u/RubiGames

Which is good

Trials also doesn’t do the same skill based matchmaking (SBMM) as other pvp activities so the experience can vary widely. I believe its still doing flawless / non-flawless match making but I could be wrong as I haven’t done trials in a bit. If that’s the case and you just want loot, losing a match should increase the chances of getting an easier match.

Seconding the Prism/Truth/Axes setup. I use this in like 80% of Raid content and top damage frequently when I play with casual players and can challenge better end game raiders as long as they’re not on void hunter or doing turncoat transfer.

Conspiracy Honed, a stasis heat sniper from the most recent dungeon. Its part of a heat archetype that lets you reload at a certain timing to get a buff that decreases the “heat” generated so you can fire more shots before having to let it cool (effectively reload). Ionized heatsink gives lower heat per shot so you get even more shots off with this trait, making dumping ammo really good — and thats without considering 3rd/4th column perks (which usually end up being the double damage combo of Vorpal / Bait & Switch)

The dungeons are definitely still there and in the game — note that the UI has changed a fair bit so you might have an easier time finding them in the Raid/Dungeon/Pantheon tab at the bottom of the director.

I also know that some people who bought D2 piecemeal had to activate some (free) dungeon key on the Bungie website but I’m not super familiar with that myself, so maybe you are in that boat. I did have a friend though who did that the other week who had been off the game for a few years so that seems plausible (though he could see the dungeons, just not launch them)

also its a financially bad decision — we can say in hindsight that its possible they meant to do that but as far as any of the communication went, Destiny 2 was dead and the IP was retained for future projects. But starting with unvaulting content is not a money move — its a passion move. They’re trying to restore faith because if everyone hates bungie they won’t buy the next Destiny IP game, so honestly seeing that fans wanted it, it shows they’re listening finally.

True though for a lower skill option this is way easier since her boops don’t really affect you much.

https://raidhub.io/profile/4611686018470870600

Yipppeeee

Modern builds are going have modern things, and that’s not the worst thing — this is a looter shooter after all so chasing gear is part of the fun!

If you need a specific exotic, you can use an exotic cypher at Rahool in the tower (second page) to decrypt one you don’t have yet, which can be nice.

The three titan builds I’ve been running the most are:

Arc Titan
- Storms Keep, Insurmountable Skullfort + Thunderclap. Good all rounder; can swap to Cuirass of the Falling Star for damage. I think I use Tablet of Ruin artifact with this bc of the arc synergy, but feel free to play around with it. Orb gen on melee kills is also very nice (do 3x heavy handed, honestly)

Void:
- Second Chances w/ Controlled Demolition / Offensive Bullwark. Run the Apothecary sachel and do everything that plays with void breaches (except rite of the old gods — it sounds cool but just never really pans out imo)

Prismatic Titan:
- I love running some combination of (Spirit of Inmost / Eternal Warrior) & (Spirit of Star Eaters / Severance) on Consecration / Knockout spam titan (strand melee for extra charges)

Build into melee again for that one but artifact is more flexible.

I remember doing 3 months of Oklahoma and I quickly learned our stage manager’s lyrics to Oklahomo. I’ve lost most of them over the years but “OOOOOOOOOOOK! Lahomo where the wind runs screaming down the plains~” still lives rent free in my head.

I think I checked all the comments and people seem to be missing a few things I’ll add as well:

Izi/A499 refurbished swap is ideally used with the Data Disk artifact which also gives you kinetic bricks, which autoload your A499 and eat the reload time. You can also Shoot to Loot these if you’re at a distance. This is huge on long damage phases on big bosses like Panth Warpriest or Koregos (normal, not epic.) You also literally cannot run out of ammo because of this, so your total damage is infinite as opposed to any rocket launcher which taps out at usually ~100-120k with ideal buffs.

You can also edge additional damage out of your sniper rotation by using the 4 piece Spire of the Watcher set which grants recently drawn weapons bonus weakspot damage (7%, but its free damage)

If you’re using argent you also need a steady stream of orbs, though the common solution I’ve seen to this is 4 piece Vault of Glass armor, so not a huge deal there, but also the dump time on bellowing giant is its main problem over something like Hezen’s, since we’re talking 2 in the mag vs 1 if you have your super. Perhaps in a longer dps where the buff timer is gone (Calus, for example) but Hezen’s is also popular bc it surge matches other solar weapons (particularly for prismatic hunters on Still Hunt)

There’s unfortunately not much in the way of amazing void secondary options for damage. In my opinion the best other thing to run would be the pale heart sniper with double damage perks — which is good but either you’re running Redirection which is often impractical for raids / dungeons to setup all 30x stack or you run Aggregate Charge which is not as big of a buff, making it sit a little lower. Or you lose the surge buff / have to swap loadouts again which is also a pain.

Also, outside of R&D content, the small differences don’t really matter, so if you like it you should run it. It’s still good. I also am just going to run Truth if I want a void rocket launcher.

Raids are the biggest thing for me as others have said. My loot chasing and build crafting is entirely focused around raids, for the most part. I love the collaborative challenge of coordinating a group of people to a common goal. It’s so fun, whether its trying to go for a fast time or teaching someone new.

In terms of replayability, so much of it I think comes from always feeling like I can do something a little better while also enjoying the company of the people I play with. If I like the people, I’ll play practically anything, including any portal content or even patrol. It’s a fun sandbox, and sometimes just running around shooting things is all I want. I usually won’t log in for that, but if I’m on already, sure.

It’s also not usually my cup of tea, but sometimes a private crucible match with friends also hits.

There’s unfortunately a bug where doing mid tether can cause hobgoblins to not spawn at their regular interval so tethering mid is not exactly desirable. It’s not game breaking but it makes the encounter slower in almost all cases by losing a hob here and there. (It’s incredibly inconsistent and even with a high level team, trying to observe it has been annoying at best.)

I agree though that people are overcomplicating it - 1 person at every tether - [1, 2] buff at 2; [3, 4, 5] buff at 3

For initial setup I’d have - 1/5 tether at 1 - 2 goes ahead to 2, 5 meets them there and tethers (dont go through mid, it’ll spawn Hydra early) - 3/4 go directly to 4 and tether - 3/5 meet at 3 and tether (they got there from different lanes) - 3/5 run to mid and tether, 3 takes the portal back to 3 (2 and 4 can covet 3’s ads while they’re tethering 5)

The setup is a little more annoying without a 6th. You can also just have everyone run in a circle but if you can kill a hydra and a few ads as two (anti barrier snipers / fusions are lovely) it’s way faster than driving the schoolbus around all 4 tethers.

Some tips: - 5 should have on a long range weapon to kill the ads as they spawn in their lane bc they’re the most likely to get stuck with Subsides hitting the timer instead of “all ads are dead” check which can cause them to be late to get rebuffed, which causes chaos (I like to grab a scout and sit on TOP of the tether and snipe them around the pillars) - again, anti barrier weapons are great for setup. Izanagi’s Burden x4 1-shots the hydras even with banes, so that’s also really good if you hit your shots - For motes, just have people dunk what spawns in their lane when they clear their ads. You can delay subsides or have 5 do all the dunking, but that’s probably more optimization than you realistically need and probably will cause more headaches. - in case you didn’t know, the Subsides popup is triggered either when a) all the ads from the previous waves in every lane are dead (doesn’t count supplicants) or b) a certain amount of time has passed since the wave started, so killing the ads quickly is important since otherwise you don’t get a good time to leave your lane to tether - also, everyone should be soloing the boss’ eyes mechanic, and the best thing is probably either a slug shotgun or a sniper, depending on the comfort of the user

I think that’s what they were implying, but if not this thread just keeps on giving.

most likely it would’ve been in your interest to just keep using refurbished to kill

i also wonder if you were hitting your chaos reach at their feet or if you were potentially shooting past them and not damaging them enough

My slop build (aka I can run whatever I want) is either Mint Retrograde or Praedyth’s (depending on if I want precision or not), Choir of One, and an eager edge sword.

If I’m not going to be moving around, I’ll often swap for Refurbished A499 and switch my helion for a stasis turret since I feel like I can get more value that way since I’m not moving.

I also run the NPA artifact for all the void/autorifle synergy with Choir of One, that way I can have it crafted with Onslaught. (Make sure you’re using ADS fire and not hipfire or you’ll be out of ammo in 30 seconds)

For armor, I’m usually running a two piece of King’s Fall and Europa for ungodly ammo gen, but you could also get away with just one of those (Europa being much easier to get if you don’t do raids) and then another two piece of your choice. I’d personally use the Salvation’s Edge armor, but again if that’s not your thing, you can use whatever floats your boat.

People will recommend destabilizing rounds which used to be the play however, now with the NPA Regulator back you can slap a bunch of autorifle / void things on (increased reload, void breaches, etc) and put Onslaught on your Choir. You still get the destabilizing rounds from the artifact perk, it helps load itself, it kills most things with a single bullet.

Make sure you’re using the aim-down-sights single-fire mode, as just spamming the hip fire will waste your ammo super fast. I personally also run a special finder / scout with it in most content to help my team but also the more ammo you make the freer you can be with it.

In most raids where I run this, I run double special with the armor from Kings Fall that gives you extra ammo progress for majors/elites and I never have ammo issues. And I certainly don’t have ad clear issues. It’s incredibly good.

That said if I have to run a primary auto, its probably Zealot’s Ideal with Heal Clip / Onslaught.

This is super old but there’s typically better ways to get your abilities back in most content that having higher stats is just better (blue Font mods) and kickstart is pretty niche.

If you have a very reliable source of armor charge, you could probably buildcraft something, but it may only work in specific content. They’re also a little problematic for damage because you lose surges when you lose your armor charge, and people tend to build craft more for damage than neutral since you can generally get away with it.

That said, the game is the state it is — if you want to do something because it’s fun, do it!

Those perks are absolutely still used but they shine in ad dense content and are better paired with some perk that makes them stronger, e.g. reckless oracle that can have it in the third column, meaning you get a fourth column damage perk.

For primaries, in many cases reload perks are getting dropped for some other utility (destab, demolitionist, 2nd damage perk) because we have enough ways to mitigate reload (masterwork, mag, in some cases artifact perks) that having something else is just all around more value.

I do still use incandescent in some places, because its fun, like Zaouli’s Bane with Explosive Payload / Incan, or any of the solar SMGs with heal clip / incan. I also have a LMG with subsistance / incan that’s very silly to shoot, however I don’t pull those out as much. (Fun for a change of pace though since gunplay in this game is just so nice.)

https://preview.redd.it/j8vni0rso1bh1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d92ae0824d246fc92a96dce41d3572c6488f161d

the algorithms out out for blood apparently

Came here to say Choir as well — and it’s not even close

Vog is soloable up to gatekeepers currently and was soloable with killshot / previous methods. There’s nothing requiring that in D2

You’ve got a good bit of advice here. Just to throw in some general top tier primaries I’d recommend (that I use for higher end content, but work anywhere)

Yeartide Apex (you can roll from Solstice engrams at the monument) w/ Heal Clip or Attrition Orbs + Chaos Reshaped Zealous Ideal (from Equilibrium) w/ Heal Clip + Onslaught — same concept, just longer range and its a heat weapon so bullets go brrr

healclip weapons are really nice regardless of class and while they’re an on-kill perk, if you get a kill, you immediately lose pressure on you bc of the healing, which is super nice when you’re in ad-dense content

reckless oracle (particularly the new one from Pantheon) gets Destabilizing Rounds / Chaos Reshaped which is just so fun, and clears ads like nobody’s business. With a void-friendly artifact, it can get genuinely insane

now, if you don’t do pantheon, there’s Unforgiven from Duality which I’ve heard is also a good option with similar perks, though I haven’t tried it myself

blast furnace w/ Kinetic Tremors + any good damage perk is also a fantastic pick for a pulse rifle

Yeah, I’ll admit the FOMO-style enticement for gameplay was really odd. Maybe there was a sound reason somewhere at its core, but it really feels like a waste of assets to add and remove content in a live service game. Seasonal events make sense, e.g. Dawning, Solstice, etc., since you can reprise it, but just adding campaign-adjacent content and removing it?

At least we got some of it back in portal activities but still

I mean, to say it means nothing is a little shortsighted.

It means there’s still a very large player base active enough to come back to the game when they see content that interests and appeals to them. This is important for this game’s future because it signals to Sony that if they continue to develop in the IP, there’s a playerbase. We’ve just been starved.