I spent my night leisurely getting acquainted with Crucible and taking care of the two Omolon weapon research Armsday bounties. I did not play any rift, and I'm not sure I will until after TTK actually... a little overwhelmed.
I think I'm going to really enjoy Armsday. I like having a reason to try things outside my comfort zone, and this week I got something that was definitely that, plus something decidedly
in my comfort zone, and just honestly had a really good time playing the game. Sue me.
I'm also a little puzzled at the backlash that some of the bounties are for the Crucible. As I understood it, half of the point of Armsday was to incentivize players switching up their loadouts in unexpected ways, increasing the likelihood that any given match you enter will not be dominated by 5 or 11 other players all using the exact same crutch/top-tier/no-skill/cheap/et cetera et cetera weapons over and over again. Did we abandon this sentiment at some point? In my ~10-12 matches tonight, I definitely felt the impact of people using the experimental weapons. You guys understand that when someone is using their Armsday fusion or sniper they are necessarily
not using a max-range one-shot snipe-shotgun, right? The thing we all want to see less of? If you do play a considerable amount of Crucible, the bounties are obviously quick to complete, and you have all week... I mean, I got them done in my first 6 games on the first night. Every match I played, special slots were filled by a mix of those weapons, old standards, and some surprises. Frankly, this struck me as a vast improvement and it's just the first day. Plus, you don't
have to get every bounty done every week... I fully expect not to myself.
Anyway, I've collected some of my thoughts on the two weapons and the Newcible in general. Bear in mind: I am not a top-tier player or anywhere close. In a match against top tier players, it will not matter what weapon I am using and what weapon they are using; they will crush me. I don't take Crucible that seriously, and while I am a >1.0 player across all modes, if I can be reasonably successful with something and have
fun using it, I give that a considerable amount of weight, whereas someone who was attempting to play at optimal levels would weight this marginally in comparison. This factor is difficult to describe but I know it impacts my play, and I know plenty would say for the worse. Thus, take everything I say here with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if you are a player like me, the stuff I have to say here might be valuable.
Also bear in mind that this "meta" is nonsense. Everything is going to go nuts in a week.
Let me start with this: it was a pretty surreal run. I had a lot of expectations based on what I'd read here, on reddit, on twitter... and while some of them matched up spot-on or nearly so, others were totally confounded, or made me realize that what I'd heard was misleading.
- ...I liked it. I mean I just overall had a good time. My expectations were low I guess. It felt more "balanced" (not in the traditional sense, of course, but more evenly distributed across available options). There were far fewer times where I got killed in the exact same way multiple lives in a row.
- The Omolon sniper: Huh. Well, I expected complete asstasticness... yet I did better with it than I do with traditional snipers. I think what's going on here is that it's not "a sniper's sniper" and my shitty style of wielding one is well suited to it. Basically, I don't ever find good vantage points, line up head shots and take out multiple players at a choke point like I see our all-stars do. I see something on my radar, zoom, haphazardly catch someone in my scope, fling bullets at them until the mag is empty and hope for the best. Often firing while strafing almost like a scout. And I... kind of liked it? Every so often I'd get a headshot and it would come as a shock. I got the bounty done in 4 control matches (and I always recommend Control for bounties like this). By faaaar the biggest factor keeping me from completing it was simply having no clue where the special ammo boxes were on the new maps. I spent more than half of each match with zero reserve. Other than that, the gun looks cool, but its perk is totally wasted in most modes.
- The Omolon fusion: are you fucking kidding me?
- Looks hot
- Sounds like liquid sex
- Beam fires low, but is very tight. You can aim for the feet for a oneshot in most circumstances.
- Stability is poor according to the stat lines, but this is reflected in usage very, very differently than other fusions I've used with a similar rating. It has an extremely predictable and gentle kick up. Again, aim for the feet and you're golden.
- This is my preferred type of fusion rifle: low charge rate, high impact. The variety that Bungie supposedly just nerfed. Okay so: you have to cook your fusion rifles, people! Feather the trigger as soon as you know your next target is inside your kill range. DARE the person in close proximity on your radar to poke their head out at you, from just outside shotty range. If there are a variety of Year 2 ones that are like this or better it'll be paradise for ol' Hawkian.
- The perk on it is so goddamn perfect for a fusion rifle. Mmmmm. You're telling me this is a test version? The legendaries will have more perks and perform better across the board? I'm going to collect every single fusion rifle that is anything like this one and kill you with all of them. Omolon is aiming to establish itself as my new god and you're calling this thing "butt." NUTS. YOU'RE ALL NUTS. I'M THE ONLY SANE ONE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
- Sorry I blacked out there for a second.
- Thorn: Meh. It's still good/great. Here's the thing... I think people, maybe all of us, wanted in our guts for it to be unusable, because of how many fucking times we've been killed with it under the most goddamn annoying circumstances. But... if I force myself to be objective. It's an Exotic. It should be good and offer something no other weapon does. Its range was hit hard, the DoT doesn't tick for as much even if you get hit multiple times which extends its duration- meaning that while, yes, the now-dreaded 3 body shot to kill is a reality, you just have more opportunities overall to kill someone using a Thorn, and dye from ticking out to the burn less often in uglier scenarios (multiple combatants, one shot + grenade, etc.). At this point, I sincerely do not believe that Thorn will remotely dominate top-tier play the way it used to, even for the span of this week, and certainly not after TTK.
- It's funny... watching all the initial impressions from serious PvP folk for the first 12 hours or so... I didn't hear the words "Bad Juju" mentioned all that often. Thaaaat is gonna change.
- Hawkmoon. Okay. I need ya'll to bear with me here. This was the biggest shock of the evening by far. First off, the bad (and it's quite bad): the range is no longer impressive. It really did feel like you had a sniper in your palm back in the day, and that's just gone. I'm not sure it was a good thing for it to be that way- not quite a "hand cannon," see- but it was something we loved about it. And you just can't use it that way anymore. Though, I will say I was expecting even worse! I had seen multiple posts saying "useless at mid range and don't even try past that." Just making sure- everybody switched to Field Choke, right?? When my aim was good, I hit headshots consistently at mid-range and still connected from a bit beyond. However, the onset accuracy nerf is also noticeable. Every now and again, you will "miss" a shot you absolutely know would have connected before the patch, and it is heartbreaking. A little of its range back, maybe 15% would be a charm.
Now, the wild and crazy: so earlier on at the end of OT29, I was commenting on how, despite the patch notes, Hawkmoon's magazine has not been increased at all, and this is true. Its stat page says a magazine of 11 which I guess it has when you first get it, but Holdin' Aces adds two shots for 13, which is identical to its mag before. However, the chime sound and flash effect when a lucky bullet is fired is brand new. This occurs for all three random lucky bullets, not just the two from Holdin' Aces- although you can occasionally get 2 bullets to stack and thus only have two in the mag. The chime is very noticeable and distinct and the flash, if you're looking for it, is visible even if the sound winds up obscured by explosions or whatever.
Okay. So. Now you always know how many lucky bullets are remaining in the magazine. This is HUGE. This is a BUFF. Part of my Hawkmoon strategy, and what I always told people when they ask about using it, was to never reload before an empty magazine, unless you were safe and stuck with 4 or fewer bullets. Now? Fuck that. You reload immediately if you know you've fired the third lucky bullet. If you're safe and you know you've fired two already, and more than half the mag remains? Reload that shit. Think about it. You never used to have any idea if you just threw one of the lucky bullets into a wall, or used one to finish someone off with a sliver of health (unless you always notice the adjusted damage values, which I personally don't). No longer. You can gear your entire usage of the weapon around knowing exactly how much bonus damage you're holding at any given time. I gradually adjusted my playstyle as this set in. Once, I had used all 3 by the time my mag read 9- bail out to cover, reload. Never would have done that before. Another time, I hadn't used a single one with 4 left in the mag... you can imagine how it felt coming around the corner with that in the chamber.
Why isn't anyone talking about this? I guess the onset shock of the nerf just had everyone throw their Hawkmoons back in the box and cry softly, but it has this entire new angle to it now! You can, of course, kill in two body shots if either is a lucky bullet... while my range and accuracy were hit hard, the percentage of my shots that were lucky bullets was much, much higher than before the patch. It almost feels like the Exotic perk has been specifically buffed to repurpose the weapon into something different, and actually more unique. Am I missing something? Maybe it matters less at very high levels of play...? Even if that is the case, I literally have not seen a single post about this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
- Back to the rest. I got killed by Hopscotch Pilgrim enough to notice. I haven't experienced the nerf yet personally, but I've always loved my Allfate, so *shrug*
- Pocket Infinity is still redonkulous. Here's to another year of no one talking about this gun while I casually obliterate people with it. I pulled a 1.2 and then a 1.6 the first and second game I played with it. Bonus: using it to murder people who were obviously trying to get their Omolon kills feels very "Daddy's home."
My old Ahamkara's Spine build worked like a charm with it, and the 2.0 Ahamkara's extra perks look outstanding. HYPE!
- It's been said, but Vestian Dynasty. Just, wow. Range is great, TTK is crazy, it always spawns with ammo. I can't even. Nothing more to say, the gun is absolutely a viable option for your special slot in the Crucible.
- Maps
- Frontier, Crossroads, The Dungeon and one other whose name I can't remember are good full-stop, possibly even great. The Dungeon has a lot of the stuff I complain about on other maps, but makes it work; can't explain it better than that. Crossroads is my favorite. It's like a Quake map and just put a huge smile on my face multiple times.
- Memento and Vertigo are... tolerable. I'd take either over some of the vanilla maps. Memento is quite a bit (i.e. too much) like a CoD map for me, though it does have serious and interesting verticality.
- Sector 618 is the clusterfuckiest clusterfuck that ever fucked a cluster. Just what. What. I would throw down $20 on the table right now to see the design philosophy meeting that addressed this map. Please prove me wrong and unveil a mode that makes its mindboggling set of awkwardly arranged corners and hallways into something magical.
- I never got a match on Bannerfall, the map I wanna see the most
- First Light. Ugh. Hint: every other match I played tonight finished on score, one of those on mercy (my team won!). First Light- time ran out with 13k for the leading team.
- Biggest Nerf of the Night award goes to: Arcbolt Grenades. They are like decorations. I've always loved Flux and was sad when I heard I had to switch to be competitive, so I'm happy.
- Shotguns. *sigh* I'm not going to go as far as some and say that nothing's changed. There were indeed three or four occasions in which I know I would've died from the oneshot before the patch and did not. But... the nerfs did nothing to fix the problem, which is that, with extreme consistently, the well-rolled, max-range, Shot Package high-impact sniper-tubes can still kill people from outside "shotgun range." A shotgun- any shotgun- should be a one-hit kill at extreme close range, and a two-hit kill at close range. These things can be counted on to be one hit kills at ranges that reaaaaallly stretch the definition of "close." And that's the ballgame. Still, overall, through the combination of Armsday and people matching weapon to map more often than they used to, I got killed by them less often, and that's a step up. Also, baiting people whom I recognized as slide-shotgunners using the Omolon FR was butter.
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So there's my megapost, sorry it went so long. Was a much more interesting experience than I expected. Feel bad that I never got in touch with Atticus or his fiancé... hopefully they were just tied up. I don't have any signups for tomorrow's newbie raid yet actually so I could do a Skolas or two. Atticus are you out there somewhere?
