The first Iron Banner of Destiny 2 is officially over, and in spite of my comments yesterday… I did legitimately enjoy myself for a good part of it. It was only towards the end when things started to really grate on my nerves. Last night for example was a really bad night where a combination of my general fatigue, my left index finger being sliced, and the fact that somehow I had gotten into what Destiny Tracker calls the platinum bracket… served to lead to a series of not so fun matches. I had every intent to grind out the daily milestone on each of the three characters, but in the end only managed to complete it on the hunter. I am a little disappointed that I never got the Hand Cannon, but from what I am seeing my luck was considerably better than most players. Here is my final haul for the 60 matches of Iron Banner I played over the course of last week…
- 7 or 8 Unique Weapons – lots of dupes dropped
- 5 piece set of Titan armor – lots of dupes dropped
- 2 of 5 pieces of the Hunter armor set
All in all that really isn’t too bad of a haul for the very first running of Iron Banner. This ultimately gives me the entire set of Warlock gear and most of a set of Hunter gear to get next go round. Additionally there is still the chase for the Hand Cannon. That is way more useful loot than I tended to get from several months worth of Iron Banner during Destiny 1. Sure it was interesting to get a bunch of different weapon rolls… but ultimately most of those wound up being trash. The likelihood of me getting that god roll weapon was pretty limited, and in truth I think I like having a fixed point to focus on rather than not only hoping to get an item… but hoping it isn’t a garbage fire stat wise. There are still a significant number of legendary drops that I have never seen. For example I am still chasing the Jiangshi AR4 from the Gunsmith, and its not just a collector thing… I really want to play with it because I loved the green version I got while leveling.
As far as the weapons go… I am not sure if I really have it in me to do a review of them all. I spent some time last night while grinding out Io tokens playing with them all… and most of them are completely reasonable. I realize that is not exactly a glowing review, but in many cases I already have a weapon I just like better in that slot. The Time-Worn Spire is a really solid pulse rifle, in an era when that entire class of weapons seems to be outclassed by practically anything else. I’ve become a huge fan of the Forward Path auto rifle as well, but it has some pretty stiff competition for my time with the Origin Story and Ghost Primus. The real breakout weapon for me shockingly is the Wizened Rebuke, if for no reason other than the fact that you can hit 100 impact with it if you so choose. That said I feel like the weapon performs better if you are outfitting it for 95 impact… which still makes it significantly harder hitting than all but the Shock and Awe in my vault. Sure it has insanely slow recharge rate, but if I am going to use a Fusion it is likely going to be in a PVE situation where the charge time isn’t that big of a problem. Essentially this just became my legendary fusion of choice when I cannot for whatever reason use Merciless as my exotic.
The other weapon that I found myself shocked to actually enjoy is Guiding Sight the Scout Rifle. This lives in the same archetype group as Does Not Compute, Song of Justice VI and Haunted Earth… and in truth it felt better to use than any of those. When I use a scout rifle, I want something with really good impact and range because I am effectively using it as a surrogate sniper rifle. This fits that bill nicely because it will one shot a Vandal and has armor-piercing rounds to help with shields a bit… though I feel like that perk needs a buff significantly. Sure it will drop a shield faster than a normal kinetic weapon, but it still feels horrible as compared to even an unmatched elemental type energy weapon. I’ve said this over and over… that I am not really a fan of scout rifles as a whole, however when I do use one I want something along the lines of this weapon. Between Guiding Sight and Manannan SR4… I feel like I am set as far as scout rifles go. Basically at the beginning of the week I had a good deal of time collecting loot in the Iron Banner, but as we wound down… it started to feel like a house guest that overstayed its welcome. I opened around thirty packages in total and in the future I really need to tag out significantly earlier when I am still enjoying myself rather than trying to force a grind I was no longer enjoying.
