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Sword Logic

April 9, 2016 by Belghast

Conversions Away

Last night I had every intent of logging into The Division and playing it all night long. If nothing else I knew I needed to pop in long enough to convert all of my materials to orange or blue quality. This Tuesday there is a pretty horrible nerf coming down the pipe in crafting. In the case of high end crafting it is more than doubling the amount of materials needed to craft something through the form of an extremely lossy conversion of materials. Right now it takes 5 greens to make 1 blue, and 5 blues to make 1 orange crafting material. Which has always felt like a pretty fair method. However after the patch it will take 10 green mats to make a single blue, and 15 blues to make a single orange. To make matters worse they are also nerfing the amount of materials you get off of deconstruction which right now usually yields two materials… but after the patch it will more consistently yield a single material. Essentially all of the love I have for Destiny and the quality of life improvements… I am feeling the opposite for Division and what seems to be some very unfair changes for the casual player. As a result I highly suggest you get into the game and convert everything you have up to the highest tier of material you can make.

Unfortunately there is no batch conversion option so you will be holding space bar and hitting escape a bunch to burn through your materials. It took me about twenty minutes to convert everything up because I really did have a lot of materials. I need to focus on farming some more weapon nodes this weekend so that I can hopefully convert up at least enough to get 10 for one weapon. Right now high end craftables take 8 orange mats, and after the patch they are going to require 10. I didn’t notice any mentioned nerfs to the world nodes, so I am wondering if these changes are designed to get players to prioritize going after them instead of simply killing a bunch of stuff to deconstruct. In any case I know today/tonight I plan on farming as many nodes as I can get my hands on with the hopes of converting it all upwards into shiny orange materials. In the process of screwing around yesterday I did manage to complete a mission and hit 23 so at some point I really need to make the final push to 30 so I can join in all the fun end game “reindeer games”.

Unintended Exotics

As unexcited as I am about The Division patch…. I am insanely so about the Destiny patch. Yesterday I was super pumped to see what the next Playstation exclusives would look like, namely I really really want that new exotic sniper because it has an almost Tex Mechanica vibe. I also think the new Jovian Guard armor set is probably the coolest Titan armor to date, so I will absolutely be farming up a set of it, which should go a lot more smoothly given that I can infuse things much easier. On the infusion department there is some conflicting information up on the Bungie site, but it makes it sound like we will no longer get engrams to decode to less light than our converted light total. Meaning that if you are 309 light when you decode you should get items of level 309 or higher. What is confusing is this seems like a massive change, but one that I really welcome. I am sick of getting 260 blues and 270 purples from engrams. I’ve been holding onto a vault full of interesting weapons, that just need to be infused to use… so I am amped that this might mean that process becomes super simple. At some point before Tuesday I really need to sort through my vault and deconstruct all of the lower level items that I was holding onto as stepping stones for leveling higher stuff from 280 and beyond.

I didn’t intend to play Destiny last night, but at some point during the evening I flipped over to the clan messaging app and saw that my friend Jex was trying to get ahold of me. Now I have needed to finish up the Exotic sword quest for some time, but I wasn’t really pushing the issue. It turns out that Jex and Squirrel were looking for something to do last night, and thought that it would be the perfect time to work on that quest for me. The sunless cell is probably my least favorite strike because I don’t like the whole “not being able to see” aspect, and the exploding thralls coming out in close proximity. That said the worst part about it last night was the anxiety of not wanting to screw up the pattern. You have to bleed down the main boss to where you can finish him off in a hit or two… and then drop the warden of your elemental type and then within 30 seconds finish off the boss to complete the quest. The problem being that the flame sword warden is apparently the most annoying because he could almost one shot all of us.. and we were well above the suggested 300 light. We managed to do it in a single attempt, but with a lot of resurrections in the process. Afterwards we popped over to the dreadnaught and did some Court of Oryx, with the goal of finishing some antiquated runes so we would each have a stack to go through with the patch on Tuesday. I know personally I have six, but it sounded like Squirrel had a full stack of them. The hope is that we can farm up one or more of those 335 artifacts to boost our light level before the raid that same night. In any case I am super grateful for the group, and my shiny new exotic 310 sword.

Chasing Happy

April 8, 2016 by Belghast

Obliviously Chill

This week has been an interesting one so far. I’ve been trying to take these mood enhancers that I had fallen out of the habit of taking on a daily basis. According to my wife it makes a huge difference when I am taking them, versus when I am not. However on Wednesday night they caused me to more or less forget that I had a raid to attend. I was sitting there happily on the sofa watching Daredevil Season 2 and screwing around in Destiny through the official remote play application… and next thing I know around 9pm I check into Slack and realize that I had completely blown off the Wednesday night WoW Raid thing. Thankfully they were able to make it work without me, which is awesome… but I was otherwise completely oblivious to having anything going on that night. Like in the back of my head there was a vague feeling that I was supposed to be doing something, but I was so chill that apparently I never actually acted upon that thought. I partially blame Daredevil because really, this season so far has been enthralling. I only started watching it Wednesday night because our cable box was uncooperative, and I couldn’t seem to get anything else up on the screen.

I’ve been feeling generally disconnected from the world, and my hope is that the happy pills will help to curb that instinct and allow me to actually participate in it again. I’m not even certain what caused me to stop taking them, other than one day I simply forgot… and the next day I forgot… and so on until I was out of the habit. I’ve had quite a bit of work stress lately, combined with the stress of all of the home renovation “change” has kinda pushed me into another funk. After a sequence of bad mental health days, I came to the realization that I really should be taking them again. When I am not doing great, I tend to throw up this wall and paint a happy face on it… then duck behind it hoping the world will go away. I realize this is largely a defense mechanism, but it feels so much safer behind the wall than out in front of it interacting openly. Everything feels like it is buzzing past so fast that I can’t really grasp what is going on, or who is attempting to interact. So when I am sitting in this mode I spend a lot of time staring at things, without actually understanding what I am looking at or how it actually relates to me. One of the things I have tried to do with this blog is be pretty open about whatever is going on with me… even if it is the not so great stuff.

Warlock vs Oryx

Through the course of playing Destiny I managed to push all three classes to 40, but some of them get a lot less use. Namely my Warlock has kinda become the unloved child of the bunch, because no matter how much I try… I never can seem to get the hang of their damned jump. It always feels like a much less useful version of the Titan jump. Hunter makes perfect sense… they have triple or quadruple jump depending on if you have the Bones of Eao equipped. Warlock jump however never seems to do the thing I want it to do when I want it to do it. However lately thanks to the magic of the Remote Play application I have been poking around on that character, because in the grand scheme of things… it has the least impact on my other activities. The problem is that I really have not done much questing. I ground my way to 40 through the various patrol missions and had not even completed the Taken King content. So last night I decided to pick up where I had left off in that quest chain, which turns out about four quests from the end of it. This was a big nuisance since anytime I got one of those ever so lucrative “Patrol the Dreadnaught” bounties, I couldn’t actually do that… and would end up having to complete a story mission to get kill credit. Over the course of the night however I managed to finish the main story arc of the Taken King and it is ridiculously easy when you are sitting at 292 light.

Also while doing stuff on the Warlock, I decided to go ahead and do the Stormcaller quest chain so that I could unlock that class. I have to say having done all of them now, this one was probably my favorite. I loved the whole “taming the storm” aspect of the quest because it really seems to it the class as a whole. Now unfortunately I need to just do a bunch of leveling to top off my various subclasses. I have all three maxed on the Titan, but for the others… I have Nightstalker on the Hunter maxed, and absolutely none of the Warlock classes maxed with Sunsinger being the closest since I figured the whole self rez thing would be the most needed like a Titan bubble. I wish there were versions of the mark/bond/cloak that increased leveling for classes other than the ones added with Taken King. Even if you had to do some sort of a quest to earn them, it would be a welcome addition for anyone trying to top off all three classes. The only problem with running Strikes/Crucible to level is that I feel like I am not entirely effective because I am missing large chunks of my abilities. So instead I just end up running bounties and screwing around in the patrol missions which seems like the slowest way to level sub classes. However all of this is great “playing from the couch on the remote play app” fodder so it will probably see a lot more screen time than it previously did. Before the ability to reliably play remotely, the only time I was really playing Destiny was to go do group activities. Now I can do a lot of solo questing from the comfort of the living room and it is making me play catch up on all of those things I largely ignored.

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.

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.