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Crusaders and Guardians

May 1, 2016 by Belghast

Season Six

While I greatly enjoy the concept of the Developer Appreciation Week… I am always somewhat happen when it is over. During the week I feel like I have to be making posts along that them, so when things happen that I want to talk about… I end up pushing them down until the week is ultimately over. Now as I sit here for the first unfettered post in awhile… I am finding it super hard getting started. The biggest happening of this weekend is that Friday evening at 7pm my time the newest Diablo 3 season began. For season six I opted to roll a Female Crusader, because I had so much fun playing as one last season. I have this general goal of getting a male and female of each class eventually, but that also means that someday I will have to finish playing that mage and attempt to play a witch doctor. The only problem I am running into is that it feels like what made the crusader so amazing last go round… was the fact that the Invoker set was just phenomenal. Now that I have my six piece Akkhan set, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as powerful as I did last season. In fact while the set dungeon was a breeze for me last go around, this one is only causing chain wipes. Granted I am not nearly as geared as I was at this point last year, in part because I am not getting drug by Carthuun.

When the season started we ended up with six people on the guild discord, and as a result we split into two three player teams. Ultimately ending up with me and Grace playing together, with Solaria and Kodra joining up for short periods of time. Towards the end of the evening Kylana was with us as well as the other three player team ultimately disolved with Ashgar got pulled away for work, and Callalil went to bed. I myself only lasted through level 60, because that was ultimately the point at which I was starting to fall asleep at the keyboard. So I went to bed around 11pm and the rest of the group pushed onward. Yesterday morning Grace and I ended up playing together, and she helped me get the rest of the way to 70, and unlock my gear set. She was sitting over 100 paragon levels, which means that more than likely Carth is sitting around 300ish. At some point I will join in his Torment X shenanigans because I really need some gear. All in all it was a great start of the new season, and at some point I will sort out my spec and with gear should be able to solo more stuff. Right now the challenge is finding thorns on gear, and I have ended up burning through all of my materials trying to enchant away useless stats and turn them into thorns.

Banana Split

Another awesome happening this weekend is that yesterday while waiting on folks to show up for the AggroChat game of the month show, I managed to push my Hunter to rank 5. This is the first month that I managed to get to characters to rank 5, and I’ve since started working on getting the warlock there as well. My hope is that after I finish knocking out this blog post I will head upstairs and work on that. Iron Banner has been really damned good to me, letting me amass a lot of gear and weapons that will ultimately either get used as is or serve as infusion fodder. In theory I should probably be doing matches on my Titan with the hopes of getting more 335 items, but it feels good actually working on my other characters. After playing the hunter I can absolutely see why they do so damned well in the crucible. Throwing knives are amazing, and I had so much fun yesterday finishing off people with them. I still feel like golden gun however is the least exciting of the supers, but I am getting used to using it to optimal efficiency. There was one point where I managed to get three kills in a row with it and earned the way of the gun trophy.

Over the course of the week I have picked up so much gear, with the latest acquisition being a 335 Tormod’s Bellows. The only challenge here is that I am not sure if I will keep it or infuse it into one of my heavy weapons. I could really use a 335 sword… just saying. The funny thing is… I got the 335 drop on my absolute lowest level character while working on the Warlock yesterday. So I am wondering if maybe the buff in faction that you get for pushing up additional characters does something as well to the chances of getting max light drops as well? In any case another Iron Banner has come and almost gone, and I have loved every minute of it. I finally sorted out why I like PVP in Destiny and never have in other games. There is something about getting real loot at the end of matches, as opposed to a currency in lieu of loot that can maybe someday add up to be enough to get something interesting. I love random chance, and I love being rewarded with interesting stuff. More so than that… I love getting not quite perfect items… and then trying to figure out how to use them to my advantage.

Lucky Banana

April 28, 2016 by Belghast

Strange Dream

This morning I am opting to make a more traditional blog post rather than an other DAW post because… well the DAW posts take a lot out of me. It takes a lot of effort to summon up this hardcore reminiscing, and after doing four of them, I need to take a day off. I am sure I will return tomorrow with another segment. Though it seems like not that many people are joining in, and it was a little disheartening the other day when a friend of mine called it a marketing gimmick. In truth we forgot about it this year, and I felt that it was bad that we forgot about it. Normally speaking this thing is supposed to happen during the last week of March, but instead I rescheduled it to happen the last week of April because I didn’t want a year to go by without this thing happening. I feel it is important for us as players to remember that the games we often complain about… are made by actual human beings who just want to do a good job. So it only seems fitting to spread a little love around during a single week in the year. I don’t really get anything out of doing it, and I am certain Scarybooster didn’t when he first started doing the event back in 2010. So if it is a marketing gimmick it is a piss poor design.

I’ve been pretty sick over the last few days, a combination of allergies and asthma, so last night I decided that I really needed to turn in early and get a full nights sleep. I had a really strange dream as a result and I can only assume it is due to me not exactly being all here right now. So I had this dream that I was being thrown a birthday party, but instead it was all of my internet friends. There is a lot of the dream I am already forgetting but there were some really strange moments. For example my friend Tam that I record AggroChat with, had this circa 1980s Lisa Frank folder with a rainbow colored tiger on it… and inside he had written on big chief notepad paper… these summaries of different pen and paper character archetypes. For some reason Markiplier was there, which I found odd because I only really know of him from various Pax panels. He ended up getting me a gift called a “Cat Tether” which is supposed to be I guess like a cat leash? The box looked like it came from the as seen on television aisle at Walgreens. The rest of the dream is pretty fuzzy but I thought it was strange enough that it was worth writing about. In any case I feel more rested this morning and feeling a little less horrible, so I guess it worked?

Iron Banana

The other reason why I wanted to take a day off from DAW is that I want to talk about the current Iron Banner. Largely I want to talk about it… while there is still enough time to people to get into Destiny and participate. In the past loot from Iron Banner felt like it was few and far between, but it seems like Bungie cranked the switch up to 11. On average it felt like every three to four matches I was getting a piece of legendary gear. This week the items up for grabs are boots, class items, Tormod’s Bellows Rocket Launcher, and Haakon’s Hatchet a bullet hose type Auto Rifle. The loot that you get as drops seems to be limited to these four items that are available. From the moment you hit rank 1, aka after your first match/bounty turn in you seem to be able to get either the Class Armor or Boots. When you hit rank 3 the weapons start dropping, and I got my first Hatchet from that next match after hitting the rank. The rank 3 package sadly is only a 320 artifact, which isn’t all that good for infusion, however all of the items that you end up getting are. For most of the matches I have been sitting between 327-330 depending on my weapon loadout, and all of my gear so far has been 332-334 with sadly no 335s as of yet.

Over the course of my matches so far I have managed to get four Auto Rifles, six boots, six titan marks, and a single rocket launcher. Now the dropped variants have wildly differing rolls, but I managed to latch onto one that wasn’t too horrible and have been using it for most of the banner. Hip Fire sadly is useless on an Auto Rifle, but the other stats on this one are pretty great. Right now I am a little over half of the way to Rank 5, and the goal is to buy the vendor roll which is phenomenal and infuse this 334 into it. The vendor rolls for pretty much everything are really good this time a round, and if I actually cared about rocket launchers I might consider picking that one up. If I ever use a rocket launcher I am going to use Truth for the tracking ability, because I suck at using rocket launchers. Other things I have figured out, is that 330 seems to be the current cap for faction packages, because during the course of the last few weeks I have turned in a ton of Future War Cult, Vanguard and Crucible packages… and essentially everything I have gotten stopped at 330. The funniest thing is that the last three Crucible packages have all rewarded me the exact same primary scout rifle The Saterienne Rapier, one of which was worth holding onto because it had hidden hand and explosive rounds… however the bulk have served as infusion fodder allowing me to bring up weapons I will actually use more often. As far as Scout Rifles go… I am most likely to use my brand new Hand of Judgement that I pulled out of Challenge of Elders this week.

The Banner Falls

April 5, 2016 by Belghast

Plans Change

When I left work I had every intent to go home and play Iron Banner on the Titan all night long, in the hopes of getting some really awesome drops. That didn’t exactly happen, but I did end up playing Iron Banner up until the point when I decided to go to bed a little early. The change however was that I ended up playing on my Hunter. There is a clear pecking order between my Destiny characters. The Titan gets all the really good stuff… the Hunter gets the next tier of stuff… and the Warlock survives on scraps from the other two. Since I had already gotten the Titan to Rank 5, I was curious just how fast I could get the Hunter up there in levels. I had heard there was some sort of an alt bonus, that helped to push your second and third characters up faster, as well as now having access to both the rank 5 shader and emblem which also increase reputation gain. I made significant progress and after a half dozen matches I was sitting at Rank 3 staring down the barrel of Rank 4. Had I stayed up a little later I might have been able to hit Rank 5 all in one night. The big part was that I simply did not have the skill or the time to be able to complete the “brown” bounties on the Hunter since they take a lot of repeated effort. In theory next Iron Banner I might work on the daily bounties for both the Titan and the Hunter each day, and by the end of the week I should have enough progress to turn in those weekly bounties.

The huge positive however is that thanks to the gear that managed to drop while running matches, I can now hit 302 on the Hunter. In total I managed to pick up both a chest piece at 306 and a set of arms at 285… the later I will probably push up whenever the infusion changes happen. I really like the Iron Banner armor look, and I have a feeling that before long that is what my characters will be decked out in. However the upcoming taken look stuff, will probably be what I put on my Hunter since of the three looks that is the one I like the best. Honestly of the Taken gear the only one that I really don’t like is the Titan, and that is largely because of the dumb helmet. The horns on that helmet look like the radar array off of a cruise ship or something. This gets into a complaint I have with Destiny as a whole. It is MMOish but only sorta… and the thing I wish it offered was a true cosmetic system where you could actually customize your appearance without changing your gear. That is one of the things I like the most about The Division is the ability to change my look and have it largely be independent of what I happen to be wearing. Sure there your only options are various pieces of clothing, but in Destiny you could create some really unique armor sets. However I guess with the lossless infusion system, it will make customizing your appearance significantly easier.

Ponytail Titan

Tonight is yet another Rookie Raid and it has become that night of the week that I really look forward to. There is of course a certain amount of trepidation as well, namely when it comes to the damned jumping puzzles. As I have said before Destiny manages to trip my vertigo worse than any game since Mirrors Edge. However I push through it in order to be able to get the tasty drops. This go around what I am really hoping for is to be able to walk out of the raid with the machine gun. I realize that I just put a bunch of effort into pushing up my Bretomart’s Stand to make it raid viable… but I just keep hearing that the raid machine gun is pretty much better in every way. You get hooked on guns with the Cocoon perk, and knowing that whenever you swap weapons there will never be an awkward situation where you have to reload. This would definitely make dps time in the light bubble on Oryx more efficient since you could swap weapons and pour shots into him while waiting on the machine gun to load itself. Cosmetically I am going with a sort of White Knight meets Hive Knight look, and I dig it… even though I kinda wish I had the rest of the Iron Banner gear. When the infusion changes go in I will likely be swapping over to the Iron Camelot shoulders that I picked up from Saladin. I am hoping next go round he brings boots so I can finish out the appearance.

The only regret from this past week is that I didn’t actually connect with any of my friends to talk them into helping me finish my sword quest. It is not like I can actually use it in the raid, since on several of the fights I actually need to use an exotic primary. However it would just be nice to know that I am done with it. I also missed another opportunity for the Black Spindle, because I believe that was last Friday night. I was so focused on Iron Banner that I didn’t even notice until I got an email from another friend asking if I was around to make attempts on it. I have a bit of a mental block now about that mission, since I have failed so many times at it. The other side project that I would love to work on is finding someone to recruit, so that I can get those sweet sweet recruit a friend bonus items. I absolutely want a Tron Sparrow, but unfortunately I can’t just do the World of Warcraft thing and set up a second account. A lot of the achievement steps require you to be doing stuff together. I’ve wondered for awhile now what it would take to get my friend Vernie hooked on this game… because I think he would absolutely like it. The only problem is he is a die-hard keyboard and mouse guy… just like I was before the siren song of Destiny. The thing is… all the joy I used to have playing PC shooters when we would do LAN games after work… I am having with Destiny.

Iron Banner Results

April 4, 2016 by Belghast

Evaluating Guardians

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend looking at this screen or one very similar. As I stated the other day, this is my first time really doing the Iron Banner weekend content, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. The only sadness that I feel is that it seems like I am deeply leaning into the game as many of my clan mates are leaning out. I did however get to run a few matches with the Axioma clan crew, but unfortunately I had someone come to the door and had to run quickly to go answer it leaving them somewhat stranded with some dead weight. The biggest take away from the weekend is that I am not nearly as bad at PVP as I always thought I was. There were several maps where I lead the score count, which is a pretty cool feeling. I rarely if ever however have the best KDR. I am super objective based and there are many times I will bum rush an objective just to keep the opposite team from having time to secure it. It feels like maybe the rest of the folks in Iron Banner are not necessarily doing this. I saw an awful lot of deathmatching in areas that were nowhere near objectives and since the name of the game was control… it felt like I spent a lot of time trying to make up for team mates that clearly had no interest in actually playing the “game”.

As the weekend went on I felt like I learned a lot. I fell for far fewer “traps” where people were trying to bait me into attacking and ending up getting picked off easily. I also started to learn the maps significantly better. There are still a few that are the bane of my existence… namely the Firebase Delphi, and the Dreadnaught map are ones that no matter how many times I play them I just feel like I struggle. Then there are maps like Widows Court and Bannerfall that I always seem to do really well on, but I guess this makes sense as there were always maps I did better on in Enemy Territory or Soldier of Fortune 2. I mention those games because in many ways playing Crucible and Iron Banner reminds me of all the time I spent playing shooters during the late 90s and early 2000s… and it has been shocking how fast certain aspects of it has begun to feel “natural”. I’ve been wondering if I had done myself a disservice all of these years by not playing PVP in MMOs and now I am starting to realize that it is just a different experience. MMO PVP just does not feel anywhere near as fluid as Destiny, and because of that I am doubting if I will feel anywhere near as good. That said I do absolutely intend to take some time and give World of Warcraft battlegrounds and Rift PVP another chance.

Spoils of War

Yesterday afternoon I managed to hit rank 5 with the Iron Banner and in doing so got quite the cache of goodies. I of course bought the cosmetic rewards first… because I kinda have a thing for emblems and shaders. Based on all the various emblems that I saw during the event, I am wondering if they alternate between designs or something? As far as the shaders go both were thoroughly obnoxious and I doubt I will use either, but I still had to pick them up regardless. The weapon I was most interested in this go round was Finnala’s Peril the Hand Cannon because I am really hoping that with the April changes we see some quality of life improvements to that type of weapon in general. Though if there is any evidence by the number of times I was killed by a Hand Cannon this weekend, I would say they are mostly doing okay. Other than that I have always liked the look of the Iron Banner Titan gear, so any of that I could pick up would make me happy. At some point I would absolutely love to be rocking a full set of the gear so that I look like the tank that I always thought I was. I still have one full day to try and get some drops, and I have a feeling that tonight I will be upstairs on the PS4 doing just that.

Iron Companion Plate – 290

Finnala’s Peril – 285

Iron Companion Helm – 312

Iron Shell – 310

The gallery shows off some of the drops I managed to get through the weekend. In total I have gotten three different versions of the chest piece, and the one that I am showing off in the above image is not actually the highest level version I got. I am now trying to level up a 309 light version to be my primary chest piece. Similarly I have seen I believe three of the Hand Cannon drops but sadly most of them are pretty crappy stat wise. I did manage to get one that was worth holding onto, but hopefully tonight I might see some with better rolls. From my Rank 5 package I managed to get a really awesome 312 helmet and a 310 Ghost Shell… then about fifteen minutes later got a 320 version of the same shell. So all in all I managed to get at least three pieces of gear that I will be holding onto and making part of my permanent set. As far as purchases, I picked up the Iron Camelot shoulders, and Bretomart’s Stand Machine Gun. I kinda went back and forth on the Machine Gun as to whether or not to purchase it. Comparing it to the Legendary machine gun that I had been using, I actually thought it was a little better and have now infused it up to usable levels. I gotta say I really enjoyed Iron Banner this week and I have a feeling that I will be trying to do this next time it comes around. Sure it took up a lot of my time, but I really enjoyed that time spent. I can also already tell that once Iron Banner is over… I will be back to playing a lot of Crucible.