Destiny 2 - Lightfall

[Moog72]

New season starts on reset Tuesday 23rd May

[Mastodon2]

Joeywinkle said:

Apologies gents, been neglecting this thread a bit - all of my gaming time is being taken up by FIFA of all games at the minute (i can't believe i'm actually saying that but here we are!)

How are we all getting on - when does season of the deep release? Hoping i might have time to finish the current season pass before it does!

Just focus on the seasonal challenges, in particular the ones that have XP+++ listed next to them, they grant a huge amount of experience and will get your rank up in no time.

[Speckle]

Haven't paid much attention to most of the exotics re-works but, the starfire nerf was inevitable. It's only really a boss damage nerf though, it will still be a useful exotic but, I think many may be dusting off their phoenix protocols for wellocks.

[Mastodon2]

Speckle said:

Haven't paid much attention to most of the exotics re-works but, the starfire nerf was inevitable. It's only really a boss damage nerf though, it will still be a useful exotic but, I think many may be dusting off their phoenix protocols for wellocks.

I was trying to think of a place where I'd use Starfire following the nerf, maybe to get 2 grenades on a stunned champion for a quick kill, but the way they nerfed it shows they want to move it towards ad clearing, by adding in the "empowered weapon kills grant 20% grenade energy" thing, but frankly I think there are better methods for ad clearing via grenades and Bungie knows this too. Based on the leaks that came out earlier in the season, I was expecting to see a reduction of grenade energy granted per instance of causing damage down to 8.5% from the current 20%, but they really smashed it into the ground by taking it down to 2.5%.

I found the way they said you will "probably still get an extra grenade or two per damage phase" to sound almost spiteful, but maybe it's just the way I'm reading it.

Still, it will disappear from play for a while, I expect and frankly I don't think that is a bad thing. It had reached a point where wearing anything other than Starfire was just handicapping yourself for the sake of variety and that's not healthy for the game.

The incoming changes do have me very interested, across all three classes, even though I'm primarily a Warlock and secondly a Hunter, with Titan in distant 3rd place. Still, I've got every piece of exotic armour in the game so I'm looking forward to trying out new builds. Even Point Contact Cannon Brace sounds like it will be good, Vesper of Radius sounds very interesting too. The buffs to supers are going to be big for the meta too I think. Nova Bomb and Chaos Reach in particular really needed help. Chaos Reach has some real potential with the "Sustained damage from Chaos Reach causes a jolting lightning strike" thing, that sounds like it might push this super right up the rankings.

I am going to try and make solar Hunter work next season for activities where Arc and Stasis surge aren't in effect. Celestial Nighthawk Golden Gun is one of the most satisfying supers in the game, but I haven't gelled with that class yet, more work needed. Plus, you can't stack multiple Gathering Storms, so if we do boss phases where someone has Divinity or Tractor cannon, I may well go solar Hunter for the big damage super.

The one thing I think really needs to happen now, which I suspect is maybe going to come in season 23, is a Stasis rework. Ok, perhaps not a rework but a re-tuning; as the first "3.0" class, it dropped too hot compared to the old classes and got nerfed so it didn't eclipse the old classes for the full Beyond Light year. Today, however, we've arrived at a point where Stasis is weak compared to the other classes. The huge ability cooldown nerfs need to be revised since they really slowed the class down and now we've got Strand, which does better for ad control, better for majors and better for boss DPS. It's literally like green Stasis, except better in every way.

Also, I hope Bungie make Renewal Grasps work again, since they have fallen into the "utterly useless" tier and frankly, such an aesthetically-pleasing exotic has no business being so bad.

[SimianWonder]

Speckle said:

Haven't paid much attention to most of the exotics re-works but, the starfire nerf was inevitable. It's only really a boss damage nerf though, it will still be a useful exotic but, I think many may be dusting off their phoenix protocols for wellocks.

Oh yes, it's absolutely been coming for the last three months at least.

I don't use Hunter or Titan enough to care about their reworks, and I'm not sure the other changes to Warlock exotics will be enough to sway me from my usual Contraverse/Osmiomancy/Sunbracers builds. Maybe Vesper and Chromatic fire will receive the boosts they needed, but most of the changes appear underwhelming.

And yes, Stasis really needs some help. Outside of the aforementioned Osmiomancy turret builds, Strand just does everything Stasis does, but better, and the two kits don't always play nice with each other. Freezing a target therefore taking it out of suspend should not be a thing.

[Mastodon2]

SimianWonder said:

Oh yes, it's absolutely been coming for the last three months at least.

I don't use Hunter or Titan enough to care about their reworks, and I'm not sure the other changes to Warlock exotics will be enough to sway me from my usual Contraverse/Osmiomancy/Sunbracers builds. Maybe Vesper and Chromatic fire will receive the boosts they needed, but most of the changes appear underwhelming.

I think Vesper will be strong because of the solid damage values they posted for the arc shockwaves (200 PVE) and the explosions from dying enemies (100 PVE), plus the fact that using it with Arc will blind enemies, which is always really strong. Those damage values are just the base value, which gets calculated against the defence stat of the target to give the actual damage number that appears on screen, obviously if it was only doing 200 displayed damage, it wouldn't even tickle a thrall.

Chromatic Fire will be a really solid pick too I think, especially when paired with a solid precision damage weapon like Outbreak Perfected or Wish Ender. Wish Ender especially, does so much damage on crits that it will be amazing for spreading the subclass verb effects around. Spreading weaken or blinding on precision kills will be amazing in any level of content, but I think it will really shine in high-level stuff. I am already imaging the possibilities for GMs with Wish Ender and an Arc class, popping heads and blinding everything near the target. It sounds like it will be a great boon since Wish Ender is already such an easy pick for GMs, but the changes mean that Chromatic Fire will now be a great neutral exotic that you can use with any class, with any of your favourite kinetic weapons and get some really nice benefits.

But I do agree, I will still probably heavily use Necrotic Grips for neutral play where I'm not leaning really heavily into a subclass and Osmiomancy / Contraverse Holds / Sunbracers etc when I am using a very element-heavy build.

That said, I am leaning more and more to the dark side and I may even main a Hunter next season! Unthinkable considering I've spent my time in Destiny thus far 90% as a Warlock.

[Speckle]

I really need to have a read through the details but, I'm taking a late season Destiny break at the moment so, will probably just leave it alone until season of the deep arrives.

I will say that one of my favourite things to do in Destiny is to mess around with new builds so I'm very much looking forward to next season, probably more so than any recent season! I don't think my stash of golf balls is going to last very long at all!

[Mastodon2]

Has anyone finished the new dungeon yet? I think it's easily the best one Bungie have done yet, it is exceptional, in my opinion. I did a blind run on Friday just after it launched, missed most of the collectible items so I'm doing another run to pick those up tomorrow before rest on an alt character. None of us dropped the exotic trace rifle but the loot we did drop was sweet. The rocket launcher I dropped has a reserve of like 12 rounds and if you kill an enemy with a finisher to prep the origin perk, you can get 4 rockets off in a row, it's crazy.

Lots of fun stuff to try out with all the changes too, I've been having so much fun with my arc hunter that I've not had a chance to try out the Warlock exotic buffs or the artifact mods for void, which sound exciting. The mods for getting overshields when picking up breaches and unleashing weakening pulses when dealing damage after collecting a breach sound particularly fun.

[Speckle]

Mastodon2 said:

Has anyone finished the new dungeon yet? I think it's easily the best one Bungie have done yet, it is exceptional, in my opinion. I did a blind run on Friday just after it launched, missed most of the collectible items so I'm doing another run to pick those up tomorrow before rest on an alt character. None of us dropped the exotic trace rifle but the loot we did drop was sweet. The rocket launcher I dropped has a reserve of like 12 rounds and if you kill an enemy with a finisher to prep the origin perk, you can get 4 rockets off in a row, it's crazy.

Lots of fun stuff to try out with all the changes too, I've been having so much fun with my arc hunter that I've not had a chance to try out the Warlock exotic buffs or the artifact mods for void, which sound exciting. The mods for getting overshields when picking up breaches and unleashing weakening pulses when dealing damage after collecting a breach sound particularly fun.

I've done a couple of runs. First one was blind and only killed first boss (we ran out of time on the night), then did final boss encounter the following day with a guy who had done the fight before, and another who was massively under-levelled - he died 78 times during the encounter . I think his level cancelled out the other guy's experience.

Second run on alt was smoother as I knew what to expect. Fortunately, we had someone with us who knew all the collectible locations so, picked those up along the way. No exotic though but, I have a pretty solid history of not getting dungeon exotics!

I enjoyed it a lot but then I also enjoyed Grasp and Spire immensely on the first couple of play throughs so, will see how this one ages and whether I get bored of it.

I've played arc exclusively since the new season dropped. Skip grenade hunter is so much fun and really suits a super aggressive, yolo playstyle which I really enjoy.

I'm not going to have as much time this season as I usually would due to life stuff so, not sure how hard I'll hit the GMs this season. It's a heck of a line up though - Moon battlegrounds, which has the potential to be worse than Mars with the open layout and ad density of the final boss room! Then both Lightblade & Corrupted as the cherries on top of the cake! Big boy pants will be required for anyone gilding this season

Edited by Speckle on Friday 2nd June 13:58

[skeeterm5]

For one reason or another I haven’t switched my PS on for nearly 2 years. Switched it on this week and did an absolutely mahoosive download for D2 and eventually hopped on to play.

Boy is it now confusing, loads of new stuff, weapon shaping and so on. It feels that some of the gameplay is now lost in complicated mechanics.

Going to just play simply and ignore the other admin which don’t seem to make any sense to me

Edited by skeeterm5 on Saturday 26th August 15:33

[dalzo]

A lot of destiny 2 dlc on humble bundle, £31.50 for all dlc up to date.