fps – Page 17 – AggroChat

Lobbing SIVA Charges

January 11, 2017 by Belghast

Last night did not go entirely as planned, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a pretty amazing night. The original plan that I had in my head was an attempt at completing the Nightfall bounty on as many characters as I could for shots at the Icebreaker. However as the day went on that plan slowly morphed into going to my very first Wrath of the Machine raid. So around 8pm last night we managed to pull together the six players needed for the raid and I shifted into full on learner mode. Destiny is one of those games where I am constantly amazed at the level of dedication the community has. A raid in Destiny is this complex sequence of events that have to be completed in a specific way… and the first time I step into one of the encounters it is full on information overload. I find it interesting how fast the community as a whole crowd sources the solution to the fights, sharing tidbits of information and ultimately mapping strategies for how to complete them. I say this because the fights themselves are actually messaged somewhat poorly as to what you should be doing at any given time. Since I am very much a “learn by doing” player, it means for the first few raids I ultimately feel completely lost.

What is extremely interesting about Wrath of the Machine versus Kings Fall is that the “roles” are not necessarily fixed. In Kings Fall you could essentially put your most seasoned player on the job of doing whatever was the most important task on a given fight. While there was a certain measure of randomness, like who got chosen to run the spark on the invisible platforms… others like the person getting Golgoroth’s Gaze were very much something you had in your control. As a result to some extent it was much easier to carry a new player through and allow them to see the fights in motion, before they were ever expected to take up a key roll in the fight. That is very much NOT the case in Wrath of the Machine given the game shifts the roles around quickly and while you might be dpsing one moment, the next you might be needing to toss SIVA charges at fixed markers. The hardest of these fights for me to grok was the Aksis encounter where the raid divided up into three sides, and the game randomly empowered three players at a time… sometimes requiring you to shift around quickly to cover a side if it did not have an empowered player. The end result is that new players ultimately have to learn quickly because you never know exactly when that key role is going to fall on your shoulders.

There were several points during the night where I absolutely know I failed at various mechanics, but while moving through the content I started to get a feel for what I was doing wrong and how to correct it. Now with Kings Fall, most of the encounters were fairly easy… but it was the jumping sequences that were the bane of my existence. With Wrath of the Machine, the encounters themselves seem to be the challenge, and while I died a few times during the much shorter jumping sequences they didn’t see anywhere near as nerve wracking as disappearing ships over of a giant open chasm. Last night was also important because it marked the first time I had really done large group content with Tequila Mockingbird my clan. It has been over six months since Axioma clan was dissolved in a fit, and [TQMB] was formed out of the ashes. It definitely feels like we wound up with the absolutely best natured of folks for the reboot. Within minutes I felt right back at home, which I guess is a strange statement considering I have been proudly sporting the clan tag since the moment the reboot happened.

So while I had no real intent of raiding last night, I am super happy to have seen the content now and to have gotten some of the really awesome stuff that drops there. There seems to be a massive problem with duplicates from the SIVA key caches. On the first boss encounter I got the Ether Nova fusion rifle… and then turned around and got the same thing from the cache. From the second encounter I managed to pick up Arms, that I am extremely happy about given that they have the crazy heavy ammo trait. From the third encounter, I picked up an Artifact which is decent but it is really hard to get excited over an artifact when I am apparently now swimming in 400 light ones. From the final phase of the Aksis encounter I walked away with the Genesis Chain auto rifle, and then spent a key and got an exact duplicate. Past that I wound up with three exotics from the run: 4th Horseman, Hereafter, and Crest of Alpha Lupi. The first two turning into shards since I don’t really like either weapon, and the last from an engram serving as infusion fodder for the Twilight Garrison I had yet to upgrade.

I spent a bit of time after the raid running around in the Plaguelands patrol zone to play with both the Auto Rifle and the Fusion Rifle and I like both. The Genesis Chain feels really awesome when you get headshots and cause the firefly to proc since it has a unique sound effect that goes with it. The Fusion Rifle… largely just feels like a competent Fusion Rifle. I sincerely doubt I will be giving up either The Branded Lord or Saladins Vigil for it, but it is nonetheless a reasonable weapon that is probably going to get ferried off to one of my alts. I have heard it works really amazingly in Crucible, so I will have to give it a shot there. It is bizarre how I have gone from being someone that NEVER used Fusion Rifles, to being someone who largely now favors them over Shotguns for close to medium range engagement. The other really awesome thing that happened is that I am now flagged to do the Outbreak Prime quest, which honestly could be an entire post in itself. It turns out that Lexy is also stalled on this quest, so that gives us Hunter and Titan… and we just need to find a Warlock to ride along with us since that quest requires you to group up all three classes to progress. Wondering if maybe some point this weekend we can knock out the required pieces so that by the time the reset rolls around we are working on the final step which is the run the raid again.

Exotic Towels

January 6, 2017 by Belghast

This morning is a truly bizarre morning because we went to sleep not even thinking about snow… and then it apparently happened over night. I live in a town on the northern border of Tulsa, and I say apparently because there is zero snow on the ground here. However there was enough in Tulsa proper and the southern communities for the public school system, including the town my wife teaches in to call a snow day. She is super pumped because it means she has a day to try and play catch up, and me… I have a weird commute ahead of me because I know at some point on my drive in things will go from peaceful and snow free… to a winter wasteland. I promise I did not intend to write three days in a row about Destiny, however that is ultimately what is happening. Since the launch of the dawning I have not touched any of the supposedly lucrative bounties from Commander Zavala, which are in theory the only way you can currently get the Icebreaker. Now before I took a break Squirrel, Jex and I had this tradition of running through some content on Thursday nights given that it was a big empty space in our calendars. Originally the tradition was to run as many characters through the Challenge of Elders as we could in an evening, but last night we rebooted it for the purpose of running a Nightfall.

From there we chain ran six heroic strikes in a row, because we were already considering doing it… and I have been sitting on the Champion of the Cult quest for ages. This is a quest you get when you reach level 25 with any of the given factions, and it rewards an exotic version of your class item. For Titans this ends up being a rather ornate looking towel… and I still question the good folks at Bungie for thinking that a flag football towel was a great idea for a glass item especially when Hunters get amazing and iconic looking cloaks. In order to finish the quest you have to do content while decked out in your factions gear… wearing a shader, emblem and class item for that faction. The quest ultimately requires you to do the following…

Slay 500 Minions of the Darkness
Complete 10 Heroic Strikes
Slay 250 Crucible Foes
Win 10 Crucible Matches

Now this used to be considerably easier because folks were constantly chain running heroic strikes. However with the changes to the system that essentially make them mini nightfalls… folks are just not running them as often which meant that if I was ever going to get through this step I was probably going to need a group of friends to do it with. However since I had already done the more annoying part which involved Crucible wins and kills… there was zero chance that I was going to actually abandon the quest. So for months it has been sitting in my progress tracker taunting me, until my good friends Jex and Squirrel helped me knock it out by chain running six heroics in a row.

Now earlier I mentioned that the weekly bounty from Commander Zavala was supposedly the only way to get an Icebreaker currently. Unfortunately however this week was not my week, and instead of getting an exotic I wound up with a relatively decent version of the Shadow Price legendary auto rifle. Now I had been sitting on one of these in the bank that I was using on my warlock, and it falls into the medium rate of fire/medium category. The biggest problem with this archetype is the fact that it generally has a low magazine size… for example this weapon has one of only 25 which is really too small for most Auto Rifle friendly activities. This roll however is good enough that it bears further notice since in the first slot I have Range Finder which greatly boosts the range while aiming down the sight… something I am never not going to do. In the second column I can choose between Perfect Balance or Hand-laid Stock to give it extra stability…. and after playing around last night I think I prefer Perfect Balance. Finally in the last column I have Third Eye, which is a way for me to break my dependence on my crutch… the Memory of Gheleon and equip my far better itemized artifact from Year 2 Kings Fall raid. Once you get used to having tracking all the time while aiming your primary… it is really really hard to go back to NOT having it. I still do not think this is going to come close to replacing my beloved Range Finder/Perfect Balance/Counterbalance Year 2 Haakon’s Hatchet… but it will make a decent primary to swap over to my Warlock and Hunter alts. The real take away of the evening however is that I had a blast… and I am hoping we can get back in the habit of doing the Thursday night shenanigans.

Finding the Forge

January 5, 2017 by Belghast

First off I have to start this mornings post by talking about the surprise I got last night. For awhile now I have had my friend AmmosArt working on a series of avatars to use for anything AggroChat related. When I do the title cards it always somewhat bugs me that we don’t have a set of Avatars drawn by the same person, because I think that would end up looking a lot nicer. As a result I commissioned her to create a set for the main cast, and we kicked it off with mine… however I think she has a few of them waiting in the pipes as well. Since I have “Fantasy Bel” thanks to the project that Tam started, and now “Realistic Bel” thanks to the prize commission from Faebelina I thought it would be kinda cool to have a “Sci-Fi Bel”. So when she asked me what I wanted drawn for my AggroChat avatar I sent her this overly complex idea for me wearing a bunch of named armor pieces from Destiny. Here she has expertly rendered that idea with me, a giant flaming Iron Lord axe, my Sunbreaker hammer and Nolandroid. I could not be happier, and while she was concerned about how the fire effects would feel… I think they work amazingly well. Thanks once again Ammo for taking mad ramblings and converting them into a picture format. You should also check out some of her other works on her website or on her daily art tumblr.

I have to say… it is truly bizarre getting back to the task of blogging in the morning. It is 6:23 and I have consumed my first cup of coffee and am trying to get on about the business of blogging like I know what the hell I am doing. Today is a day I have been dreading because it means that I have to give up the comfort of my sofa blanket cocoon and venture forth into the cruel and now very chilly world. Of note… I have been off work since Friday December 23rd. So I have had two blissful weeks that have allowed me to get completely out of the habit of functioning on any sort of a schedule. Those weeks have been shockingly busy with only a couple days where I could truly hang out dawn til dusk in my flannel pajama pants and pretend the world didn’t exist. During that time we dealt with a handful of crisis that involved changing out a leaking faucet in our bathroom… and then ironically rushing some big air mover fans to my mother in law who had a major leak in her front bathroom. In between that there were numerous Christmas celebrations, and an attempt to properly recognize my father’s birthday… which also coincides with New Years day. I have not even really gotten around to making some proper resolutions, and while I don’t really buy into them much, the New Year is a decent time to start new things. At the moment however my mind has turned towards preparing for Pax South which is coming up in a few weeks.

The Forge Trick

Yesterday I posted a mammoth Destiny guide of sorts that I had been meaning to create. I have a number of friends in various stages of getting sucked into the game… and when I try and give them advice it often comes off as mad ramblings filled with a bunch of topics that they don’t quite understand yet. The guide was my attempt at writing something for someone just getting started but also still focused on pushing through the light levels as quickly as possible. As I said yesterday… I failed to do 99% of the things mentioned in the guide but I am following a similar thought process on my Xbox One account since it is largely starting from zero. One of the things I mentioned doing was Archon’s Forge… and you might of thought to yourself “But Bel, that is a Group Activity… how did you solo it?”. Some time ago my friend Shadoes gave me some tips on how to reliably make Archon’s Forge spawn with a group in progress. Firstly you have to understand how patrol zones in Destiny work in order to make this happen. Each named area is essentially a match made zone that the game tries to pair you with other players also in that area. However you usually zone in and out too fast for the game to effectively do this, so there are things you can do to force the game to match you up with other players. Inside of the Archon’s Forge there is a path behind the forge that leads down to an area that a number of missions and patrols send you to, but is effectively open at all times. You can see this path as the opening with the ride SIVA cables coming out of it in the above image.

What I find works is to run down this tunnel to the next area, you will be able to tell you have transitioned by a title card coming up identifying that you have entered “The Warrens”. From here I tend to kill the various splicer mobs that spawn in… which may include a handful of 2-4 Vandals, 2-4 Stealth Vandals, 2-4 Dregs… and potentially a Captain. The mix varies slightly, but essentially I spend enough time in this area to clear out whatever happens to have spawned. From there I slowly walk back up towards the Archon’s Forge, and for me personally it helps for me to crouch while walking just to force myself to slow down. In Destiny I am so used to constantly sprinting that I find myself doing it without realizing it. Essentially you are trying to give the game plenty of time for it to notice that you are entering an area with an event… and that it should match you up with additional people.

If it works, you should hear the familiar Fallen Klaxon as you near the tunnel leading out of the area and into Archon’s Forge. If you make it to the Forge without getting matched into an open world group… then simply head back down to the Warrens and start the process over. I would say 99% of the time by the moment I reach the top I hear the Klaxon and am up and running with a viable open world team doing Archon’s Forge. The longest so far it has ever taken to get matched is three trips up and down the tunnel but your mileage may vary depending on the time of day you are trying and your platform. I’ve not tried this on Xbox Live, but considering the person who tipped me off to this method plays there I am going to assume it works fine as well. Basically doing this method is going to allow you to hop into the Plaguelands and farm the forge until your heart is content, just remember to keep going to orbit every so often to make sure you are not losing loot. Your mailbox can only hold 20 items… and while it takes longer for your inventory to fill up now that greens turn immediately into materials… it still happens frighteningly fast while doing the Forge.

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.