Review

This week was the first Iron Banner of the season and my first serious foray into PvP following all of the changes.  As has become my custom I tracked all my games in a spreadsheet.   I played a total of 57 games to complete all of my bounties:  22 on Hunter, 18 on Warlock, and 17 on Titan.  Of the four bounties this week — Defeats with Zone Advantage, Opponent Defeats, Weapon Final Blows, and Ability Final Blows — the Weapon Final Blows took the longest to complete.  It appears that we get bonus progress for multi-kills for the final blow bounties, so where I got multiple kills with supers (easier on Warlock and Titan) the ability bounty went quickly. All of my games were solo queue.

Once again I actively dodged stacks, including just leaving games immediately against six-stacks the two times I could not leave the match during matchmaking.  Eleven of my games were in the freelance playlist as well.  I did not notice an appreciable difference in the quality of matches. One quarter of the games were mercies, which is down a bit from past Iron Banners.

Overall I greatly enjoyed the Iron Banner experience this week.  Games were more even than in the past and I felt like I could be competitive with a variety of weapons (though Vex Mythoclast was clearly very strong).  I won more than I lost, going 35-22, which I’m sure helped enhance my satisfaction, but even during a stretch where I lost six games out of seven I was having a good time

On the PvE side, we got a new scorn-infested Shattered Realm map, and got the True Sight buff unlocked which shows hidden platforms in the Realms.  Shattered Realm continues to be the highlight of the seasonal activities, with Astral Alignment being ok but not something that is so compelling that I want to do it more than the minimum requirements.  I also maxed out rank for both Vanguard and Crucible so I got the ritual rocket launcher for the season and can now work on the Vanguard and Crucible ornaments given for the second rank reset.

Levelling went pretty well.  I got to 1330 on my Hunter and Titan.  Unfortunately my Warlock had awful luck on pinnacle drops and still needs leg and chest armor to drop at 1330 to get there.  On the one hand, that kind of bad luck continues to feel bad, but on the other since leveling means relatively little it doesn’t have a tremendous impact on my day-to-day experience.

Preview

We should get the third Shattered Realm map this week and I am looking forward to exploring it and to unlocking the last of the buffs, “Safe Passage”.  In addition it is double Infamy week so I think I will be playing some extra gambit on at least a couple of days to get through my first Infamy reset.  Most importantly, TRIALS returns on Friday.  I am excited to see how the new systems work and to get back in there, and also to see how regular crucible feels on non-iron banner weeks.