Destiny 2

[J.T.]

On ‎6‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 12:54 PM, J.T. said:

Nope, it's Crota's aunt actually:  Savathûn , the Queen of Final Shapes.

Now that it's out that the Scorn are a faction made up of "undead Fallen," the rest of the YouTubes seems to be falling in line with my Savathûn Is The Prime Evil conspiracy theory.

I await the big reveal that Eris has been playing everyone for suckers the entire time.  I'm looking forward to shooting out all three of her eyes right after I put Uldren's carcass in a gibbet and hang it from the gates at the Prison of Elders.

[RIPPA]

I have two different things on my Warlock that require EP levels and I have zero desire to grind them

[J.T.]

11 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I have two different things on my Warlock that require EP levels and I have zero desire to grind them

Just go to Mars and loiter around the zones.  There's always someone trying to goad players in the zone to do an EP. 

Fast Travel back and forth from the Glacial Basin to BrayTech until you hear the sound of people fighting and then jump right in.

I've been doing a lot of that lately since Level 1 EPs are ripe opportunities to get Sunburst kills thanks to all of the Ice Thralls running about.

[RIPPA]

Oh I know - just the desire to do it is zero.

And also I have been running into groups that start the EP and the fucking vanish like a fart in church.

 

[J.T.]

4 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Oh I know - just the desire to do it is zero.

Once you get started your enthusiasm will ramp up, especially if you are in a zone with a group that makes a good run at Wave 7.

5 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

And also I have been running into groups that start the EP and the fucking vanish like a fart in church.

I've been running into that bullshit as well.  I just try to get as many Sunburst kills as I can on the Thrall hordes until the timer runs out.

[J.T.]

Best PvP Tips Vid Is The Best.

Lots of excellent common sense tips that sometimes get lost in the Fog of War.

The only thing I disagree with is the It's All Your Fault mentality that he takes for all matters.. 

I am a big proponent of the Get Gud movement, but guns are part of the problem as there are obviously some weapons that are better in PvP than others.  Doing dumb things to get yourself shot doesn't help, but you can't sit there and say weapon choice is a non issue.

Ultimately, yes.  You cannot always blame OP weapons for your losses.  Either you suck, your team sucks, or probably a  bit of both.

And yeah, being awesome sometimes cannot always counterbalance horrible gameplay decisions made your team's resident retards  Anyone who has suffered through Control matches where your squad refused to cap when they were behind in points can relate. 

To this I add an 11th tip and further elaborate on his case study about the enemy team that was camping when they should've been attacking...

Know Your Game Mode. 

Do not fucking play Control like it is Clash.  Do not defend when you should be pressing.  Do not press when you should be defending.  If you do not need a Power Play to secure victory, do not cap the third zone.

Do not play Countdown like it is Clash.  There is an objective. Either set the bomb or defend it.  Help your teammates secure the objective..

[Eivion]

I did not realize Faction rallies would be back so soon. That seems fast. Well at least I have another chance at the Sunshot catalyst.

[RIPPA]

20 minutes ago, Eivion said:

I did not realize Faction rallies would be back so soon. That seems fast. Well at least I have another chance at the Sunshot catalyst.

The last one was 3 weeks ago which seems to be the normal Bungie rotation. 

They are also supposed to do that Solstice of Heroes Seasonal Event in July so that is probably gonna throw off the schedule next month

[Eivion]

Don't know why, but I thought it was only two weeks ago.

[RIPPA]

44 minutes ago, Eivion said:

Don't know why, but I thought it was only two weeks ago.

Funnily I did too when you said something but the. I went back and looked on Bungie’s site

I think I’m gonna stick with FWC for one more pass. Maybe I can at least get a full set of gear.

[Eivion]

I joined FWC this time around. Last time I fucked up and joined New Monarchy thinking it would get me the Sunshot catalyst because I read a mistake somewhere about who has what. This time I'm getting my damn catalyst.

[J.T.]

15 hours ago, Eivion said:

I joined FWC this time around. Last time I fucked up and joined New Monarchy thinking it would get me the Sunshot catalyst because I read a mistake somewhere about who has what. This time I'm getting my damn catalyst.

You're going to spend a lot of time on Mars leeching kills from EPs and lurking around the Lost Sector on Mercury after you get that catalyst.  Sunburst Kills for days.

I finished my Flashpoint and all of my FWC running around.  I am motivated to get Call To Arms and the Nightfall done this week since Zavala and Cayde-7 decided to give me infusion fodder upgrading my highest armor pieces instead of the ones that really need LL bumps.  It would've been nice to see a weapon upgrade or two, also..

I stayed with FWC this week because I am lazy and did not feel like armor grinding all over again for another faction.  It has taken me this long just to get Purple mods slapped on all of the pieces of my FWC armor and my FWC shotgun still needs to be masterworked.

I got hemmed up with a bunch of awesome randos last night who got me past Wave 7 of EP.  I got a shit ton of shaders and the IKELOS sniper rifle.  I also got the EP Hunter Cloak, hated how the hood looked, and infused it into my beloved Frumious Cloak which is now 375.

So now I can no longer say that I have never seen any sort of endgame content in D2.  It was a bittersweet moment using one of my Decrypted Cache Keys, because now I have a new weapon that needs masterworking and a Legendary weapon mod.  The grind never ends.

There were a lot of Euros hovering around Lakshmi this morning.  Maybe FWC gets the duke this week now that nearly everyone that wanted a Graviton Lance catalyst probably has one by now?

[RIPPA]

Nessus was strangely dead when I did my Flashpoint last night. So it took me longer to get that done.

It didn’t help that I kept forgetting that renown was kicked in this week.

I will probably knock out my clan engram and call to arms at the same time tonight.

I keep forgetting I’m in NY this weekend so I will have to spend my “work from home” day doing all my Warlock stuff

[J.T.]

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Nessus was strangely dead when I did my Flashpoint last night. So it took me longer to get that done.

It didn’t help that I kept forgetting that renown was kicked in this week.

Building / Shedding your Reknown after completing a PE is the only downside of Faction Rallies and that can be annoying during a Flashpoint. 

The upside being that you can make your victory run back to the Tower with at least fifty or sixty faction tokens in your pocket once you're done with the Flashpont.  You can also cash in the shit ton of location tokens you earned to that planet's vendor.

Last night when I was working on EP with that rando group, we almost failed Wave 5 because we had to beat a Heroic PE during the encounter. We had to shed the three Reknown points we earned during the PE because Reknown debuffs damage output, and we were barely getting it done against the Boss plus five bajillion Ogres and Knights running around the battlefield.

It was easy to die three times quickly thanks to the recovery rate debuff you get with High Reknown.

2 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I will probably knock out my clan engram and call to arms at the same time tonight.

As per my usual pattern, I will tackle CTA on either Thursday or next Monday when the sweaties are gearing up for or competing in Trials.

If no one from the DARPA group is on this afternoon, I may hit up Xbox LFG to see if anyone is running a Prestige Nightfall.

Then I will zip off to Gamestop to see if this used copy of Battle Chasers is still on sale.

 

[RIPPA]

Normally I wouldn't be pushing to complete Call to Arms yet but with my compressed schedule this week - I need to do what I want with my Titan tonight and tomorrow so I can do everything on Friday with my Warlock (and I guess a little bit Monday evening)

[J.T.]

26 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Normally I wouldn't be pushing to complete Call to Arms yet but with my compressed schedule this week - I need to do what I want with my Titan tonight and tomorrow so I can do everything on Friday with my Warlock (and I guess a little bit Monday evening)

I may still hold off working on CTA until later on in the week. 

I'm definitely going to try to get the Nightfall done this afternoon in addition to whatever Faction Rally DCs are up.  Now that I have a DFA hand cannon, I really want to see if I can get the Duty Bound auto rifle to drop for me after a Savathûn's Song completion so that I can pass it on to my Titan.

[J.T.]

Hey, Eivion. 

There are two D1 Loot Cave-esque glitches you can exploit.. er.... take tactical advantage of when you start trying to get Sunburst kills. 

1. In Trostland, there is a Fallen Captain high priority target that spawns near the Widow's Walk Lost Sector.  He stays close to his emergence point, but he has three Shanks with him.  Just hang around and shoot one of the Shanks and the others close to him should blow up nicely.  Don't kill the Captain.  Leave him be so that more Shanks will spawn to defend him.  After a while the high-priority target timer will expire and you can go about your business.
2. In the Hallows on Nessus there is a spot where the Fallen spawn during the enemy confrontations.  Shoot them as they spawn and they should chain reaction kill each other.

EDIT:  Go figure.  Someone already has a YouTube of #2:

You probably won't be as fortunate as the guy in the video because EVERYONE knows about that place and goes there to farm kills.  If someone else is there, just time your shots to kill some of the enemies the other person is bound to miss and you should get some explosions in.

As I mentioned before, the Lost Sector on Mercury is also a good place to farm as well as Mars if you see people spamming Level 1 EPs.  Lots of targets in clusters to destroy with one shot.

[RIPPA]

Well ended up doing my strikes with my Titan last night since the Rally objective was to do 3 strikes.

Very amused how 5 other people quit out of Tree of Possibilities before I could load in and quit it myself.

I also get entertained by people who don't look at the modifiers and instantly die when they leave the ground.

Between Zavala, Hawthorne and FWC last night was a good night in getting higher level gear I needed

[J.T.]

Well, I rolled with a couple of awesome randos last night and we put up enough points in the Prestige Nightfall to earn our sexy purple halos.  One guy got the Duty Bound auto rifle to drop for him and he shrieked over the mic. 

We were pretty happy for the guy because he's been trying to get that weapon for his Titan ever since PNs were announced.

It was a good experience because now I have a better handle on how Prestige Nightfalls really work. 

Our team consisted of two Hunters (I was an Arcstrider and the other guy was a Nightstalker) and one Titan (Bubble Sentinel with Helm of Saint-14).

We buffed our modifier with:

• Solar Singe
• Extinguish (so it felt like an old school Nightfall Strike)
• Famine
• Match Game

And we topped it off by taking a -10 Power penalty which dropped us closer to the minimum recommended LL of the PN.  Now I know why people want players that are 370+, because the handicap put me right at 361 for the duration of the strike.

Even though we had Famine on, I didn't really have problems with ammo.  The key seems to be to remember that you have powers and to not wait around to use them  Whenever we had our Supers up, we'd use them almost immediately to generate orbs for the other players since you get bonus points for picking up orbs. 

We carried Sleeper Stimulants and a Telesto as our Power Weapons and we had either Void or Arc energy weapons to use on the Knights and the Wizards (who have Void shields instead of Solar ones in this Strike). We did not hesitate to use Power Weapons on Yellow Bars since they drop Power Weapon reloads anyway when they die. 

Notice that none of us played a Solar class.  Solar Singe was just there to boost the effect of the Sleeper Stimulants for Yellow Bar killing effectiveness.  The Nightstalker and the Bubble Sentinel were there for crowd control and Void Shield damage and my job was to take care of Arc Shields.  

Since there were two Void classes present who could use their powers to hurt the Void wizards, the Nightstaker also used an Arc damage Uriel's Gift to help me deal with Knight barriers.

I had the class portfolio on that gave me Disorientating Strike as my Melee so I did a little bit of crowd control when groups of Thralls were running around, but crowd control wasn't my primary function.

I don't think your choice of Kinetic weapons matters as long as whatever you have gear wise puts you over 370 LL.  We carried mostly auto rifles and pulse rifles because we engaged from medium to long range and didn't want to get zerged and die all at once.

We were also smart about communication and shouted out who drew agro so that the guy running the Void orb knew it was safe to make his move.   That helped immensely during the two shielded Shrieker segments of the mission as well as the final boss battle.

It also helps to call out what kind of shield a Yellow Bar has so that your designated Arc damage or Void damage dudes can step up and take out the barrier so that you can all nuke the enemy when its down. 

There's only one Solar barrier to deal with in the entire strike and that's the first Wizard at the start of the mission. 

Every other barrier is either Void or Arc so plan accordingly.  Even if you draw the Fallen variant of this strike, there won't be any Solar barriers deep in the mission to worry about.

I would imagine that Hard Light would be a pretty decent weapon to carry since you can change the elemental damage type on the fly, but it is probably better just to run with hard hitting Fusion Rifles as your Power Weapons so you can knock the Boss Shrieker out of the box as soon as you can.

Speed Runs in this case make no sense, really.  We finished in about twenty minutes, so not murdering everything in your path and holding your Supers for a long time Is just stupid and a waste of points.  The only time you should probably say "Fuck Adds!" is when the big Shrieker is low on health at the very end of the mission.  Just blast him with your Power Weapons and get it over with.

If any 370+ guys here on Xbox want to make a PN run and take a shot at the Duty Bound, message me this afternoon and I can try to Sherpa you.  Otherwise, I will probably fire up Battle Chasers soon after I eat dinner.

My purple halo will give us a Vanguard token bonus after a successful strike completion.

[J.T.]

1 minute ago, RIPPA said:

Well ended up doing my strikes with my Titan last night since the Rally objective was to do 3 strikes.

Very amused how 5 other people quit out of Tree of Possibilities before I could load in and quit it myself.

I also get entertained by people who don't look at the modifiers and instantly die when they leave the ground.

There are so many players out there who run Hunter and evade by jumping first.  Completely forgetting that they have one free Dodge.

Warlocks usually remember they have Healing Rift and Titans rarely fail to put up their Barrier immediately when they are getting wrecked.

[J.T.]

Faction Rally bullshit for today is raiding a Lost Sector on Titan, so I should knock that out in short order by building up to 5 and then going in.

After that, if I can't find a PN group quickly or if no one here is online and wants to run one for the milestone and a shot at Duty Bound, I see a rapid transition to Battle Chasers in my future.

[RIPPA]

I am working late so I doubt I will get on

If I do - it will be just to finish off my Call to Arms on my Titan

[J.T.]

3 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

I am working late so I doubt I will get on

If I do - it will be just to finish off my Call to Arms on my Titan

I will be jetting for the crib in a few and get running after I get my dad settled.  I will probably be playing Battle Chasers by the time you get online, but hit me up if you need an extra gun.

[J.T.]

I got my Duty Bound auto rifle last night.  It totally melts enemies in PvE, but it's a 600 rpm rifle so you won't be outgunning dudes in the Crucible armed with pulse rifles, high impact 450 rpm auto rifles, or 720 rpm auto rifle bullet hoses.  Their flinch will beat your flinch. 

This is one of those LOOK AT ME~! guns that will totally destroy during a Heroic Strike and make other players drool with envy (the bayonet is quite awesome!), but it's the reason you use Origin Story, Graviton Lance, Uriel's Gift, Vigilance Wing, or Battle Scar in PvP.

Wow.  Trying to get into a Prestige Nightfall random group is a lot like applying for a job.  If the host wants to run Solar Singe, it is probably best to say that you have a Sleeper Stimulant and even then, there are a lot of Conventional Wisdom people out there that won't take chances on a player with a LL lower than 375 since they want to run at least a 8 point LL handicap in order to buff the score modifier..  Most will want to run the full 10 point handicap and those people will prefer players that have 385 LL.

Even though I was only 371 LL, the one thing I had going for me is that I already broke the Threshold score in the Strike I ran the day before and had my Crown of Bravery.  That means three things:

1. Extra Vanguard tokens for the party.

2. This guy knows the magic formula of modifiers that we need to get a high score!

3. He is below 375 and still got a high score so he knows what to do.

The sad part is that even that won't get you into a PN group if there is a popular weapon to farm like Duty Bound.  If you don't say up front that you are wiling to help out with at least two or three farming attempts, you will still sit idle in orbit.

So if looking for a group isn't working, you should host one, right?  WRONG~!  If you try to host a PN with a hotly desired item in the balance and you don't announce that you're going to farm it, you will once again find yourself sitting idle in orbit.

I finally got an invite after about an hour of trying.  At least I was able to eat dinner in the meantime.  In retrospect, I wish I hadn't gotten that first invite.

The first PN group I got into was hosted by some no mic having asshole that sandbagged most of the strike.  The cool Welsh rando in the fireteam and I almost rage quit, but we were both after the rifle so we hung in there.  No rifle dropped for either of us after we secured victory, so we both quit out of the host fireteam before the Song's dead carapace stopped rolling around in the dirt..

Fuck that host.  The Postmaster will hold my shit for me until I get back to the Tower.

Second group I was in was much better and we made three runs to make sure that everyone got the Duty Bound.  I was the second player to get one and I suspect the reason that the host didn't quit out after getting his rifle first is that the third fireteam member was one of his friends.

The host didn't have the modifiers to get a high score, but he invited me to his farming team because I had zero deaths in the PN where I got my high score so he knew I didn't have to be carried.

That means that mother fuckers are going to the D2 companion app to check your game history to see if you've done what you say you've done.  That is some wild shit to do for something that is supposed to be recreational.  Like I said, it's like applying for a job.  Your employer is going to check to see if you have bullshit in your resume or if you are actually qualified..

I was going to hand this rifle over to my Titan, but I fell in love with the PvE gloriousness and left it with my Hunter after helping one of my DARPA clan mates beat the Heroic Strike on Mars with the Psion Flayers that he needed to complete Nascent Dawn 2/5.  Enemies fell like wheat before the fucking scythe, man!

Poor guy.  Getting the BrayTech scoutie is just the beginning of the journey through Hell that is the Polaris Lance saga.

One of these nights I really am going to sit down and play Battle Chasers.

[J.T.]

Oh, and if you are going to host a PN. for the love of St. George do NOT chose the same fucking Singe modifier damage type that the boss has.

The Welsh dude told me this horror story about an earlier group he was in where the Host ran the game with Void singe because he liked being a Voidwalker and his favorite weapon was the Graviton Lance.  Not his best weapon; his FAVORITE weapon..

The idiotic host also had Extinguish active and the fireteam wiped during the boss battle twice and four times total.   I wonder why?  Maybe because NEARLY EVERY MAJOR ENEMY IN THE STRIKE DOES VOID DAMAGE~???  INCLUDING THE GIGANTIC HONKING SHRIEKER AT THE END OF THE MISSION~???

That's over an hour of game time shot to shit because some douchebag fireteam leader cannot figure out that it isn't good to help the Song or its Hive servants do their dirty work.

You can still run the Graviton in that Nightfall if you want to grind the catalyst.  Just change the fucking damage modifier to Arc Singe, run as a Stormcaller, and then turn on Match Game for extra points.

That way, you have a Void weapon that can damage the Void shields that the Wizards have in this particular Strike while your Arc class abilities can deal with Knight barriers.  That is not rocket science.  That is Middle School consumer math.  Everyone in the fireteam does not need to run the sub-class that does the same elemental damage type as the Singe modifier.

Since I am total dick, I had my Hunter sit down on the floor of the Tower flight deck near Tess and the Postmaster, got some Butter Pecan ice cream, and just watched as my Crown of Bravery and badass auto rifle drew crowds of players who would surround me and then immediately begin to check the Roster to see who I was and how high was my LL.

Nothing will get you more unsolicited game invites than chillin' at the Tower with the Nightfall Strike Item of the Week slung over your back and your noble head adorned with an awesome purple aura.