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Derpy Banana

December 7, 2016 by Belghast

Last night I moved a little bit out of my comfort zone and decided to do what I had hoped to do some time ago… and test Beam.pro. Firstly you have to understand that I have gone around and around with streaming services because none of them really seemed to fit me. Twitch is the ten ton juggernaut in the room, and in a way that generally makes all other services irrelevant. That said… I feel like it is a generally inferior experience for both the viewer and the streamer. The lag delay between video stream and chat is horrendous and it pretty much makes any attempt at having a conversation with someone watching you impossible. Hitbox seemed really cool other than some weird issues I had regularly with stream quality. It however had little to no lag between video stream and chat and made it super easy to have conversations over. They also seemed to have way better back end tools to support the day to day management of your stream and syndicating it to various social media platforms when you go live. Beam however entered the ring some time ago, or at least came into my general consciousness when my friend Maeka decided to switch over to streaming on it exclusively.

Destiny_20161207062529 — Braced Frame – Snapshot – Range Finder

So Beam represents a more twitch like experience in quality, but with far better chat delay and an interesting reward model for viewers and streamers. Watching streams earns folks sparks, that can then be spent on either unlocking features for your own channel… or spending those sparks on other streamers who often offer weird things like sound boards for you to play with. I admit the gamification aspect of the streaming interested me, and I find myself way more connected to the concept of letting a stream run while I am doing other things because I know that eventually it is going to benefit me. For example… something I have always wanted was the ability to create an AggroChat team, and that functionality apparently unlocks when I hit 5000 sparks… to which I am sitting at roughly 2000 currently after a few days of usage. Over the weekend I got my setup rearranged and organized so that things were going through the appropriate devices, thinking that sometime in the future I might maybe start streaming again. However a thread on the That Gaming Forum Imzy was the catalyst needed to go ahead and push me across the line to trying to stream something properly. When I got home last night I quickly assembled a fresh OBS install and pulled in the artwork I had from the previous attempts and before long I was up and running.

Destiny_20161207062455 — Perfect Balance – Snapshot – Headseeker

The end result is me playing some of the absolute worst Iron Banner ever, but you can check out the VOD here on Beam. I spent way more time turning my head to the left and checking chat than I did actually playing the game. This is compounded by the fact that before last night I had played a half dozen Rift matches period, and it is a vastly different style of gameplay than I am used to in the Crucible. Generally speaking I am used to the “rush to the choke point” style of game play that comes from Control or Supremacy, and in trying to play Rift that way… I died a lot. Later on in the night after I chilled the hell out and started taking things more slowly… I started doing better but unfortunately this was LONG after I ended my stream. I was still recording, however when I configured OBS I ended up accepting the default flv format… which Adobe Premiere seems not to know what to do with. So I am either going to have to find a plugin that lets me import them… or find something to convert that to a format so I can actually properly edit it. I did get one really solid match recorded, and I would like to edit that up and post it on my youtube channel at some point.

Perfect Balance - Extended Mag - Zen Moment — Perfect Balance – Extended Mag – Zen Moment

One of the big positives about Beam is that they are now owned by Microsoft which in theory means they are going to get more support. The negative there is that Microsoft has a long and storied history of abandoning products… zune anyone? However the killer feature seems to be that it integrates perfectly with the Xbox One… which also adds to a little platform bias. Most of the streams I have watched were streamed from an Xbone… so it confused my viewers when I said I was playing Destiny on the PS4. Ultimately I have a pretty cool setup that I am happy with in that in my office I have my desktop beside what is essentially a console gaming area. In a storage cabinet beneath my 48 inch television I have a PS4, PS3, Xbox 360 and now Xbox One all connected through an HDMI switch that then goes through a splitter before going into an Elgato HD that I picked up off craigslist for around $35 used. That then feeds into my PC and is served up by OBS using the Elgato streaming tools. So that means quite literally anything I can connect to my television through HDMI can then end up getting streamed out. At one point I had my WiiU connected here, but I took that downstairs so I could hang out in bed and play on the weird remote device. Also Nintendo has some pretty draconian practices surrounding streaming and youtube videos so I figured it was probably a good idea NOT to do that.

At one point I drew up this diagram quickly to show how my set up works. The key element there is the splitter and you can read more about that in a previous post I made back in June 2014 when I got the setup running. As far as Iron Banner itself… I have interspersed some of my best rolls from the night in amongst the paragraphs. In total I am sitting 3/4 of the way through Rank 3 and have picked up 3 fusion rifles, 1 scout rifle, 1 pulse rifle, 2 legs, and a helm… that I then bought the 100% roll from Lady Efrideet and infused that into it. I feel like I made a decent start to getting to Rank 5 and I finally grasped the unique rhythm of the game mode as I went through the night. I suddenly stopped being the lowest person on the team to vying for the top spot once again. I am not terribly great at crucible but I am generally not as bad as I am in the stream test. However that wasn’t really the purpose of the stream… it was to test out Beam.pro and I think so far I am saying it passes with flying colors. I accepted the absolute default settings and it performed admirably. Now is the time for me to actually set my channel up properly and try and sort out how precisely is the best way to use the service.

Clever Dragons

November 15, 2016 by Belghast

Iron Banner just concluded yesterday, and I spent a good deal of time playing it this go round. I’ve never had any luck in trying to get a decent Grasp of Malok, so when the rank five roll of Clever Dragon featured Counter Balance, Perfect Balance and Snapshot… I knew I was ultimately going to grind until I got there. With the Rise of Iron it brought a number of changes to “Iron Banana”, namely since Lord Saladin is nor our “faction leader” of a sort… the reigns of the tournament were passed to Lady Efrideet. The primary change that happened is the fact that instead of three weekly bounties, and three daily bounties… we are given four weekly bounties. Previously you got a crappy blue item at Rank 3 with Iron Banner and an item package at Rank 5. This time around two of these new bounties reward armor packages, and the other two reward weapons… and you still get some sort of a big package upon hitting Rank 5. So the total loot payout of participating in the event is significantly more than it used to be. That said I find it MUCH harder to get to Rank 5, given that I don’t have something I can be working on every day to give me a much needed boost. In Iron Banner you only gain ranks if you are winning, and especially trying to queue during the day on Friday… I hit some significant losing streaks. Now there is a built in system that gives you a sort of consolation prize coin upon a loss… and these stack to five, with a boost to your rank granted when you finally turn around and win. However there was at least one point on Friday that I lost eight games in a row… so it just become frustrating as I kept getting thrown up against premades.

Now the positive of the event is that I got tons of loot, and also managed to complete both the void damage portion of the thorn quest, and the crucible kills portion of my Future War Cult exotic class item quest. I spent a significant amount of time running around shooting people into the face with the above Shotgun. I’ve had the Party Crasher +1 for awhile now and I consider it to be as close to a god roll as I will ever likely see with Full Auto, Final Round and Rifled Barrel to help boost the range a bit. Traditionally I use my Invective when doing crucible, but at the moment I am simply not willing to waste an exotic shard on anything until I get significantly closer to the item cap. I went on a mission to try and get a decent legendary shotgun during Taken King and in my very first round of attempting to grind the Crucible I managed to pull this guy in the end of match rewards and have been loving it ever since. I am sure a god roll Matador could pry it from my hands but for the moment I am super happy with it.

The other weapon that I used a significant amount of the time especially to get those void kills is Saladin’s Vigil. Now this is something I picked up last Iron Banner from one of the loot bounties, and I felt like I got a completely reasonable roll on it. I am not even sure what a “god roll” would look like, but mine has Hammer Forged, Enhanced Battery, and Performance Bonus…. with that last perk actually extending the usefulness of the weapon as it materializes ammo out of thin air. With a really low charge rate and almost maxed impact and reasonable range… this is essentially the first fusion rifle that is not Sleeper Simulant that I really find myself enjoying using. I got many a kill by this one and leading the charge as I expected something to duck around the corner. Fusion Rifles can be extremely frustrating in the crucible because they are very much a “whelp I’m dead” weapon when you intercept a bolt.

Lastly the weapon I cannot stop using… literally ever is this Haakon’s Hatchet that was a vendor roll during the Taken King. I realize that the “doctrine of spamming” archetype is still pretty potent in the meta, but no matter how many versions of that archetype I get… I never can seem to do shit with them. I currently have a potentially viable Hex Caster ARC and an Unbent Tree… but I cannot ever bring myself to level them and have not deemed them worthy of motes of light. The weapon I continue to go back to however is this Hatchet with Ranger Finder, Counter Balance and Perfect Balance. This is as close to my perfect weapon as I will likely ever find, because not only do I love the appearance… but I can also draw a bead on enemy players with in and chew them up. What I love the most about the weapon is the fact that it is just as viable for me in Crucible situations as it is doing literally anything PVE… namely the Archon’s Forge. The magazine is big enough that I can often take down an entire wave of mobs in the forge without a reload.

I’ve tried so many different primary weapons… for example I managed to pull the above Shadow Price that while it does not have the perfect roll has something I can work with. With Rodeo and Perfect Balance it becomes usable… and while Icarus is generally a worthless perk I can make it work since I jump around a lot. This gun works well in any PVE situation, but it is completely useless in the Crucible, at least with the roll package that I wound up getting. I have a copy of The Continental that seems similarly reasonable, but nothing can quite match up to the “perfect for me” stat package of the Hatchet. I still want to try and find one of the Doctrine archetype weapons with Counterbalance and Perfect Balance to see if it suddenly becomes this magical weapon that folks talk about. However for the time being I will keep using Hatchet and be happy to have it. I am hoping however that after all the time I spent trying to get it… that I find that sweet spot with the Clever Dragon and it becomes my new favorite Pulse Rifle.

Tricksy Shotgunner

May 26, 2016 by Belghast

Surprise Banner

This weekend as I have said before I will be going to visit friends in St Louis, or more literally Lake St Louis. As a result we will be taking the weekend off from the podcast, and I will be taking the weekend completely off from my blog. I am not sure if I will be making a post Monday or not… because in theory if things work as intended we should be back Sunday night. One of the things I was mildly relieved about was the fact that I would not be missing an Iron Banner. There is a nasty bug going on right now that happens in a certain circumstance… which primarily involves the rocket launcher from the raid… if it happened to roll with the Clown Cartridge perk. It combined with Cocoon meant that you could have limitless regenerating ammunition and be able to fire rockets long before the heavy ammunition showed up in crucible matches. As a result they completely cancelled Trials of Osiris, and looked like they were going to cancel this months Iron Banner. However yesterday unexpectedly Lord Saladin showed up at the tower, and just like that Iron Banner was on for the month of May.

I know without a doubt that there is no way I can manage to get three characters through to rank 5 this time around because I will be out of town for most of it. However I decided to focus on my hunter that is my second highest light character. The hope being that somewhere in this process I get some decent infusion fodder if nothing else. This go around the weapons are the Fusion Rifle and Sidearm… neither of which I am actually interested in. As far as armor we have Chest and Arms again, both of which are pieces that my Hunter has. In theory I should probably be doing this on the Warlock because he could use both of them. I did however manage to ALMOST hit Rank 3 last night on the Hunter and knocked out some of the harder achievements like “top score” for a match. It was a lot of fun, and a whole bunch of that I chock up to the Lord of Wolves Shotgun. I had not really fallen in love with this weapon, but I had moved it to the hunter at one point because it was 335 light and I needed something to get my light levels up.

What makes this weapon awesome is that it works unlike pretty much any other shotgun. Firing it feels more like a pulse rifle, and at least now… no one seems to be expecting it. So many times I managed to pick people off just outside of normal shotgun range with a single burst to the head. While it doesn’t hit quite as hard as a traditional shotgun… it still hits plenty hard and the perfect balance perk seems to help quite a bit with the otherwise nasty recoil. This feels like one of those meta breaking weapons, that will probably only work well against untrained players. There are plenty of ways to counter it… and lord knows last night several people figured it out. However for guarding flags… this combined with Trip Mines seemed to be super effective. Hunters are just brutal in any of the PVP modes, and that throwing knife… so much fun to use, so much cursing when it is used against you. I am certain that I pissed off a handful of people during the night, because there was this one guy that seemed to make it his personal mission to seek me out and kill me… not always effectively which probably only added to the frustration. Its my hope that maybe I can push to Rank 5 tonight and then maybe try pushing the Warlock when I get back from my trip.

Goal Failing

As stupid as it might sound… this is the thing that I have missed the most from Final Fantasy XIV. The whole standing around and interacting while in the at the Free Company thing. Unfortunately this is also something that doesn’t really happen that often. It feels like with Heavensward there are not as many reason to keep returning to the Free Company house as there used to be. Also the FC is going through that pre-patch doldrums with not that many people being on within a given night, unless that night is Tuesday. I have been trying to clear my schedule so that I can participate in Tuesday night shenanigans and this week was no exception. For whatever reason however we struggled quite a bit, and in part I think that was because we were way short of a standard 8 player group. Towards the end we were down to five players… 1 tank, 2 healers, 2 dps which for most of the classic Extreme Primals was doable but considerably more difficult. As a tank I had to start dealing with mechanics that I usually never see like weight of the world. The other bummer was that through all of this struggle… we didn’t see any pony drops… and no real interesting weapons either.

As far as failing at my goal… it was my intention to get in every night and run at least one expert. The problem being… nobody has been around and my desire to solo queue is minimal. It is one of those hurdles that I need to push myself over, because I realize that it is not terribly likely that I will run into one of the “git gud” idiots. Most of the community is pretty damned chill, but there is a small fraction that feels just as toxic as any other. It was one of these people that halted another friends queue frenzy, and I guess I am afraid I will bump into one of those and have my happy reunion with this game halted. If you can bring two players into a four player group… you can mitigate a lot of frustration and if nothing else kick the offending party. However I wish I had a regular group of people to queue with for nothing more than a single expert, because god knows I need the currency to buy upgrades.

Flowers and Rank 5s

May 2, 2016 by Belghast

Backyard Whim

One of the interesting developments that has happened this summer is that we are spending a good deal more time outside than we have ever before. I mean we have lived in our house for seventeen years now… and we’ve never really taken advantage of our backyard. My wife and I tried to sort out why this was, and I think in truth it was that the back of our house looked bad. Before moving in during the inspections they found a lot of termite damage on the wooden siding, and the bulk of this was located on the back of the house. The repair job looked adequate at first, but as it aged… the back wall ended up looking like a patchwork quilt that even with a fresh coat of paint just looked “wrong”. So in many ways I think it just put us off from being outside and having to look at it. With the recent renovations and new siding, we also had a door installed off of the bedroom. Years ago we created a quick and dirty patio with pavers, and now it feels like everything has finally come together. Sunday morning for example by the time I had woken up and gotten out of bed, my wife was already on the patio off the bedroom reading. There have been many times during the weekends that we end up eating lunch on the back patio as well.

Now I am not exactly certain where it came from… but recently we have talked about trying to put flowers sprinkled around the backyard. Granted we have always had a brown thumb, but this resurgence of backyarding… has made us want to at least try it. This reached a boiling point Saturday when while running errands we found a couple of planters that we really liked at Sam’s Club, and you can see one of them in the foreground of the above image. Given that Sams always has a rotating stock we went ahead and picked them up, thinking that if we waited they probably wouldn’t have two of the color we wanted later. Now I had zero intention of doing anything with them this weekend… I mean because I had Iron Banner and Diablo Season 6 to play. However before I knew it Sunday we were making a trip to go get rock and potting soil, and plants. We are massively cheating in that the start of each of the pots is a hanging plant, but so far so good. Now we just have to make sure they keep watered, but the hope is that since we are spending so much time out in the backyard anyway… that it won’t be that big of a deal. For those that are curious I created a nifty panoramic shot of the entire back yard.

Rank 5 For All

Even though we spent a chunk of the afternoon working on flowers and such, I still managed to make it upstairs on the PS4 by around 4pm. This allowed me some dedicated time to play the Warlock, and push forward towards Iron Banner rank 5. I closed with the weekend with my Titan and 333 light, Hunter at 324 and Warlock also at 324 which is significant movement. I have a feeling that those last two points of light on the Titan are going to end up being pure hell. However on a similar photo from the 22nd… I was sitting at 324 on the Titan, and 314 and 304 on the Hunter and Warlock respectively. So I have to say… I am pretty damned pumped about the rapid progress. The Iron Banner as a whole was very good to me, especially in the equippable gear and infusion material categories. I managed to get all of the available gear for this week, minus a pair of legs for the Warlock. There are numerous copies of the Auto Rifle, Rocket Launcher, and even managed to pick up a sidearm and sniper rifle from Rank 5 packages. It has been interesting playing all three classes this weekend, and I have to say that in truth… I think maybe the Warlock and Hunter are just inherently better at crucible than my Titan. It feels like they have a lot more tricks up their sleeve, whereas the Titan is just pure brute force. Warlock Blink seems to be the best escape method for getting out of an engagement, and Hunter throwing knives seems to be the best finishing move ever.

As far as the sniper rifle goes that I managed to pick up, I am not exactly a huge fan. It has Eye of the Storm, Speed Reload and Spray and Play which in theory would make it an insanely fast sniper rifle, but given its low impact… I question how useful it really is. For crucible at least you would have to land so many shots to make the kill, and it is hard enough to nail a single shot let along multiple at range. I will probably end up holding onto it just because it looks really cool, but I have a feeling that sooner or later this will get infused into something else to bring up its light levels. As far as new snipers go, I am still a much bigger fan of the 333 Her Fury that I managed to pick up from my Challenge of Elders this week. High impact, paired with Triple Tap and Armor Piercing rounds makes it something enjoyable to use. Tonight I have plans to hang out upstairs at least for a bit and try my luck at getting more of that tasty Iron Banner loot. It would be amazing if before the end of the weekend I manage to get more of the 335 items to help push up other gear. As far as the rest of my Destiny schedule for this week it feels a little up in the air. I did not set foot into Kings Fall last week, and I would really love to remedy that this week. The thing that sucks is that I am now in a position where the only benefit I will see is from a hard mode run, given that all three of my characters are now over the 320 light level that normal drops.