the Origin Story which is ultimately what initially got me excited about the weapon, but winds up being a vastly different weapon archetype. It lives in the 600 rpm bracket which means its most direct competitors are Scathelocke, Ghost Primus and Martyr’s Make… at least of the rifles you see in regular rotation. All of these weapons are really closely grouped on most of the stats but The Forward Path has significantly more handling than most of the other weapons in this class. The big take away from me after using this a good deal is that it feels really reliable and easy to hold on target… especially with a moving target. It benefits significantly from the Tap the Trigger perk which grants increased accuracy and stability the few moments after pulling the trigger. When I am taking down targets at max range I tend to habitually pump the trigger firing off short bursts… a habit that I picked up from playing the early FPS titles and this weapon plays directly into that instinct. The only negative is… this feels like a PVE weapon… that is being rewarded by a PVP event. There is just not a case where you would not choose to take Scathelocke or Origin Story in your kinetic slot because High-Caliber Rounds and Rampage are just that good. However Armor-Piercing rounds makes this thing a beast for strikes and other PVE content where the mobs are shielded because this gives you the ability to easily break shields with both Kinetic and Energy weapons. I am super glad to add this weapon to my arsenal, but it is right now a weird mixed bag for me… and in truth I am probably going to rock Ghost Primus/Scathelocke in a lot of the situations I would normally use it.

Grenade Launchers need a great deal of work. As it stands this is my least favorite weapon type and is voted most likely to get sharded on sight when one drops into my inventory. I’ve found exactly one Grenade Launcher that I actually like using and that is the one from the crucible/packages Play of the Game. The reason why this weapon shines above all others is because of a single perk… Proximity Grenades causing the payload to detonate when it gets close to a target rather than hitting it. Grenades are insanely unwieldy and bounce like mad… making them completely unreliable other than being used “for funsies”. The Day’s Fury suffers from all of these problems with grenade launchers in general… but is increased by having a fairly small blast radius and perks that don’t really help make up for the weaknesses of the genre. You have Mini Frags which increases reload speed and magazine size at the cost of blast radius, or Spike Grenade that inexplicably increases stability. When I think Spike Grenades I think some sort of a claymore mine action where it hurls shrapnel into nearby enemies when it explodes… which would have been awesome and maybe would have made this weapon reasonable to use. As it stands this just ends up being vault clutter that I will end up holding onto because it was hard to get… hoping maybe they will turn Grenade Launchers into something useful in the future.

Have you gotten anything cool from the Iron Banner? What are your thoughts of the event so far? Drop a line in the comments and let me know.

Xur Week Four: 10/6/17

October 6, 2017 by Belghast

Happy Xursday! Since this seems to be a fairly popular feature I will be doing a run down of what Xur has this week. Since the Flashpoint is in the European Dead Zone he is found over in the winding cove area. For characters who have yet to hit 20… you can get there by just going west out of town and winding along the coastline… but in truth I would warn against doing this because his items degrade in power based on your level. This time Xur is a little tricky given that the previous three weeks he has been in some sort of a sheltered area, and this time he is up on top of a cliff that you are going to have to do a bit of wall jumping to get to. Another thing to watch out for… the area he is in is patrolled by a group of dregs on pikes. Additionally there may or may not be a public event active at the drop zone in the winding cove area. Essentially this is probably the most dangerous area Xur has been so far, just be careful if you AFK because Vandals could in fact hit me with their wire rifles from where he is located.

First off he is offering the Vigilance Wing, a weapon I am extremely excited to see because I have yet to get one from an engram. This is an odd Osiris themed weapon that you occasionally see in your “killed by” notes in the crucible and now that I see the perks I understand why. The exotic perk for this weapon is Harsh Truths which does several things. Firstly it fires a five round burst which is a bit unique because most pulse rifles fire three round bursts, and hakke weapons are the outlier with four round bursts. A five round burst for reference means a single precision burst kills a second tier mob like a Vandal. The second part of the perk is that when a nearby ally is killed you gain health regeneration and increased movement speed… something that happens constantly in the crucible. Seeing as I just literally got this weapon today I have yet to take it into the crucible so I am uncertain how much difference this makes. I did however run around the EDZ and complete a public event to get a feel for it and my opinions are a bit mixed. Statwise it is probably most similar to the Lincoln Green, with a very odd 530 rounds per minute rate of fire and surprisingly high 33 impact for that rpm. Traditionally the high rate of fire weapons have an extremely poor range but this one has 68 and a medium range sight to go with it making it fairly decent in longer range engagements. The other side of the coin though is the unique sun themed sight means it is extremely annoying for close range fights. The last stand perk plays well with harsh truths in that it gives the weapon improved performance if you are the last member of a fire team. It seems like it is well worth the legendary shards if for no reason other than to get the unlock and a good Kinetic pulse rifle is a bit of a rare item to find.

The Insurmountable Skullfort is another of a list of items that has returned from Destiny 1. Its bizarre because almost all of them were considered second tier items, which makes me wonder if the devs were simply unhappy with the amount of play time that they got and carried them over to potentially give them some new life. Transfusion Matrix causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration and restore melee energy. What this means in play is that there is a really interesting build you can do with a Striker Titan where you have near 100% up-time of the insanely powerful arc shoulder charge ability. This is literally the only reason to use this exotic and is probably well worth the pick up so that you have it in case you ever want to try that build out. Personally since I love my Auto Rifles… I am likely to almost always use the Actium War Rig because it benefits whatever spec I might be in at that time and doesn’t hamper me from switching freely.

Nezarec’s Sin is another really limited use case item because its exotic perk does one thing. Abyssal Extractors causes void damage kills to increase your ability energy recharge rate. I feel like the primary use case for this item is going to be in the crucible and specifically in control or similar modes where you are wanting to stand your ground or camp out a location. This is of course a useful for Void warlocks, but also is triggered by void weapon damage. This means you could in theory build a specific layout with a void energy and a void heavy and be constantly dropping your healing puddle on the ground. I ran this item for a bit of a time and the ability recharge rate increase is significant. Overall however I tend to prefer Eye of Another World that highlights priority targets and has a flat increase to the recharge rate of melee, grenade and your ability. The helm however is well worth a pick up in case you really need to be the one providing an on demand puddle.

And we have our very first repeat item of Xur in Destiny 2. Foetracer helm was offered in week two and my feelings are probably much the same. The exotic perk is Relentless Tracker which causes any mob you scope in on to acquire an X target that you can see through obstacles. Additionally marked targets like this take additional damage when they get to low health range. This is a generally useful item and I am sure there are specific cases where it is extremely solid especially for low health target damage. Personally I am a huge fan of Knucklehead Radar because I like having my radar up while I aim down sight regardless of the weapon I am using. The Foetracer however is probably a much better damage option because at least it does something to increase your output. I didn’t pick these up in week two, but I did this week largely to get a collection unlock. Probably a solid item if you are needing a reasonable exotic to use.

All in all I feel like this was a pretty solid week for Xur. I’ve been wanting to play with the Vigilance Wing as it is an exotic that I had never seen from an engram, so I am super happy about him offering that. The two weapons you can get from an engram that I am still missing is the Sweet Business Gatling gun auto rifle, and The Prospector grenade launcher. As far as armor pieces go… there are still a sizeable number of unlocks on each character that I will hopefully see Xur offering in coming weeks. I am mildly annoyed that on week four we are already getting duplicates, which reminds me all too much of the number of times we have seen weapons like the Hawkmoon or Last Word being sold. What are your thoughts? Are you impressed with what Xur has been offering or are they all old news to you by the time you can get your hand on them? I am interested in your thoughts. One last thing… I decided to start including Destiny 1 Xur in these posts because I feel sorta bad about that incarnation stuck in a game that people aren’t hyped about anymore.

In Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Vanguard area of the Tower. I am not going to go into a lot of detail on this, but the major items he has to offer…

Suros Regime Auto Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
ACD/0 Feedback Fence Titan Arms – 13 Strange Coins
Celestial Nighthawk Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
The Stag Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Legacy Primary Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo Weapon Bundle with Superspy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust
Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust