Meet the expansion

[markopolo]

Dec 3, 2014 15:20:15 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

Dec 3, 2014 15:13:57 GMT -5 markopolo said:

So..... what do I do with my maxed our Helm of Dire?

Nothing.  Wait until Xur has it available to upgrade.  Then upgrade.

But.... it's maxed already?

Will the new update erase those upgrades?

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 15:32:51 GMT -5 markopolo said:

Dec 3, 2014 15:20:15 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

Nothing.  Wait until Xur has it available to upgrade.  Then upgrade.

But.... it's maxed already?

Will the new update erase those upgrades?

Yes. You'll need to restart from the scratch, but in return you will have a more powerful one once fully upgraded again.

[markopolo]

Lemme gues... my maxxed out legendary gear... reset too?

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 15:41:12 GMT -5 markopolo said:

Lemme gues... my maxxed out legendary gear... reset too?

Nope. They don't reset, but will look "blueish" when compared with the new legendary offerings.

Essentially:

New exotic = reborn old exotic >= Crota's End raid legendary > new legendary > old exotic >= VoG raid legendary > old legendary > rare > green > white

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 15:28:34 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Bungie has just released all the details you need to know:

www.bungie.net/7_The-Dark-Below-Preview/en/News/News?aid=12442

First, read the link above.

Then, in-a-nut-shell recommendations:

1) Glimmers are useful, farm them!
2) Glimmer-boosting consumables should be used whenever you are doing PvE and you are nowhere near the glimmer cap, to maximize your glimmer production;
3) If you are near the glimmer cap, buy heavy ammo synthesis;
4) Keep your glimmer-rewarding consumables (the ones Cryptarch is interested in and give you glimmer for) reserved in vault and only cash them in when you need the extra glimmer;
5) Coins are very important again. You need them to buy exotic shards to revamp/upgrade exotic weapons, in addition to exotic weapon/armor purchase;
6) If you have an "old" exotic: you should not bother upgrading it unless you plan to put it into serious usage. Instead, you should wait for Xur to give you a chance to "revamp" it into a "new" exotics, do that, and then upgrade;
7) Feel free to use AE/AS on your regular legendary. No need to save them for raid legendary (now requires "radiant materials" instead, which can only obtained as loot drops from the new Raid) or exotic (now requires "exotic shard" instead) any more. Note: VoG Raid gear may still require AE/AS. need to confirm or deny;

[hebbnh]

What Witty said. Basically, all old legendaries are going to be outclassed compared to the new stuff. New exotics and upgraded old exotics will be best. Although thinking about it, did they confirm anywhere that upgrading old exotic armor will increase its light level? Because the update only mentions attack and defense. If those are the only two stats affected, upgrading old exotic armor seems like a big waste of time.

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 15:56:38 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

What Witty said. Basically, all old legendaries are going to be outclassed compared to the new stuff. New exotics and upgraded old exotics will be best. Although thinking about it, did they confirm anywhere that upgrading old exotic armor will increase its light level? Because they update only mentions attack and defense. If those are the only two stats affected, upgrading old exotic armor seems like a big waste of time.

I sure hope that upgrading the old exotic armor will increase their light level as well. If they are making an effort to keep exotic weapons to never become obsolete, I see no reason not to do the same for the exotic armor pieces.

Below is what I expect to happen on the Light math front (pure speculation):

1) Level 31 requirement = 120 + 12 = 132 light;
2) Level 32 requirement = 132 + 12 = 144 light (4 * 36);
3) Fully upgraded new exotic / revamped old exotic = 36 Light;
4) Fully upgraded Crota's End legendary = 36 Light each;
5) Fully upgraded new regular legendary = 32 Light each, so players can reach level 31 without having to get any Crota's End raid gear (1 exotic & 3 new regular legendary = 36 + 3 * 32 = 132);

[hebbnh]

Seems logical enough to me. Then again, it makes all VoG and IB gear completely outclassed (not to mention making the VoG itself pointless), which would suck. I have a feeling we're going to be seeing some way to either upgrade or earn new VoG gear too. Maybe a 3rd difficulty for VoG coming soon?

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 16:14:11 GMT -5 hebbnh said:

Seems logical enough to me. Then again, it makes all VoG and IB gear completely outclassed (not to mention making the VoG itself pointless), which would suck. I have a feeling we're going to be seeing some way to either upgrade or earn new VoG gear too. Maybe a 3rd difficulty for VoG coming soon?

I for one would still like to play VoG from time to time, not for the loot, just for the fun. I would also like to have the full raid weapon & armor set for collection purpose.

Not to mention: it is THE only way to get Vex Mythoclast

BTW, story/weekly/nightfall will all have +2 level increase, I am expecting VoG to do that too sometime. Or maybe they are just going with a tiered experience:

VoG normal = level 28 baseline;
VoG hard / CE normal = level 30 baseline;
CE hard / expansion pack 2 normal = level 32 baseline;
expansion pack 2 hard / expansion pack 3 normal = level 34 baseline;

so on and so forth.

After all, there might be players who get the game late (say 1 year from now), and they need incremental steps to get to the hardest raids.

[tooros]

Generally I like it but:

There's even more emphasis being placed on raids. Not only does the gear come from raiding but, the ability to upgrade said gear does too. At least with the VoG any gear could be upgraded with materials gained outside the raid. I'm having genuine problems finding 6 people at any given time to run a raid in the first place. This really does imply getting left behind is a real possibility.

[Dumien]

Shoulda got the X1! ahah

Sorry. I'm really hoping they add an in-game LFG for people with this problem.

[wittyscorpion]

Dec 3, 2014 16:34:44 GMT -5 tooros said:

Generally I like it but:

There's even more emphasis being placed on raids. Not only does the gear come from raiding but, the ability to upgrade said gear does too. At least with the VoG any gear could be upgraded with materials gained outside the raid. I'm having genuine problems finding 6 people at any given time to run a raid in the first place. This really does imply getting left behind is a real possibility.

I won't go that far.

For somebody who don't have a group to play raids with, below are the options:

1) Weekly/Nightfall as usual, now with max level at 30;
2) Non Raid legendary armors/weapons can still be obtained as before, so are exotics. And they are stronger with more versatile perks;
3) VoG LFG should become much easier with virtually every active player can get to level 30+;
4) Use LFG channels to find people to play with for Crota's End normal should not be hard either;
5) With an improved loot system that has better odds of dropping stuff, move up to higher levels should become significantly easier. When January comes and the hard mode is opened, LFG shouldn't be too bad;

IMHO it is not worse than right now. We just need to embrace the various LFG channels until the time comes that either we have enough people on our friends list to raid with, or Bungie adds in-game LFG support.

[markopolo]

So.... just so I understand this correctly... after I install the update:

1. All of the upgrades made to my gold and purple weapons and armour will be gone.
2. I can purchase/exchange my current gold and purple items for the same newer purple and gold items, that are more powerful. As well, I will have to purchase an shard for my gold item but not my purple ones
3. My gold item will not need any A.mats to upgrade, but my purple ones still will require ascendant materials

[mannon]

1. No. You only lose progress on any exotics you trade into Xur for upgraded exotics.
2. You can only upgrade exotic (gold) items and only the ones Xur is exchanging that weekend. It costs a shard to do the exchange and the exotic he gives you in exchange has no progress. (Note: It will require another shard to fully upgrade the last slot.)
3. This is already true. Exotic items no longer require the AE or AS, just the other exotic shard thing for the final slot.


Legendary items (purple) are unaffected other than the fact that there will be new ones coming with the expansion which are more powerful. The raid legendaries also will not use AE or AS but will use their own raid dependent material, however we've been told there will be an exchange between that material and the exotic ones.

[markopolo]

So.... all my purple eq and weapons are unchanged and there is no "better" version that will be brought out. For example, my maxed out shadow price has a damage of 300... with the update, there won't be another shadow price with a damage of 350?

The only thing that changes with this update, is my one exotic helm, that will be reset if I choose to trade it in for a better helm with a higher max?

[mannon]

Right you'll be able to trade in the exotic for an upgrade you can relevel. They are doing this because exotic weapons are unique and special and they don't want them to be simply outclassed by new exotics so instead you can upgrade them to keep them on par with the new higher end gear. As for legendaries, those will pretty much be replaced as the expansion is adding a new layer of loot on top of what we have now.


Some people say that makes current legendaries pointless, but I don't see it that way. It just makes them transition items, like every other item in the game. The legendary armor you buy from the Vanguard is already transition and replaced by exotic, VoG, and IB armor. The VoG weapons are also considered higher tier than the ones you can purchase as well, but several of the ones for purchase still perform well so aren't completely outclassed as the armor is due to light.

[hebbnh]

Dec 4, 2014 14:01:44 GMT -5 markopolo said:

So.... all my purple eq and weapons are unchanged and there is no "better" version that will be brought out. For example, my maxed out shadow price has a damage of 300... with the update, there won't be another shadow price with a damage of 350?

The only thing that changes with this update, is my one exotic helm, that will be reset if I choose to trade it in for a better helm with a higher max?

There won't be a new, better shadow price.  There will, however, be new, better purples that will be higher than 300 -- not sure of the max yet, I've 331 thrown around.  So your 300 shadow price is quickly going to become outclassed.

[wittyscorpion]

markopolo:

First of all, this blog post from Bungie should make everything very clear: www.bungie.net/7_The-Dark-Below-Preview/en/News/News?aid=12442. The gist: none of the stuff you own right now will change in any way. What will change however, is that there will be a new batches of more powerful items, of the following categories:

1) New exotic
2) New raid legendary
3) New non-raid legendary
4) Old exotic revamped into new exotic

From your point of view, this is good news . Why? Because you will be on relatively even footing with other players once the new changes are in. The players who played 5x more hours than you and have a huge pile of weapons? You can laugh at them now because most of his arsenal will become obsolete.

Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, the new tiers of weapons will be like this (assuming all fully upgraded):

Tier 1: New exotic, revamped old exotic
Tier 2*: Crota's End raid legendary
Tier 3: new non-raid legendary (available from vendors and loot drops)
Tier 4: Un-revamped Old exotic
Tier 5*: Vault of Glass Raid legendary
Tier 6: old non-raid legendary
Tier 7: Rare
Tier 8: Green
Tier 9: White

(* Note: tier 2 ~= tier 1, and tier 5 ~= tier 4)

[wittyscorpion]

What this means from grinding point of view:

a) Unless there is a strong reason, stop doing the following until the expansion pack is coming out:

1) Purchase non-raid legendary weapons/armors;
2) Upgrade non-raid legendary weapons/armors;

b) The following can be considered but you need to have a good reason:

1) Upgrade raid-legendary/exotic weapons. Reason: max the ones that have solar / arc damage in preparation for the new Raid;
2) Upgrade raid-legendary/exotic armors. Reason: get to a higher light level;

Otherwise you should stay put.

c) Beef up your farming efforts, and stockpile the following:

1) Coins
2) Glimmers
3) Vanguard/Crucible Marks
4) Vanguard/Crucible Reputations
5) Destination materials

You will soon need a crap load of each.

Also, note that after the expansion pack, you'll need something called "commendations" (Vanguard or Crucible) to purchase legendary weapons/armors, in addition to Marks. These commendations will be rewarded as part of the "legendary package" when you rank up on Vanguard or Crucible. So, if you are close to rank up, you might want to consider "pause" that until next week, by switching to a faction temporarily. Otherwise you'll get the rank-up package "prematurely" before the new changes and you will miss an opportunity to get commendations.

[markopolo]

Do we know if we still get the nice "Congrats you leveled a ranking, here's a weapon as a present" gift from the post master still? I know it stopped for doing the first public event gift....

[wings]

Dec 4, 2014 15:55:27 GMT -5 markopolo said:

Do we know if we still get the nice "Congrats you leveled a ranking, here's a weapon as a present" gift from the post master still? I know it stopped for doing the first public event gift....

Yes.

[mannon]

I think there is still as much reason to upgrade Legendary non-raid items as there ever was. New non-raid legendaries may or may not replace them soon, and may or may not be comparable. For people like me and Marko who have no raid gear, (because we can't get a raid party together) I don't see any reason not to upgrade legendaries other than saving shards for raid/exotic armor to get to level 30+ or just saving the glimmer. Exotics on the other hand probably should not be upgraded or at least should probably not bother with the final upgrade that costs new material, because it would be better spent exchanging it. On the other hand, there's no telling how long you might have to wait for Xur to offer an exchange of that item so unless you have lots of Exotics (I know some of you do) it's a bit of a gamble. Personally I'm planning to hold off initially, but if I go several weeks and wind up with nearly maxed out exotics and plenty of coins I'll go ahead and do it. We'll see how it goes. As is my voidfang armor has been maxed for a while but my Plan C and Invective aren't even close.

I'm also not so sure about Witty's #3 up there. It seems odd to me that they would offer items for purchase from vendors or dropping from loot that are better than VoG. Why would anyone ever run VoG again except just for fun? I would expect Bungie would want to keep the new raid relevant so these new Legendaries would be at best on par with VoG gear.

[mannon]

I'm thinking it breaks down kinda like this:

S+	New Exotic (Gold)	reXurbished Old Exotic (Gold)	Crota's End Raid Legendary (Purple)
S	Un-exchanged Old Exotic (Gold)	Vault of Glass Raid Legendary (Purple)
A+ or S?	New non-raid Legendary (Purple)
A	Old non-raid Legendary (Purple)
B	Rare (Blue)
C	Uncommon (Green)
D	Common (White)

Although I don't think the new non-raid Legendaries really deserve their own row, I'm not quite sure where they'll stand. I guess if the new legendary armor goes up to 30 light that makes them S and if not it makes them A or A+ if slightly better than vanilla legendaries... though I'm not sure they will be better rather than simply different.

Note: I used letter grades instead of tiers to avoid confusion with Witty's list. Also I'm just discussing, he'd clearly more pro at Destiny than I am, being stuck at 28 as I am. ;p (Actually I can probably hit 29 if I don't mind burning some shards... that I don't have... since I got my IB boots.)

[wittyscorpion]

The reason why I rank old stuff below the new non-raid legendary is because of one reason, the "Attack" (for weapons).

No matter how good the non-revamped exotic, non-raid legendary, and VoG legendary are, their max attack is stuck at 300. I assume that they are no match to new weapons with 330+ attack.

Armor wise the thinking is even simpler: we are primarily interested in armors that can provide max light. Any pieces that don't do that will be transitional.

I could be wrong, we will have to see once we have the expansion pack. I am not going to dismantle any of the old legendary, yet

[wittyscorpion]

People are not happy with the way how new things work (after they saw the Game Informer article, and I failed to see why. Is it that much work to re-upgrade an exotic?), so Bungie spent one weekly update to explain things (which I thought their previous blog post was already clear enough):

www.bungie.net/7_Bungie-Weekly-Update---12042014/en/News/News?aid=12447

Public event enthusiasts (i.e. wings ) will also be happy to know this "change" is actually a bug, not intended, and will be fixed soon enough:

Daily Event Reward Packages

No longer delivered by the Postmaster after a Public Event
Will be fixed automatically in The Dark Below update
All players will receive the fix when Expansion I goes live

Crucible and IB enthusiasts (i.e. me ) on the other hand will need to digest the following info:

Destiny is an ever changing and growing game. We're excited that you're along for the ride. Here's a look ahead at the Crucible through the end of the year.

Slaughter Rules

Live right now!
In the event of a massacre, all parties are returned to orbit at the conclusion of the match

Team-based playlists
If one team is grossly under-performing, the session is dissolved in favor of matchmaking

Rumble playlist
If three or more players are grossly under-performing, the session is dissolved in favor of matchmaking

Public Playlists

Limited-time playlists (Salvage and Combined Arms) will be available to all players
Bastion and First Light have moved out of Control and Clash to Combined Arms

Premium Playlists

New Playlists will let you play new content right away
Playlists will require The Dark Below to enter
Each week, we'll have two additional Premium Playlists
Week One will be Clash and Rumble on new maps
Rotators will change each week
New experimental modes to be included!

Iron Banner!

Lord Saladin returns to the Tower on December 16th
He’ll reset Event Standings – like a new season
Level 31 inventory can be earned by winners
The Dark Below will not be required to compete

[wittyscorpion]

Also, don't get your hopes up on the mysterious 3rd subclass slot and chances of Arc-Warlock/Void-Hunter/Solar-Titan:

www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/12/04/bungie-explains-destiny-s-mysterious-third-subclass-slot.aspx?

[n1gh7]

Yeah I like those things I'm hearing about Crucible/IB. Now that I'll have some free time soon...

[wings]

New experimental modes? King of the Hill and Demolition please.

[markopolo]

Dec 4, 2014 19:41:11 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Public event enthusiasts (i.e. wings ) will also be happy to know this "change" is actually a bug, not intended, and will be fixed soon enough:

As someone who has spent 3.7 of his 4.5 days playing patrol, how do I join this elite group of public event enthusiasts?

[tooros]

I am less that 40 points short of rolling over a vanguard ranking. I've stuck my new monarchy band back on to halt this progress. What do we think? Is that the best idea? The vanguard commendations aren't really clear but, I suspect it's as simple as just ranking up. I also wonder if faction ranks will count too, my plan being to get NM ranking ready to upgrade as well after Tuesday.