Destiny [PS3,X360,PS4,XO]

The Wormwood I use is Steady/*Sure,HCR/Hip,Fitted Stock/Relentless,Rangefinder. Not really sure the dealer version would be significant better.
 
I would try it, I think so.

Well I guess the difference is hand loaded which will give you +2 range which is probably about 1/3 meter. Worth it? I think so. My Wormwood is already exceptionally stable (in contrast to say a Jabberhakke) so I see no need for stability perks.
 
I FINALLY tried Trials a couple times the last two weeks. Just LFG'd. With players about my skill level.

It's hard. Like this last time after a few wins (about 2, really, 4 with boons) we ran into this 2 1600+ elo and one 2000+. All they did was sticky grenade with impunity and teabag us. Couldn't touch em. Next round similar with slightly less stickies. Guys were all over 2 k/d we had no chance.

I dont see how I can ever get on those guys level. I have played a ton and I am nowhere near. Plus Trials is pressure, and I'm always worst with pressure. Like I'm a better player just soloing 6's partly because there's no pressure, I dont care if I win and there's no teammates to let down.

Plus LFG people get bored/discouraged/whatever really quick usually so far.

Dunno if I will bother trying to go to the lighthouse this late in the game. It's one of these things had I been trying since day one I imagine I could have got lucky one day and done it. But this late with so many tryhards left, I dunno.

Going into regular crucible I feel better than ever. I'm often running high k/d's, tearing people up with whatever scout or pulse I feel like and a sidearm. Still best with bladedancer after all this time. Although Warlock is good too (storm or void) it doesn't feel as natural to me.

I got a Hero Formula drop with Braced Frame+hidden hand. I had sworn off this archetype as crap for about two years. But I'm finding it pretty fun and effective. Got The Burning Eye from Trials bounty too, it seems very good as I expected. The extra damage from the barrel mods sets it apart from other 37/48's, even if they dont increase the paper TTK. The scope that highlights enemies is nice too. I feel like you get some random kills thanks to that highlighting. Plus I use a Dis 43 a lot. Anything to avoid using Mida because it's so boring. In trials I go safe with a PDX 45.

All that said for the past couple weeks I've been strongly considering deleting destiny from my HDD. I feel like I need a break before D2, and to do some other things with my time, including play gasp, other games. But the problem is as long as Destiny's sitting there it's too easy to get sucked into, particularly the grindy stuff (still a couple grimoire remaining, doubles, 250 VIP patrols, and 250 of those Vex thingies the name escapes me, besides two lighthouse related Grim) and most of all multiplayer. I haven't pulled the trigger yet...

For D2 whatever the equivalent of grimoire is I will have learned my lesson, it will be much easier to max if I think about it from day one. The ones I have remaining (like for example, doubles) I could have finished off ages ago had I had an eye on grimoire from the start. I mean I still could max it pretty easily if I wanted. Except the lighthouse might be a little difficult.
 
Blind Perdition, the ToO PR dropped for me 3-4 weeks ago from one of the normal weekly Crucible Bounties. Has the same highlight feature and would probably be still great if they hadn't nerfed the low dmg PR class.

BTW, remember the Wormwood argument a few comments upwards?:) I bought the dealer version back then just to compare and it felt worse than my previous model with Fitted Stock. Luckily the dealer version dropped but with the Sureshot sight like my old Wormwood and that fixed the weapon for me.
 
I FINALLY tried Trials a couple times the last two weeks. Just LFG'd. With players about my skill level.

It's hard. Like this last time after a few wins (about 2, really, 4 with boons) we ran into this 2 1600+ elo and one 2000+. All they did was sticky grenade with impunity and teabag us. Couldn't touch em. Next round similar with slightly less stickies. Guys were all over 2 k/d we had no chance.

I dont see how I can ever get on those guys level. I have played a ton and I am nowhere near. Plus Trials is pressure, and I'm always worst with pressure. Like I'm a better player just soloing 6's partly because there's no pressure, I dont care if I win and there's no teammates to let down.

Plus LFG people get bored/discouraged/whatever really quick usually so far.

Dunno if I will bother trying to go to the lighthouse this late in the game. It's one of these things had I been trying since day one I imagine I could have got lucky one day and done it. But this late with so many tryhards left, I dunno.
ToO can be tougher these days because the player base has shrunk, and a lot of the people that still play this playlist are pretty competent PVP players. Some nights it seems like nothing but streamers or really good players are online and every match (even the first match) is really tough.

Plus ToO amplifies all of the issues in the crucible by 10. Since they've nerfed shotguns and special ammo economy, sticky grenades are RIDICULOUSLY OP, and that's ALL you see in ToO these days. And Anomaly (the current ToO map) is a VERY good sticky grenade map. I had the most frustrating time playing trials this weekend and only managed 1 flawless and came close several times. Playing Anomaly and getting killed by sticky grenades 90% of the time put me on tilt so much that I might just quit ToO until they nerf stickies. It's especially frustrating when I'm winning 90+% of my actual GUN fights. I've had so many rounds turn around in the enemy's favor because of sticky grenades.

I did have some pretty good matches against some really good players (checked their stats afterwards and was surprised) and saved some clips. I'll upload a few matches that I played over the weekend in a bit.

Blind Perdition, the ToO PR dropped for me 3-4 weeks ago from one of the normal weekly Crucible Bounties. Has the same highlight feature and would probably be still great if they hadn't nerfed the low dmg PR class.
Blind Perdition is part of the Hawksawk/PDX-45 archetype, it was not affected by the recent PR changes. Grasp of Malok, Clever Dragon etc., had their fire-rate reduced so the TTK is about the same as the Hawksaw type. Blind Perdition is still one of the top PR in the game.

BTW, remember the Wormwood argument a few comments upwards?:) I bought the dealer version back then just to compare and it felt worse than my previous model with Fitted Stock. Luckily the dealer version dropped but with the Sureshot sight like my old Wormwood and that fixed the weapon for me.
Not sure which vendor one you have and what roll you have on yours, but the recent vendor one with truesight, high-cal rounds, hand loaded and rangefinder is pretty much as good as you can get. I wish I would've gotten a Conviction sidearm, or I hope I get a well-rolled Jabberhakke, as they both hold 15 (or 18 with appended mag) and are the same archetype as wormwood.
 
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Here are a couple matches I played last-night. I only managed to save half of the last match because I forgot to hit the share button and saved it half-way through the next match.

We lost the last match, which was for lighthouse, but we should've won. When we were up 4-3, I was in a 1v3, killed the first 2, tried to revive one of my teammates but stopped a quarter-second short of reviving him and get killed by a sticky grenade. :sigh: He doesn't even shoot his gun at me. If I would've revived him, we would have won. Also notice in the next round, I was a split second from killing the sunbreaker with my nova, but apparently he killed me first. That would have turned things around in our favor. That last match still hurts because there are things I should've done differently, but wasn't thinking clearly in the heat of the moment. Like I had my grenade charged but didn't throw it before getting the revive. And obviously I let go of the revive button slightly too early.

*Note audio is fairly quiet because I play with earbuds and was in party chat so I have to turn my Destiny in-game audio down (game audio is way louder than party chat, even with priority set to voice chat).
 
Yeah the sticky insanity I didn't know was a thing. But in trials it's INSANE. I wouldn't have known it was that bad without venturing into Trials. That first team of apes to steamroll us pretty much got every kill with stickies. Meanwhile I stuck with Skip's. I've never used stickies so i just assumed there would be a learning curve that i shouldn't go down mid-match.

In public 6's they aren't that great and then they are pretty good/common in rumble, but still nothing like in trials.

The thing is there's some evidence Bungie is just awful at, and/or doesn't play their own game (such as seemingly not knowing where to go on the map in MP reveal streams). As such who knows if they even play trials to know what a problem it is unless they happen to read a reddit thread about it.

Also, I am not sure they plan to release anymore crucible balance patches. Lets hope so.

Edit: Just stalked you and see you're a 1604 trials elo Skribbles. That is damn salty no doubt.

Trials is kinda discouraging for me. It's like I've played a ton and I'm not even on these guys planet. I kinda very much doubt I'm capable of being more than essentially a 1200-1300 elo player, capable of feeling good about curbstomping some noobs, but not much more. Nothing in public matches can prepare you for this. Maybe a good team instead of LFG would help, but I dont see much chance of that.

I can often go in control nowadays run a 2 or 3 k/d with a random gun, it still means jack. My elo is 1100-1300 in every game mode after all this time.
 
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1653 actually :p. I usually hover in the mid-1700s and peaked at 1800-something at some point. It dropped a lot this week because the map and sticky grenades. And getting very unlucky getting matched against really good teams even early in the card.

Not that I live by ELO... it really doesn't tell the whole story. I always just notice it because I check destinytrialsreport often to see how I did for the week, and to check opponents etc.

Trials is completely different than other game modes... it's a lot slower-paced. You need to have patience, communicate well and play well as a team to be successful. Have that and you can beat teams above your level. It's definitely not for everyone and it's becoming less and less fun these days tbh.
 
Blind Perdition is part of the Hawksawk/PDX-45 archetype, it was not affected by the recent PR changes. Grasp of Malok, Clever Dragon etc., had their fire-rate reduced so the TTK is about the same as the Hawksaw type. Blind Perdition is still one of the top PR in the game.

You are right, it's 7. Thought it was lower.

Not sure which vendor one you have and what roll you have on yours, but the recent vendor one with truesight, high-cal rounds, hand loaded and rangefinder is pretty much as good as you can get. I wish I would've gotten a Conviction sidearm, or I hope I get a well-rolled Jabberhakke, as they both hold 15 (or 18 with appended mag) and are the same archetype as wormwood.

My experience is that Sureshot is the deal difference maker between slightly different great rolled Wormwood versions and the dealer back then hadn't Sureshot.

Still have a Conviction(94,12,30,72,88) True/Sure,Rangefinder,Outlaw,Snap/Quick/Appended Mag in my vault. My Ironweath-D(12,26,76,87) with Fast/Sure,Rangefinder,Frenzy,Speed/Skip/Appended also has 18.
 
Hmm, I just played a bunch of matchmade clash and I kept getting matched against this one guy on the other team, he stuck out as the best one. Anyway at first he was mostly owning me but by the last match I was pretty much owning him. I was camping on bannerfall behind the boxes with Mida and he kept coming for me since he knew I was there, killed him about 5 times straight. The last 3 kills of the game he just kept coming for me and I killed him with skip grenades every time. And my team kept beating his. The last game he was 24-19 but I was 14-6, and a lot of his deaths were due to me.

So for some reason I looked him up after, and he has a 1717 Trials elo...

I dunno, maybe I'm just not used to the way Trials is played. So maybe I'm not that bad I'm just not used to trials and dont have a good team to carry me...

Also while I'm here, cool build idea. I might try this. Ability build for hunters.


Basically it's Felwinters artifact for double grenade/melee/tier 14. The Frostees exotic boots for more grenades. Impact induction on helmet/gauntlets (more melee for grenade kills, or vice versa). Ether Nova fusion rifle for the special, because it has army of one and army of two. Monte Carlo for the primary, more melee. A heavy weapon with army of one. Then you can run whichever subclass matches the burn, and set those perks up too. LIke backstab/hungering blade for BD, Scavenger/incendiary blade for gunslinger, etc.

One of the comments said it works well in PVP too. Although since it's not meta it cant be that great...

Luckily I kept my ether nova...
 
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Uninstalled Destiny :)

I could always reinstall it easily enough, but I felt like I needed that barrier rather than just "stop playing if you dont want to".

Looking forward to a 4 month break, well hopefully it lasts...

Destiny 2 gameplay May 18.

Officially at 1910 hours according to timewastedondestiny.com. However that does not include tower or orbit time, much of which is active gameplay, which would add some amount of hundreds more hours.
 
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Played pretty bad this week in trials (hate the map, Frontier), but managed to get 3 flawless runs pretty easily. Had a few nice plays; this one in particular was the one I'm most proud of. In a 1v3, I killed the first guy but he got me with a sticky grenade (*sigh*). Used my nova to survive and kill the second guy, then killed the last guy in a 1v1.
 
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I knew it would allow me to survive the sticky grenade. It was a split-second decision whether or not to use it though. If the third guy was immediately behind the second guy to help, he probably could have easily gunned me down. Obviously I decided to use it, and fortunately the third guy was a bit late and I was able to recover my health from the nova kill with life steal.
 
Fell off the wagon (teehee) for a couple days last week. Wanted to get that PB/Rodeo/RF PDX 45 I read about on reddit from the gunsmith. Seemed to take a solid 2 hrs to redownload and reinstall, maybe more I dont remember.

Was tempted to finish off those last few grimoire but, gotta hold strong. Go to bed earlier and play other games...so for now I re-un-installed it.

I was playing doubles too (one of the last difficult grim I have left, at 27 wins) and I remember before, doubles was sweaty and difficult as hell. For whatever reason this time, I was racking up mostly big positive KD's and often being the best player. As much as I'd like to believe it was my skill, I have to think maybe the game saw an influx of players on Destiny 2 hype or something? Allowing me to be matched with the crap players I can actually beat instead of all stars because noone else is on?

I dunno, I feel like as well as I was doing last week I could knock out the doubles grim in probably two more cycles/weeks. I feel like I could do 35+ doubles wins per week if I ground (grinded?). Either way it would be vastly easier than the rumble grim. It's tempting.

BTW that PDX roll. maybe I'm not in the best mind to judge after a layoff, but really solid. I think I'll take it over my 99 stability roll now.

I cant stress enough though, holy smokes Gears 4 controls (playing that campaign, then Halo 5) are awful compared to this. I tried to make the excuse to my brain "it's just different, not better or worse". But no, it's worse. A lot. geez, Gears grenades are the most un-intuitive thing ever. Along with well, everything else.
 
So I finally have been trying the ubiquitous Palindrome/Icebreaker loadout the last couple days. some early struggles but now doing better. I think I can see the inherent power of the loadout already.

It's tough, it basically requires a total rewiring of my brain after hundreds of crucible hours played trying to keep distance between me and enemies and use Mida or a pulse to advantage.

I've also found HC/IB it seems to pair way better than other loadouts with bladedancer/shinobu/skips (which I main anyway). I guess because you can throw the skip then jump around shooting them. Also i imagine because each HC shot packs more damage than any other gun, so just one shot finishes them off much more often.

I've seen mobility increases exponentially with HC, as well. I see myself hopping around a lot more.

It does introduce the issues I always find with a sniper, which is I can tend to get way too passive, and try to "force" the use of the sniper rather than let it come to me. Actually though with this loadout that seem MUCH less of an issue than when I used to use Mida/LDR or what have you. Maybe it's the state of mind of knowing you have unlimited ammo with IB, I dont know.

Also, didn't know IB does 160 to the body. That explains a lot of it's popularity right there. The real key to snipers IMO has always been the body shot cleanup kill, and 160 allows that, almost any preexisting ding to an enemy and 160 will kill them. It's hard to think of much that's going to do less than 40 damage to a player after all.

I have been getting back into sniping more easily than I thought though.

It's stupid and seems self evident and I'm sure I already knew it, but a reddit comment made me understand the loadout much better, the comment said you will get the most kills with this loadout, just kill with hand cannon up close, then outside pulse/Mida range go to Icebreaker.

But I will say, this may be the most unbalanced Destiny has ever been. As far as viable primaries, there's really only one, Palindrome/Eyesluna (which are basically the same gun). Competitive loadouts, only one, IB/HC. Yeah, there's a distant 2nd of Mida and a Sidearm. But it's a very distant 2nd. Maybe the most distant any 2nd place meta loadout has ever been. And there's almost no variety beyond that, either. Looking at Trials reports stats, Hawksaw pulses are a very distant 3rd even to Mida's distant 2nd (and seem to be falling off more and more). The fallof of top guns to everything else is a yawning cliff, again worse than I can ever remember really... And AR's barely exist and haven't for ages on top of all that.

The thing is the community has become so biased towards and aggressively protective over hand cannons, that I am sure Bungle is afraid to balance other primaries to be competitive again (let alone actually nerf hand cannons). So the community essentially demands this incredibly unbalanced state, but it's still disgusting. Perhaps with a clean slate (so they can avoid the angry community backlash to anything touching HC's) Bungie will allow the 75% of primaries in the game that aren't hand cannons to be competitive in D2, but knowing Bungie I dont have all that high of hopes.

To dive into the numbers, Trials report for last week's Trials, which was on Black Shield, if anything a slightly larger map biased slightly away from hand cannons. Weapons ranked by kills. Also, I group similar guns (archetypes) that have a number of kills that is significant, to get a better real picture. So Pali/Eyes/Lord High Fixer are basically the same gun, grouped. same with Hawksaw/Blind Perdition/PDX45/BP adept.

https://leaderboards.trials.report/

#1 Icebreaker, 2.3 million

Palindome/Eyesluna combined=2.6m

Can anything challenge these monsters? Not really.

Sidearms? Wormwood (1.1) +Ironwreath (.4)=1.5. higher than I thought, but still not even challenging IB. There aren't other sidearms that put up significant numbers.

Can any primary groups challenge Pali/Eyes? Nope.

Mida is at about 1.1. Wayyy behind, not even half. The next Mida archetype is Distant Star at 57k kills, so not even a blip.

Hawksaw type? We have Hawksaw 332k, Blind Perdition Adept 212k, BP non adept 173k, PDX 45 96k. Total ~800k. Cant even challenge Mida, less than 1/3 of Pali/Eyes. So much for the meta Pulse rifles. All these pulses plus Mida (about 1.9) still are way less than Pali/Eyes (2.6).

Burning Eye is worth a mention, as it's not Mida archetype. Still, both versions combine at 286k. Add that to all the others and Mida we still haven't reached Pali/Eyes.
 
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Today I've been advertising for a lighthouse carry. A 2800 (!) guy and a 1500-1600 guy picked me up. I guess they had a podunk twitch stream going. I thought oh man, this will be easy.

Anyways we kept running into stacked teams and didn't get too far. Only 2 wins, 4 on the card. Actually the last team we lost too wasn't even stacked.

The 2800 guy that I thought would be an absolute monster really wasn't. Maybe he got carried to that rating. He was talking about trying to get #1. He was #15 or something. Or maybe I'm just that bad and dragged them down. i dont know. I was getting kills here and there. The 1500-1600 guy seemed as good or better than the 2800 guy in actual play.

Honestly got about as far in Trials the time I hooked up with some other mediocre LFG'd probably 1200-1400 Elo, randoms on a not-carry, just playing. I mean I think we got to 2-4 wins then too.

I'm guessing it's not going to happen with only 3 trials weeks left or whatever. Probably something I needed to be working on since early, then get lucky sooner or later and go flawless.

Some of these players are on such a level above me it's scary. Like i can get Mida picks here and there, but at other times I'm pretty lost. It's so fast paced. It's also an attitude or strategy I'm not familiar with cause I still have so little time in trials.

Oh well I'll have a few hours monday to try and beg for another carry...

Oh and all they do is mock the other team for using stickies, NLB, Icebreaker, Nightstalker, anything and everything is a "crutch", no skill, Destiny is such a joke, Destiny so unbalanced (true, I suppose) etc etc. I dont get it. But then they run same stuff but "it's ok course we're gonna crutch cus we're doing a carry". I mean they were nice guys but dont people get how dumb they sound complaining about everything when they lose. Pretty much everybody does this.

I mean people are ALWAYS gonna complain about the game they play, I dont really get it. At least make valid complaints, or not only when you lose, or whatever. But I'm sure I do it too. You want to complain when you lose.
 
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People will always complain but this is the worst meta in Destiny history. The problem with the way Bungie handles Destiny PVP is they constantly nerf things into the ground, then other things become overpowered. They nerfed so many things in this game that the meta and skill gap are very narrow.

I used to play Trials with my buddies every weekend but I haven't played any PVP in weeks. Game is just frustrating now that lesser skilled players can win games by throwing grenades.

I think that Destiny PVP would be nearly perfect if:
-They didn't nerf shotguns as much as they did. In-air accuracy with shotguns is absolutely terrible now. I welcomed the range nerf though.
-They tweaked the special ammo economy. I think starting with a small amount per round and losing it on death (even after being revived) would've been better. Special ammo isn't as much of an issue in other modes than it is in Trials/elimination.
-They reduce the finch on snipers a touch...something in-between how they were before and how they are now.
-They buffed Auto rifles more. They're still far worse than they were before.
-They reduced the amount of tracking on sticky grenades, or reduce the damage so they're not a OHK like they are in D2.

Class/Subclass changes:
-They made bladedancer's hit registration more consistent.
-They took away the radar disappearing for a short time with blink.
-They buffed firebolt grenades a bit (they nerfed them too much to the point where they're useless now)
-Reduced the cone size of lightning grenades.
-Make the melee range the same across all classes (except for stormcaller with perk). I think they did this in D2.

This would add so much more variety and fun to Destiny PVP and would remove many of the nerfs that were not necessary in the first place.
 
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Yeah the game was much more balanced at the last patch. You had Clever Dragon almost as good as the HC's. So you had Mida, Clever, HC's, you basically had 3/4 primaries with an entrant in the meta, and hell before that doctrine was an entry for AR's so they shoulda left that alone.. Doctrine wasn't OP. Then special, you could use any special since you started with ammo. People regularly used fusion rifles for example. And why do they treat every other class different than HC's? if an AR or Pulse gains prominence they hammer it, if a HC does, they leave it. Unless it's an exotic.

Even now I feel they nerfed Pulse flinch too much, I can sit there and be headshotting the hell out of somebody with PDX 45 and they just nonchalantly return fire.

Or how about the fact that just a couple high impact shotguns were "the problem" yet they nerfed all of them, as always. in response.

They need more subtle and regular balance patches. We wait so long between patches, the other problem is they overnerf everything. Look at Clever Dragon nerf. They destroyed the ammo, 24 to 18 with braced. They hammered the flinch. They on top of all that, reduced the damage and time to kill drastically. So it became totally useless. They do this regularly. Any ONE of those nerfs probably would be enough.

Arc blade is just pretty much the worst joke super in the game. It needs hell of a lot more fixes than hit registration...mainly it need a longer run time. it runs literally like half as long as all the other roaming supers, while simultaneously being pretty much far worse in killing capability than the other roaming supers. It's absurd. But we know Bungie hates hunters so guaranteed they wont do anything.

I'm really shuddering what Bungie is gonna do to Hunters in D2 cause I already read something from a streamer about Shadestep being useless because of a long cool down in D2. That's the special hunter power or whatever, and of course, it's going to be useless and by far the weakest special class move.

Lightning grenades are another pet peeve. Why haven't they nerfed those despite they've been OP like 3 years?

Another thing you forgot to mention is shoulder charge. Needs a nerf.

However I dont agree that nerfs in and of themselves are the problem. It's a law of physics. If you have a nail sticking out of a board it's easier to hammer the nail down than bring the board up. That's just always the case. It's always going to be easier to see and deal with a few outliers via nerfs than try to bring up 3,000 other guns and wreck everything for sure.

But yeah the current balance is just stupid. Much less balanced than the prior patch.
 
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