aprettycooldude

It was a good Destiny weekend! Now I just need to get internet set up in my new place and things will be *even better*.

I think the thing is that there will *always* be that kind of joy in certain drops. There's the story about me screaming when I got a Gjallarhorn from a Nightfall with jonac and remadeking a few weeks ago, just earlier this week Ice Breaker dropped for remadeking after A CELL FROM THE PRISON OF ELDERS, the Crota run with the disappearing crystal (and a Crux!), etc. Taken King is only going to add more Great Stories for everyone to share, so I think turning August 14th into the Great Gjallarhorn Festival is perfectly fine. It's a story for everyone!

I initially laughed but then absolutely did not get misty-eyed at all, nope not me. It does bear thinking about though. If you're trying to build Oryx as the Ultimate Villain, building him as a Dad Out For Revenge runs counter to everything the AAA game industry has been pushing since the late spring/early summer of 2013 (the Summer of Triple-A Dads, if you will). Like, I'm all about disrupting the status quo, but it's interesting that we haven't heard much other than "YOU KILLED MY SON." That's an interesting motivation for a Big Bad these days.

Everybody check your postmaster, there seems to be something wonky going on where things are just showing up. At first the thought was "Oh, all the old gifts - christmas legendaries and strange coins - are showing up," but I just logged in on lunch break and had a Patience & Time, Dry Rot 32, and a blue engram on my Titan. The last thing I did on my Titan was the "kill Bracus" bounty two days ago. Something is up. The postmaster has turned into a used car dealer in Tess' absence.

I think literally adding "Clan" as a separate column next to "Fireteam, Friends, In-Game" is all you would need. It would cramp the screen, maybe have it be a separate page? Like, have an arrow down at the bottom a la the character page, and have that have a list of clan players, sorted the same way as friends (online at top). Then again, it looks like the entire menu area is getting refreshed, so who knows!

I have two right now; I think I'm gonna try to roll a void and a solar and keep praying for a Fourth Horseman. Also, speaking of Crota exotics; boy howdy does NLB have a steep learning curve. I've so far never had the gun jam, but I am god awful at getting headshots with it compared to other snipers (probably because of the sight?). Body shots still kill most regular enemies (I haven't taken it to Crucible, and won't until it's maxed on perks at least), but it's looking like a pretty terrible PvE weapon, especially in any mission with Hive.

Dry Rot can be rerolled as a poor man's Fourth Horseman, which makes it Super Fun in PVE and 100% garbage trash in PVP. If you're not up for rerolls (and, given that Dry Rot is gonna be outclassed in a month), then yeah, it's kind of trash. It's also your closest option if you're playing on Xbox though, at least until TTK drops. Edit: ninja'd! Do we still say that? Is that still a thing?

FWIW Mike Danger, my luck appears to have run out this week (I ran PoE 28 on my Titan this morning and received - I kid you not - just strange coins and motes from the bathtub), so I won't be hogging all the Thunderlords and Dry Rots

I'm gonna ask the obvious question: Why Hard Light? Is there something I'm missing about it? From all accounts, it is not a very good weapon for Crucible no matter what. There are other "bad exotic primaries" that can be viable with the right loadout/practice (No Land Beyond, Universal Remote, Suros with a solid secondary backup), but since Hard Light is an auto rifle with a questionable exclusive perk (essentially just Skip Rounds since you're not firing at clusters), I'm curious how you'd run it. Aggressive Ballistics and Fitted Stock to maximize the bottom half of the magazine and Glass Half Full? Edit: I know the answer could very well be "for leveling" or "why not," but I'm just curious if there's something I'm missing on a Higher Level.

I had one heck of a weekend. Had both No Land Beyond (PoE 28) and Thunderlord (Engram!) drop, finished leveling several exotics (Dragon's Breath, P&T, Air Jordans, Vestments, almost done with the Feedback Fence), and unlocked all content on my Warlock (still need to run all of it, though). That said, I burned pretty much all my glimmer this weekend on a combo of upgrades and telemetries, so the ol' cash grind is back. I think Trials this weekend sounds like a lot of fun, and I still need to bang out VoG before I'm willing to truly put the game down before TTK, but I haven't hit full burnout quite yet. I give it a week.

Yeah I 100% picked up my Jordans before going to work today. So pumped for Jumpathon 2K15. Note: with the purchase of the Bones of AYO/Jordans/Those Damn Boots, I have - for the first time - everything that Xur is selling this week! That is a good feeling. It is a cool, good feeling. Also, a Titan Crest of Alpha Lupi (with, admittedly, a pretty lousy roll) dropped from Chest Engram #1, and I think I have enough motes for a round 2 later if I consolidate across all my characters. The irony that a Titan was the last character I created and yet somehow the one I have the most exotics for (Saint-14, Eternal Warrior, Feedback Fence, Crest) is not lost on me.

remadeking and myself are signed up on the100.io for a Hard Mode Vault of Glass raid tonight at 7:30PM EDT, if you (and others, hint hint) are interested!

When do you play? My hours are super variable, and I can make Late Night Trials happen.

A guild, you say? May I humbly recommend... Idle Thumbs Jon's right though, if you're looking for a Serious Daily Clan, /r/fireteams is your best bet. I stick to the Thumbs clan, this forum, and our the100.io group, and that generally meets my needs. I would like to set up a weekly Trials group here (Thumbs of Osiris, if you will), but from what I've noticed we steer more PvE heavy on these forums.

On the note of "just have fun" I would like to again make the sappy shoutout to this whole Thumbs crew, who have made playing Destiny a true delight again. The concept of "the grind" kind of vanishes when you've got two (or five, or however many people bumming in a party chat) other people joking around throughout everything, getting excited for one another when a Sweet Drop Happens, and patiently helping newcomers through content that's been run many times. Playing Iron Banner solo last week reminded me of why I stopped playing Destiny last winter, and then running the Nightfall the next day with remadeking and wracketeer reminded me why I'm playing regularly again.

Well, when it comes to Fatebringer... But in all seriousness, I think there's plenty to do still. My personal pre-TTK goals (note though, like Jon says, that you shouldn't be playing to "prepare" for TTK, you should just be playing because playing is fun): General Destiny Goals, regardless of whether or not Taken King was coming out in a month: - Get Warlock (32) and Titan (15) to 34, with both subclasses maxed. - Fully level all currently owned exotics, plus any others that I come across in the next month (not necessarily fully upgrade, because shards ain't free) - Finish the triumphs (just Hard Mode VoG left, it's up on the100.io, let's make lemonade) - Run every mission on each character; I've ignored normal mode strikes quite a bit on the Warlock, and the Titan is obviously still in "developmental." I like seeing filled circles! And uh, hexagons. - Hit rank 3 rep in each faction on each character. - Make it to the Lighthouse. Dream Goals (confined to weekly lockouts, and thus not necessarily doable no matter how hard I play): - Full sets of raid gear for each class - A Vision of Confluence, Fatebringer, Praedyth's Revenge, Corrective Measure, and a Praetorian Foil (lol) September 15th Taken King Get Pumped Last Minute Specifics: - Maxed glimmer, with one Royal Amethyst on each character and one in the vault - Max Crucible and Vanguard Marks on all three characters - My trusty Comedian (first Legendary, will never shard), ascended to all get-out, ready to take its rightful place as the #1 slot in my Vault, to be revered forever

The gear is going to be really important at the start of The Taken King. You'll definitely want some good armor out the gate, and running weeklies is still going to grant Strange Coins, Motes, potential exotics/shards, and Etheric Light, which will help max that gear. The idea of "everything I have is worthless" is both true and not. There's no point in hoarding "generic" armor that doesn't serve a purpose (so long, Sanction Six!), but full kits of Raid Gear will still be useful, as will guns with raid-specific perks (the number of times DeeJ says "Vision of Confluence" in that IGN interview is nuts). Also, consider that you may have friends who come into the game because they hear about how Taken King makes Destiny "Actually Fun," and assuming they don't use the "directly to TTK, do not pass go" item, you'll want that old gear to help them through old content.

If there is one thing I think everyone can agree about it's that Destiny's core gameplay - the shooting - is best in class. I've never played another shooter that feels as good as Destiny does. Everything about it is magical; I remember waxing rhapsodic about how good *melee* felt for about five minutes in the first week of playing. I've never paid enough attention to Grimoire score as a means of progression, I think because I didn't pick up all the ghosts. Maybe I'll do that tonight so that additional points are tied to other rank ups. Also, I should be clear: it's not that the game as a whole ceases to have meaning - there's still a profound joy whenever I see "UPGRADE UNLOCKED" for armor/weapons, and whoops and shouts when Sweet Gear drops or we finish Skolas - it's that something as simple as an EXP bar on the HUD has a huge effect on me. It's a permanent carrot on a stick, one that continually stares at me, waiting to be filled before it resets. It only matters most when I'm grinding out bounties, since I'm not as focused on that sort of progression when I'm playing with a group, but running bare minimum 18 bounties a day by oneself can be two hours depending on what's been doled out, and that two hours feels a lot better with a dumb bar to fill than without.

Honestly, I just want the little EXP bar at the bottom of the screen again. It bums me out that it goes away after you hit 20 and all traces of progress vanish. As I'm leveling up my Titan, I realize just how nice it is to see +170 after shooting a whole bunch of Vex at the bottom of the screen. It gives it weight and makes my kills mean something - even on patrol - as opposed to my Hunter and Warlock, where kills are just "ugh how many more" EDIT: Watching the latest IGN interview with DeeJ and the EXP bar is back! There is a lot of important news in here, but answering the "how do I level" bit, it sounds like whatever the highest level you've acheived is what you start at. Oh, and Year One legendaries are addressed. As expected, the answer is "use them in the old content and normalized crucible."

I think there's no way the raids don't get bumped for the level cap, especially with the announcement of the "Go Directly to 34, Do Not Pass Go" freebie. I'd expect a 40 for VoG, CE, and PoE, leaving King's Fall (I think the official name?) as the new "One Level Above" raid. With (at least) 12 new exotic guns, I'd expect those to be included in the new level 40 loot tables, alongside some newer legendaries. Since we're still fighting Hive and Fallen at the least, it doesn't make sense to nuke the abilities of legendaries like Word of Crota, Oversoul Edict, or any of the other guns with "do extra damage to <whatever>," and instead have them attached to new guns. Maybe even new guns that aren't just generic stock models with "throw some bones on it."

So a lot of this is unanswered, which is kind of interesting! I imagine drops and bounties will stay the same. It would be ridiculous to rewrite entire loot tables to exclude exotics (especially the raids). Xur is gonna get *really interesting* now that he has four tables of content to work with. It sounds like a lot of the new exotics are acquired through quests and the like, so Xur could only offer the "older" gear to catch people up. We can really only speculate until a Big Huge Gamescom info dump happens alongside the GI issue, but we'll see. I hope we get another Agent of the Nine, to be honest. More Nine lore!

I think that given how perks seem to work in Destiny 2.0 (which is the real loaded question we'll get into later), it's possible to assemble a longer range shotgun with the right roll. Again though, I think some of these nerfs are happening beforehand to ease players into the way the newer guns will feel. A lot of people cry for the "last hurrah" of the Gjallarhorn or whatever once TTK drops (like the gun is going to be WEAK FOREVER), but by pushing that patch out sometime this month, everyone gets a good while to get a feel for how guns are gonna play. When "Vanilla" (BUNGIE OFFICIAL) dropped, everyone set to work on figuring out which gun had which function, and you had a month or so where auto rifles were overpowered beings that fit all roles. By pushing out the 1.whatever patch ahead of time, Bungie and the actual widespread playerbase get to see what is Good and what is Bad, and adjust before the new content drops. But back to that real loaded question. What happens if you don't buy TTK? What the heck does Destiny look like? I'm amazed this hasn't been addressed at all. The thought, I suppose, is that anyone still playing Destiny is gonna buy it, and it's why the boxed copies from here on out come with everything bundled in. But what happens if Joe Q. Destiny decides to fire up the game again after not touching it since Dark Below dropped? What does he see?

That is the greatest joke/contribution I will ever make to the Destiny Community™

It's been mentioned that exotics alone are scaling and carrying onwards, while legendary weapons and gear and getting left behind. This makes the Black Hammer nerf weird, but everything else makes perfect sense. Other than that, the changes they've mentioned are Class Wide (e.g. "all hand cannons get a range nerf," "all auto rifles suck less"), so that's necessary to help people adjust to the new way guns will feel in TTK. I think that patch drops sometime this month, which gives us two weeks to get acclimated to the differences. Edit: Also, making the "but what about my blue Galahad" joke before anyone else can.

I am 100% okay with old weapons going, and I am so glad this came out now so that I can Shard Without Shame