Destiny [PS3,X360,PS4,XO]

Finally did the raid...

I think my group was kind of under leveled. IIRC I was the only one over like 370 ish. I didn't know what I was doing but nonetheless things went smooth until the final boss. Then they fell apart and we didn't beat him.

I dont think it's amazing or anything, didn't get any awestruck feelings. Well, actually on the Death Zamboni, that whole area is pretty neat and impressive.

I think I may have missed loot on the first boss? Because I didn't pick up the engrams that drop? Not even sure. Anyways I got the Quantiplasm which I dont think is good, and some armors I haven't looked at. When you are already max light it takes some fun out of raid loot for sure.

Oh and I got that emblem thingy. We did monitors or whatever up to the end.

 

370 is already high level right?

I did it when I was around 355 with a bunch of around 355 guardians.

The last boss battle is an ass. Bungie throw freedom away to another planet.

I'm more and more convinced that Vault of Glass is a mistake (that I loooove). Because each newer raid always take away more and more freedom.

Bungie loooove canned battle. Canned experience.

Destiny is a theme park. Not a sandbox. And the community seems prefer canned theme park rides much more (at least according to the harsh comments and down votes I got on reddit every time I discussed this design decision)

 

I think we had some 350's and 360's too.

One thing I did like is it seemed shorter. The raids dont need to be so much of an ordeal.

Also, "jumping puzzle (s)" stupid easy. Which is good. Kings Fall was just obnoxious with Transept.

 

I havent even beat normal raid yet and heroic raid is out in a couple hours.

Not too mention I'll be trying to increase my light to 400 like crazy this week, so raiding will be a sideshow.

Bungie compresses these timelines too much. We should get like two weeks from expansion to new raid, then like maybe two months from normal raid to heroic. That would also help space out the content which they need all the help they can get with.

 

Has anybody has seen an Exotic Shard dropping from a public event? Happened to me yesterday and I can't recall to have ever seen this before.

 

Sorry @orangpelupa I didn't see your message, kind of too late now I guess.

@Nisaaru, no I haven't, and I've done quite a few public events.

Hard raid isn't too bad, especially if you're 390+. It basically doubles up on all of the mechanics, with a few surprise additions here and there. I dunno how difficult it is for pickup groups, but our group beat it on our first try, blind, in just over an hour.

Personally I think the hard raid is a bit too easy. I thought for sure Aksis would be 400 light, but he's just 390.

RNG for me has been really bad, almost as bad as the VoG days. Seems like every drop I get or engram I decrypt is just 1-2 levels above me. Have my characters at 394-395, while everyone else in my group is 397+. I don't play as often as some of them, though. I feel that getting my 3 characters to 400 will take 3-4 more weeks at least.

Also, I've gone to the lighthouse 7-9 times in 'year 3' and I keep getting duplicates from the armor/weapon rewards at 5/7 wins and the lighthouse rewards. I haven't got a single weapon or armor piece that I want.

 

Raiding has really changed for me from what it used to be. Starting with Kings Fall and now WOTM. It seems much harder. It seems like I less feeling like dealing with the hassle of LFG groups. I guess the central issue is you no longer need raid to reach max light. So, for better or worse, I no longer need the raid.

I've raided normal mode I think about 3 times, and pretty much every time we get to Aksis and then fail, sometimes after spending a long time. And this is like what, over a month into ROI and I still have not beaten just NORMAL raid. And I've been well leveled or over leveled. I was probably 390 my last normal raid. So there's a lot less loot motivation, I have to force myself to raid normal mode just for the sake of learning the raid, and I guess I want a Chaos Dogma.

Another demoralizing thing was like week I was watching I think Triplewreck raid on Twitch, here's a great player, with surely a great team, high light, and I was watching them fail hard Aksis several times. And I was just thinking, if these guys are struggling...what chance do I have much less in a LFG group?

So right now I feel like the raid needs to be maid easier since Kings Fall. I felt KF was too hard overall as well.

Yet all that said, I think it's just RNG. I just haven't got into that good LFG squad that just blows through the raid carrying me. If it had happened, I'd probably be in here talking about how the raid is too easy.
It's just weird though, raid used to be central to my Destiny experience and now I just generally tend to find it frustrating and limited. I feel kind of bad about it, like I should force myself to raid more.

Not sure what I will do this week, I feel like I have little chance of beating hard this week, but OTOH at least I could get light level loot. I could continue to try to beat normal before doing hard, but then I'll be getting useless light level drops.

For me I'm proceeding well on leveling, I'm already almost 394 and haven't played that much. Archons Forge is really easy to get Artifact/Shell/Class Item from when they are lagging. For everything else I figure it's best to just pop 3oC and play crucible all day, which is what I enjoy most anyway.

I find it kind of weird when there's a new light level target, you start to become very restricted in your PVE and PVP loadouts for a couple weeks since you want to wear your good stuff as much as possible, which is a bit annoying. I cant even use Shinobu's Vow lately in crucible because it would require swapping out several pieces of gear and knocking down my light. I dont know, just an observation. It'll be nice to hit 400 and start rounding out a varied loadout again.

Nightfall was fun last week though. Very hard on my first run, but then learned the tricks and was much easier/more fun after. Too bad one of my rewards was like, 12 3oC, which I always have like 40-80 anyway. Saw another guy get rewards a Fall 2015 grab bag of emotes or something, haha, that was laughable.


In crucible, I started struggling with Distant Star, went back to Mida and started doing much better again. I give up. I just cant escape Mida.

I love sidearms now, I feel I can really learn to use them and it's fun learning to strategies around them. I never run sniper in crucible anymore. Usually I can take on snipers with my primary with the flinch now anyway. And with sidearms I feel I've finally found a decent close range option for me, so it feels more well rounded.

I got a great roll Grasp a bit ago, I feel this archetype is better than Hawksaw, if I run that though Sidearm seems a bit superfluous as the Grasp is pretty good up close anyway, so I switch to shotgun, the ranges feel more natural that way, Scout/sidearm, Pulse/shotgun.

 

There are less mechanics in WoTM but communication and positioning are key for when he teleports. Aside from that, it's just a matter of staying alive and doing your job.

I guess one of my friends tried helping someone by LFGing a group together for him and he had a tough time, so apparently it is still a struggle for some people. I think that if you have a good sherpa telling everyone what to do, it won't be so bad. Me and my buddy helped his friends through Aksis, and while we struggled the first 2-3 attempts, we had a smooth run after that.

 

The team is so important, for sure. With LFG you just never know what you're gonna get.

One thing I didn't like about KF or somewhat WOTM is, where VOG and Crota never really forced crappy players like me into the spotlight (relic runner, sword runner, etc), Fall and WOTM do. Fall with Torn and WOTM with the ball throwing. Ball throwing is exactly the sort of thing I tend to feel pressured on and choke. Even now on normal raid I default to just, not throwing the bombs, and letting other people do it. So I'm already knowing it's gonna be a problem in hard when I have to because I wont be practiced. Oh yeah, and empowered too. Which, I've been empowered 2x and slammed him once and failed once. Bones should help, it doesn't seem too hard either.

In the beginning section there's not much pressure and it's easy, I throw there. The good thing is it seems somewhat possibly easy? I dont run the electricity though, again whenever there's a choice I let others step up. Although I know thats not hard, I still wouldn't know how to do it. I just hang out in middle.

I do like that the jumping sections in WOTM are much much easier, not a challenge per se at all. Transept was brutal.

Got a 398 helm from my 1st NF, yay! Easily my highest individual item yet. That put me to 394. Also I was 393 so thats plus 5 loot, thats as good as possible I guess. Also got a skeleton key, which I hardly ever get.

It seems the sticking points to 400 are boots and chest, because they are not available via strike chest. They are I think both 392 for me right now. My Shell/CI/Artifact are all ~393 I think, beginning to lag a tad, so I'll hit up forge. Probably wont get huge increases though, not even to 395 after all 3 are refreshed maybe. Also that will do the artifact bounty while I'm at it.

I may use my Strike key on Fallen Saber, because my heavy is lagging a bit 393, and the best chance of getting a heavy is saber, it's 50/50 there.

 

Each time I go to the Forge my postmaster overflows so I don't even know what gear got lost. Even if you try to manage the postmaster it seems gear drops which bypasses everything or the engrams vanish.

 

Destiny Item Manager has a farming mode that automatically sends engrams to your vault. It's almost a requirement if you plan on doing forge for very long. I've had like 50 engrams transferred to my vault in an hour before.

 

but my vault is full of stuff and engrams (i filled it with exotics and lgendary since RoI announcement)

 

My vault is full and I can just keep one gear slot open to filter unnecessary engrams away. But even when I deleted blue engrams to control the postmaster it spills over. Some stuff directly bypasses it by design or when the gear slots are temporary full.

 

If you're a collector, you run into vault issues almost every time you play Destiny. The exotic kiosk etc., helps greatly, but I like to keep my Year 1/2/3 lighthouse Trials gear/weapons and raid gear/weapons (well most of the raid gear/weapons). It's nice to look back and put on the old stuff for fun. Plus they were hard earned items. My old stuff probably takes up 2 pages alone.

Now that I'm nearing 400, it's getting better with vault management, but it's still a PITA. After my weekly raids and nightfalls, all 3 characters are at or close to 399. It seems like once you hit 396, the drop rate for 400 stuff is almost 100%. When I was 393-395, everything was 1-2 levels above my light.

 

It seems to me like nightfall operates on a more generous loot algorithm, I got a 400 shotgun there this week and at the time i think I was 395. Also got that 398 helm when I was 393. I can only do it twice though, since my hunters are more leveled than my Titan I'm kinda forced to stick on them for now.

Just had a 17-2 clash game, boy that was fun. Timekeeper, one of my favorite maps. I just camp on the outside and go to town with Mida. I may not have many skills in this game but if I catch you at range with Mida you're probably dead. Also what made it more fun is I joined in progress when my side was down, and we ended up winning by around 1k points. So I can feel like I was the reason (whether true or not).

The firewolf mask is really cool, when I saw it in game I was like whoa. Just watched a video though showing the drop rate of that mask is (the guy bough $100 worth of packages, or 52) around 2%.

Getting the superblack shader and Broom was easy, I like little cool stuff like that. I'm not going to grind for a half hour or whatever to get one free treasure though via the quest. I bought 5 bucks worth of silver which is two packages, didn't get the firewolf which is all I care about.

I also hate how the masks dont have any stats and knock your light down 40 points. It means I would be conflicted about wearing them anyway, for example in crucible where drops are loot based. I guess you could switch helmets at the end but any kind of switching is annoying for me. The masks need to basically be transmog (or some kind of switchable consumable) with the stats of a helmet you have to be viable IMO.

Also, rather than be greedy, Bungie needs to make the coolest stuff like the firewolf, obtainable via a quest or directly purchasable or SOMETHING. IMO they're handling this wrong.

I like the holiday atmosphere and the sense of community it fosters. But I still wonder (other than that Bungie are evil, heh) why they blow out halloween and ignore every other holiday. Imagine a Christmas themed winter wonderland, complete with christmas-y music in the tower etc, that'd be so cool. And how about a tower fireworks show etc, for new years?

I imagine they dont want to offend other religions by doing religious holidays, or something (even though lets be real, how many people who would be offended play Destiny? I'm guessing 1% of the player base or something? Is it really so important?) but that doesn't explain lack of new years stuff.

 

Had a good heroic raid run. Didn't beat it, but came very close a couple times. Got a lot of 400 loot.

This was really my first extended time on Aksis phase 2. So now I'm beginning to actually understand the fight and the practice was invaluable.

I learned throwing is easy. Jumping on Aksis when empowered is semi easy. Probably the one thing I might have trouble with is cross mapping servitors.

Anyways 399, 7/10 slots are 400 and 2 of the 3 remaining I can pick up at Archons forge. So the only stickler will be my Chest armor. I'll have to get lucky with an engram or get it in the raid.

Still didn't get Dogma though.

This raid LFG group reminded me, high light is the biggest indicator of LFG success, more than grimoire or anything else. In this raid everybody was pretty much 392 or above. It makes all DPS phases easier, staying alive easier, likely means the players are better...heck I was the only reason we didn't beat it probably because I caused fails on several runs.

I noticed I got some 385 exotics. I guess that was normal mode loot. That doesn't seem right to me. Exotics are exotics.

 

Question about crucible. If going into crucible why use a year 3 Thorn over a year 1 thorn?

Year 1 is better in all aspects no?

 

Wouldn't current nerfs apply to old version too?

I still kept my old 170 Gjallahorn for some reason, even after getting new Gjally. Will never use it but, it feels like some piece of history. And that's another reason we need more vault space, heh.

Another raid that stopped on Aksis phase 2. And I didn't get the chest from Zamboni. So unless I get lucky with an exotic engram probably tmrw, 400 will have to wait till next week. Got a 400 cloak from crucible though, that was nice, so now I only lack 2 slots (1 of which I can get in Forge whenever I apply a little time).

A weird thing happened, I was messing around with weapons or something and I decoded an exotic accidentally while I was 391 because I forget I had some 360 gun equipped or something. But it still decoded 400. Weird...

I've seen on reddit people want it where the game calculates your max light from everything you have including your inventory for drops/engrams, and bases it on that, so you dont have to have certain things arbitrarily equipped. But, I'm pretty sure they haven't implemented that suggestion.

It's nice once you get to 399, even 396/397 pretty much as far as raid, everything in raid and exotics will be 400. Not the 384 or 385 crap from before. No 399, actual 400 all the time. Great change.

I'm glad I'm basically 400 (in most slots) so I can start rounding out my gear! Feels so constricting when you only have 1 thing you can use in a slot since it's your highest.

I've been using Wormwood for my sidearm because it felt most effective, but I randomly looked at the stats and it only has 28 range. I had an ironwreath in my vault of the same (most effective for sidearms) archetype, but it at least has 36 range (and zen moment which seems kinda like the counterbalance of sidearms, aka the must have perk). It also has 15 in the mag instead of 12, and that is actually a pretty big deal as it's easy to run out of SA ammo even in a one on one. Already won a couple fights because of that bigger mag. So yah, jazzed that my ironwreath seems much crisper all around. Stability is 70 vs 77 on my old WW, but that's probably not a big deal.

 

Nope, they are separate. At least from suros and red death and old pulse trials I have .

Of course this could very bungie simply forgot to change the old versions

 

That doesn't seem right, wouldn't non-light enabled crucible be teeming with 170 Thorns then?

That's really interesting if true.