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Destiny |OT36| Fifty Shades of TTK

Had one of those rare Destiny dreams the other day. It was about a quest that let you put elemental damage on any primary.

Don't really remember all the steps, but it required you to complete a lengthy 12 step quest getting ability kills across the game with each element similar to how you do for the exotic sword. There were steps involving bosses with respective elements as well, and one where you played a special mission for each element where the enemies were super charged and you have to kill all of them without taking damage from them. (e.g. If you're doing the Void element, all of the enemies do void burn damage; basically the Black Spindle mission.)

At the end of it, you had to give Xur a whole bunch of shit and then he'd send you on the final step - you fight a "darkness infused" version of yourself. And apparently, your shadow has really good auto aim.

So once you beat that, you get an exotic elemental stone and you can charge any weapon with it, but you can only do it 3 times - once with each element - and it only works on kinetic weapons. So... choose wisely.

I'll give you three guesses which gun I infused with what element first.
No, it's not the one you're thinking of

If the only Time-gated step was waiting for Xur, I'll take it. Please Bungie, let me infuse my primaries with elemental damage.
 
If the only Time-gated step was waiting for Xur, I'll take it. Please Bungie, let me infuse my primaries with elemental damage.

Well you'd wait for him to show up to start and finish the quest, but then the quest itself would probably take you more than a week to finish. No one would be able to beat it before Xur leaves for the first weekend.

It was a fun dream though, and it sucked when I woke up thinking I read about it in an update.
 
If I don't like a roll on a gunsmith weapon do I have to keep the package until the next time the weapon is available or will I get a new roll each week regardless?
 
Lyudmila rolls are bad/mediocre again :(

#1: headseeker, full auto, snapshot/hand loaded/injection mold

#2 army of one, counterbalance, single point sling/hand loaded, reinforced barrel

#3 glass half full, full auto, snapshot/hand loaded/reinforced barrel
 
We're doing fine without elemental primaries, it's the perks on the guns that matter more, and weapon balancing.

That's not really the point, but as for your first comment i'll mention this:

I was using a Jewel of Osiris with Kinetic damage that I bought from Vance before I had the Arc one drop from the chest.

Same gun, same perks. Which one do you think I used?

Elemental primaries are cool end-game rewards you didn't find anywhere else in the game - vendors didn't sell it, they didn't drop in Strikes or Crucible or even the Nightfall. Want a Scout with Void Burn? Run the hardest PvE or PvP content and you'll get one. And that shit's dope, even if you're using it in PvP. Even when the perks sucked, I'd still use it because it had a burn on it (Six Dreg Pride).

I like colors. I had two Baby Blue snipers with the same perks and different elements and I'd swap between the two depending on what color I wanted to see when I shot people.

The moment it was confirmed that they weren't coming back is the moment I stopped caring about any of the end-game loot.
 

Kadey

Mrs. Harvey
These drops.

2CQz1de.jpg
 
We're doing fine without elemental primaries, it's the perks on the guns that matter more, and weapon balancing.

LOL @ weapon balancing. I can hold 50-odd bullets in reserve for hawkmoon. How's that even remotely balanced? And yes, perks do matter more, but I think Bungie's attitude towards elemental primaries is because no one wanted to use anything other than VoG gear for primaries. BUT, I firmly believe that even if Fatebringer and VoC came without an elemental burn, people would still keep them as their preferred primaries, because as you said, PERKS matter more (and they always have).

You just need to look at the current state of things. Majority of people are either using Hung Jury or another scout rifle with Hung Jury like perks in PVE. HOW does that encourage "loadout diversity"? If you want loadout diversity, create more perks that work well in unison with each other, instead of useless stuff like Exhumed and Danger Close.

If Bungie really wanted people to have diverse loadouts, they'd loosen their grip on Weapon Parts and Strange Coins and make infusion less lossy (especially for exotics), on top of making Exotic Shards available for purchase again.
 
This is exactly my problem. And now the raid is rng on top of rng on top of rng so most things you get you use to Infuse.

It shouldn't take weapon parts to Infuse a weapon to another weapon. You're ONLY taking part of a weapons power, none of its perks or attributes of any kind. And you're losing the actual weapon and losing BOTH the legendary marks and Weapon Parts you could have gotten for dismantling it. Infusing a legendary with another legendary shouldn't cost legendary marks, period.

If you could also swap a perk for the weapon that's being used as the fodder, then it would make sense to use weapon parts.

It just wouldn't be an issue if they didn't mess with the weapon part nerf.

Agree.

I got my black spindle finally and infused it up to 308 which used my last weapon parts. Now I don't have any left to activate the actual perks.

Don't see why we can't buy a pack of 20 from the gunsmith like we can with relic iron etc from the vanguard quartermaster
 
I just realised that on top of the hand cannon archetype nerf all the new hand cannons base models come with almost no range whatsoever and tiny mags. Imago Loop and Eyasluna legit have double or more range than the new shit with healthy 10 and 11 mags and that's only because Bungie copied them wholesale from better year one models.

Hand cannons are fucked five ways from Sunday. Your Gaheris-D will always be ass
 

deadduck

Member
I was in a raid last night and the group wanted to do the 'no knights' strat... OK done it before BUT every time we didn't kill the knights we get 'regains favour of darkness'


If we're having to kill the knights anyways, the normal strat seems better and more consistent.

What was going wrong, timing of bombs?
 

GorillaJu

Member
I just realised that on top of the hand cannon archetype nerf all the new hand cannons base models come with almost no range whatsoever and tiny mags. Imago Loop and Eyasluna legit have double or more range than the new shit with healthy 10 and 11 mags and that's only because Bungie copied them wholesale from better year one models.

Hand cannons are fucked five ways from Sunday. Your Gaheris-D will always be ass

The perks on Ace of Spades make it pretty good. Firefly, decent stability perks, refund on all precision kills and melee hits can recharge mag.

It is lacking in range tho
 

Kadey

Mrs. Harvey
Well thanks for the run guys. Aka and Jigga jumping into help. Wasn't going to stop until I get at least one kill. Getting the chest was worth it. Actually got a lot more stuff from that run. A 310 horseman, 310 vestments and more harrowed gear there are lower than what I already have.
 
LOL @ weapon balancing. I can hold 50-odd bullets in reserve for hawkmoon. How's that even remotely balanced? And yes, perks do matter more, but I think Bungie's attitude towards elemental primaries is because no one wanted to use anything other than VoG gear for primaries. BUT, I firmly believe that even if Fatebringer and VoC came without an elemental burn, people would still keep them as their preferred primaries, because as you said, PERKS matter more (and they always have).

You just need to look at the current state of things. Majority of people are either using Hung Jury or another scout rifle with Hung Jury like perks in PVE. HOW does that encourage "loadout diversity"? If you want loadout diversity, create more perks that work well in unison with each other, instead of useless stuff like Exhumed and Danger Close.

If Bungie really wanted people to have diverse loadouts, they'd loosen their grip on Weapon Parts and Strange Coins and make infusion less lossy (especially for exotics), on top of making Exotic Shards available for purchase again.

Here's the way I see it:

Bungie has 3 weapon tiers in the game:

Primary, where ammo is in abundance
Special, where ammo is more scarce
Heavy, where ammo is very rare

In PvP, elements don't mean anything.
In PvE however, they use elemental shields to make their enemies more difficult to kill. And part of the reason they're more difficult to kill is because your weapons with elements - specials and heavies - have less ammo. So your primary is good for unshielded enemies and trash mobs, but that Wizard needs a Fusion Rifle or Machine Gun, which you can't have out all the time.

That dynamic is cool.

Fatebringer and other elemental primaries broke that dynamic by giving you a weapon that could strip through shields AND had an abundance of ammo.

Everyone should understand this. Before Fatebringer's range was nerfed, there was no reason to use anything other than Fatebringer. Having such an obvious choice like that ain't cool.

But the element isn't the problem. When you take away Fatebringer's element, it's still a perfect Hand Cannon. Its base stats were ridiculous (it used to have 13 rounds for the new folks) and it had Outlaw and Firefly. That's god tier shit. When you take away Vision of Confluence's element, it's still a perfectly stable Scout Rifle and it was actually the meta weapon in Crucible after Autos were nerfed. Black Hammer - perfect Sniper. Gjallarhorn - perfect Rocket Launcher.

See a pattern?

All of these weapons were perfect and then putting an element on top made them OP by giving players an obvious choice. A weapon with no tradeoffs is an obvious choice.

An element on a weapon alone however does not make it OP or an obvious choice. Six Dreg Pride is a trash Hand Cannon that barely does anything in PvE, but when I had a Void one drop from Skolas it was my go to PvE Primary for a while. Take away its element and I don't want anything to do with it, but when I heard Skolas was passing out some elemental stuff I checked myself in to see what was up.

Why?

Because I'm playing end-game content to get a weapon - one I can not find anywhere else in the game - to offset that dynamic.

After all that effort, I expect to get some swiggity swooty loot. I want to shoot cool shit, because up to that point, I've been doing the vertical climb with guns that mostly behave the same from one another with slight variations in how well their perks compliment one another. Once I hit that horizontal climb of replaying the same content over and over (and over and over), I want to use a weapon that makes me play differently than how I'd been playing up to that point. For example, instead of only having two weapons to deal with the tough guys, now I have three. I conquered the end-game and now i'm a BAMF looking for more cool shit to shoot.

And that's part of the problem - there weren't really more. There were barely any elemental primaries, and of that pool most of them were garbage. The good ones however were perfect, and that's because of their stats combined with the element. When there is gold among coal, people will go to the gold.

The solution - I think Six Dreg Pride says it all. Don't discontinue elemental primaries, but rather stop making weapons with no tradeoffs (and also, stop giving them low drop rates; i'm not chasing after a doorstopper). Anything that has an element should have a significant tradeoff to balance it out, therefore preventing it from being an obvious choice. Would I run the Raid if that shitty Hand Cannon had Solar damage? Bet your ass I would, but would I use that gun 99% of the time? Hell naw.
 

Bradach

Member
I ran HM up to Oryx last night and got some nice new guns

Harrowed fusion (319)
Harrowed sniper (317)
Raid shotty (303)
Harrowed chest (310)

Overall it was a great night for loot!

Is the LMG the best raid weapon? Anything else worth keeping or is it all infusion fodder?
 

GorillaJu

Member
I ran HM up to Oryx last night and got some nice new guns

Harrowed fusion (319)
Harrowed sniper (317)
Raid shotty (303)
Harrowed chest (310)

Overall it was a great night for loot!

Is the LMG the best raid weapon? Anything else worth keeping or is it all infusion fodder?

Scout rifle is OK. Pulse isn't terrible but it's a pulse
 
Well shit.

Two Exotic Drop on Oryx Kill
310 Hereafter (Meh)
310 Ruin Wings (H Y P E)
314 Anguish. Eh.
311 Harrowed Titan Gauntlets. GG Bungie.
 
The perks on Ace of Spades make it pretty good. Firefly, decent stability perks, refund on all precision kills and melee hits can recharge mag.

It is lacking in range tho

Ace of Spades is based off of Fatebringer tho

I'm talking about the stuff like the Omolons, Hakke and whatever the crucible model (Bryonic Hero). All have <= 25 range going as low as 15 on Down and Doubt and Zaoulli's. The norm on Y1 HCs was 38+. The heavy hitters like Timur's Lash came with close to 50! Just a regular ass Timur's Lash is better than The First Curse even in bonus mode.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that not only did hand cannons get nerfed, they made them worse and also nerfed them lol
 
These drops.

2CQz1de.jpg

Congrats on stealing the entire fireteam's loot drop.

This is what's broken in the raid drop - one or two players get double normal and hard drops, others get nothing.

That's not really the point, but as for your first comment i'll mention this:

I was using a Jewel of Osiris with Kinetic damage that I bought from Vance before I had the Arc one drop from the chest.

Same gun, same perks. Which one do you think I used?

Elemental primaries are cool end-game rewards you didn't find anywhere else in the game - vendors didn't sell it, they didn't drop in Strikes or Crucible or even the Nightfall. Want a Scout with Void Burn? Run the hardest PvE or PvP content and you'll get one. And that shit's dope, even if you're using it in PvP. Even when the perks sucked, I'd still use it because it had a burn on it (Six Dreg Pride).

I like colors. I had two Baby Blue snipers with the same perks and different elements and I'd swap between the two depending on what color I wanted to see when I shot people.

The moment it was confirmed that they weren't coming back is the moment I stopped caring about any of the end-game loot.

I'm not against having elemental primaries, but the lack of the same doesn't really bother me.

I like how the flavour text tells you what to do when you find the gun

PS: infuse immediately.

LOL @ weapon balancing. I can hold 50-odd bullets in reserve for hawkmoon. How's that even remotely balanced? And yes, perks do matter more, but I think Bungie's attitude towards elemental primaries is because no one wanted to use anything other than VoG gear for primaries. BUT, I firmly believe that even if Fatebringer and VoC came without an elemental burn, people would still keep them as their preferred primaries, because as you said, PERKS matter more (and they always have).

You just need to look at the current state of things. Majority of people are either using Hung Jury or another scout rifle with Hung Jury like perks in PVE. HOW does that encourage "loadout diversity"? If you want loadout diversity, create more perks that work well in unison with each other, instead of useless stuff like Exhumed and Danger Close.

If Bungie really wanted people to have diverse loadouts, they'd loosen their grip on Weapon Parts and Strange Coins and make infusion less lossy (especially for exotics), on top of making Exotic Shards available for purchase again.

No one understands these decisions.

Handcannon has rifled barrel for double the range.

HC is pure infusion material.
 

Ji66a-Man

Member
I was in a raid last night and the group wanted to do the 'no knights' strat... OK done it before BUT every time we didn't kill the knights we get 'regains favour of darkness'


If we're having to kill the knights anyways, the normal strat seems better and more consistent.

What was going wrong, timing of bombs?

Your fireteam was taking too long to detonate the blights.
 
Congrats on stealing the entire fireteam's loot drop.

This is what's broken in the raid drop - one or two players get double normal and hard drops, others get nothing.

I've killed the Daughters in Hard Mode 6 or 7 times without seeing a Harrowed Class item. Well, that's not true, I did get a 310 Harrowed item, but does that reeeeeeeally count?

Also, I've yet to see the Helm drop in Normal or Hard mode for me or for anyone who has raided with me. The only reason I have helms in 300s is coz of 310 exotic helms that I've used for infusion.

This loot game has a loot problem, but Bungie throws out PR-spiel every Weekly Update without giving us an update on whether or not they're hearing our grievances. Hell, if they're not, then the least they could do is give us the standard "Working as intended" response.

All the raid weapons are infusion material. The machine gun is probably worth using though.

The Ruin Wake is the only other Machine Gun that I like as much as the Qullim's Terminus. Shit's legit badass, except for the cosmetic aspect.
 

GorillaJu

Member
The new Trials machine gun is pretty damn good actually. I'd take it over Ruin Wake, but the raid Machine Gun is good enough to use so I haven't infused it.
 
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