The Top 5 Best Changes Made to Destiny

As a follow up to my previous post where I presented the worst changes to Destiny, this post discusses the best changes made to Destiny since its launch.

#5 - Pledging to Factions & Rewards
Before The Taken King launched, to pledge to a faction you had to wear one of that faction's class items. In Taken King class items became a real armor piece that contained stats to increase your guardian's level. As a result, you no longer have to wear the class item to represent a faction, instead you pledge to a faction by purchasing their badge and you can change badges or factions once per week.

New Monarchy Faction Badge

Rewards from factions prior to The Taken King were abysmal. Most of the time you simply came away with one or two strange coins/motes of light, paltry rewards considering it takes several days of playing consistently to rank up a faction, and even more now in The Taken King. Now factions have a smart loot system, where the game will not give you a duplicate emblem/shader/ship if you already unlocked it, each package has a guaranteed 4 strange coins, 4 motes of light, and can roll a legendary item, whether that be a weapon, armor piece, shader, ship etc.

#4 - Class-Specific Weapons

This is one of my personal favorite changes, and I would rank it higher if some of the weapons were not as weak as they are (looking at the Titan ones specifically). Each class has a specific legendary and exotic weapon, which are available from questlines given by the Gunsmith upon reaching Gunsmith Ranks 2 & 3 on that character. The best part about these weapons is that they enhance certain capabilities of the classes they work for, or were designed to fit the class thematically. For example, the Tlaloc exotic scout rifle for Warlocks, specifically the Sunsinger subclass. This subclass is often used in end-game PvE content for its ability to self-revive with its super. The Tlaloc gains increased stats such as rate of fire, handling, etc. while your super is charged, a perfect weapon for Sunsingers who hold onto their super until they die.

Warlock exclusive exotic Scout Rifle

#3 - Introducing Legendary Marks
The predecessors to Legendary marks were Vanguard and Crucible marks, which were removed in The Taken King and replaced by Legendary marks. They are used for two main purposes, infusing gear & purchasing gear from vendors. They are a reward for a variety of activities both PvP & PvE or can be obtained by dismantling legendary gear. Unlike Vanguard/Crucible marks, the amount of Legendary marks you can earn in a week is not capped, but you can only hold 200 at one time, compared to being able to hold 200 of each Vanguard/Crucible marks. The biggest advantages of Legendary marks was introducing a currency that was used at all gear vendors in the tower, that you were encouraged to spend, and had a variety of sources.

#2 - The Addition of Kiosks
Kiosks a great addition to the game for three major reasons. First, it made everyone get a collector's mentality. Seeing what emblems, shaders, ships etc. you have collected, what ones you were missing, and the method of getting those missing ones woke the collector's drive in many guardians. Second, it allowed multiple copies of these items without having to get more than one drop. Prior to this, if you had a really cool shader, you had to transfer it between each character if you wanted to use it. Now, once you unlock it for the first time, it is available at the kiosk for your other characters to pick up at no cost. Last, it simply freed up vault space which leads into the best change made to Destiny.

View of the Shaders Kiosk

#1 - More Vault Space
Was there any doubt this change would be number one on the list? Originally the vault could only store 20 armor, 20 weapons, and 20 general items (materials, consumables, shaders etc.) This was later expanded to 24/36/24, and again expanded in The Taken King to the space of 72/72/36. How Bungie ever thought that a shooter loot style game like Destiny would have enough space with just a 20/20/20 vault is beyond me, but you must thank them for listening to its players and expanding the vault when it needed to be. A bigger vault makes life on players much simpler. Not only is transferring gear between characters a much smoother experience, it also allows players to more easily keep gear for specific playstyles, so they are always running an optimal loadout for whatever activity they are playing.

Original Vault

Taken King Weapons Vault Tab

The Top 5 Worst Changes Made in Destiny

Destiny has seen a lot of changes since its launch just over a year ago. Many of the changes were quality of life ones that made the user experience more convenient and overall an improvement. Some changes were noticeable improvements on the game, and others were made with good intentions in mind, but have not necessarily made the game worse, but creates many headaches for the players.

#5 - Elemental Primaries
Elemental primaries were around at the games launch, however there were very few elemental primaries and an even fewer amount were strong weapons. Originally obtained only through a hard mode raid, Vault of Glass, for vanilla Destiny, new elemental primaries were introduced with each expansion. In The Dark Below there was Crota's End hard mode and in The House of Wolves there was either going flawless in Trials of Osiris or doing Lvl 35 version of Prison of Elders. However with The Taken King expansion, Bungie did not add any elemental primaries into the game and all old ones were left behind and not brought forward to Year 2. In this Game Informer article, Luke Smith, a leading game designer at Bungie, states that this was to create more diversity in which primary weapons are used. This strategy definitely succeeded but they made an exception to their rule which is why I put this on the list. The exotic auto rifle Zhalo Supercell has arc damage, the only primary weapon in The Taken King which has an elemental damage type. This creates an irregularity with the arc element in Taken King, much like how Solar burn was rarely used in Year 1 activities because of the potency of Gjallahorn, Black Hammer and Vision of Confluence, arc burn will most likely take a back seat because of how strong this one weapon will become in those activities. If arc burn is used, any player without this weapon will find the activity much more difficult than those who do. The idea of getting rid of them was sound, but there was no reason for this exception.

#4 - The Loss of Old Content
Destiny was a game criticized for a lack of content on release. Each expansion has added more content so this criticism is no longer entirely true, but is still relevant because with each new expansion, some of the old content seems to be pushed away. The previous end-game activities are no longer of use to players, except to play them for nostalgia or if they missed out on the opportunity in Year 1. The rewards are no longer end-game, and are not even from Year 2. The daily story mission before any expansion had been released, used to go in order through the story missions, and then start the cycle over after it had been completed. When the first DLC was released, this pattern has stopped and never resumed. Instead, it focuses on the few missions added in the DLC and a couple from the base game. In Taken King, the hope of breaking this pattern has all but vanished, as two missions introduced are directly related in receiving two of the new exotic weapons. If the cycle would return to pre-DLC, these exotics would only be available once a month. The loss of content is not limited to PvE, but also PvP, as many older multiplayer maps fail to make an appearance in newer playlists. This trend has been noticed by many players of the community and to read those thoughts you can click here.

Old maps are available in separate playlists

#3 - The Seasons of Weapons
This trend in Destiny is mainly referring to the Crucible. When Destiny first launched, Auto Rifles were the undisputed number one choice for weapons, due to their range and accuracy that matched the precision weapons of scout/pulse rifles. Auto rifles were quickly nerfed into the ground in accuracy, range, and base damage. Around this same time, the Thorn and other handcannons received small buffs, and became the new powerhouse of the Crucible. However, handcannons reign was different from that of the auto rifles. Auto rifles across the entire weapon type were superior, but handcannons it was only the exotics that were extremely overpowered. After almost 9 long months of these weapons being at the top, Update 2.0 nerfed the whole handcannon class, and pulse rifles rose into power. Certain pulse rifles were already making their way into Crucible before the demise of the handcannons and when they were nerfed, it just opened the floodgates. Pulse rifles may be the strongest out of the three weapon types to hold their grip over the crucible in their primes. Like auto rifles, almost any pulse rifle can be used, they have superior range and a significant amount of flinch or stagger on opponents due to the burst nature of pulses. The reign of auto rifles lasted for around 3 months, handcannons close to 9 months, it will be curious to see how long pulse rifles will be left in the limelight.

#2 - The Double RNG Issue
The double RNG issue is a change introduced in The Taken King's raid King's Fall. Not only do players only have a chance at acquiring the best gear in the game, but the stats of that gear is also randomly picked from a range of values. Now with the reworking of leveling in Taken King, the small difference in the range of values is not really noticeable when playing, but dedicated players have already begun to feel the frustration and recognize the long grind ahead of them if they want to reach the max obtainable level. The other end-game activity, Trials of Osiris, also includes this range of values for its drops, but these drops are only given for going flawless on a ticket (going 9-0 or going 7-1 with the boons purchased) in brutal crucible matches against other top tier players. In this week Bungie Weekly Update, the statistic was published that only 16% of players who participated in Trials were able to make it to the Lighthouse. This small percentage is a fine number in my opinion as Trials is supposed to put the best against the best, but it also shows how many number players will be reliant on the double RNG of the raid for the best gear in the game.

The Lighthouse chest on Mercury

#1 The Economy in Destiny
Simply put, the economy in Destiny is a mess. With each expansion new currency is introduced into the game in an effort to help delay players in reaching max level or completing all the content too quickly, and once another expansion is released all that currency becomes useless. Some currency has been used since the games inception, but what it can be used for has changed dramatically. The two best examples of this are Motes of Light and Weapon Parts. In vanilla destiny up to the House of Wolves expansion Motes were not a piece of sought after currency. They could be spent on special class items from the Speaker in the Tower, or used to buy exotic engrams from Xur. In House of Wolves they were introduced as the currency to upgrade armor and weapons. In The Taken King, they are no longer used at Xur, but can now be traded in at Factions for reputation, are used in infusing weapons and armor to higher levels, and can be consumed to add experience to weapons and armor. Weapon Parts are, like their name, used in upgrading of weapons. In vanilla destiny dedicated players had stacks of a couple thousand of this currency. In House of Wolves those stacks took a hit as Bungie introduced reforging for weapons, and although they removed reforging in Taken King, Weapon Parts are used in purchasing items at the Gunsmith, infusing weapons, ranking up weapons and have had their drop rate reduced leaving those stacks of thousand a thing of the past. A recent reddit thread was created discussing the issues with the economy as a whole and particularly for new players who never had the chance to build of vast quantities of certain materials.

A view of several currencies of Destiny

Swords in Destiny: Is there a place for them?

Before The Taken King expansion, rockets, particularly the Gjallarhorn, was the indisputable choice for a heavy weapon. However, the Gjallarhorn like many other exotic weapons, was not brought forward into Year 2 of Destiny in an attempt to add more diversity into players choices for weapons and to have them give new weapons a try. Among those new weapons, was the new heavy weapon class swords, which contains three legendary swords, one for each element, and three exotic swords also of each element but with their own special attack. Many people have taken a liking to using a sword, myself included, but it is a weapon class that is lacking in end game content.

The Attacks of a Sword
Swords come with the risk of getting up close to do massive damage to the enemy. This of course puts you in an extremely vulnerable spot where you can be gunned down. Legendary swords have a guard mechanic which slowly drains your ammo charge from your sword to gain some damage resistance and help you reach those kills. Exotic swords, who also have the guard mechanic, also have a special attack to make up for this weakness. For two of the swords, solar and void elements, the attacks are capable of one-shotting many higher health enemies. The exotic arc sword is different from the others, its special attack is ranged and involves throwing arc bolts across rooms at your enemies. The attacks from the arc sword are just as powerful as those from the solar and void swords, provided that your aim is accurate.

Swords in End Game Content
This is the shortcoming of swords and I doubt there is a scenario where this will change. They have no place in end-game content. For Iron Banner & Trials of Osiris, which are PvP end-game content, they are obviously at a clear disadvantage to rockets and machine guns. In end-game PvE content, i.e. the raids or high-level strikes, using a sword works well when clearing the weak enemies. Bosses in strikes, with the exception of Dust Palace, all have a ground-attack which will automatically be used when a guardian is within a certain radius of them. These attacks are extremely powerful and will take more than half your health requiring you to immediately retreat and look for cover if you are hit by one. In raids, it is often times that the mechanics of the boss fight simply do not allow for you to realistically use swords. The exotic arc sword is the only one that can be used in several fights, because of its ranged special attack, but the projectiles are relatively slow, and the rate at which you use ammo when using the special attacks, makes it un-ideal for multiple rounds of damage to bosses.

Possible Sword Changes
Unfortunately for swords, I cannot see any changes that will change their major shortcoming. Sword mechanics in Destiny had been around since the base game released over a year ago through the Sword of Crota mission, and also in the Crota's End raid that was released with The Dark Below. It would be rather diffcult for them to change the way swords work in Destiny so sword enthusiasts will have to wait until Destiny 2 to see any drastic changes. The only change they can make for legendary swords is have a new set of three that either vary in attack speed/damage from the original three or come up with new special attacks for a few new exotic swords.  These changes will not address the underlying problem with swords, as those problems stem from the game's mechanics, but could bring a nice change of pace for sword users.

The Changes in Hard Mode King's Fall Raid

The much anticipated hard mode version of the King's Fall raid launched yesterday, and due to the mechanic heavy design of the raid, many people were expecting the hard mode version to be significantly more difficult, with even more complex mechanics. This hope was somewhat shattered when hard mode was cleared for the first time by a group of six in just 1 hr and 17 mins. Many people still at work or still in school were shocked to here that the raid had been able to be cleared in such a short amount of time, and began to question how much more difficult the hard mode version could actually be.

Difficulty Bump
The most obvious change in hard mode is the base level of all the enemies has been raised, making it more difficult by default. In normal mode King's Fall, the recommended light was 290 to start the raid and scaled to 300 recommended by the final boss fight at Oryx. In hard mode King's Fall, the recommended light to start the raid is 310 and scales to 320 by the Oryx fight. Of course, the loot you can get in hard mode has been raised from a 300-310 drop table to a 310-320 drop table to compensate as well. The loot is also exclusive to hard mode in design. Weapons and armor are titled "Harrowed" and have had color change from the white/red design to a black/red design. Bungie also kept the same mechanic of not being able to revive your teammates when they die until the next checkpoint is reached, as they use in previous hard mode raids, so Sunsinger warlocks become much more valuable.

Pre-Warpriest Encounter Changes
This section sees the least amount of changes. Opening the raid in the Court of Oryx is the same as normal mode, although it does seem that you are not allotted as much time as you were in normal mode in between awakening each statue. On the ship jumping puzzle, there is simply no checkpoint halfway through. The ledge where the checkpoint used to be was removed entirely, so just stay on the ship until the next one spawns instead of going for the checkpoint. In the totem section, the only change is that hallowed knights will spawn once you are over halfway done opening the door.

Warpriest Changes
The change in the Warpriest fight is my favorite change in the hard mode King's Fall. It gives the fireteam the option to pick their poison in what mechanics they want to face. The damage buff is obtained the same way as normal mode, but when the Warpriest activates the Oculus, and consumes one of the pillars he will gain a new mode of attacking. If the left pillar is consumed, the Warpriest gains the Axion Dart ability like that of Taken Centurions, if the middle pillar is consumed, he will gain Taken Hobgoblin sniping capabilities, and if the right pillar is consumed, he gains the Taken Captain blinding attack. The Warpriest will gain multiple abilities if he consumes more than one pillar.

Golgoroth Changes
This fight sees a very minor change but something to be wary of. Upon capturing the gaze and entering the pools to damage Golgoroth, a few members that stand in the pool will gain a debuff titled Unstable Light. This debuff is on a short timer and upon hitting zero the guardian with the debuff will let out a small area explosion that will kill any other guardians in range. Whoever acquires the debuff should simply run out of the pool and away from all other members at around 2 seconds left to gain plenty of distance to keep your fireteam safe.

Daughters/Deathsingers Changes
The jumping puzzles before this encounter have no changes and the deathsingers also see a very minimal change like Golgoroth. After claiming the invulnerability buff from a deathsinger, and doing as much damage before the timer runs out. Immediately after the blinding light that kills any guardian not near the buff holder, the next timer starts. In normal mode there were about 10 seconds in between starting the next timer, in hard mode the timer starts immediately. This makes communication extremely important so your group does not waste time figuring out who is the runner and who should stand on which platform.

Oryx Changes
Oryx sees another small change but a very aggravating one. As each of the light-blighted ogres is killed, a knight will spawn slightly behind the platform that is opposite of you on the same side. The knight will take a diagonal path towards the blight left behind by the ogre and will consumer the blight if not killed before it reaches it. To gain a better perspective on where the knights spawn, on the side where Oryx initially shows his face, the knights will spawn where the taken thralls spawn at the start of the encounter. On the other side, the knights will spawn out of the small puddles of water behind the platforms. The knights are sword wielders and are not hallowed, so they are relatively easy to snipe.

Destiny Reflections: The First Iron Banner of TTK

Iron Banner is a week long crucible event that many Destiny players look forward too, especially for those who prefer PvP to PvE. It is a monthly held event in which level advantages are enabled, which are not in normal crucible, and is a 6v6 control gametype. Iron Banner has its own exclusive gear, weapons and armor, and also includes emblems and shaders only available through the event.

Changes in this Iron Banner
Obviously this being the first Iron Banner since the launch of the Taken King, one of the big changes for this event is the introduction of several new maps, weapons and the three new subclasses to choose from. Other than this, the only change to the event is that the tempered buff, which increases your reputation gained from winning games and completing bounties in the event, is automatically applied and increases each day the event is live, is automatically applied to your characters, instead of having to purchase the buff each day.

Weapon & Class Choices
Iron Banner did not stray from the crucible meta that has become prevalent since the launch of the Taken King. Pulse rifles dominate the choice for primary weapons, with a few scout rifles or auto rifles with strong perk rolls sometimes making it into the mix. Shotguns and snipers dominated the choice for secondary weapons, and it mainly comes down to player preference or which map is being played on to determine which weapon to equip. Heavy weapons saw a mix of rockets and machine guns, and as expected, swords were non-existent.

Titans saw the least variation in subclass choice with Sunbreaker being dominant. Most people stray from the defensive/supportive style of the Defender subclass, and the Striker subclass is completely out performed in offensive capabilities by the Sunbreaker. Warlocks primary choice was also the new subclass introduced in the Taken King, Stormcaller. Similar to Sunbreaker for titans, this subclass allows for the mass chaining of kills and can completely turn the tide of a game if used correctly. Voidwalker was also used to some extent, but mainly used to eliminate one trouble person in their super, or for the maneuverability of the blink jump. Hunters saw the most variety of choice in which subclass to use. Gunslingers are long favorites to one-shot enemies at a long range and the new Nightstalker class to make use of the ability to cancel the supers of others, and for the flashy plays with the evade skill. Bladedancers saw the least amount of use as can easily be killed out of their super, and lose trades to almost all the other supers in the game.

The Loot Table
With every Iron Banner two weapons and two armor pieces are available. In this event, the sidearm and pulse rifle were available for weapons, and the class item and boots were available for armor. The loot can be obtained from the host of the event Lord Saladin by purchasing them with legendary marks, or obtained through random drops for completing Iron Banner matches. The general consensus is that the drop rate was hilariously low, several people reaching max rank in the event before getting or even seeing one piece of loot drop. Bungie has already noted that the rate of loot dropping was low and will most likely be increasing it in the next event. Personally, I received five pieces of loot, two hunter class items, two pulse rifles, and one sidearm.

The next Iron Banner will most likely take place during mid to late November. Crucible players will not have to wait that long to get their end-game PvP content however, as Trials of Osiris should be making its Taken King debut before Iron Banner returns.

The "Waiting" Trend in Destiny

The Taken King expansion for Destiny brought with it a sleuth of new content for players to enjoy, but why must some of that content be blocked by time? What I mean here, is not the time scheduled of release of content in the Taken King, such as the raid not becoming available until the Friday the DLC launched. This kind of waiting allows players to prepare for the difficulties of the end game content, by grabbing weapons and armor with strong perks, and time to complete the previous content so they do not have to make a choice on what content to pursue. The type of waiting I want to discuss is the waiting for content in the game to be triggered, and why the trend of this waiting time needs to be fixed in the next expansion for Destiny.

Public Events
Public events have been around since Destiny was released one year ago. They occur on each of the destinations, except for the Dreadnaught, and involve taking down a mini-boss enemy, or small groups of an enemy depending on what planet you are on. They were designed to need a small group of people to complete if you are the same level as the event, but higher level guardians and well-equipped ones have no issues soloing these events. Initially, thought to be random and triggered by a certain amount of guardians being in the area, these events are actually on a schedule. If you wanted to do a public event for quest purposes, potential rewards, or grimoire it was a simple matter of checking destinypublicevents.com to find the next event in the cycle.

Off-Public Events
I am calling this next section of events off-public events because they still happen on patrol, but are on no set schedule and are similar to regular public events. In this category I would include, the Blades of Crota event from The Dark Below DLC, the Pack of Wolves prowling event from the House of Wolves DLC, and Taken Forces Corrupting the Area from the Taken King expansion. The completion of these events is often linked to bounties, grimoire, and the potential for some decent loot. The problem with these events is, there is simply nothing to do while you wait for them to spawn. You wander around the patrol area aimlessly killing the few enemies that spawn to pass the time, Sometimes you wait just a couple minutes, and sometimes you seem to wait for more than 15 minutes to get the event you are waiting for.

Bounties/Quests
As I said earlier, this will not include the timed release of content but will include bounties/quests that have timing gates built into the quest-line. The first instance of this happening with Destiny was in The Dark Below DLC, in which in the small bounty based quest-line from Eris after the main story was complete. A part of this bounty-line included buying an item from Xur, a vendor in Destiny that only is available from Friday mornings until Sunday mornings. Depending on when you reached this bounty in the chain, you may have to wait several days for the chance to complete it. This trend continued with the House of Wolves DLC and the Elder Cipher bounty-line to get one of three new exotic weapons introduced. One part of the bounty-line included waiting, simply waiting, for the next part to be available. To make this section worse, the time was completely random, waiting times ranged from just ten minutes to three days. Lastly, in The Taken King, there are several quests that involve waiting. The three quests for the exotic swords all require you to wait until Armsday (Wednesday) as a part of their quest line. The Chaperone quest, requires you to wait until the next weekly reset (Tuesday), as the final part of the quest-line. The quest for The First Curse exotic handcannon also is time gated requiring you to wait until Armsday, just like the exotic sword quests.

The Problem
Dedicated players, although they will be annoyed by having to wait for their rewards, will complete the quest-lines regardless of the waiting time. However, for those people that can only play maybe an hour a day or less on average, having to wait for these events to spawn, or having to wait potentially a whole week for the next step in your quest-line to be available can be quite aggravating. These waiting times may lead to players thinking the game is boring, or cause them to simply stop playing while they wait for the quest-line to be available. This cannot be a strategy going forward as Bungie continues to look to attract new players to the game. These players need to be excited about the experience and the gameplay, not forced to simply pass the time while waiting for the rewards of that gameplay.

Destiny: The King's Fall Raid Strategy Guide Part 1

The Prior Raids

King's Fall marks the third raid to be released for Destiny players. The first raid, the Vault of Glass, has been marked by most of the Destiny playerbase as a truly awesome experience that never seems to get dull, and always presents a challenge due to the mechanics and puzzles presented to the players. Crota's End, the second raid, has been criticized since it launched with the first expansion for Destiny, The Dark Below. Most of the raid's puzzles and mechanics could simply be skipped due to poor design and small glitches, not to mention the hard mode version had next to no difference than normal mode, except for an increased level cap (which was above what players could achieve at this time), to make the raid more difficult without having to add any mechanics. The King's Fall raid which came with The Taken King expansion, and opened up for players on Friday blows these first two raids out of the water.

Opening the Raid

To first gain access to the raid a player had to be level 40, completed the main storyline for The Taken King, and have a light level of around 290 (which is the recommended level). The fireteam will load in to the Dreadnaught, at the entrance to the Court of Oryx. There will be two relics that spawn right next to you, both must be picked up, and placed in the glowing statue around the same time in the hallway leading to the Court of Oryx. Enemies will begin spawning, and the two more relics will spawn, one down the corridor to the left, the other to the right. The ideal way to manage this is to split into three teams of two. Two left, two right, and two stay in the main room to clear the enemies and destroy the barriers that are summoned once a relic is picked up. Rinse and repeat this strategy until all six statues are glowing, each time you place the relics, they will spawn further away. Enemies also spawn around the relic holder when each are picked up, which is why you send two people in each direction. Once all six statues have been placed, the portal in the Court of Oryx will open and you can enter the raid.

Jumping Puzzles Set #1
After running through the portal, grab your first chest, which only gives moldering shards and ammo synths before moving on to the first of two jumping puzzles in this area. The first is not really a puzzle, but a series of platforms that are arranged in a zig-zag formation, which every few seconds will switch sides. If you are looking to play it safe, just simply wait until after they move and take one platform at a time. The second jumping puzzle consists of a series of hive tomb ships that you have to jump on top of as you make your way across a chasm. Advice here is to max out your agility stat, even use perks that you would not normally use, such as angel of light for sunsinger warlocks, because it grants an extra agility point. Hunters could use Bones of Eao here and not worry about dropping in light level because there are no enemies here to be careful with. In this jumping puzzle, you should focus your attention towards the direction the ship you are on is moving towards and constantly check to the left and right for the next ship spawning in. Once you make it across, there will be another ship that travels straight towards the next area. The doorway is sealed off by two plates that must be held active by two of your fireteam members so the other four can pass through the doorway. There are two other plates once you pass through the doorway to allow the two members that held the original plates open to catch up. Continue on by going up the gravity lift to move to the next checkpoint.

The Warpriest
The Warpriest is the first boss encounter of the raid, but you first have to gain access to it. When your group first enters the room there will be several hive bowing their heads towards a blocked doorway, to open the doorway your fireteam should split into two groups of three. Each group will pick a side, left and right, on your way down to the annihilator totems on each side there will be a buff that you will have to claim. The buff, and those standing close to the person holding the buff are shielded from the small damage over time each those will take once you enter each side. The buff has a thirty-second timer, upon expiration, it will be transferred to one of the other players standing in its aura and the player who just lost the buff will gain a new one titled Deathsinger's Power x10. This player from each side should then run to the middle, and stand on the plate there to drain away this buff. Doing this will work towards opening the door, which you can tell how far your group has progressed by watching the runes on either side of the door light up. Having a few defender titans in this encounter that place their bubbles on top of the plate in the middle can make this encounter a breeze. Once you have drained your entire Deathsinger's Power buff, run back to your corresponding totem, and the next player that gets Deathsinger's Power will rotate into mid. If you fail to drain your entire Deathsinger's Power buff, you will not be able to reacquire the buff that allows you to survive while standing on the totems.

Once your team has opened the door you can begin the Warpriest fight. There are three small plates in this room, top left, front middle, and up the small stairs to the right; stand on all three at the same time to begin. The Warpriest is immune to normal damage, dodge his fire, while clearing away all the enemies that spawn until you see a hallowed sword knight that spawns on each side and in the middle. Once each one of these has been killed, the glyph sequence will be started. Send one of the two guardians in mid behind the three pillars with runes on the front. On the back side near the top of each pillar is a small symbol that will glow blue if the corresponding plate is the next on in the sequence to be pressed. Have a member of your team go stand on that plate, and another symbol will glow blue, have another member move to the next plate, and then activate the last plate. You must stay on each plate while waiting for the others to be activated. The person who activates the last plate will get a buff that allows those standing in the red aura to damage the Warpriest. This aura lasts for ten seconds, the person who holds the buff can refresh the timer up to five times by killing an acolyte. If they fail to refresh the buff, they will die and the buff will be passed to another person. After the buff expires the Warpriest will activate the Oculus, which will kill anyone not standing behind one of the pillars. Your entire fireteam should stand behind the same pillar as you should already be grouped up close to the person who had the damage aura. Once the Oculus is over, the pillar will be consumed. Enemies will respawn and repeat the process until the Warpriest is defeated. Since one of the pillars is gone, when it is the corresponding plate's turn to be activated, a beam of red light will be where the pillar used to be. You have four rotations to kill the Warpriest, as there are three pillars, on the fourth buff claiming the Oculus will kill you. In addition, once the Warpriest health is dropped low enough, ~30% or so, Taken enemies will spawn instead of Hive.

I hope to get Part 2, which will cover the rest of the raid, up in a few days!

The Crucible: How update 2.0.0 changed Destiny PvP Secondary & Heavy Weapons

Overview

This post is part two to my previous blog entry that I published yesterday which highlighted how the new Destiny update changed primary weapons for the crucible. The focus of this post will be to finish examining how this update changed the crucible but with secondary and heavy weapons.

Secondary Weapons

Secondary weapons remain relatively unchanged in the new update. Snipers, obviously, still dominate the picks for long range, and are selected on the few maps with good sight-lines where they can be used safely and avoid getting engaged on in close combat. Shotguns with range perks still dominate the close engagements, as they have only received a slight range nerf and the other secondary weapon class that can be used effectively at close range, fusion rifles, are still inferior in almost all aspects to shotguns. While they can be used at a longer range than shotguns, the delay of firing with having to charge the weapon, the travel time of the bolts, and the spread of the bolts all make the damage that these weapons can do too inconsistent for most players to use them. Even fusion rifles with strong base stats and perfect perk choices, can struggle for kills at their optimal ranges. I leave the sidearm class off this list on purpose, as there are only two sidearm weapons in the game, they are almost never used, and therefore are hard to place in comparison to the other weapons.

Heavy Weapons

The heavy weapon class, much like the secondary class, has not seen any changes. Rocket launchers still show their dominance over heavy machine guns. This trend is not necessarily showing that rockets are stronger than heavy machine guns, but they serve a much different purpose, and this purpose is valued much higher by most crucible players. Heavy machine guns are much better at chaining kills together and snowballing the game through having the strongest DPS gun in a firefight. Rockets fulfill a very different role, clearing out congested areas and giving your opponent no chance at fighting back. This enables a team to quickly gain an advantage over another, or take away an advantage that the other team has achieved. Rockets are also a great counter to those that choose to use heavy machine guns, as the quick instant kill counteracts their high DPS. This class however may be subject to change, as the Taken King DLC that launches tomorrow morning, introduces a new heavy weapon class, swords. Although just by looking at the weapon type and relative nature of swords in other games, it is not far fetched to say that swords will be outshone in the crucible by their other heavy weapon counterparts. 

The Crucible: How update 2.0.0 changed Destiny PvP Primary Weapons

For months every Destiny player knew what they were signing up for when they decided to play a few games of crucible whether it be Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris or Clash. The equipment for every guardian was the same, Thorn or The Last Word exotic handcannons occupied the primary weapon slot. A rerolled Felwinter's Lie, Matador 64 or Party Crasher shotgun to have shot package/rangefinder with rifled barrel in the secondary slot.Wrapping up the inventory in the heavy weapon slot were the rocket launchers, rerolled to have the grenades and horseshoes (proximity detonation) perk, with tripod/clown cartridge. This led to an inevitably stale experience when playing crucible, and those brave guardians who strayed from this just put themselves at a disadvantage. The weapon rebalancing that came with update 2.0.0 which released on Septemember 8th in preparation for The Taken King DLC which launches this Tuesday, changes this stale crucible gameplay.

The premiere primary weapon class is a little tough to call with only a week of gameplay to go off of, but if I had to choose at this moment, I would say that pulse rifles are the strongest. Both exotics of this class, Red Death and Bad Juju, are extremely strong and a huge amount of legendary pulse rifles can go toe to toe with any weapon in the game. Scout rifles seem to be a class that is often overlooked in the crucible. These weapons favor mid to long range combat which the majority of crucible maps lack. Just as it was before the update, the only scout rifle used regularly in the crucible is the exotic MIDA Multi-Tool. Its relatively fast fire rate, amazing accuracy, and special perk that boosts agility allows skilled players to outmaneuver their enemies to pick up kills.  Handcannons were the weapon class that had reigned supreme for the past eight months in the crucible, but no more. The trio of exotics Thorn, The Last Word, and Hawkmoon (PS exclusive) saw slight tweaks across the board that have made them fall from the clear tier one of weapons into tier two. Don't be too alarmed however, these weapons are still strong, Thorn went from a two shot headshot kill, to a three shot body and walk away. The Last Word still dominates close quarters firefights amongst all primary weapons. Hawkmoon remains the long range choice for handcannons, and can instantly turn a lopsided firefight into your favor with just one luck damage shot landing. Lastly, the original kings of the crucible, the auto rifles. Once the top tier of weapons across not only PvP in Destiny, but PvE as well, the auto rifles have begun to creep back into play with the new update. The once useless exotic Necrochasm is now something to be feared at close ranges. The Hard Light with its freshly buffed ricocheting bullets is a fresh approach to the game and can make for some interesting kills. Finally, the once steady hand of the Suros Regime returns, and although it isn't as overpowering as it once was, guardians are rather pleased to see an old favorite return to life.