Guardians!!!! Another week has passed and Xûr has presented himself in the Tower to trade for your Strange Coins. In other news a new week means a new Challenge of the Elders, Trials of Osiris Map, and the Weekly update from Bungie themselves. We will dive into all of those explaining some tips/tricks that worked as well as what we can expect from Bungie moving forward.
Xûr is currently waiting for your Guardians down across the hall from Lord Shaxx in the Tower. Xûr has brought some goodies that are must haves while he also has brought some items that just are nice to haves. Let’s dive into Xûrs sack of goodies to see which ones are which.
The Titan armor “Twilight Garrison” is a very unique armor within the exotic armor world. This armor’s main exotic ability called Tactical Air Support allows the titan to evade in the air. This armor also grants the user of Void Recovery or Void Armor. Only one is selectable, but if you do not like the elemental roll on the armor you can re-roll these with Glass Needles. Another trick is to purchase this armor (if you have not unlocked it), then go over to the exotic kiosk down by the vanguard vendors to get a different stat roll.
Overall Opinion: This armor allows titans so much extra maneuverability especially combined with Titan skating and shoulder charge. What may seem like a little extra boost to momentum might be the only thing that gets you out of those tight situations. This armor has been utilized in a lot of speed run videos as well as ways to get through jump puzzles a little bit easier. I would say if you have the strange coins to spare pick this armor up, as this is becoming a must have armor due to the capabilities it offers.
The Hunter armor this week is the “Achlyophage Symbiote” helmet, which has not been sold for a while now. This helmets exotic ability allows the Hunters Golden Gun a fourth shot, which can give the Gunslinger’s a surprising edge when most enemies in PvP are only expecting three shots. That being said while using this helmet your Golden Gun ability duration is slightly decreased.
Overall Opinion: This helmet is a must have for any Hunter that is especially fond of using the Golden Gun ability. Not only does this helmet provide four shots to kill more enemies in PvP, but also gives the gun a little more kick in PvE providing that extra shot to finish off any enemies you started to damage. For other hunters that are fonder of other abilities you can save your coins and pass up on this helmet.
The Warlock exotic this week is “THE STAG” helmet. This helmets exotic ability allows the Warlock Super to charge faster once per life while all your teammates are dead. In addition to that every time you respawn you have a chance to do so with an overshield.
Overall Opinion: This helmet to me screams “use me in PvP”! That being said it has to be used in the proper game type. In 6v6 it’s hard for all of your teammates to be dead at once allowing your Super to charge faster. Even if they do all died near same time they will be respawning quickly after that. If you choose to run this helmet I would say do so in 3v3 type game play. Honestly though I pass up on this helmet all together as a warlock due to other exotic abilities, and the fact that this helmet gives your position away far too easily.
The other item Xûr has brought this week is the heavy weapon “Super Good Advice”. This solar heavy weapon has a very unique exotic ability which helps you if you hit or miss your targets. Your missed shots have a chance to be returned to the magazine free of charge. Any landed shots have the chance to replenish the magazine, but at the cost of your ammo reserves.
Overall Opinion: This heavy is a must have especially if you are one of those Guardians that takes pride in completing the old raid content (Vault). Having the ability to kill targets without having to reload is a great perk, but the additional bonus of having crowd control on it as well makes every shot even more deadly after that first kill. Think about it, crowd control without having to reload is just plain nasty. Granted you will likely not be able to get the required ammo in PvP to do so.
Destiny Weekly News Roll-Up
-Bungie news & Community focus-
This past week Bungie has given us an insight on the what makes the artists tick inside the Bungie Studios. This next week Bungie has reminded us that they will be doing a live raid of Kings Fall with developers. This will give us an idea of what was going through their minds while they made this raid come to life.
Other things that are going on with Bungie right now are the developments of a recruitment tool that will be enabled through the companion app. This is going to help things along with the recruitment forums and helping guardians search for help in any form that they are looking for. This addition seems pretty nifty and easy to use just like DestinyLFG has become over the duration of Destiny’s lifetime.
In other news, Bungie has done a community focus piece on Orion8. If you have not heard of Orion8 aka OrionTheTitan in Reddit, his team has taken the time to craft PvP maps that are built for competitive level execution. These maps are top down views of all PvP arenas to help build communication among teammates to make call outs easier to make. Nothing is more difficult than trying to describe something to teammates who are unfamiliar with the maps at hand.
Another thing that these maps provide is an overall tactical layout of a PvP map with all playstyles taken into account. Meaning you can plan all tactical approaches on a map no matter what the play mode is. For a full list of all the maps his team has created feel free to bookmark the Crucible Playbook Reddit creation page here. The maps are extremely intricate including heavy ammo spots, sniping lanes, and map level differences. I use these maps specifically when it comes to Trials of Osiris competitions.
-Challenge of the Elders-
This week’s Challenge of the Elders grants extra bonus points for any melee kills generated. With that being said the modifiers this week being Airborne and Chaff make it a lot easier to jump melee your targets, the only difficult part will be finding them now that your map is disabled. For the weapon of choice i would lean towards using the Monte Carlo since it helps to reduce your melee cooldown timer. This weapon will also shave some health off your enemies to get close a finish them with a nice punch.
For the Titan, I would recommend the Striker class combined with the Peregrine Greaves to even further increase your shoulder charge melees while airborne. I would also select Overload, Transfusion, and obviously Shoulder Charge in the Striker subclass.
Hunters, get prepared to get your Bladedance on. Since the Bladedancers super kills with a melee you get extra points. So to help keep your Super as active as long as possible I recommend equipping the Mask of the Third Man helmet, while selecting Encore and Fleet Footed. In addition to those two perks, I would recommend also selecting Fast Twitch to even further reduce your melee cooldown timer. The only downfall of this build is that it lacks a little bit in survivability so be careful when activating your Super ability.
Warlocks, It is a little up to your playstyle of choice but I found that using the Stormcaller subclass to be more effective.I’m not too worried about the super ability of the subclass, I’m more concentrated on what lets me melee ability cooldown trigger more often so I don’t have to two or three punch an enemy to death. The Stormcaller subclass has a couple of perks which reduce your Thunderstrike melee timer a lot more than your other two subclasses. These perks are Perpetual Charge which grenade kills recharge melee, and melee kills recharge grenade energy. Rising storm is a perk in the Thunderstrike tree which causes your super and melee energy to charge slightly. Feedback is another great perk which makes incoming melee attacks fully recharge and increase Thunderstrike damage output. Now think if you combined those with the Claws of Ahamkara which allow you to run around with two melee charges!
I hope these help your endeavors inside the Reef, and until next week I’ll see some of you inside the Crucible or running around the Tower as you can see in the image below. Looking forward to seeing you Guardians again next week.
-ShadowAssault86