Destiny 2

[Malaphax]

Destiny 2 raid thoughts and various shitposting. 

Raid List: https://d2.destinygamewiki.com/wiki/Raids

• Leviathan - we've done this, it's pretty easy at this point. 
• Eater of Worlds - did this last night, slightly harder and shorter, still interesting
• Spire of Stars - I sort of want to do this for the emote, but the videos I've watched show a ton of mechanics to deal with.
• Last Wish - I want to do this, I've heard it's arguably the best raid in the game, this is also sticking around after the next expansion so there's no rush.
• Scourge of the Past - Got my anarchy, I'll run if necessary but I this raid didn't do much for me.
• Crown of Sorrow - I want to do this, seems interesting.
• Garden of Salvation - I want to finish this, I think this is one of the more mechanically intensive raids but it was interesting. 

Other notes: Pugging is very hit or miss (just like other mmo's) I had one group that ran scourge 2x with no major issues and was mostly ok.  I also had one group that ran scourge and had an utterly obnoxious 12 year old memelord leading the group or at least dominating the coms; that was... unpleasant.  On the flipside all our clan raids have been absolutely great, everyone pulls their weight, good banter, fun times. 

[kuhla]

I got Malfeasance last night.

I think I should be able to get The Chaperone soon.

I want to knock out a few of this weapon quests I have had sitting in my backlog for months.

[Malaphax]

I've now gone full circle and joined a pug group for leviathan to find out they're basically all new and I had to lead them.  It actually went better than some other raids I've been a part of, although I again consider leviathan to be fairly easy. 
I also have a regular version of acrius now, which is nice to get out of my inventory. 

Crown of Sorrow seemed exceptionally short, I understand that technically Raids come in short and long versions, with the shorter versions sometimes being called raid lairs.  I guess it's unfair to expect all raids to be super long and involved but clearly some are even shorter than the dungeons. 

I have a handful of goals I can work towards, but in general I'm far more interested in going through the various raids.  I guess if I'm feeling in the mood I might try and finish off the forerunner title this season since I'm so close to it already. 

[Malaphax]

Completed Garden of Salvation and Last Wish.  At this point I have completed every raid and I'm fairly confident with most of the mechanics. 

I pugged garden, first group was terrible and obnoxious but got me to the boss checkpoint before it broke up, second group finished the boss without much issue.  I did see a new strat for the garden boss.  They used 3 teams of 2, but instead of sending in a team on left and then a team on right they complete one side first, so two go in left, and when they're pulled another two go in on left - likewise on right.  I also noticed that they didn't do the second boss tether, it does cut down on the dps window by a fair bit, we needed 3 phases to kill the boss, but it was also easier to coordinate. 

Last Wish - I completed this with Tino and the clan last night.  I joined on the third encounter (morgoth) but it went relatively smoothly.  This raid definitely has the weirdest set of mechanics with nearly every encounter being significantly different, it's also by far the longest with 6 encounters.  We cheesed Riven and considering Datto's video is 18 minutes of explanation on 3 different mechanics present in that fight, I think I'm ok with cheese.  We actually had a rough time with the queenswalk section, but I think that's fairly common considering how many posts I see on fireteam finder. 

As far as raid loot and farming is concerned, I'm willing to farm Crown of Sorrows for tarabah, Garden for various raid drops - and maybe do the divinity quest, and Last Wish for 1000 voices. 
I'm still willing to do any raid just for fun if we have a full clan group. 

[kuhla]

Probably the next 3 things I'm working on should be Lumina, Thorn and Truth

[T1no]

this catalyst going away

Bad Juju -- prob never need 45 only have 40
The Huckleberry -- done
Izanagi's Burden -- done
Legend of Acrius -- 
Polaris Lance -- done
Skyburner's Oath -- in progress
Sleeper Simulant* -- dont have it
Telesto* -- dont have it
Outbreak Perfected* -- in progress
Whisper of the Worm* -- done
Worldline Zero* -- in progress

[kuhla]

List taken from: https://www.bungie.net/en/Explore/Detail/News/49454

I've got plenty of little things to work on for the next 2 months until November 10.

Weapon	Got it?	Got cat?
Sturm	I think	No
MIDA Multi-tool	Yes	No
Rat King	I think	Not sure
Legend of Acrius	Yes	I have the quest
Sleeper Simulant	Yes	No
Polaris Lance	Yes	No
Worldline Zero	Yes	No
Ace of Spades	Yes	I think
The Last Word	Yes	No
Le Monarque	No	No
Jotunn	Yes	No
Izanagi's Burden	Yes	Yes
Thorn	No	No
Lumina	Close but no	No
Truth	No	No
Bad Juju	No	No

[Malaphax]

I need to work on the outbreak and whisper catalysts. 
I do have some missing exotics, namely wordline zero (which I have no interest in) and the 2 exotics from last season: 4th horseman and Heir Apparent.  I figure they're going to keep giving us ways to earn them through those exotic tokens and I'd rather just buy some of the stuff I've missed, especially since only heir apparent is decent. 

I'd also like to try and do last wish once a week to try for 1000 voices, but I'm still up for just filling out a random raid spot if we have something going.

[kuhla]

 

Arbalest broken?

[Malaphax]

It's currently meta especially in 3v3 or trials.  It has ridiculous bullet magnetism, and can one shot everything, including supers, with a headshot.  The charge up time means that you can still lose to snipers or even shotguns, but it's still very strong. 

I used it heavily in pve, but I got frustrated that it can't deal with barrier champions and it doesn't work with match game.

[T1no]

yea im using that now working on the komodo lol. im not very good at it . the delay is kinda hard to use in pvp.

[Malaphax]

Since this week is double rewards for Nightfall Ordeals, it might be worth it to try running master or grandmaster nightfalls and stock up on some golf balls (ascedant shards) so you can masterwork armor. 

I'm up for running lake of shadows a few times, seems like it's fairly easy, and since we all have divinity and izanagis we should be able to clear it without issue. 

[Malaphax]

 

[T1no]

Destiny 2

3 classes
3 subclass 
6 subclass tree (2 / subclass)
4 raids 1 main 3 lairs
6 patrol zone
30 exotic weapons
57 exotic armors

Forsaken

3 subclass tree (1 / subclass)
2 Patrol zone
weapon random rolls
2 Raids
1 Dungeon
24 exotic weapons
18 Exotic Armors
1 new enemy type

Shadowkeep

Finisher
1 patrol zone
15 Exotic weapons
9 Exotic armors
armor 2.0 + armor mods
1 Raid
2 Dungeons 
Champion Enemies

 

[T1no]

this game sucks!

 

i enjoy the campaign more than shadowkeep and i think the seasonal events are fine and interesting, but the baggage from sunsetting just gave me a bad taste; they did it poorly and everyone knows that.

i miss the big activity mindless shooting. like menageries and escalation protocol.

i think im just going to look at this as a base template for the future "Destiny 3" 

stasis obviously needs to be balanced on pvp but the subclass itself it's fun to play with and the aspect and fragments is wayyy better implementations than the static trees like the other elements subclasses.

[Malaphax]

The campaign was very short but had much more cinematics than even shadowkeep.  They did a better job telling the story of the fallen and why they have such a hatred for humanity.  If they can keep most of the story in the game instead of grimoire cards then I'd be much happier with their lore/writing teams.  That being said the actual plot of beyond light was a joke, I could have written the exact plot on the back of a napkin in 15 minutes it was so paper thin and predictable that it really didn't do much for me. 

Sunsetting isn't just a small problem it genuinely ruins major parts of the game.  Both Forsaken and Shadowkeep are still being sold for $40 and none of the loot from either zones drop beyond 1050.  That's genuinely insulting and they could probably fix some of the issues by simply raising that power cap to 1350 or something similar.  The amount of loot that was cut was huge, and the amount of new loot introduced was a complete joke, there's like 8 new weapons and 2 sets of armor (one is reskined 3 times for vanguard/crucible/gambit) added in the entire expansion.  The season pass wasn't included this time and even if you include that it's still a minor amount of loot compared to what was cut. 

I haven't used stasis outside of pve, and in pve it's fine.  Everything I've seen about pvp says that stasis is an absolute shitshow in pvp.  Bungo doesn't want to split skills or set up different balance between game modes but they also haven't realized from other popular games like overwatch just how much being stunned/frozen sucks in a fast ttk game.  I heavily suspect they're going to either have to nerf stasis into the ground or put significant diminishing returns on stun/freeze timers in pvp to attempt anything close to balance. 

I understand covid hit their development pretty hard, and you can really tell from the amount of bugs as well as the very limited current season just how much they needed to scale back.  At this point it's basically impossible to recommend this game to anyone, especially because of the current grind required to play the "good" parts of the game. 
There are rumors that bungie is currently hard at work on another title (possibly 2, one of them being a mobile game) and I suspect destiny is in pseudo maintenance mode while they pour a serious amount of resources into their new unannounced project.  That doesn't help make the case for buying/supporting anything in destiny 2, especially if the expansions are going to look like shadowkeep/beyond light and the seasons are going to continue to be lackluster. 

[Malaphax]

So I'm not going to bandwagon the sudden shift from "this expansion sucks" to "this expansion is awesome."

I will say that with the new content that became available after the raid, it certainly made this expansion better and more interesting.  I still think there's severe lack of loot and some garbage decisions from bungie, but we're making some progress. 
The quest design is still straight trash, with multiple quests having filler steps that just involve get x kills with y.  The actual quest missions have been mostly good, with the standout exception being the cloudstrike acquisition which is "lol rare chance go speedrun this mission 15 times." 

The new exotic sword is cool, and the missions surrounding it are definitely a highlight.  The large sections of the exo labs are fantastic environments and I hope they make serious use of them, because the bulk or europa has some incredibly boring outdoor environments. 

I still feel like this seasonal activity is absolutely trash.  The seasonal vendor can be quickly maxed out and while I expect some additional lore/story elements surrounding the crow/uldren but for now this season is just as bad as season of the undying was, maybe even a bit worse.  The fact that they make you play random activities to "charge" the lure and then you basically do a 10 minute "hunt" which is basically attack a yellow bar down to 20%, press E to track, follow green slime and then load into a new arena to kill that enemy and a second enemy that spawns afterwards with only a minor shield that prevents you from blowing them up immediately.  It's not as bad as a terrible open world event but it's not much better either. 

[Malaphax]

Posted in group chat, but here for posterity:

https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49957

tl;dr "We're sorry, we will do better"

I know bungo has a history of releasing things in a fucked up state and then slowly fixing them, but man is it sad that most of the community saw this stuff from far off and the devs just didn't listen.  Multiple major reddit threads and well thought out videos talked about how sunsetting was a bad idea, and some even mentioned that if sunsetting was going to be done, some of the best ways to do it.  Bungo does bungo things and creates a mess - here's the public apology and the "we'll fix it soon, please keep buying eververse items." 
On the one hand I hate it, because they clearly blow up their own good will every time they screw up, on the other hand, they are actually implementing changes (although most seem 3-6 months away). 

I guess the only thing I have do add at this point is to wait and see some of these changes manifest before deciding to purchase the recent expansion or seasonal content.  If they actually keep their promises, the game might be in a better state sometime before the next expansion. 

I also halfway expect the next expansion to feel a bit smaller or rushed, between covid-19 and the current rumors that Bungie is working on another major project, I think people need to reign in their expectations for upcoming content. 

[kuhla]

article - https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49971

Quote

Nezarec’s Sin Exotic helmet no longer triggers for five seconds after the second kill and all buff kills are now 2.5 seconds. This is intentional, but we failed to call it out in the patch notes for Update 3.0.0.1. The “original” functionality was a bug that applied 2.5 seconds twice for each subsequent kill. 

I just settled on a build with Nezarec and they are nerfing it even after that item has been completely left alone for a long time. Thanks bungo.

[Malaphax]

[kuhla]

Mod - ELEMENTAL ORDNANCE

https://www.light.gg/db/items/1824486242/elemental-ordnance/

Quote

Picking up an elemental well grants energy to your ability with the lowest current energy. Picking up an elemental well whose element matches your subclass damage type grants energy to all of your abilities.
Requires 3 of ANY energy

Perks

Defeating a combatant with a grenade spawns an elemental well that matches your subclass energy type.

So this is new and interesting. Even if the effect of this is relatively small this seems really strong. If you combine this with a warlock exotic that gives a lot of grenade energy like.....

• For void Contraverse Hold gives random on grenade hit
• For solar Sunbracers gives unlimited on grenade kill
• Verity's Brow on any subclass type type gives grenade energy on a kill with energy weapon

.....this seems like it could almost give you a bonus mini Nezarec's Sin type effect where you are reducing cooldowns on everything.

[T1no]

not going to lie ive been enjoying the core grind this seasons. 

i think its true what datto said. they load up the enemy counts on few activity and the new strike.  i hope they do it consistently.

 

the only thing that is still not exciting was the sunsetting and the crucible, which i have not try. 

[T1no]

interesting

[Malaphax]

I'm going to make a prediction that all the exotic quest guns for this year are going to have random rolls. 

I really dislike that design decision. 

[T1no]

yea not sure about that. they remove my excitement towards legendary weapons cause of sunsetting its hard for me to care or be attached to any of the legendary crap anymore. i guess im supposed to get excited for my exotics?!?