Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

Destiny 2

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

This week we have a phenomenal week for Xur at least as far as I am concerned.  He brought a bundle full of goodies that I either had never gotten to drop or did not yet have on the PC.  As a result this week is an extremely expensive week for me personally.  As is always the case he can be located on the Flashpoint location and in this case that is Titan.  You can find him in the rig section in a building devoid of enemy spawns.  That said be careful because they will absolutely stand at the doorway and shoot you while you are hanging out and doing your business with your face tentacled friend.  You might need to do a little pre-clear before you duck inside.  Let’s get on with the goodness.

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

Hard Light as a gun has always been in the marginal category as far as usefulness goes.  It was never a bad weapon but it also never really stood out in the pack.  The year two Hard Light feels better across the board but still is far from the best Auto Rifle that you could be using in your energy slot.  That said the it is still a really interesting weapon because of its ability to shoot around corners and the fact that it lacks damage fall off.  That is however a deceptive thing to say given the way Hard Light works in that it fires a volley of projectiles that go bouncing around as they hit surfaces, meaning you can in theory “curve the bullet” and fire around corners.  While the gun doesn’t have damage fall off there is absolutely accuracy falloff the further from your target you get because you increase the likelihood that it will encounter something else and cause the trajectory of the original round to shift.  All of this is still in the fun and interesting but not amazing category until you bring into play another intrinsic ability of the weapon, and that is to shift the elemental damage type by swapping around your perks.  This isn’t near as handy as the playstation exclusive sniper rifle that has a keybind allowing you to do it on the fly… but it does serve as an excellent prism/match game weapon that can shift to whatever element you happen to be lacking.  If you do not already have this it is well worth the pick up and I know I personally am definitely going to be grabbing this for the PC since I’ve yet to get it to drop otherwise.

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

The Synthoceps are another fun and interesting item, but maybe not best in slot at anything.  If you are a Titan you probably like punching things…  and these gauntlets improve the way you punch things.  The exotic perk Biotic Enhancements increases your melee range and improves melee damage when surrounded.  That last bit can be a slight improvement if you only have a few targets around you to a massive improvement when you are fighting packs of things like thralls.  If you combine this with something like the striker melee build…  you can do a number of very interesting things and cause massive amounts of damage as a melee titan.  Similarly this would benefit the sentinel spec path that causes you to regain health on melee kill, but not nearly as much given that spec cannot really chain melee abilities in the same fashion as Striker.  This is an item that I had yet to get so I am definitely picking it up for the unlock, and more than likely going to try out a striker melee build around it.

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

Do you really still want to punch all the things even as a Warlock?  Karnstein Armlets are a set of exotic gloves that are effectively all about punching things as a warlock.  They have a built in version of the devour perk, though as I understand it significantly weaker that causes you to gain health recovery on melee attacks.  Note that it says attacks and not kills so in theory just punching things are going to help slowly regenerate your health.  While doing this punch happy life you are also slowly increasing the regeneration of your melee, grenade and class ability.  I am absolutely certain there is a build out there that could make the most of this… and I feel like double dipping with devour is maybe a great option.  Sometimes you look an an item and think to yourself…  I can build something around this and that is definitely the case with these gauntlets.  If nothing else I wanted to pick them up simply because I did not have the unlock in my collection.

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

The Lucky Raspberry is a returning item from Destiny 1 that more or less kept the same ability.  Probability Matrix the exotic perk causes your arc bolt grenades to chain significantly further than in their default state.  Additionally dealing damage with your arc grenade has a chance of recharging your grenade.  This means that if you drop your arc grenades in a large pack of mobs, it is extremely likely you are going to get a proc and return your full grenade charge.  This makes this item a beast for doing something like the Nightfall on the weeks where every kill counts towards gaining back time on the clock because you can wait until arc burn and become a mad bomber dropping grenades everywhere.  The rest of the time however you are probably not going to see enough mobs tightly clumped to really make this worth using.  Occasionally in the team shot environment of the crucible you can drop one and take out an entire team…  but that is going to be the exception rather than the rule.  Still a very interesting chest to pick up and at least add it to your collection.

Destiny 1

Xur Week Ten: 11/17/17

Xur had a similarly interesting day in Destiny 1 as he brought a couple of my favorite items.  Firstly the Armamentarium is the chest piece that I want back for my Titan more than anything because it simply gives you a second grenade charge.  Right now I am so enamored with striker titan largely because it is the only spec I can have this functionality back.  Similarly once I found the Bones of Eao I never looked back because it started enabling me to quad jump as a Hunter, a piece of utility that beat out every other possible exotic that I might want in that slot.  The Warlock helm is largely forgettable because it is their version of the Alpha Lupi chest that Hunters and Titans have…  but Xur did bring the Universal Remote which is the very odd primary slot shotgun.  Lots of stuff worth picking up if you don’t already have them… and I would say for Titan and Hunter these are absolute must haves.  Enough so that I am legitimately considering grinding out the strange coins so I have them on my Xbox One account.  Here is the full run down of what he is selling.

  • Legacy Chest Engram – 29 Strange Coins
  • The Armamentarium – Titan Chest – 13 Strange Coins
  • Bones of Eao – Hunter Boots – 13 Strange Coins
  • Light Beyond Nemesis – Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
  • Universal Remote – Primary Shotgun – 17 Strange Coins
  • Dragon’s Breath and Tigershark Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
  • Nemesis Star and Meteorite Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

 

Week Three Thoughts

Week Three Thoughts

Yesterday was if I am counting correctly the third reset we have experienced on the PC version of Destiny 2, and as a result that seems like an interesting time to take a sort of postmortem of my experiences so far.  In fact I apparently also made a similar post three weeks after the PS4 launch, that could serve as an interesting comparison.  At that point I was sitting at 291 light with the rest of my characters sitting in the 285ish range, and now I am knocking on the door of 305 with my Titan sitting at 304 without completing any of his weekly milestones, and the rest of my characters in the 300-302 range.  In fact it was not until October 18th if I am looking at my posts correctly that I could hit 304 which I believe was somewhere in week six after release.  There are a bunch of variables at work here, namely that I am trying to get a Nightfall every week and I did not do that before.  Similarly I am dabbling in the raid and did not do that before…  however the raid itself is not providing much in the way of gear yet other than a higher than normal level engram every week.  What I am missing however is that after the second or third week I had access to a raid engram every week on the console side and we have yet to finish the raid on PC side but are getting close.  I think when you balance everything out I have had access to roughly the same amount of gear so it isn’t simply that I am getting more of it more frequently.  According to WastedOnDestiny.com I’ve spent 126 hours playing the PS4 version and 84 hours so far playing PC…  so all things considered I have maybe been playing a little bit more on the PC than I was on the PS4 at this point.

Now the piece that is much harder to account for is ancestral knowledge.  By playing Destiny 2 on the PS4 I essentially gave myself an extended beta test period with the game and by playing it as hard as I did I gleaned a bunch of knowledge that I then attempted to share on my blog.  I know how things work and more than that I know how to best spend my time at least in the early game when I probably wasted some potential power gains on doing certain things too soon.  In the console I was in a rush to see and do everything and now I more or less know what I like playing with and what it takes to get those things again.  As a result I am now sitting on stockpiles of tokens that I can then use later as leverage when playing the 300 engram game trying for max level loot.  I for example am sitting on 131 EDZ tokens largely because I know there isn’t much on that loot table that I don’t already have.  On the converse I burn down my stock of Crucible and Vanguard tokens as soon as I get them because I am still looking for weapon drops from those activities.  I could also be doing a lot more, like for example I don’t think I have touched Ikora’s memories at all during the PC launch and they are an additional draw at Vanguard loot that I should potentially be tapping.  Essentially I progressed so much faster than I was expecting to…  and I would chock that up to experience were it not for the fact that a lot of the Aggrochat crew are also progressing at similar levels.  Are they simply getting the benefit of my experience as well, or did the PC game loosen the throttle a bit and let everyone’s item levels drift a little higher than was the case on the console?

Week Three Thoughts

The Achilles heel of the PC launch seems to be something that was almost completely overlooked.  Destiny 2 added this fairly detailed clan system that allows players to benefit from the actions of other clan members…  but does absolutely nothing for helping them communicate.  What I mean by that is that while we have a weird text chat system on the Bungie website… that does not exist anywhere in game.  The only options for chat in game are /fireteam, /team, and /whisper leaving out the very critical /clan.  I mean I realize Bungie is still in denial that they made an MMO but this is the most basic functionality that PC MMO gamers expect from a game.  Blizzard introduced this whole “social” section of the battle.net client…  but that doesn’t work in game either leaving this huge gap for now to glue people together.  Prior to launch I shared out the Beyond the Light Discord as a sort of multi-clan hangout and several weeks in I am still thinking that is going to be the best option to help people connect up for groups.  I feel like they largely did not consider how vastly different the PC community would be and what sort of cultural norms we would expect going into the game.  The end result however seems to be “use voicechat” as the way to connect up with folks…  and there are just times where I don’t want to be talking on voice chat.  My dream for Blizzard games is to have some sort of guild chat that spans across all of their games and allows me to talk to people playing Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft while I am playing Destiny 2.  However that dream is seemingly still a long time coming, but in the mean time…  Bungie please put in /clan.

 

Diablo 3 Season 12

Last Thursday was the start of Diablo 3’s Season 12. Once again I abandoned my paragon levels and stash full of ancient legendaries so I could start fresh. This time around I am playing a necromancer. My thought was this was the only class I haven’t finished all the set dungeons for, so if I can get all the pieces I need I can knock that out as part of the season journey and check off one of my long-term goals.

I haven’t been very engaged with D3 lately, and even though I’m participating in the season it is not my gaming focus. Still, I managed to knock out the first four chapters of the season journey over the weekend. That earned me my cosmetic rewards, which include a nice portrait and a sweet set of druid-themed wings.

I don’t have any plans to push much farther into the journey, but I’ve been enjoying myself enough to keep playing for now. I got a carry from a friend which helped beef up my paragon levels a bit, and can solo T8 without breaking a sweat. I don’t love the blood magic theme of the free set necromancers get this season, but I don’t have a full set of anything else yet. I need to get a few more key pieces of gear so I can handle T13 and push greater rifts. We’ll see if I stick with this season long enough to do that, or if I wander back to Destiny 2 where all my friends are right now.


Diablo 3 Season 12

Holy Crap A Sword

Holy Crap A Sword

This wee the Faction Rally event has been going on in Destiny 2 and as I stated earlier in the week I was absolutely expecting Dead Orbit to win.  They had the worst weapon during the first Faction Rally and won regardless, and I just assumed that was going to be our fate in life from this point out.  However it feels like Bungie attempted really hard to stack the deck in favor of New Monarchy by offering up the only faction based sword weapon as the prize for repping the faction.  Basically in my opinion Future War Cult has the best weapons on average and New Monarchy has the coolest looking gear and shaders…  then Dead Orbit is the also ran faction of having both gear and weapons that look scavenged.  However Dead Orbit has black/grey/white shaders which at least in Destiny 1 tended to make everyone want to faction with them.  Hell I did it for awhile until I started on this whole Future War Cult kick.  Basically I had resigned myself that I would log into the game this morning and we would have a crappy grenade launcher waiting for us to purchase for far too much glimmer.  Instead I have a sword slung across my back and some pep in my step as a result.

Holy Crap A Sword

Last night we ventured forth into the Leviathan again, and as a bit of a favor to myself and Grace we used a brand new raid seed so that we could get in and at least get some tokens for the week.  Sunday night while I was downstairs playing WoW and watching Walking Dead a crew made their way into the Leviathan and made a repeat performance at dogs, and then put in some work on figuring out the Gauntlet event.  Last night we once again downed dogs, this time on our second attempt and were able to move on to work on the Gauntlet as well.  I like that all of the fights so far feel extremely repeatable, as in once we get the dance down we seem to be able to do it without much effort.  The most challenging part seems to be that the dogs themselves are erratic as hell and seem to behave oddly at times making it a little slow.  I fully expect that once we have the fights down solid we will be able to clear all of the Leviathan in an hour, which means we can do multiple trips in each week to get folks through it without a lot of effort.    I realize we are months behind in doing so… but I am looking forward to being able to beat Calus on our own terms and unlocking raid engrams for the rest of the clan.

Holy Crap A Sword

The bulk of last night was spent sorting out the mechanics to the Gauntlet and then attempting to refine what we had learned and turn it into something that was effectively repeatable.  The last few attempts were really close to winning and the ultimately challenge seems to be during the “everyone runs” phase of the fight, keeping those of us who have not been running the orbs up to that point alive long enough to get enough orbs through the gauntlet to actually win.  The last several rounds we were getting both runners through the tunnel each time, meaning in theory we needed fewer people to actually make it to the end of the fight successfully.   However the death timer is ultimately what got it as myself or someone else failed to make one of the jumps.  Functionally in my case this is going to be one of those “practice makes perfect” situations because I learn largely through doing.  The other thing that I need to do a little research on is how best to handle the waves of adds because I was doing the Axe platform and it felt like I was just straight up getting shredded by grenades all the time.  I did notice that my adds seems to stop coming out sooner than the other platforms so I am wondering if there is something to that.  The last few attempts Tam and Shiana that were doing the runs were floating to help out the other platforms clear adds and it went so much more smoothly.  I look forward to finishing this fight so we can get started on the Slug Emperor himself.

Holy Crap A Sword

Lastly I thought I would share this over on my main blog.  For those who are unaware we have another site tied to our AggroChat podcast that effectively rolls up and syndicates all of the content from all of the hosts.  What this means in practice is it is generally my daily posts, perforated by the occasional post by Grace and then our Sunday podcast releases.  For the past two years our banner has not at all represented the cast of the show and there has been a project to fix this getting the always amazing @Ammosart to do individual character shots.  Firstly we have Ashgar as a high tech bear, then myself as a Destiny Year 3 Iron Banner guardian, Grace as the octopus pirate queen, Kodra as Commander Keen, Tamrielo as a Red Mage, and finally Thalen as a sort of futuristic marksman.  Basically I had each member work with Ammo directly to do whatever representation they wanted to use going forward, and I think the set turned out great.  I finally got off my ass and pulled it together in a new site banner and will start using them on the title cards that I create each week for the podcast.