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Xur Week Five: 10/13/17

October 13, 2017 by Belghast

This week is an interesting week namely because it answers a question I had rolling around in the back of my head. Since this is the first week Xur is returning to a planet that he had already been to… I had wondered if he would always appear in the same place on each planet. While we may not be absolutely certain… he did in fact appear up in the tree in the Watcher’s Grave area once again. I am curious to see when he goes to Titan next week… if they do follow the pattern if he also still appears in the little building that he did last time. I feel like this is going to be one of those weeks where you are either highly disappointed or really excited based on a handful of variables. So without further delay, lets rip that wrapping off and see what Xur brought us.

Every so often in Destiny 1 they had an exotic that equipped in the wrong slot… No Land Beyond the primary slot sniper or Universal Remote the primary slot shotgun are prime examples. This weeks bounty is the Fighting Lion… an energy slot grenade launcher that has a significant number of negatives that I feel have been placed on it in order to let it sit in a slot that is easier to get ammo for. The exotic perk is Delayed Gratification that allows you to do a timed explosion sort of thing where so long as you are holding down the trigger it will bounce the grenade around… then when you let up off the trigger it will explode. This continues to go into the generally fiddly and unreliable nature of grenade launchers as a whole that I went into a whole diatribe about yesterday. The most interesting perk is Thin the Herd which causes direct hits with the grenade to do significantly more damage to enemy shields… and then rapid kills to enemies damaged in this fashion cause the weapon to reload. Given that this is a single shot weapon… I feel like this is actually the perk we should be caring about. In function I think this weapon is designed to be a shield stripper and for you to swap over to it… hit an enemy decimating its shield in a single hit and then swap back to your kinetic to kill it quickly so that the weapon reloads and is ready for the next encounter. I mean this is a cool mechanic, but it also means you are losing one entire weapon slot to effectively a gimmick. I rely way too much on both my kinetic and energy weapons for moment to moment game play and cannot really afford to have a one hit wonder taking up one of those slots. Your mileage may vary of course and it is probably still worth a pick up if you have not yet unlocked this item in your collection.

Peacekeepers are an item that I would have purchased… were it not for the fact that I literally just got a pair from an engram last night. The perk on these is interesting in that it effectively gives Sub-Machineguns a stronger version of the cocoon perk. Effectively Mecha Holster does two things… firstly it causes submacs to reload when you stow them and secondly it causes submacs to swap instantly. I feel like this is screaming for a build where you are running two different archetypes of submachinegun in both your kinetic and energy slots. Were I doing this build I would go with a highly stable 600 rpm weapon like the Antiope-D or the Adjudicator in my kinetic slot, and rock something like the Royal Dispensation II in my energy slot. This is more than likely a PVP build sort of thing given that submacs akimbo is probably not the best idea for PVE engagements because you lose a lot of utility. This is a cool item that is inspired by the way Robocop drew his weapon, but it just isn’t good enough to probably get me to stop using the exotics I already have in rotation. Once again this is another if you don’t already have it, buy it to unlock in your collection sort of setup.

This week we have yet another repeat in the form of the Wings of Sacred Dawn… that actually last appeared in Xur’s inventory on week one when we were back here on Nessus. This still is one of the most ornate chest pieces that I have seen in the game and I know a lot of players seem to rock this almost for looks alone. I am still not really a fan of the Dawnblade sub class nor am I really a fan of the whole hover in air while hurling blades at your enemy that the Exotic perk gives you. If you like hanging mid air and performing attacks though then this might be the ideal weapon for you… for me that just seems to make you a giant target and I absolutely love when a warlock is using this in the crucible for that reason. It is worth the pick up for the unlock and maybe there will be a situation where this sort of gameplay is really needed in the future.

Now I present the diamond in the rough… Knucklehead Radar. There has been this trend in Destiny 2 of bringing underutilized exotics from Destiny 1 into the game, but this one sort of breaks that pattern. Knucklehead Radar has always been useful because it grants an insanely good exotic perk in the form of Upgraded Sensor Pack. What this effectively does is grant you radar 100% of the time regardless if you are aiming down the sight of your kinetic, energy or heavy weapon. The shine off of this item tarnished a bit during year three, when they introduced the Memory of Gheleon artifact… that effectively did this same thing. However for now… this is the only exotic that I use on my Hunter and if you do not already have this in your arsenal you should do whatever it takes to buy this item this week. Sure there are items that are functionally better in different situations…. but I like the fact that this is legitimately always going to be useful regardless of what sub class you are using or what situation you are in be it PVE or PVP. One of my favorite Destiny 1 items… and still one of my favorite Destiny 2 items… I just wish there was an equivalent for Titans.

Another thing I have started trying to do on my Friday morning post is show of what Xur is selling in Destiny 1, since no one seems to still be doing this thing. This week he can be located on the Reef, and apparently talked to his Destiny 2 counterpart as he is also offering the Knucklehead Radar. I am not going to talk a lot about his offerings but instead just list them out for any players who are still trying to complete exotic sets from the first game.

Legacy Heavy Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Helm of Inmost Light – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Knucklehead Radar – Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Nothing Manacles – Warlock Gauntlets – 13 Strange Coins
Hereafter – Sniper Rifle – 17 Strange Coins
Last Word and Sequel Ornament – Hand Cannon – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Truth and Prototype Ornament – Rocket Launcher – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Autos and Grenades

October 12, 2017 by Belghast

Apart from the recent jaunts back into Final Fantasy XIV brought on by our amazing Free Company house… I have been spending most of my time this week with the Iron Banner. There are a whole lot of things that have changed from Destiny 1… most of which for the better. For me at least in D1 Iron Banner was this holiday event in part because I knew that I could get gear that would help bump my light level up. Unfortunately that is not the case with D2, and this is all part of a larger discussion I want to have at some point about the general problems with the way progression feels. In D1 the only way you made progress through the ranks of the Iron Banner reputation was by winning, which meant that if you hit a frustrating unlucky streak you could stall out complete. Gear drops were rewarded as part of bounties that you could get on each character, and as random drops at the end of matches. On average I seemed to get a new piece of gear every three or four matches… but you also had dry spells where you could go upwards of ten games without seeing anything. In D2 this situation is largely resolved by shifting everything to token based loot. It takes 20 tokens to get a package with one iron banner exclusive item and then the potential of getting a random filler legendary and/or some shaders. You gain 2 tokens for a loss and 5 tokens for a win, so if you can manage to get on a streak you can rack up several packages in a row. Additionally there are challenges that can be completed each day and turning those back in to Lord Saladin rewards 15 faction tokens.

My goal so far has been to earn at least 2 packages a day, and in part this is only because I cannot really handle a bunch of crucible in a row. So far in Destiny 2 the length of time I can reasonably play crucible matches back to back lines up almost perfectly with the amount required to get the Call to Arms engram. My biggest problem is that I need a breather every so many matches because I notice that my own abilities start to wain greatly as the stress and anxiety sort of catch up with me. As a result I notice that I am completely all over the map when it comes to my ability. I also have certain maps that I am just not good at, or do not fit whatever it is that my play style actually is and as a result my Destiny tracker profile is a mess. The biggest problem for me is that the core reason why I spent so much time playing Iron Banner was the overarching goal of increasing my viability in the game by getting more powerful gear and infusing it into stuff. With this gone… some of my drive to keep playing is largely toast and at this point my goal is to get 10 packages so I can unlock whatever it is that I earn by doing so. Right now I have opened five packages and gotten the same auto rifle twice… which admittedly was the primary weapon I was interested in… as well as helm, chest and a grenade launcher. I thought I would take a moment this morning and talk about the two weapons I have seen so far.

The Forward Path looks like the Origin Story which is ultimately what initially got me excited about the weapon, but winds up being a vastly different weapon archetype. It lives in the 600 rpm bracket which means its most direct competitors are Scathelocke, Ghost Primus and Martyr’s Make… at least of the rifles you see in regular rotation. All of these weapons are really closely grouped on most of the stats but The Forward Path has significantly more handling than most of the other weapons in this class. The big take away from me after using this a good deal is that it feels really reliable and easy to hold on target… especially with a moving target. It benefits significantly from the Tap the Trigger perk which grants increased accuracy and stability the few moments after pulling the trigger. When I am taking down targets at max range I tend to habitually pump the trigger firing off short bursts… a habit that I picked up from playing the early FPS titles and this weapon plays directly into that instinct. The only negative is… this feels like a PVE weapon… that is being rewarded by a PVP event. There is just not a case where you would not choose to take Scathelocke or Origin Story in your kinetic slot because High-Caliber Rounds and Rampage are just that good. However Armor-Piercing rounds makes this thing a beast for strikes and other PVE content where the mobs are shielded because this gives you the ability to easily break shields with both Kinetic and Energy weapons. I am super glad to add this weapon to my arsenal, but it is right now a weird mixed bag for me… and in truth I am probably going to rock Ghost Primus/Scathelocke in a lot of the situations I would normally use it.

Grenade Launchers need a great deal of work. As it stands this is my least favorite weapon type and is voted most likely to get sharded on sight when one drops into my inventory. I’ve found exactly one Grenade Launcher that I actually like using and that is the one from the crucible/packages Play of the Game. The reason why this weapon shines above all others is because of a single perk… Proximity Grenades causing the payload to detonate when it gets close to a target rather than hitting it. Grenades are insanely unwieldy and bounce like mad… making them completely unreliable other than being used “for funsies”. The Day’s Fury suffers from all of these problems with grenade launchers in general… but is increased by having a fairly small blast radius and perks that don’t really help make up for the weaknesses of the genre. You have Mini Frags which increases reload speed and magazine size at the cost of blast radius, or Spike Grenade that inexplicably increases stability. When I think Spike Grenades I think some sort of a claymore mine action where it hurls shrapnel into nearby enemies when it explodes… which would have been awesome and maybe would have made this weapon reasonable to use. As it stands this just ends up being vault clutter that I will end up holding onto because it was hard to get… hoping maybe they will turn Grenade Launchers into something useful in the future.

Have you gotten anything cool from the Iron Banner? What are your thoughts of the event so far? Drop a line in the comments and let me know.

Xur Week Four: 10/6/17

October 6, 2017 by Belghast

Happy Xursday! Since this seems to be a fairly popular feature I will be doing a run down of what Xur has this week. Since the Flashpoint is in the European Dead Zone he is found over in the winding cove area. For characters who have yet to hit 20… you can get there by just going west out of town and winding along the coastline… but in truth I would warn against doing this because his items degrade in power based on your level. This time Xur is a little tricky given that the previous three weeks he has been in some sort of a sheltered area, and this time he is up on top of a cliff that you are going to have to do a bit of wall jumping to get to. Another thing to watch out for… the area he is in is patrolled by a group of dregs on pikes. Additionally there may or may not be a public event active at the drop zone in the winding cove area. Essentially this is probably the most dangerous area Xur has been so far, just be careful if you AFK because Vandals could in fact hit me with their wire rifles from where he is located.

First off he is offering the Vigilance Wing, a weapon I am extremely excited to see because I have yet to get one from an engram. This is an odd Osiris themed weapon that you occasionally see in your “killed by” notes in the crucible and now that I see the perks I understand why. The exotic perk for this weapon is Harsh Truths which does several things. Firstly it fires a five round burst which is a bit unique because most pulse rifles fire three round bursts, and hakke weapons are the outlier with four round bursts. A five round burst for reference means a single precision burst kills a second tier mob like a Vandal. The second part of the perk is that when a nearby ally is killed you gain health regeneration and increased movement speed… something that happens constantly in the crucible. Seeing as I just literally got this weapon today I have yet to take it into the crucible so I am uncertain how much difference this makes. I did however run around the EDZ and complete a public event to get a feel for it and my opinions are a bit mixed. Statwise it is probably most similar to the Lincoln Green, with a very odd 530 rounds per minute rate of fire and surprisingly high 33 impact for that rpm. Traditionally the high rate of fire weapons have an extremely poor range but this one has 68 and a medium range sight to go with it making it fairly decent in longer range engagements. The other side of the coin though is the unique sun themed sight means it is extremely annoying for close range fights. The last stand perk plays well with harsh truths in that it gives the weapon improved performance if you are the last member of a fire team. It seems like it is well worth the legendary shards if for no reason other than to get the unlock and a good Kinetic pulse rifle is a bit of a rare item to find.

The Insurmountable Skullfort is another of a list of items that has returned from Destiny 1. Its bizarre because almost all of them were considered second tier items, which makes me wonder if the devs were simply unhappy with the amount of play time that they got and carried them over to potentially give them some new life. Transfusion Matrix causes kills with arc melee abilities to trigger health regeneration and restore melee energy. What this means in play is that there is a really interesting build you can do with a Striker Titan where you have near 100% up-time of the insanely powerful arc shoulder charge ability. This is literally the only reason to use this exotic and is probably well worth the pick up so that you have it in case you ever want to try that build out. Personally since I love my Auto Rifles… I am likely to almost always use the Actium War Rig because it benefits whatever spec I might be in at that time and doesn’t hamper me from switching freely.

Nezarec’s Sin is another really limited use case item because its exotic perk does one thing. Abyssal Extractors causes void damage kills to increase your ability energy recharge rate. I feel like the primary use case for this item is going to be in the crucible and specifically in control or similar modes where you are wanting to stand your ground or camp out a location. This is of course a useful for Void warlocks, but also is triggered by void weapon damage. This means you could in theory build a specific layout with a void energy and a void heavy and be constantly dropping your healing puddle on the ground. I ran this item for a bit of a time and the ability recharge rate increase is significant. Overall however I tend to prefer Eye of Another World that highlights priority targets and has a flat increase to the recharge rate of melee, grenade and your ability. The helm however is well worth a pick up in case you really need to be the one providing an on demand puddle.

And we have our very first repeat item of Xur in Destiny 2. Foetracer helm was offered in week two and my feelings are probably much the same. The exotic perk is Relentless Tracker which causes any mob you scope in on to acquire an X target that you can see through obstacles. Additionally marked targets like this take additional damage when they get to low health range. This is a generally useful item and I am sure there are specific cases where it is extremely solid especially for low health target damage. Personally I am a huge fan of Knucklehead Radar because I like having my radar up while I aim down sight regardless of the weapon I am using. The Foetracer however is probably a much better damage option because at least it does something to increase your output. I didn’t pick these up in week two, but I did this week largely to get a collection unlock. Probably a solid item if you are needing a reasonable exotic to use.

All in all I feel like this was a pretty solid week for Xur. I’ve been wanting to play with the Vigilance Wing as it is an exotic that I had never seen from an engram, so I am super happy about him offering that. The two weapons you can get from an engram that I am still missing is the Sweet Business Gatling gun auto rifle, and The Prospector grenade launcher. As far as armor pieces go… there are still a sizeable number of unlocks on each character that I will hopefully see Xur offering in coming weeks. I am mildly annoyed that on week four we are already getting duplicates, which reminds me all too much of the number of times we have seen weapons like the Hawkmoon or Last Word being sold. What are your thoughts? Are you impressed with what Xur has been offering or are they all old news to you by the time you can get your hand on them? I am interested in your thoughts. One last thing… I decided to start including Destiny 1 Xur in these posts because I feel sorta bad about that incarnation stuck in a game that people aren’t hyped about anymore.

In Destiny 1 Xur is located in the Vanguard area of the Tower. I am not going to go into a lot of detail on this, but the major items he has to offer…

Suros Regime Auto Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
ACD/0 Feedback Fence Titan Arms – 13 Strange Coins
Celestial Nighthawk Hunter Helm – 13 Strange Coins
The Stag Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Legacy Primary Weapon Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo Weapon Bundle with Superspy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust
Zhalo Supercell with Not A Toy Ornament – 30 Strange Coins and 25 Silver Dust

Leveling Addendum

October 5, 2017 by Belghast

A few days ago I wrote a post entitled “How I Should Have Done It” where I attempted to lay out the way I plan on leveling with the release of the PC version. Today I am going to talk a little bit about a brief addendum on how I should have been pushing my light levels all this time. Yes I realize it is now called “power” but after three years of the original Destiny I just cannot bring myself to say that. Functionally for me I have one class that I care about significantly more than the others… and that is Titan. I am what you would call a Titan main, and some other players may or may not have similar inclinations. After 270 the only real way you make forward momentum is through the weekly milestones and the Luminous Engrams that they drop. I am running at least three milestones on each of my three characters, and as a result I am slowly ratcheting up the light levels of them all. However I noticed a pattern… I would start out on my Titan and then slowly work my way through my other two characters and the gains from each would help push up the next character. What I should have done is started doing these every week in effectively reverse order of preference. That way my Titan main gets the maximum benefit from the other two characters Luminous Engrams. Instead what is happening currently is my last string character… usually my hunter… winds up reaping the bounty of potential light level increases because I wind up handing her all of my weapons that got upgraded while pushing the other two characters.

The other thing that I wanted to talk a little bit about this morning is some more of that “Dark Math” that I spoke off some weeks ago. This is one of the things that drives me insane with Destiny 2 is that the math doesn’t always work out like it should. Part of the confusion is that the light level on your character sheet is a lie. What I mean by this is that all of those legendary mods that you may or may not have in your gear are artificially inflating the total. You can use a third party tool like Destiny Item Manager to see what your “base” power level is, but generally speaking it is 5 light lower than what is showing in your character sheet. So right now on my character sheet I show 301 light, and in DIM it is telling me that my actual base level is 296.4. When things get really confusing is that drops don’t work entirely like advertised. In theory as I have seen it explained it should work something like this…

Blue/Purple Drops/Engrams/Faction Packages — These should drop -5 light levels from whatever your current base power level is.
Exotic Engrams — These should drop at base light level +5 so effectively somewhere around the same level as shown on character sheet.
Luminous Engrams/Powerful Rewards — these should drop base light level +10 or 5 over what is shown on your character sheet.

I’ve been told that the Exotic Quests that you can complete reward an item that is 18 levels over your base light, but I didn’t throw that in the bullet point list because I don’t with 100% accuracy that this is actually a thing. The problem is that these are largely just guidelines… and you are going to see +/- 1 level when actually getting gear to drop. For example the above shown engram is decoding at 291 as it should… 296 base light minus 5 gives you 291. However all last night I got handfuls of 290 items instead of 291, and each time I have been at a plateau it sort of fluctuates back and forth between the number it should be and just slightly lower than that number. Its the fudge factor that I find maddening, because no matter how locked down you think you have the formulate there is always this chaotic nature to it. Side note… I am superstitious and feel that Tyra Karn gives me better loot if I go back to the farm and decode my engrams there.

One of the big positives of the night is that I managed to get my first max light item. The only problem is… it is kinda a crappy one. I mean I am not a huge fan of the grenade launchers in Destiny 2, and while there are a few really good ones like Play of the Game… most of them are awkward to actually get to perform. Fighting Lion is one of those awkward to get to perform ones… and even worse it is by some quirk of exotics an energy slot weapon and not a heavy. Sure it is cool to have the damage potential of a heavy weapon in your energy slot… but I like energy weapons. When I am not rocking either The Number or Uriel’s Gift I miss it horribly… so I am largely holding onto this only because it is the highest available light item for that slot I have. I have yet to do the Luminous engrams on my Warlock and I am hoping maybe just maybe I get another max light weapon while doing that. I really need to get some nightfalls in this week because I could use the extra chance at decent gear that they offer.