This week was the first week of the caches being available in the Shattered Realm, and the first week that I gave up and looked up the location of an item. One of the caches had a triumph that said it was in the shipyard, when it was in a different location, and after about 90 minutes of searching the shipyard fruitlessly I looked it up. It was a little frustrating because if the triumph hadn’t been misleading about the location I would have found it on my own. But that’s a minor thing, I still love the Shattered Realm activity.
It was also the first week the catalyst for Ager’s Scepter was available and I was lucky enough to get it on my first run of Astral Alignment for the week. I then played normally to complete it, finishing in a couple of days. It’s another well-done exotic with a lot of character and utility.
Raid-wise, we did not complete a flawless Vog run and my teammate who is missing vex mythoclast still did not get it, and we tried and failed to complete the red rover challenge in Deep Stone Crypt. It’s funny how even a good team with good players can struggle when doing something different — practice does make perfect. Pinnacles with friends on Thursday was the usual good time.
Friday rolled around and it was Trials time. With the flawless matchmaking pool pushed back to Sunday and having commitments Saturday morning I did my carry run early Friday. It was harder that the past couple of weeks but still pretty routine. The rest of the trials experience, though, was much more difficult this week, as I noted here.
In the end I wasn’t having much fun solo queuing and even with a team we were struggling as compared to other weeks. Having already gone flawless and therefore having no chance of relief when flawless matchmaking turned on I just packed it in for the week and did not play trials anymore after Saturday night. Here were my final stats for the week:
Sunday and Monday I exclusively played other crucible modes and had a pretty good time. Next week is Iron Banner, which I plan on playing a lot of, and when trials returns if the matchmaking remains the same I am not going to go flawless until Monday at the earliest.
Preview
This week we should finish off all of the nodes of the Compass, and complete all of the triumphs for Shattered Realm: Ruins of Wrath. The raid team will take another run at flawless VoG. And, as already mentioned, Iron Banner returns. We are getting towards the end of the seasonal content before the “catch up” weeks and I am going to start paying more attention to the seasonal triumphs to be sure that I am on pace to complete them all.
The rhythm of Destiny is becoming a PvE section from Tuesday-Thursday, a Crucible section from Friday-Sunday, and a cleanup day on Monday. Trials is dominating the online discourse about Destiny, as I posted about late last week.
My main PvE activities were finishing up everything available in the Shattered Realm: Forest of Echoes, raiding with my team on Wednesday, and doing a set of pinnacle activities with friends on Thursday. The Shattered Realm continues to impress — it was fantastic to figure out how to find everything and trigger the Ascendant Mysteries. The best part is that it was all reasonably findable so I did actually do it myself rather than get frustrated and look up a youtube video. And there are three more mysteries for the next time around. This is my favorite seasonal activity so far.
On Wednesday my raid team did Vault of Glass then hopped in to do Deep Stone Crypt. Our organizer has us on a schedule to do all of the triumphs for everyone on the team. I already have them all except for the flawless runs but I am really having fun raiding with this crew and I’m glad that we’re still doing it
Thursday pinnacles are just a good way to spend time with friends. We may change it up once all of us are at the cap; the point is to touch base and play together.
Friday the focus switched to trials. There was interest in the raid team to go in together Friday night so I got my wish and got a team together. They couldn’t be on until later than me so I did 10 solo matches first. It was a bit of a weird experience. Five of the games were against solos or duos. My team won all of them. Five of the games were against trios. We lost all of them, and in four of the five we had absolutely no chance taking just 2 rounds total in the four games. So on the one hand I went 5-5. On the other the losses were matches in which I had no chance.
I then played 19 games with teammates from the raid team. The first team we had never played together and it took us a bit to get used to each other — we lost the first two games badly and the next two 5-4. We then won five out of the next seven, and switched teams. The next team it was with someone with whom I had played a lot last week plus one of the guys from the earlier team, so we had some chemistry right away and reeled off six wins in a row before running into a very good team on game seven and losing 3-5. We then had an easy game 8 for my first non-carry flawless ever.
My first non-carried trip to the lighthouse!
I then played a few games post-flawless with one of the guys I had just played with and it was a stark change. We lost all four matches and didn’t have a chance in two of them. Our new teammate decided to leave and find some non-flawless people to go in with.
Saturday morning I played with my carry team. Despite being in the flawless pool, we cruised, winning all 17 matches and with our opponents never winning more than two rounds. The games were harder than last week but still much easier than last season, and I don’t see any team that was able to carry last season having any trouble whatsoever carrying this season.
Sunday evening I went back in intending to solo queue, and then got joined by one of the guys from the flawless team a couple of games in. And the experience was perfectly fine. I lost more than I won (1-1 solo, 4-8 Duo), but only three of the matches were matches in which we didn’t have a chance. Although my overall record on Sunday was 5-9 vs 5-5 solo-queuing on Friday, the games Sunday in the flawless pool felt better.
I played again solo queuing a few games during the workday and then more in the evening on Monday. The experience was generally ok but stomps against me were more prevalent. As I climbed the win ladder (I was working to complete a 7-win card to get one last Adept Reed’s Regret) matches seemed to get harder. And when I had one more win to go I unfortunately lost three 5-4 matches in a row and then got stomped for four matches, for a seven game loss streak before getting that seventh win. And that felt bad. But intellectually I know that if I had won any of those 5-4 games I would have stopped then and seen the experience entirely differently. Here are the final stats:
Post flawless seems to be about a one-third winning percentage solo-queue, which is not wonderful but is enough to keep me playing if the experience is otherwise good. There are still far too many stomp games — on both sides — for my taste. Out of the 83 matches I played, in only 18 — or less than 22% — did the losing team win at least three rounds. I don’t know if this is the nature of elimination or if this indicates that matches are imbalanced, but I wish there were more close games.
Preview
This coming week PvE wise is the next phase of Shattered Realm: Ruins of Wrath. I’ll do the seasonal content including that as well as my weekly pinnacle activity night with my friends, and Wednesday raid night. We are going to try for flawless Vault of Glass. On the weekend we will have a “Trials labs” with an objective and Bungie will be removing the display of the guardian count in the lobby to avoid people dodging teams. Plus, they may make matchmaking changes again — who knows? I plan on playing a lot of Trials again next week.
This was a bifurcated week: the beginning was all PvE and Gambit, from Friday on it was the Trials revamp and PvP until I returned to PVE on Sunday night to hang out with friends. The hive-themed Shattered realm map (Ruins of Wrath) was revealed and along with it the last of our ‘buffs’ for the activity — Safe Passage, which eliminates the effects of the slow/suppression fields for a short time. As has been usual I had a great time exploring the map and trying to find all of the secrets myself. I don’t think I got everything — there was one building I couldn’t figure out how to get to yet — but I got a lot and doing all of the exploring myself was a lot of fun. And the story that’s playing out over this season continues to be great.
I also raided twice, once with iLulu on her stream and then with my regular raid group. Both were fun and efficient, though one of our team is still looking for Vex to drop and it didn’t happen. After the raid the team went into Astral Alignment and knocked out all of the triumphs except the “destroy all ether” one, on the first try. It’s great to play with such a cool team.
On Thursday I played many, many Gambit matches until I reached a Gambit reset. It was surprisingly fun. For some reason being invaded didn’t bother me that much and the games were usually pretty fast paced.
Friday launched the revamped Trials, and I already posted my initial impressions. After that I continued to play a little and ended up with a total of 51 matches played, pretty much evenly split between a team with very good players (a Carry team, 17 matches), a team of regular players (a Regular Team, 16 matches), and solo and duo queuing (9 matches each, total of 18 matches). These were the results:
The difference between having a team and not is stark, and having a regular team was easily the most fun. It may be that my solo queue experience was worse because I had already gone flawless, so I am going to try solo queue again this coming Friday to see.
Preview
This week we get back into the Forest of Echoes for the first time with all of the buffs. I am looking forward to getting out to the platform off in the sky with the statue on it to see what is there, and to finding out if there are other secrets. I am also looking forward to another fun week of Trials and am going to start to figure out how to get a regular team going. Also, now that I’ve hit the pinnacle cap on all of my characters it is time to figure out what my weekly routine will be for the season.
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.
This was the first week of Season of the Lost! The first couple of weeks of any season for me are primarily about (1) trying out new things; and (2) levelling up. I played a lot of the new activities and enjoyed them, and posted my initial thoughts yesterday. Beyond that it was all about levelling.
Levelling in Destiny 2 can be a frustrating experience, because (1) the most efficient ways to do it often requires doing specific things in a specific order and of those things require a fireteam you either need to have people ready to play when you are, LFG, or wait; and (2) you are at the mercy of RNG for drops. For example, at one point I needed a powerful helmet on one character and got three cloaks out of four powerful drops (the fourth was also not a helmet).
That said, at this point in Destiny 2 levelling has limited purposes:
Levelling matters in iron banner and trials, but with the cap at 1330 and artifact levelling not mattering, you are ok pretty much as soon as you get to 1321 (i.e., one level).
Levelling matters for Master Nightfalls and Lost Sectors, which are at 1350.
Levelling matters for Master VoG which is now 1360.
Levelling will matter when they bring back Grandmaster Nightfalls in October (will need to be 1345.)
And that’s pretty much it. With artifact I’m well into the 1330s so I have no levelling issues, and I expect that with any reasonable RNG I will be at 1330 or close on at least one character by the end of next week.
In addition to levelling my priorities are to get the new exotics and try out the new guns. I used the Legend lost sectors to get all of the new exotics, though the only one I really tried was Nothing Manacles. I also ran a lot of strikes to try to get the ritual rocket launcher but am not quite at level 16 yet. Crucible took a back seat to PvE this week.
Preview
Iron Banner is coming this week with the opportunity for four extra pinnacles and so this week will be a lot more Crucible focused. I’ll also be trying to manage the power grind to level up my characters as quickly as possible, while trying out whatever new things come up (I expect a different shattered realm, and I’m hoping for a change to the seasonal activity). I’m also keeping an eye on all of the seasonal triumphs to look for opportunities to get those.
It’s a great time to be playing Destiny, the biggest risk is overdoing it.
This week I completed the Fatebreaker Seal by completing the gatekeeper challenge in Master Vault of Glass. In addition we had the last bit of the season’s story, the “Epilogue” cutscene in which the Vex have invaded the Last City and are repelled by St. XIV, Mithrax, Ikora, Amanda Holliday, and Zavala — with an assist from us, of course. It’s been a great season story-wise and I am excited for the next season and Witch Queen next year.
Thursday, I did a dungeon crawl with random weapon loadouts with Lostsight5 and NeoMadDog. The dungeons are some of Destiny’s best spaces and it’s always good to go through them again. And Destiny is indeed better played with friends, so I am grateful to have a regular time set up with them to game.
Other than that I spent my time in the Crucible, both in Control and Survival (Freelance) on my own and in Trials on Saturday morning. The Trials map was Endless Vale and the cards went quite smoothly — we took a couple of losses but no resets. I was generally satisfied with my play but am increasingly frustrated by the FoV/aiming difference going back to the old-gen Xbox makes. I am hoping that switching to old-gen won’t be necessary this upcoming season, and indeed am eager to find out what changes they have planned for Trials.
I continue to have fun playing trials though it is hard to determine if I am getting better or making any progress. I gave some feedback in my last post and it bears reemphasizing that some form of ranked mode would be a godsend.
Preview
This is the last week of the season and there is nothing left that I have to do. I’m not planning on playing Trials this week because I have family plans. If the uzume sniper is the nightfall loot I will likely try to farm a decent roll, and of course I will raid with Team Fabulous on Wednesday and play with Lostsight and Neo on Thursday. Beyond that I am just waiting for any information at all about the new season, including the weapons changes that are going to be announced in Thursday’s TWAB.
Other than the Grandmaster Nightfall, the Disgraced, and the Oracles Master VoG challenge, there was nothing pressing in Destiny PvE this week. I ran the Disgraced twice, with relatively easy clears both times. It was double loot, and the first time I got two adept weapons. The second time, however, I didn’t get any. Not getting any when you expect that “double loot” means you have a good chance to get two feels bad.
Oracles was a relatively easy challenge on Master difficulty. Our team used this strategy from reddit and with multiple well warlocks, always three people to teamshoot, and relatively few threatening enemies we got it done quickly. We then hopped into normal mode and did the Eyes on Atheon challenge (kill Atheon without anyone killing a supplicant) which means that I now have all of the challenges done except the remaining Master challenges: Templar and Gatekeeper.
I spent the rest of my Destiny time playing crucible, with 93 control matches and 39 Trials matches. Let’s start with Trials. The map was Wormhaven, which I think is a reasonably good map for trials. We had three resets on my first character — hunter — although one was only on game 2. We then ran off 21 wins in a row. I continue to struggle in Trials, with only 12 out of the 39 games being at a 1.0 k/d or higher. I do feel like I have improved in the past year but it is difficult to know how much and how to take it to the next level.
One issue I have is the transition from my Xbox Series X, with 105 Field of view, back to my Xbox One X, with its unchangeable field of view of 72. When I first switch back my aim is off because I am sliding way past the target when moving my reticle quickly. I feel like it comes back after an hour or so but the first few games are always unpleasant. I am considering not playing next season if I can’t play on the Series X.
I had a wide variety of matches in control. In many I struggled and went negative, where in others I had very good games. I am switching between handcannon/ shotgun and pulse/SMG as my main loadouts. I felt like as the week went on I got better at being conscious of and using cover. I am going to continue working on that this week.
Preview
This week the master challenge is Templar. I have gilded the Conqueror title so I will not be doing any grandmaster unless it is to farm for an adept weapon and upgrade materials. I may attempt to solo flawless the Warrior master empire hunt as I never got the flawless master empire hunt triumph. Beyond that, I will be spending my time completing the Iron Banner bounties on all of my characters in preparation for next season. I may not be able to play trials as I have a lot of plans this weekend.
With all of the Solstice and seasonal activities done I am down to the Master VoG challenges and Grandmaster Nightfalls as far as “must do” PvE activities each week. I still do a set of gunsmith and vanguard bounties on each character, as well as a set of splicer bounties as I do the three overrides and three expunges that grant a powerful engram each week. Aside from that I am spending my time in the crucible.
I did the Master conflux challenge early in the week with Wafflez’ clan with not too much trouble, though I came in as a sub so I don’t know how long they had been at it. But after I joined we got it on the third try. Raid Team Fabulous had a bit more trouble — we had to abandon the effort on Wednesday night as it was getting late and someone was headed out to Vegas in the morning. When he got back we went in again on Monday night and finished it off. A very satisfying clear. Once again I was very impressed with how chill everyone was even when things weren’t going well. This is a team I’d be comfortable going into a raid day 1 with, because even if we couldn’t clear it we would have a good time.
The Grandmaster was the Warden of Nothing, which I did one time. Some people do it for clears, and some people like to farm. I don’t like farming and don’t want to do more than 1-3 at a time so unless I catch a group just interested in that I’ll only do my one clear a week.
The trials map this week was Convergence, which is — by far — the map I play the worst on. The first two cards (on hunter and warlock) went smoothly, but the titan cards were more of a struggle with 2 or 3 resets on the way to that flawless. I mostly had fun but don’t enjoy the “lost” feeling I get when I don’t really know how to play the map.
I spent a lot of time in the crucible and generally had a good time. I tried out a couple of handcannons including having a few good games with a 180 (Survivor’s Epitaph) of all things. I play well at times but also play mindlessly far too often; I need to find consistency.
Preview
This week the master challenge is oracles, which I think will be one of the easier challenges. The Grandmaster is the Disgraced. Aside from those I have no real plans to do a lot of PvE activities beyond the usual. Instead, I will concentrate on the crucible.
I have rediscovered my motivation to get better, so I’m looking forward to more crucible the rest of the season. I want to do some deliberate practice to work on weaknesses in my game and improve. And also find a loadout that I will work with in Iron Banner next week.
This was an “odds and ends” week rather than a week dominated by any one activity. Raid Team Fabulous (my regular Wednesday night team) went in to Master VoG on Wednesday night and got farther than we had before, stopping at oracles more out of running out of time than a feeling that we couldn’t complete it. So we are getting there. I think Master VoG strikes a good balance between difficulty and accessibility.
I also did the Grandmaster Inverted Spire a few times, as it is not a hugely difficult grandmaster. I enjoy the challenge of those but am not someone that likes to farm the same activity over and over so 1-3 runs at a time is the sweet spot for me.
The Trials map this week was Javelin-4. After last week I was not optimistic that it would be a fun time, but it was. The cards were challenging, of course, and I still personally struggle in trials, but it was a fun time with only one reset over the three characters. I don’t play golf but I know a lot of people that do and they have described struggling through most of a round but having one or two shots on the day that feel so great that it makes up for it. That is what Trials is like for me and I had a few good plays and one really good match that made my day.
On Sunday I decided it would be crucible day and played 12 matches of control, all on my hunter, trying Messenger (High-Impact Pulse) and either Compass Rose (Shotgun) or Shayura’s Wrath (Submachinegun) as a loadout. I had a lot of fun with it, trying to learn and pay attention to things like engagement distances and cover rather than just playing mindlessly. I think that I will be playing more Crucible in the coming weeks as we wait for the new season.
I also joined a team from Wafflez’s clan doing an Atheon checkpoint for Master VoG. We got the clear so I got the triumph and the ship, but I won’t consider myself to have cleared it until I do a full run through.
This was the last week of seasonal challenges and I finished them all, including a few last gambit matches that gave me enough wins for gilding Dredgen for the second time. I also completed the “kill 100 bosses on Prism day” triumph to complete the Solstice triumphs. That is enough EAZ for me for this year.
Preview
The end-of-season doldrums have begun to set in a bit. There are not a lot of groups active in the clan for impromptu raids or other things. And, personally, there are not many PvE activities that hold my interest more than an hour or so, other than raiding. So the rest of the season may be more crucible-focused for me.
Raid team Fabulous will go in to Master VoG again Wednesday and I’m very confident we can get the conflux triumph done. Beyond that and doing the Grandmaster I have no plans other than continuing to experiment in crucible.
Because there was no new story mission this past week, the week was focused on Solstice of Heroes with a side of Grandmaster and Master Vault of Glass.
Solstice of Heroes is much improved from last year, with the grind substantially shortened and with many steps involving older content having options (e.g.,Wrathborne hunts or blind well completions). The EAZ activity has gotten some quality of life enhancements as well, with little “lifts” all around the arena to assist with jumping and, most significantly, chests that stay visible throughout the ‘chest opening’ phase. I got the armor sets for all three characters done and never felt like it was a chore.
That said, there is a triumph that requires killing 100 EDZ bosses on “Prism” days. That is *a lot* of EAZ and it can only be done every fourth day. That *does* feel like a chore and is not something I am looking forward to completing.
I did one master VoG attempt with the regular Wednesday night team. We didn’t even get the door open, which was disappointing, but everyone stayed chill which is an excellent sign for working through difficult content. Hopefully we will all be a little more leveled up this coming week and make better progress.
Fallen S.A.B.R.E. Grandmaster was a fun challenge to get through, once.
I did not spend as much time in Crucible playing after the sandbox changes as I hoped to, except for struggling through my trials cards. We had three resets on Titan before getting flawless, got flawless on Hunter on the first try, and had two resets on Warlock before running out of time. Trials population seems so low that carries are increasingly hard to do and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep playing Trials for much longer. So far it does seem that there is more weapon variety in the crucible.
Preview
This week the last of the seasonal weekly challenges are available, and I intend to finish them. I’m also hoping to get further in Master VoG. I have 16 bosses killed during prism days; I plan on doing 28 on each of the next three prism days to finish off the triumph. I also hope to get more time in the crucible.
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