Destiny

[Hot Heart]

Right, so the new soft cap is 340 (345 with mods) and the only way to get higher is with the milestone "powerful gear". Meanwhile legendary drops are capped at 340 and exotics drop at your level. Oh, and heroic strikes are 350 while dropping 340 gear. Basically, have a regular raid team or gtfo.

 

Looks like I'll be done with this expansion quicker than the last one...

[CorgiShinobi]

I know, right?

 

I also made the mistake of infusing my current chest armor with a 337 Light I got from a clan engram. Guess what that does; it increases the level requirement on that armor! So it went to Lv 26 and I was without my best chest armor. I tried doing the story at 294 Light, but that was ridiculously hard with all the adds and funneling the game throws at you. It wasn't until my fifth death that I realized I could use one of my weaker chest armor to at least survive better.

 

Ana Bray is cute, but the story felt like it was missing something. Again, we have an iconic character, mysterious location/entity, and epic stage to fight something of tremendous power. Yet, it's empty when you're basically someone's errand boy and you've got a single Vanguard rep being grumpy. And the attitude Zavala had towards our Guardian? Excuse me? I know you're the Vanguard leader, but I've saved everyone's collective butts many a time over.

 

Direct that attitude up your butt for a sec and let me blow up a damn worm.

[TheMightyEthan]

Apparently there are other sources of >340 gear, like the Nightfall, Flashpoint challenge, etc. So you can get it without having to do the raid.

 

It is bizarre though that the Heroic Strike playlist doesn't drop higher level stuff, hopefully they'll change that.

[Hot Heart]

4 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Apparently there are other sources of >340 gear, like the Nightfall, Flashpoint challenge, etc. So you can get it without having to do the raid.

 

Those are the milestones, but you can't solo most of them. Flashpoint is the only easy one. I can get clan xp because I'm already part of a (now inactive) clan but that's something you'd need to sort. Then there's the crucible kills one (although, something tells me they adjusted it to just be matches, or at least counts assists?) which is easy enough when I can be bothered with pvp. Nightfall is endgame and even if you find two other people, it'll be tough doing that with your 345 light, I imagine.

 

The problem is the pattern for levelling up used to be:
1. Complete milestones to get pieces of powerful gear, which tend to drop 5-10 points higher than your current power level.
2. Collect legendary engrams whose base power level has now raised slightly.

3. Use or infuse these new legendaries, install mods, etc. to help raise your overall power level.
4. Repeat.

 

Now the pattern is:
1. Complete milestones to get powerful gear to raise your light level 2-5 points higher than your current level.

2. Collect 340-power legendary engrams because *shrug* getting the exact same drops of weapons and gear over and over again wasn't bad enough.

3. Repeat.

 

The original way worked pretty well with a casual approach where, even if your friends had stopped playing, you could work on your weekly milestones to get the "Powerful Gear" and then collect other stuff to keep gradually improving your preferred gear sets. Didn't matter what activity you did, as long as you've done a milestone or two, you can still make at least some progress from all the drops you'd get.

[Thursday Next]

On 13/05/2018 at 9:13 PM, Hot Heart said:

 

Flashpoint is the only easy one.

 

There's loads of "easy" ones!

 

Flashpoint = tool around on the designated planet for a bit.

Call to Arms = Play 5-8 crucible matches. No need to win, just completing a match gives you ~15% toward the milestone.

Heroic Strikes = Complete 3 Heroic Strikes. You can easily solo queue these, matchmaking takes very little time and depending on your level, the strikes are pretty easy.

Clan = Do all the above and you should have unlocked the clan engram. You don't even need to join an active clan, you can start one yourself.

 

The only hard ones are:

Nightfall = Do a hard strike, easy if you are in a clan, if not matchmaking is ok but can take ages to hook you up with a pair.

Raid = Do the raid, again, you can matchmake, but it's not likely to be quick and the raid is challenging.

Trials = Win a match in trials of the nine PvP. <- Probably the most hardcore of the lot.

 

I normally have the first four + nightfall done in the first day or two of reset. Call to Arms is a chore, but the rest are achievable through playing for fun. By the end of a season I'm normally skipping on Call to Arms coz I don't like PvP.

 

Edit: Unless they changed something in this season (I haven't played Warmind).

Edited May 22, 2018 by Thursday Next

[CorgiShinobi]

Heroic Strikes are a pain in the ass now. Recommended Light 350 and Modifiers. Perhaps if the Light Level wasn't as high it wouldn't be an issue, but they've been unbearable to run through now. There's a "Pursuit", a.k.a. weapon quest, that wants you to run Heroic Strikes with a certain weapon. While there are other weapons of its class, they only drop from the Light 370 PvE Escalation events. So unless you can grind your way to those first, you have to gimp yourself with a subpar weapon in an unforgiving mode now.

[Thursday Next]

Noted.

[B for Brian]

Having a hard time convincing myself to come back for the Warmind DLC. So much disappointment from this game and I was so hyped about it.

[Hot Heart]

Yeah, heroic strikes are 350 while Osiris max was, I think, 335. Two weeks later, I've only just got to 350 (jumped all the way to 352 with a couple of milestones and infusions after). The gear you get from them is 10 levels below your max. I think heroic strikes are even harder than the nightfall because that hasn't seen a light level increase. I don't think the nightfall is easily soloable anyway and it doesn't have matchmaking, it has guided games which, admittedly, I've never tried and I don't think it's really taken off.

 

Maybe they've changed the crucible one for participation, because it used to be kills, which I noticed because my fireteam with whom I played every game could get out of sync.

 

Doesn't help that they also fucked up clan engrams so they're dropping at your level for a lot of people (did for me the first week) and the issue is only fixed, currently, if you wait for them to decrypt on weekly reset.

 

Like I said, my main issue is that they've messed up all the other sources of equal level gear. I used to clear a few milestones early in the week then work on getting other gear up to scratch; now, I just get the milestones and stop.

[Thursday Next]

I see, yeah, not being able to catch up the rest of your gear is annoying.

 

Tried the new heroic, didn't find them too bad tbh. You should try Guided Games, it can take a while (couple of mins) to find one, but it works well.

 

Crucible was always participation, you get ~15% for match completion plus extra % for kills etc. Didn't know about Clan Engrams, that's annoying.

 

[Thursday Next]

 

New things. Gambit looks like a fun take on PvPvE.

 

[Obviously I'm a shill and biased, but still looks fun]

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Just beat Curse of Osiris, but now I have to get my light level from 253 up to 310 before starting Warmind. I really have no interest in doing that. Why must this game have so much built-in tedium? The core gameplay is a lot of fun, but damn. Warmind is the one I was more looking forward to, too.

[Thursday Next]

That won't take long at all. The grind from 335 to 385 is real though...  

 

Problem is, the hardcore fans live for the grind. It's difficult to balance making end game content rewarding, while at the same time making getting to the end-game achievable by the majority of players.

[TheMightyEthan]

It took me probably 6 hours, which is more than I had intended to spend on it, but I had fun. I'm at 340 now with little prospect of making any increases.

[TheMightyEthan]

I got a 350 scout rifle from the Flashpoint stuff, and used it to infuse my 340 scout rifle that I liked better, but it only brought it up to 345. Does anyone know what's going on with that? Usually infusing brings it up all the way to the level of the sacrificed gear.

[CorgiShinobi]

Does the scout rifle have the Kinetic +5 damage modifier? The 350 one sounds like it was 345 +5 mod.

[TheMightyEthan]

Oh, maybe, I can't check anymore since I broke it down to infuse the other. That would make sense though, cause I got it from a 345 engram, and was surprised when a 350 weapon came out.

[MetalCaveman]

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Nice.

[Mr. GOH!]

LOL, guess I'm getting D2 to sit in my library and never play because MP-only is for children.

[MetalCaveman]

I've downloaded it, will check it out after the SC2 WCS games, assuming my PC can run it.

[CorgiShinobi]

If only Bungie were able (or maybe allowed) your character to transfer over to another platform. I have a newer GPU now, so I could definitely run it better than I did during the Beta. Still not a fan of the keyboard controls, but aiming with mouse adds more advantages. Stability and Handling become such moot stats on your weapons that you never have to concern yourself with weapon perks that improve those stats.

[MetalCaveman]

https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/47569

 

Bungie parts ways with Activision.

[TheMightyEthan]

Eesh, Destiny 2 must have done worse than I thought, if Activision is even turning over the Destiny publishing rights.

[danielpholt]

This is probably a really bad question but I'm going to ask it anyway.

 

What does a retired D1 player need to know about D2?

 

I'm a few hours into the game now and what I see I like, however (as tends to happen with these games), I feel like I need a quick course in how to play the game 'correctly'. Any tips for a guy who just doesn't have the time to find out how to play the game naturally.