Coins

[wings]

You can always do the daily story mission as shards are the most common reward by considerable margin.

[tooros]

I'm at 28. No raid gear. Fully levelled exotic helm. I'm sitting on 50 shards. I'm not levelling anything unless it's raid gear. Fingers crossed for this week.

[iw5000]

28 is the perfect level. I don't think there are any enemies in the VoG above 28? So level 28 is all you need for the VoG. You don't get any bonus damage killing opponents below you (26 & 27)

But if you are level 26, you are taking a 25% penalty hit on your damage output on the Level 27 opponents. And a 40% hit on the Level 28 opponents.

[mannon]

I'm 26 now, still have blue helmet and no exotic. I don't think I could get to 28 even if I fully upgraded all three of my legendary armor pieces. 27, mebbe, but I'm not even sure about that. As of now I am only saving shards for my exotic that I don't currently have. ;3

Once I've upgraded my exotic I probably will go ahead and use shards to get to 28 if I can as I don't expect to be able to run VoG very much. Hell... I didn't even get to play this weekend.

[iw5000]

It's an annoying process.

When you most need shards, you can't find them (getting ready for the VoG, leveling from 24 to 28)

When you get to doing the VoG, you get to many of them. Have dozens sitting around collecting dust.



anyways...probably the most time efficient way to get them now is to hammer the public events. I was told to do that, and it worked. Get the destiny timer app and use it. Create a second & third account. You can get up to 3 AS's a day doing this, in as little as 20 min a day of effort. Sign in, do the event, switch to next character. In one week, you should have at least fifteen AS's.

[thebb22]

You can get even more than that. You're guaranteed one from the first gold rating for each character from the postmaster, but sometimes doing a 2nd, 3rd, 4th event etc. can yield another shard or energy or sometimes even both. Realistically, you could get 10 or so shards/energy in a 2-3 hours if you time the events right.

[wittyscorpion]

Oct 27, 2014 8:12:25 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

28 is the perfect level. I don't think there are any enemies in the VoG above 28? So level 28 is all you need for the VoG. You don't get any bonus damage killing opponents below you (26 & 27)

But if you are level 26, you are taking a 25% penalty hit on your damage output on the Level 27 opponents. And a 40% hit on the Level 28 opponents.

I was told that damage penalty for under level is as follows:

1 under = 30%
2 under = 40%
3 under = 50%
4 under = 100%

Can anybody confirm?

Reaching level 28 is definitely important, making it much easier to do lvl28 weekly solo. For the past 2 weeks I attempted solo with 1/2/3 under numerously times, I have to say -3 = play a very long time, and this is with Ice Breaker. Without Ice Breaker, I don't think that it is even possible for me to complete.

As I mentioned in the "smarti's guide' thread: level 27 can be reached definitively by buying and upgrading 3 legendary (22 Light each without AS) and acquire 1 exotic from Xur (30 Light with 16 AS), totally light reachable = 96. This can be grinded without expecting anything from RNG. To get to level 28, you'll either need a raid gear, or spend 14 AS to upgrade a legendary to 25 Light (7 AS to get 1 more Light, still not enough to reach 98, another 7 AS for 2 more Light). These 14 AS are "wasted" investment because the legendary will be replaced later.

One way or the other: reaching level 27 = you are strongly encouraged to start Raiding, which will have chances to drop raid gear, as well as raining shards.

[iw5000]

I have tested this a good bit with my new warlock. I took notes as my characters moved up, at level 3, 5, 7 and 10. Each time testing the relationship with enemies a few levels above me. For example, a Level 7 warlock using a Auto Rifle to shoot opponents who were level 7, 8, 9, and 10. I took notes on the actual damage being shown with the hit-markers, for the body/head shots. I found a consistent pattern....

Even level +/-0 - 100%........full damage.
One level less - 75% to 77%....% of full damage
Two levels less - 60% to 62%
Three levels less - 55%
Four levels less - {} cannot do damage.

I would imagine the same relationship holds true when you get your character into the 20's.

If so, you can see the difficulty in doing the VoG with a level 26. You would face off against level 28 opponents towards the end I think. All things equal, you would be doing about 40% less damage per shot. So for example. If you were level 28, using a Vision of Confluence. You might be doing 297/890 when matched up against level 28 opponents. But if you were level 26, the same gun might be doing 178/534 damage. Seeing how a level 28 lizard might have around 2,500 health points, ....the math is there. Three head shots might kill if you are level 28. But you would need around 5 or 6 headshots at level 26. That's almost a full extra second to kill. If you aren't getting head shots, probably two extra seconds. An experienced player can probably make up that difference with positioning. A new player? Probably not. You will need to be carried somewhat.

If you plan on raiding a lot, 'investing' to level 28 might not be a bad deal. You eliminate damage nerfs. You can hold your own better...and hopefully then play more raids, ...which will get you those 12 to 18 shards right back in a few runs. I think I got 10 to 12 AS's in just that one run last night.

'Investing' to level 29, might not be worth it. You don't get bonus 'buffs' for being an extra level over enemies.

[wittyscorpion]

Level 29 is important if you want to do hard raid. However, it is wise to not force it, and just let the normal raid take you there after "gifting" you 2+ raid gear pieces.

[iw5000]

Oct 27, 2014 12:49:16 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Level 29 is important if you want to do hard raid. However, it is wise to not force it, and just let the normal raid take you there after "gifting" you 2+ raid gear pieces.

well yeah. I was referring to the earlier person talking about doing the normal raid.

[wittyscorpion]

Another thing to consider before spending AS on non-Raid legendary:

to reach level 30 you need 16 AS on exotic, and 21 AS each on Raid gear, for a total of 79. That's a LOT of shards. Usually you should have invested the 16 AS already before reaching level 28, so 63 to go. A single normal Raid may drop ~10 AS, but you can only do it once per week per character. Combine ~1 per public event per day, and ~1 per daily story, you are looking at a rate of ~25 AS per week per character at maximum.

My main point: spend you AS very wisely, especially if you are like me who is trying to get all 3 characters there eventually

[iw5000]

I wasn't advocating wasting shards...only using enough to get yourself to Level 28. Or at least level 27, if you have a few guns fully maxed out that can heavy damage. Like a maxed out Icebreaker, etc....

[wittyscorpion]

Oct 27, 2014 13:56:26 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

I wasn't advocating wasting shards...only using enough to get yourself to Level 28. Or at least level 27, if you have a few guns fully maxed out that can heavy damage. Like a maxed out Icebreaker, etc....

I am not arguing against your point. Spend 14 AS to get to level 28 is a very worthy investment, considering that you will be able to solo daily/weekly much more easily, and have a realistic shot at completing Nightfall without being carried. Last week I found out even a level 30 will have a hard time carrying a level 27 on Nightfall, because the enemy strengths are significantly bigger against 2 or 3 players, while the level 27 player can't quite pull the expected weight. The level 30 is better off just doing it solo and let his friend join at the very end for the reward (which I shamelessly did ).

I am just providing the numbers so investments can be made wisely . I am seriously considering that investment for my Titan, the only character that does not have >=2 exotic/raid gear.

[iw5000]

I would venture a guess fully maxed out guns are worth one level too. Most people when they start out with the VoG process, at level 26/27...don't have this done yet. But if you get a launcher, an icebreaker and a primary maxed out...I think that can boost you up one spot. A 26 > 27. A 27 > 28, etc...

[wittyscorpion]

Oct 27, 2014 14:40:52 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

I would venture a guess fully maxed out guns are worth one level too. Most people when they start out with the VoG process, at level 26/27...don't have this done yet. But if you get a launcher, an icebreaker and a primary maxed out...I think that can boost you up one spot. A 26 > 27. A 27 > 28, etc...

Ice Breaker kicks serious ass when it comes to solo through weekly. I was able to do some serious soloing with -3 levels last week, it just takes a very long time . The experience (of getting beaten up repeatedly by AIs) has made me a pretty good quick scoper with the thing

[iw5000]

Don't quote me on these numbers, but I tested a fully maxed out Vision of Confluence [300], against a recently loot-prized non-upgraded MIDA MT [260]. I tested these two guns versus a bunch of enemies at various levels. Also tossed in the very weak intro scout rifle too, for comparison purposes, the Trax Callum II A [49].

I don't know what the base damage is with the VoC, but looking at what I found, having it fully upgraded made a huge difference in damaging enemies. At least up to the enemies I measured at level 22. And the difference grew as the enemies got tougher. Growing from a 10% or so difference on weak enemies, all the way up to 40% difference on the level 22's. Leveling up guns matters.

Level 22 lizards:
Trax - 61/181
VoC - 297/890
MIDA - 208/623

Level 18 lizards:
Trax - 61/181
VoC - 234/350
MIDA - 187/280

Level 6 lizards:
Trax - 61/181
VoC - 115/345
MIDA - 99/296

Level 2 lizards:
Trax - 61/181
VoC - 88/264
MIDA - 76/226

[psychlon]

Upgrading weapons matters for content +18/20. The difference in damage should come mostly from impact differences on the weapon itself.