Professor Video Games

It's game breaking in that it's by far the best gun to use, so everyone uses it. You can kill in two headshots thanks to it's damage over time (which also lets you disengage before the opponent's health is at zero) and the range and accuracy are so good that there really isn't a map it's not suited for. The Last Word is basically the only alternative because of it's insane rate of fire, but you also have to be in a bit closer for it to be useful. Honestly I think both of those guns kill too quickly. One thing I generally like about Bungie PvP is that you have time to react after getting hit, unlike a Call of Duty style game. With either of those guns you can drop someone in an instant (just talking primaries here, obviously sniper headshots or close range shotguns are gonna be one hit kills).

Back in the good ol' days, Suros was the go-to gun for PvP. ARs got nerfed not long after though and now you almost never see them. I've still got a few decent ones in my vault for the day when they get buffed back into relevance. And fun to break them out in PvE patrols and such now and then. I tried to get up to level 3 (from nothing) in IB last night but couldn't quite get there as a few of the bounties just weren't happening for me. They need to address the PvP balance soon. I'm so tired of playing against Thorns. It's not even that I care too much that it's overpowered (it is), but it's just boring to fight against a single gun almost exclusively, with a few Last Words mixed in. Something should probably also be done with the shotgun range situation too but that seems less critical.

The only part you could probably ever move from a laptop to a desktop would be the HDD (and even that won't fit in the case without an extra bracket) and it sounds like that's shot anyway, so basically no. JonCole posted a youtube vid on building a pc, that should be enough. Every part literally only plugs into one spot and it's all keyed so you can't even put it in backwards. It's pretty hard to mess up.

The Vault of Gas

I rescheduled it for 3:30pm eastern, which I guess is 8:30pm for you Vasari. Figured that way it should be relatively clear of dinner time in both timezones. By the way, with Iron Banner running, if anyone sees me on and playing that, feel free to join in. Always more fun with a group.

I'm actually in the same boat here and was looking for an excuse to reschedule I can do pretty much any time Friday.

There's definitely room for casual players. I personally find it fun to teach the raid mechanics to new people and anyway most players don't have all the weapon drops from the raids, so there's always some incentive (plus everyone from here has been super cool and it's always fun to shoot stuff with them). Like Jon said, once you can load up on vendor gear you'll jump up to LL32 and be good for the PoE. And there's always the level 28 one, though the rewards are less and won't help you get to LL34. Totally pumped for TTK. I'm really curious how they handle weapon upgrades for it. Will the current ones be able to be upgraded again? Etheric Light very conspicuously mentions upgrading damage to "Year 1" levels and I'm sure there are some guns they'd love to leave behind.

Well, Scorch triggers Ignite doesn't it? Radiant Will is probably still better though. What I need is to max out my Heart of Praxic Fire so I can really go crazy with my grenade/melee.

I'll need to think about what Sunsinger combo would work best for total melee dominance in that fight. Do Radiant Skin and Flame Shield stack? Radiant Will or Viking Funeral? Brimstone would be fun if the enemies are close enough together.

Yeah a bubble would be great especially on that center mine where we're so exposed. Like you said, Lightswitch really made standing in the open there next to impossible and not having good rocket launchers that could clear out the area didn't help. Maybe we should have been more aggressive with our supers? It's tough to risk losing your self-res, but if we take out enough guys we should be able to generate enough bubbles to feed each other. Anyway, I agree that it was an interesting modifier set for the fight...even though we couldn't get through it I had a lot of fun. Mechanically that fight rivals either of the raid boss encounters in terms of complexity and teamwork required. I'm free Thursday night (or tentatively any time over the long weekend)...might try and set up Skolas Fight 2.0 for that night if you two are both free.

You're also welcome to join the100.io group if you need to find people to play endgame content with. I think most people in there are willing to bring newbies through the raids and it's always been a lot of fun. Most of us are in the US, but there's always the weekends Last night Joncole, Vasari, and I made a go of lvl35 Prison of Elders after cruising through lvl34. It was a lot of fun, but the final boss was a motherfucker because it had the Small Arms modifier was on, which basically nerfed our heavy weapons. I think we could have done it given enough time, but it just got too late for us. Mechanically it's pretty intense...the second half of the fight basically has a hot potato component where you have to pass an item between the three teammates every 30 seconds all while running around disabling a couple rounds of mines that spawn. It looks like Skolas is Brawler and Juggler this week. I'm ready to Gjallarhorn the hell out of that guy.

True for Crota, but Vault of Glass actually drops a few on Normal: Atheon's Epilogue (barf) and Vision of Confluence (best).

Yeah that guy was a bit of a know-it-all (I'm still sure Fatebringer doesn't drop on normal)...no worries though. I still thought it was pretty fun. We were just a bit careless on the Templar, and people dying in hard mode can really punish you. And Atheon only took a few goes, which considering several people weren't super familiar with it, wasn't too bad (I was totally holding down the button for the shield that one time btw ). I'll try rescheduling that NM Crota run at some point, though I'm hesitant to do it on a weekday with the spread of timezones we have and next weekend is a holiday so people may be busy.

It's weird too because unlike, say, Assassin's Creed, it's not like they were pushing up against the holiday release window or anything. Just hold the PC release a bit longer! Certainly less of a PR disaster than this turned out to be. Maybe the fact that it was bundled in with those graphics cards added some pressure to get it out the door soon? Somewhere in the corporate chain was a guy who knew it ran like shit and said "ship it" and I just wanna know what why (and probably never will).

I went on the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island and I don't remember having to wait very long, and I thought the sliding around was a lot of fun. Maybe they run it longer between loading there? And definitely not more nauseating than any other amusement park rides I've been on.

How much does a new release typically cost in the UK? And if anyone wants to schedule some PoE runs tonight I'd join in. I made a game on the100 (which you need to join, Zeus) for Nightfall + PoE but I forgot to set it to private so some random players filled it up...I can make that one Nightfall only and do PoE with people here.

While they're being a bit coy about it, the new DLC seems to include at least one new patrol zone, a new "campaign" which I think means it will be closer in scope to what we got in the main game than the other expansions, a new raid, more than one new strike, a capture the flag mode, and new subclasses (that look awesome). People are angry why? Not from a potential dearth of content, but because if they want these cosmetic items they have to spend an extra $40. This isn't an exclusive gun or something that matters...it's literal dance moves that should be looked at as bonuses for new players (the only people who rationally should be buying the full edition). These people grumbling should just come to terms with the fact that their collect 'em all lust won't always be satisfied and just buy the expansion on its own, which they almost all will. Besides, the real shit move, and this isn't exclusive to Destiny, is that while the expansion costs $40 here in the US, it's £40 in the UK. That is lame.

Thorn and The Last Word are by far the most heavily used PvP guns (and probably/hopefully about to be nerfed). I tried out Spare Change.25 for a bit, but it's got this weird up and to the right recoil that's really annoying and makes it hard to land multiple headshots. Something like Red Death is better where it's straight up and down. I think the Messenger may be similar (don't know first hand). Agree that for PvP having proximity detonation is the most useful perk for rocket launchers, followed by tripod. Proximity means you don't have to be very accurate, can hit people who try to hide around corners, or even hit them out of the air...accuracy isn't a requirement. I see a lot of talk about Final Round for the high impact sniper rifles because it means your last shot is a 1-hit body shot kill. But I'm a bad aim so I don't snipe that often.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/18/8803243/super-mario-maker-level-design-tips Not quite what you want, but close.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/23/8831325/batman-arkham-knight-pc-issues It's crazy that a game can be so poorly optimized for PC when consoles are so close to PC architectures these days. Anyway, I watched the GB quicklook and prettyunsmart's assessment of another Batman + tank sounds pretty accurate. Not that that's a bad thing. I'll probably pick this up once I get through my current backlog i.e. sometime in 2017.

I was pretty well behaved and just got The Talos Principle. But then I also just picked up a Grimrock II, Fract OSC, and The Book of Unwritten Tales in the GOG sale. Ugh.

Yeah don't let the timezone or player levels be discouraging. I'm sure any of us would be willing to help out on lower level stuff and the timezone was required when I set the group up so I just selfishly picked my own, plus you can always be in multiple groups if the schedules for ours don't usually work out. I've been super busy with personal stuff the past few weekends...I'm hoping this next one is a bit more open. I haven't even tried the lvl 34 and 35 PoE stuff yet.

From what I've read, the drones only show up when you start killing stuff, which I don't think is required? Not sure about the space shootin' though.

Yeah I'm a big dummy and got them mixed up

Oh he was on an old 1UP Yours where busted out a prepared speech or something to address NeoGaf haters I think? It was insane. He is insane. Regarding old Bombcasts, they were fun at the time, but that was many years ago and I don't think I'd find that stuff nearly as funny now. I do miss that lineup though