September 2017 – Page 4

Dark Math and Infusion

September 19, 2017 by Belghast

I finished the night last night at 287 power, putting me well within striking distance of at least 290 this week… and with some additional luck in getting some really good drops 300. For the moment I have standardized on the gear set that I am wearing and I have been eating everything that gives me slightly higher light levels to pour into it. This morning I thought I would talk a bit about the infusion game in Destiny 2 and my frustrations with it. The longer I play Destiny 2 the more I think of it as a continuation of the previous game to the point of largely feeling like a big smooth reboot. There is a lot of gnashing of teeth over this point but I have reached a sort of equilibrium in my attitude. I realize there are going to be some people that cannot get past this fact and I am guessing they really were not that big of a fan of the original game in the first place. There are certainly things that I am not the biggest fan of, but overall I am really enjoying my time spent wandering around… and weirdly looking forward to starting over with the PC launch and doing all of the things that I wish I had done this time around. For me at least the chronology of Destiny looks a little something like this.

Year One – Destiny Launch/Dark Below/House of Wolves
Year Two – The Taken King
Year Three – Rise of Iron
Year Four – Destiny 2 Launch

Now back to the original topic I wanted to discuss… Infusion. During Year One it was not really a thing even though there was a limited form of it available in the ability to “power up” weapons with ascendant shards… which was less a version of infusion and more a version of delayed gratification making you level your weapon further after getting it. Side note… they are doing something like this system with an exotic shotgun that you get from the raid but that is a discussion for another day. During Year Two they introduced the infusion system but made the calculations behind it extremely frustrating. The closer you got to the level cap the less light you were able to squeak out from each infusion. I remember keeping a vault full of random gear to step new items that I got up… without losing a bunch of potential light in the process. For those who didn’t live under the system… say you had a 300 light level exotic item.. and you wanted to infuse a 335 item into it… the resulting item would be 324. If the first item was a legendary item… you would end up with 328 making this weird penalty on using exotics. During the tail end of Year Two and all of Year Three this changed and you started to get the complete face value of every infusion, meaning in that same scenario… of a 300 exotic and a 335 infusion fodder… you would end up with a 335 exotic gaining full credit for the item you were pouring into it. The previous infusion system was pretty straight forward in that any primary could infuse into any other primary… with the same being true for armor pieces. Meaning I could throw my trash at my alts and help funnel their light level up.

Now we scan forward to Year Four and a bunch of things have changed that make the system as a whole way less beneficial to the players. Year Three was pretty much the pinnacle of the system as far as I was concerned, it felt good and didn’t cause needless strife to the players. In Destiny 2 however… they made a bunch of tweaks that seem like nonsense. Firstly they removed the element of simplicity, meaning it was no longer slot based infusions and instead depended upon the specific item type. This means if you need to bump up your auto rifle… you are going to need another auto rifle. Similarly it means that if you want to pour additional power into your hunter arms… you are going to need another pair of hunter arms. To further confuse things they added a system of mods into the game, and at face value these seem like awesome things. It lets you take one piece of gear and tailor it to your exact needs without having to wait for the ideal item roll to drop. Where this complicates things however is when it comes to legendary mods, because not only do they add perks to an item… they also had 5 power levels. This means that if you have a 200 item without a legendary mod and a 225 item with a legendary mod… feeding the 225 item into the 200 item will result in a new power level of 220 because the mod gets consumed in the process. The first time this happened to me I was confused as hell and extremely angry because it felt like they had taken a step back to the lossy days of item infusion.

Where things get even weirder is the fact that in the past there were hard item level caps that you could not breach. For example right now in Destiny 2… blues stop giving you upgrades initially a 260 and purples at 265. That however is a somewhat fungible barrier, because as your power level trickles up… so does the level at which items start dropping. I am not entirely certain why things drop at the level they start dropping… but for example last night the maximum power I could hit was 287 but the blues I kept seeing were 277. The lowest power item I have equipped is a 282 helm… so I do not think it is based on that given that there was a period of time where I kept getting items that I could infuse into my lower armor pieces to keep pulling my total up a bit. There is some manner of dark math happening behind the scenes and I think that is what is making this process feel less certain and because of that less “good” than the previous system. We reached peak infusion during year three and all of these tweaks just feel like they were screwing with a solved problem. I am hoping at some point we revert back to just having slot based infusion rather than item type based. The whole item levels and drops thing however I am not even sure how to straighten that out because it seems super wibbly wobbly. All of this said however… Bungie has tweaked things significant given time and I have a feeling that they will also tweak this product to roll back some of the weird parts. It is just a little frustrating at this point however to be entering what is legitimately year four of the game, and it feels like they forgot some of the lessons they learned during the first three years. I mean maybe this is the influence of Blizzard, since they seem to love fixing systems that were not broken by ripping up the pavement and installing brand new and improved pavement that requires a completely different car to drive on it. Whatever the case I am still loving the game and have been spending almost every non-work waking moment playing it… but there are just frustrations that build up as with any new experience. I thought I had gushed for awhile… and its probably time for me to start unpacking some of my baggage as well.

Destiny 2: Favorite Weapons So Far

September 18, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend was a weird mix of leveling characters and slowly incrementing that light level up there. Saturday I spent most of my time working on the Warlock and I managed to get the light level up to 282, then I turned around Sunday and caught my titan main up and can now hit 283 if I swap a bunch of gear around. I potentially should have taken a new screenshot this morning, but largely I took this one to show off the gear that I finally stabilized with, or at least enough to feel like I could use some shaders to blend everything together. I’ve been using the Doom Fang Pauldrons as my exotic armor piece because of the benefits it gives to Sentinel. The shield throw is rather potent and giving me an ability to do more than one per super is something I can seriously get behind. The rest is a blend of Wild Wood armor and Kerak Type 2, which gives me the sort of heavily armored but also a bit piecemeal look that I was going for that the Doom Fang Pauldrons already had. Another thing that I spent a significant amount of time was sitting on Io and testing weapons out trying to determine what I want to keep and what I absolutely hate to use and can shard. As far as the “why Io” part it just happened to be where I was when I decided to start down this rabbit hole. The end result is that my vault is greatly less cluttered, and that I have settled on a number of what I consider my favorite weapons. I thought this morning I would talk about some of them.

Scathelock is the weapon that I keep going back to and for all intents and purposes can be called my primary gun. I loved this weapon in the beta and one of my happiest moments was when I got my first copy from Devrim Kay, and quite honestly from that point on its been in pretty heavy rotation. It is really hard to compare weapons from Destiny 2 to Destiny 1 but as far as feel goes this is somewhere in the range of my beloved God Roll Haakon’s Hatchet and Zhalo Supercell. It is extremely fast and relatively accurate… and if you land precision shots you can melt four or five oncoming minion type mobs without reloading. The only negative is that there is sometimes this weird pull to one side… which can sometimes make it a bit hard to track mobs that are moving. However I have learned to adjust and completely love this weapon, especially with the cool copper and black shader setup that I am rocking right now.

The other weapon that has become my default energy slot item is the MIDA Mini Tool. You get this weapon as part of the new quest chain that ultimately leads to the MIDA Multi Tool, and I absolutely love the look of it. My default crucible loadout tends to be auto rifle and submachinegun, and for the most part I tend to treat subs as the new shotgun. They offer you a way to completely melt a target at close range in a very short period of time. As far as for PVE purposes, this also melts enemy shields and tends to be a bit more accurate than the average submachinegun is. You are going to use this in close to medium range engagements however, because there is no way you are accurately hitting something across the room from you. This thing is awesome for melting Vex Minotaurs and Cabal Centurions specifically.

Yesterday I heard this weapon referred to as the new Gjallarhorn, and while in some ways I agree with that… I am afraid no weapon in Destiny 2 is ever going to be nearly as powerful as the Gjallarhorn was. Merciless however comes really close and if you absolutely need to destroy a boss target, then this thing is going to be your go to. It has a really tight cluster of shots as far as Fusion rifles go and this means that more than like a single shot is going to take down any non-boss yellow bar. When it comes to bosses however that’s where the perks of this weapon really shine. I talked about this a little Friday when I did my Xur post, but Conserve Momentum is the exotic perk and it causes non-lethal hits to speed up the weapons charge rate. This is EXTREMELY noticeable and after a few hits the weapon starts to feel more like a pulse rifle than a fusion rifle. It is going to be extremely useful for fights where you have a limited burn window to take down as much ammo off the boss as possible, and if you use hunter dodge or titan shield reload you can keep up the damage without breaking the effect. I’ve managed to get a couple of these so far from Exotics and I have a feeling as we go deeper into the game this is going to be that weapon everyone wished they had gotten when Xur sold it.

I am really not much of a fan of scout rifles in general. They are great for using as a psuedo sniper rifle, but I would just much rather have a harder hitting hand cannon or a more buzzsaw like auto rifle to whittle down mobs. The Manannan sorta plants itself in a territory that I actually really enjoy using. Once again it is super hard to compare a weapon stat for stat to Destiny 1, but this feels like a much harder hitting Year 2 Hung Jury SR4. Explosive payload makes this weapon help quite a bit on add duty which is where I feel scouts tend to fall down a bit next to the weapons I am used to using. It’s weird, that during Destiny 1 I was not really a big fan of most of the Omolon weapons… and WAS a huge fake of Hakke. This time around it is pretty much the exact opposite… where I am finding myself sharding very few Omolon weapons and sharding almost every single Hakke item I get my hands on.

Speaking of Hakke weapons… here is one that has absolutely earned its slot in my inventory. Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun… is a mouthful but so far it is hands down the best shotgun I have come across. The primary reason being that just like Destiny 1… Full Auto is where it is at and this thing is super useful for pouring a bunch of hits into a boss in quick succession. It has shockingly decent range and a decent magazine size for a shotgun. I’ve sharded a bunch of shotguns because they never really gave me much reason to use them… and I was completely spoiled by Destiny 1 weapons like the Invective or Party Crasher +1. This shotgun however absolutely sits nicely on the same level as those weapons, and if you get it… you might think twice before tossing it aside as you are probably not going to find a better shotty.

I’m going to close things out with something that I happened to find while cleaning out my vault, that I apparently hurriedly tossed in there without really trying it out. This is another one of the few Hakke weapons that I have kept and I did so largely because this hand cannon has damned near maxed out impact at 92 out of 100. The only weapon I have with that same stat is the exotic Sturm… that I just picked up and have yet to really use much. Basically think of this weapon as a Legendary Sturm much the same way as Eyasluna from Destiny 1 was a Legendary version of Hawkmoon. If I had to choose between using Sturm and using Merciless… then I am absolutely going to be equipping Pribina-D and having that exotic in the heavy slot. More than anything though this weapon proves that you should in theory at least give some test time to every single legendary weapon that comes across your path. You are going to find some gems that at first glance you thought nothing about.

AggroChat #173 – Vampire Pirate Dinosaurs

May 21, 2019September 17, 2017 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Kodra

Tonight we are down both a Thalen and a Tam and get off on some meandering topics. We start off with some discussion about the Final Fantasy XIV Rising event that just finished and the introduction of the cheap dungeon. From there Belghast gets pretty deep in the woods talking about infusion mechanics and Destiny 2. We branch off from there into a discussion that is really hard to describe. Functionally we were having a chat about MMOs and whether or not the devs are obligated to provide a uniform experience for all players and all activities in a game. This branches out into a bunch of directions from the PVP/PVE debate to how uneven some of the artifact weapon quests felt in World of Warcraft Legion. Kodra talks a bit about his recent journey into the iOS port of one of his favorite Vlaada Chvatil games… Though the Ages. Ashgar gives us some updates on his experience playing through Monster Hunter Stories and we delve a bit into the new Magic the Gathering expansion Ixalan.

Topics Discussed

Final Fantasy XIV – The Rising Event
Destiny 2 Mechanics
Providing Uniform MMO Player Experiences
Through the Ages iOS
Monster Hunter Stories
Ixalan Pre-Pre-Release

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Happy First Xursday!

September 15, 2017 by Belghast

One of the tidbits of information that we knew going into Destiny 2 was that Mister Shadow Tentacles himself… Xur the Agent of the Nine would no longer be showing up in a social space. That meant that we would need to find him somewhere on a planet. At first I thought this would be somewhat of a scavenger hunt, where we had to scour the planets to find where he was hiding. However that does not appear to be the case because they put a familiar IX logo on the director map. This week Xur is located on Nessus in the Watcher’s Grave area, and in this case he is up high in a tree next to a golden vex scannable item. The other things that we didn’t know were the level of items he would be bringing…. and the cost. We knew that legendary shards would be the universal currency for lots of different things and now replace the familiar chase item… Strange Coins. It appears that everything is 270 and I have verified with a few videos of Xur that regardless of the players power level he seems to be handing out that same static level. The basic set up is similar to Destiny 1 in that he is bringing a single weapon and a piece of armor for each class. This week we have…

Merciless – Fusion Rifle – 29 Legendary Shards
Raiden Flux – Hunter Chest – 23 Legendary Shards
Doom Fang Pauldrons – Titan Arms – 23 Legendary Shards
Wings of Sacred Dawn – Warlock Chest – 23 Legendary Shards

If you only have the Legendary Shards to pick up a single item… I would say buy this thing. I was lucky enough to get it as an Exotic Engram drop while leveling… and this thing is amazing. It has a weird perk on it that speeds up the recharge rate until you get a kill. This combined with a perk that increases your damage if you reload after getting that kill.. makes it a machine to melt mobs. Especially on bosses the fact that it keeps getting faster lets you pour some insane damage into the boss in a very short period of time. This thing completely decimates the ship that flys in on the Cabal extraction event for example. This was one of the first legendaries that I infused up, simply because I like using it that much.

I went ahead and picked these up because I didn’t already have them. Effectively when you are in your super mode… kills with the shield bash reset the cooldown of your shield throw. I could definitely see this being useful since in general you only get one throw per sentinel super. Similarly melee kills help give you super energy… and since I run around punching everything already this should be a good exotic for me. The only problem is… I am currently using another exotic just for the light levels so in theory I need to find something to replace it with before I can rock these.

For the Warlock Xur is selling the Wings of Sacred Dawn, which is one of the fanciest chest slot items I have seen in game so far. The truth is however that I largely just bought this for the item level to help give my Warlock I am currently leveling a power boost, so I can start double dipping on those sweet sweet powerful engrams. The perk is Tome of Dawn, which causes you to suspend midair while aiming while you are in your super. Precision hits extend this effects duration allowing you to stay up in the air frozen longer. Since I don’t really like Dawnblade as a subclass and went Voidwalker the moment I got it as a drop and have never looked back… this really is all about the 270 light level for me and nothing else. If you like Dawnblade your mileage may vary.

I had to swipe an image of this one online, because I have not even begun to start my Hunter leveling… since it is probably the class I like the least in Destiny 2. I went ahead and picked this up however because I had the shards… and once again it will be a power level boost when I finally get around to leveling and equipping a third class. The perk on the item is called Synapse Junctions… which causes quick successive attacks with Arc Staff to increase damage output and the duration of your super. In truth this is probably a good item for me since I mostly like the Arc Staff super ability. Again however… its really about the 270 light.

One of the slight disappointments comes not from the exotics themselves… because I really do think that he brought a decent load out of items. What I am a little disappointed in is the fact that he ONLY brought the exotics. Previously in Destiny 1 there were a ton of other items that he sold… most of which are no longer still in the game. What I would have loved to see him sell in their place however were maybe some really nice gear mods to help those players who have yet to hit that 280 plateau get there. Additionally I would have loved to see him offer Fireteam Medallions as an alternate way other than Eververse dust currency to get them, since they appear to be the replacement for three of coins. The best method of getting Exotic engrams appears to be running one of those and chaining heroic events. Speaking of which… I need to do a lot more of that. Anyways regardless of anything else… I am just happy to see the Friday tradition of finding Xur continue into this new game.