Equipping for PvP

[mannon]

I'd like to get some advice on what sort of equipment to be looking for as regards PvP. I know that attack and defense stats are ignored so it comes down to all the base stats, but what really makes one thing better than another?

I think when it comes to Auto Rifles, Shotguns, and Machine Guns pretty much Impact is the most important thing and the slower firing harder hitting weapons are generally considered better than the reverse.

I was wondering about sniper rifles, though as I've mainly been focusing on Impact, but it seems so long as a sniper rifle can get a headshot 1HK then it doesn't really need more impact and having better handling stats would help you get headshots more reliably or have more chances at them. Or is it better to focus on impact anyway so that you can do as much damage as possible even with body shots? Can sniper rifles get low enough on Impact to not even be able to 1HK with a headshot in PvP?

Any other advice on equipment or even abilities? Is it worth sacrificing armor or regen for speed or best to max armor and regen? Any other thoughts?

[wittyscorpion]

Attack vs. Impact: denkirson.proboards.com/thread/7243/destiny-attack-impact , for bros who has not yet had a chance to read it.

I have some questions regarding PvPs:

1) What upgrades of high level gears are available in regular PvP? Can you benefit from non-damage related attributes like faster reload, faster cool down, etc? What about subclass upgrade tree?
2) Are benefits of armor's Strength/Discipline/Intellect attributes available in regular PvP?
3) Do we have any detailed stats at "Den's standard"?
4) Do we know bullets-to-kill of Scout Rifles?
5) In Halo, the goal is to remove shields first (during which phase headshots do same damage as body shots), then a single headshot or 2 body shots for the kill. Looks like Destiny does not work that way (shield vs. health) and is more like CoD (headshots & body shots do same damage no matter when you hit the enemy)?

[mannon]

1. I don't have specifics but it's my understanding that nearly all upgrades other than those affecting attack and defense are applied in PvP including all you mentioned. I will defer to bros with more specific knowledge, however.

2. Benefits of Strength, Discipline, and Intellect are fully applied in PvP, but also largely normalize out across the level range because it takes a higher stat to get the same benefit at higher levels. There's also a cap. If I remember correctly all your cooldowns start out with a two minute duration which can be reduced by up to one minute via your stats. There is a formula that determines how much reduction you get per point and anything that gets you over "100%" is wasted. In other words the percentage shown when you hover over the icons in your inventory is the percent of your cooldown bonus, not percentage of actual reduction. You can at most reduce your cooldown by 50%. The base cooldown time does not change, ever. But higher level players do have access to items with better stats. I believe that access to items does slightly outpace the formula, particularly at very low levels where items with stats are rare.

3. Don't think so, though someone in Beta had used screenshots of all the weapons to record the displayed stats and devolved the damage formula, which probably hasn't changed much.

4. It will vary because not all scout rifles have the same Impact. You'll probably have to do your own testing for now, although I'm sure someone, somewhere is making a detailed list.

5. I don't know and will defer to bros on this one. Personally I just always aim for the head in Destiny.

[hebbnh]

1) Level, attack, and defense are all equalized for a more level playing field. I believe cooldown reductions and abilities granted from armor do still have an effect. Subclass abilities definitely are not equalized--whatever you have unlocked is available.
2) Not sure on this.
3) I've seen a couple explanations, but nothing close to Den's standard.
4) Don't know about scout rifles, but hand cannons are either 3 or 4, depending if you headshot after the shield is down.
5) Headshots do count in my limited experience. With my hand cannon it was 2 shots to break shield, then 1 headshot or 2 bodyshots for the kill.

[mannon]

I believe in Destiny the only real significance of the shield break (on players) is that is when health drops below the point where regen will pause at.

[n1gh7]

There are definitely snipers that OHK people. I just played against some. As for amour and stuff, you'll want armour that improves the cool downs of what you want specifically, rather than just high defense. Also you'll want the extra abilities to cater to your play style and load out. For example, your gauntlets should increase the reload speed of your primary. Things like that.

[mannon]

I know sniper rifles generally 1HK with a headshot. I think even the weaker ones probably can due to massive headshot multiplier, but it's possible one could actually be too weak for that.

I didn't think any did enough damage to 1HK an uninjured player without a headshot, but I'm not sure about that.

[n1gh7]

I think some do.

[mannon]

Think my numbers were all wrong on Strength, Discipline, and Intellect, but that's still basically how it works.

Looks like this guy did some testing.

[wittyscorpion]

Sorry for the confusion of the highlighted portion of the following comments in my earlier post:

In Halo, the goal is to remove shields first (during which phase headshots do same damage as body shots), then a single headshot or 2 body shots for the kill. Looks like Destiny does not work that way (shield vs. health) and is more like CoD (headshots & body shots do same damage no matter when you hit the enemy)?

I did not mean headshot damage = body shot damage, because that's obviously incorrect.

What I mean is this: say you hit the enemy with 10 bullets, out of which 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 are headshots, while 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 are body shots. All headshots will have the same damage (say 108 in gold color), and all body shots will have the same damage (say 53 in white color), does not matter when you hit the enemy.

In Halo this is not true:

1) For BR like weapons: until the shield is taken out, headshots and body shots do the same damage. in other words, headshots provide no damage benefits against shield. Against health on the other hand, 1 headshot is enough to kill the enemy, while with body shots you need two;
2) Sniper Rifle headshot is OSK. 1 SR body shot = taken out all the shields;

In Destiny PvE however, it seems to me 1) is still the way how damage works when against a shielded enemy.

Regarding Sniper Rifle in Destiny PvP: I am pretty sure the design goal is OSK headshot.

[qupie]

Are you sure that is correct Witty? I thought you could only get precision damage after shields down.

Edit: silly me didn't read your whole post, so it is actually different between PvP and PvE? Good to know!

My crucible advice:

Auto: Use shingen/cydonia or blue/purple version. Mind that a green gun might be better iftried as a better perk! (I really like the flinch one, and the grenade cooldown one)
Shotgun: use one with highest impact, there are several, but sometimes it takes a while before you find one. Good perks are less spread when ads and bonus ammo after kills. Good weapon mods are Quickdraw and agility.
Fusion rifles: take the one with the lowest ROF and highest impact, or the one with 2nd highest impact and faster charge. These two are beasts, didn't find any with real good perks though, grenade countdown is nice I guess. For weapon mods something strange is going on, it seems as if the faster charge mod reduced the damage in crusible! Maybe fusion rifles damage in crusible is dependant on chargetime instead of impact. Maybe it was placebo though :/. Frost/nos something and damerrung are all good contenders. (the slower ones are able to one shot far more reliably and from longer range though)

Lmg are all usable, most have a very short effective range though. I like the ones with around 50 rounds per mag and as much stability as possible.

On the other weapons:
Scout, did pretty good a few times on that boring map with vehicles. Definitely not weaker then using an auto on that map. Also very nice if you don't use a sniper
Hand cannons, I have an legendary which totally rapes face in PvE (devil you know), but is horrible in PvP. Didn't try more then 3 games though. One I had some fun with in the past is one with a random bullet in the magazine which did more damage. But I think they are (slightly) inferior to the guns unnamed above
Pulse, tried strangers rifle, because I liked it in PvE for level 18-20 but I couldn't do good with it. I have been owned by someone with a pulse rifle sometime though...
Rocket llaunchers are going to give you less kills per ammo pickup than lmg on average, but can be nice for dom/salvage I guess. Never used one in PvP, feels like trolling opponents and gimping yourself at the same time.

Hope it helps

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 23, 2014 2:57:19 GMT -5 qupie said:

Are you sure that is correct Witty? I thought you could only get precision damage after shields down

In Destiny I am not sure about anything. I was just asking whether more experienced bros know whether that's the case or not.

All I know (from beta) is that Destiny PvP did not seem to implement it the same way as Halo. Exactly how remains a mystery to me at the moment.

[hebbnh]

After playing PvP for several hours last night, I can safely say that all shots do the same damage whilst shields are up, then headshots matter once shields are down. Every sniper rifle I used was a 2 bodyshot or 1 headshot kill. It does seem that high impact, lower rate of fire weapons with each weapon class are better than the low impact, high ROF versions. Shotty/melee combo is just as devastating as it was in Halo. Auto rifle is probably the most consistent and easiest to use, but I think other weapons (hand cannons for sure, haven't used pulse or scout rifles yet) may outstrip their damage potential assuming the user can hit headshots consistently. Using any Bladedancer ability that grants invisibility allows you to completely faceroll people that don't have any idea you're there, which is thoroughly enjoyable. It's going to be even better once I get Shadowjack unlocked to increase the duration.

[TheHawkNY]

Look for an auto rifle with the focused fire upgrade (when zoomed, this weapon fires slower, but causes additional damage). You get the damage buff in PvP, and greatly reduced recoil. I can't find a reason to use any other primary at this point.

[wittyscorpion]

Sept 23, 2014 8:13:36 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

After playing PvP for several hours last night, I can safely say that all shots do the same damage whilst shields are up, then headshots matter once shields are down. Every sniper rifle I used was a 2 bodyshot or 1 headshot kill. It does seem that high impact, lower rate of fire weapons with each weapon class are better than the low impact, high ROF versions. Shotty/melee combo is just as devastating as it was in Halo. Auto rifle is probably the most consistent and easiest to use, but I think other weapons (hand cannons for sure, haven't used pulse or scout rifles yet) may outstrip their damage potential assuming the user can hit headshots consistently. Using any Bladedancer ability that grants invisibility allows you to completely faceroll people that don't have any idea you're there, which is thoroughly enjoyable. It's going to be even better once I get Shadowjack unlocked to increase the duration.

Great, so it is built upon the Halo model.

The reason why I am so interested in how damage works against shield vs. health is because Destiny's primary weapons have excellent hip fire accuracy for hitting body shots but not good at making headshots (unlike halo, which does not have hip spread). If the "shield stripping" phase is nondiscriminating against shot placements, firing from hip at body can be a quite viable tactics. With all the crazy movements (jumping, double jumping, gliding, hovering, short time teleporting, turning invisible, crouching, sliding, etc), hip firing makes target tracking much easier, especially if you have a scope of higher zoom.

[-3055-]

Sept 23, 2014 8:13:36 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

After playing PvP for several hours last night, I can safely say that all shots do the same damage whilst shields are up, then headshots matter once shields are down. Every sniper rifle I used was a 2 bodyshot or 1 headshot kill. It does seem that high impact, lower rate of fire weapons with each weapon class are better than the low impact, high ROF versions. Shotty/melee combo is just as devastating as it was in Halo. Auto rifle is probably the most consistent and easiest to use, but I think other weapons (hand cannons for sure, haven't used pulse or scout rifles yet) may outstrip their damage potential assuming the user can hit headshots consistently. Using any Bladedancer ability that grants invisibility allows you to completely faceroll people that don't have any idea you're there, which is thoroughly enjoyable. It's going to be even better once I get Shadowjack unlocked to increase the duration.

You can get critical hits (headshots) in PvP while their shields are up.

[tooros]

Sept 23, 2014 12:48:36 GMT -5 TheHawkNY said:

Look for an auto rifle with the focused fire upgrade (when zoomed, this weapon fires slower, but causes additional damage). You get the damage buff in PvP, and greatly reduced recoil. I can't find a reason to use any other primary at this point.

Can you remember the/a name? Sounds like the the best option to me. Nice one.

[TheHawkNY]

Sept 24, 2014 19:05:21 GMT -5 tooros said:

Sept 23, 2014 12:48:36 GMT -5 TheHawkNY said:

Look for an auto rifle with the focused fire upgrade (when zoomed, this weapon fires slower, but causes additional damage). You get the damage buff in PvP, and greatly reduced recoil. I can't find a reason to use any other primary at this point.

Can you remember the/a name? Sounds like the the best option to me. Nice one.

The upgrades are not tied to any specific weapon model. There are a set of upgrades available for Auto Rifles, a set for Hand Cannons, and so on. So if you pick up, for example, a Cydonia, it could have any of the auto rifle upgrades available for it. The exception to this is Exotic weapons (and maybe Legendary, I'm not sure?). If that's what you're asking for, then the Suros Regime is an Exotic Auto that has Focused Fire. I was fortunate enough to be able to get my hands on one. The people I play with are very jealous

[wings]

Sept 24, 2014 19:05:21 GMT -5 tooros said:

Sept 23, 2014 12:48:36 GMT -5 TheHawkNY said:

Look for an auto rifle with the focused fire upgrade (when zoomed, this weapon fires slower, but causes additional damage). You get the damage buff in PvP, and greatly reduced recoil. I can't find a reason to use any other primary at this point.

Can you remember the/a name? Sounds like the the best option to me. Nice one.

Galahad packs a punch and is a rare auto rifle that I use. The firing sound is more like an LMG.

[tooros]

Mine's a "painted" something. Pretty good actually.

Edit.

Painted Suros CGB-47

[mannon]

Galahad sounds awesome. I'm not a big fan of the pewpewpew sounding autos. I expected them to sound like assault rifles, not lazor gunz. heh

[psychlon]

Sept 24, 2014 16:15:26 GMT -5 -3055- said:

Sept 23, 2014 8:13:36 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

After playing PvP for several hours last night, I can safely say that all shots do the same damage whilst shields are up, then headshots matter once shields are down. Every sniper rifle I used was a 2 bodyshot or 1 headshot kill. It does seem that high impact, lower rate of fire weapons with each weapon class are better than the low impact, high ROF versions. Shotty/melee combo is just as devastating as it was in Halo. Auto rifle is probably the most consistent and easiest to use, but I think other weapons (hand cannons for sure, haven't used pulse or scout rifles yet) may outstrip their damage potential assuming the user can hit headshots consistently. Using any Bladedancer ability that grants invisibility allows you to completely faceroll people that don't have any idea you're there, which is thoroughly enjoyable. It's going to be even better once I get Shadowjack unlocked to increase the duration.

You can get critical hits (headshots) in PvP while their shields are up.

What shields are you talking about? I dropped 2 guys with full health with whatever lvl 12 sniper rifle with 1 headshot each.

[hebbnh]

Yeah, sniper rifles are always a 1 headshot kill whether shields are up or not. Use something like an AR and you'll see what I'm talking about on shields.

[mannon]

I think in Destiny the "shield" only signifies the health above the point where your regen will pause. It doesn't seem to affect headshot crits.

[wittyscorpion]

Yes, I can testify that there are times I oneshotted AIs with shield, using a sniper rifle with damage type matching the weakness of the shield.

[mannon]

For AI's the shield does prevent headshot/weakspot criticals until the shield is depleted. The catch is that if your attack does more than enough damage to deplete the shield then the remainder of the damage is applied to normal health complete with critical damage. So if you're sniper rifle does enough damage to break an AI's shield with or without matching the element, then you can still get a crit. With high enough damage you could get a 1 hit kill without even getting a crit at all.

[iw5000]

Sept 22, 2014 17:44:03 GMT -5 mannon said:

Think my numbers were all wrong on Strength, Discipline, and Intellect, but that's still basically how it works.

Looks like this guy did some testing.

If this is true. And seeing how most PvP games seem to be in the 12 to 14 min range....

..would it make sense to not put any modifiers on one's super recharge? Like drop your 'Intellect' modifiers down to 0 (0%) Whether your super use takes 5:30 to get, or 4:00 min to get, you are only going to get two uses out of it in a 12 to 14min game. So why not put all your modifiers on Discipline, to better max out your Grenade use? Rather than getting say 12 grenades to use, one can then reduce the time to 33 seconds....and then get 22 or 23 grenades to toss.

One then has ten extra grenades, at not real cost to one's super use.

Is my logic correct on this?

[mannon]

Except that maxing out intellect also doubles the super charge you earn from kills, (though I don't know how much that is). So it could still be useful, though I'm personally more inclined to go with grenades as kills with them will help boost your super as well if you're getting more kills.

[wings]

Sept 25, 2014 14:04:55 GMT -5 mannon said:

Galahad sounds awesome. I'm not a big fan of the pewpewpew sounding autos. I expected them to sound like assault rifles, not lazor gunz. heh

Now we just need a sniper rifle that sounds like the L96 in Black Ops, including the ching from the bolt.

[mannon]

Give me a heavy machine gun that sounds like the M60 so I can chugchugchugchugchugchug all the way home!