Destiny: Iron Banner 2.0

[mannon]

I think his point was that control points are important, but it is not worth zerg rushing the point. All that does is feed the enemy team tons of points because points do come from kills, unlike other games where the points only come from holding the capture points and deaths don't matter.

[wittyscorpion]

On the flag control looks like we have a difference of opinion, let's discuss.

1) If a team is down 3 flags: this is an easy situation. No matter how bad a team is, they can take 1 flag back very easily. I don't think we will have any disagreement here.

2) The place we don't agree with each other is when a team is down 1 flag to 2.

a) If the enemy team is not strong, or they don't have a good hold of 1 of the 2 flags, of course the priority is to take that flag. We have an agreement here too.

b) However, if the enemy team is well organized, and they have stronghold on the 2 flags, IMHO the strategy should be to get Super / heavy before trying to take flags, especially for players who are not doing well (either because they are not experienced at Crucible yet, or in the case of IB underleveled or out gunned). What I have seen too often is people rushing toward enemy flags without power weapons/abilities, only to be mowed down by a) enemy snipers, b) enemy crouch campers, c) enemy heavy ammo wielders; d) enemy supers.

This will result in 2 serious consequences:

i) The enemy team are getting easy kills while having flag advantage;
ii) The enemy team are building their Supers, take turns to use them, and feed each other orbs;

As a result: a game that is initially only trailing by 100 points quickly become a game that is trailing by 300+ points, and the gap just keeps increasing. After paying heavy price and grab the flag, the team is usually not in position to hold it, therefore can't benefit much from the flag advantage without losing them again.

[wings]

Not sure if this has been posted or not:

www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2mnnu6/iron_banner_in_numbers/

[iw5000]

Nov 19, 2014 13:18:30 GMT -5 mannon said:

I think his point was that control points are important, but it is not worth zerg rushing the point. All that does is feed the enemy team tons of points because points do come from kills, unlike other games where the points only come from holding the capture points and deaths don't matter.

I understand his point. I suppose it depends on how you are playing. If you are playing with a group, where you can coordinate, then by all means take your time. There's no benefit to going one at a time attack on a point. You'll get mowed down. So group rush and limit your cap time and exposure to being hit. I am pretty sure that's where witty is coming from.

But if you are playing solo, with idiot randoms, imho go attack a flag as fast as possible. If you just got capped (falling behind 2 to 1), then most likely that means their other flag is/could be open. Or at least have decent odds on your side that you are only facing one or two people when getting there. It's a numbers game.

If you wait, ...it's not like your random idiot teammates are going to coordinate. They won't. Most likely they'll be sitting back on their/your one flag, trading kills. All you will be doing is allowing the opponents to set you up in a sort of Destiny'ish spawn trap. And if you wait a bit, now you are facing difficult odds on both of their flags, not just one.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 13:21:59 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

On the flag control looks like we have a difference of opinion, let's discuss.

1) If a team is down 3 flags: this is an easy situation. No matter how bad a team is, they can take 1 flag back very easily. I don't think we will have any disagreement here.

2) The place we don't agree with each other is when a team is down 1 flag to 2.

a) If the enemy team is not strong, or they don't have a good hold of 1 of the 2 flags, of course the priority is to take that flag. We have an agreement here too.

b) However, if the enemy team is well organized, and they have stronghold on the 2 flags, IMHO the strategy should be to get Super / heavy before trying to take flags, especially for players who are not doing well (either because they are not experienced at Crucible yet, or in the case of IB underleveled or out gunned). What I have seen too often is people rushing toward enemy flags without power weapons/abilities, only to be mowed down by a) enemy snipers, b) enemy crouch campers, c) enemy heavy ammo wielders; d) enemy supers.

This will result in 2 serious consequences:

i) The enemy team are getting easy kills while having flag advantage;
ii) The enemy team are building their Supers, take turns to use them, and feed each other orbs;

As a result: a game that is initially only trailing by 100 points quickly become a game that is trailing by 300+ points, and the gap just keeps increasing. After paying heavy price and grab the flag, the team is usually not in position to hold it, therefore can't benefit much from the flag advantage without losing them again.

While are discussing strategies, let's also talk about what a winning team should do.

The situation described in 2b above, with advantage of i & ii, is what the team should strive for. They should have a 4-2 split on holding the 2 flags, with 4 on the heavily attacked flag, and 2 on the other. The goal here is to lure enemies into flag capping mode, then crash them for easy kills. When heavy ammo are "inbound", the team should consider abandoning their defensive posts temporarily, load up on heavy (BTW: a tip here, take your heavy weapon out when getting ammo, this way the weapon will be fully loaded, so you don't have to go through a reload) then go back. Even if the enemy team took the flags, you can easily get them back with the heavy ammo.

Triple cap should be avoided unless your team have a commanding lead.

[hebbnh]

Nov 19, 2014 12:27:03 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

With the team chat feature, it is now possible to start solo and then make "friends" along the way, and build a fire team over a span of a few games. Do that to increase your odds of winning.

Mal / Stone / Heb: we should definitely team up for this. Ideally on Saturday and Sunday for me. If we have a team, we can reach the desired rank pretty easily with the the buff.

I can't commit to Saturday just yet but there's a pretty good chance I'll be on for a while at some point.  I'm in for sure all of Sunday afternoon and evening, and Monday evening as well if need be.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 13:26:04 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Nov 19, 2014 13:18:30 GMT -5 mannon said:

I think his point was that control points are important, but it is not worth zerg rushing the point. All that does is feed the enemy team tons of points because points do come from kills, unlike other games where the points only come from holding the capture points and deaths don't matter.

I understand his point. I suppose it depends on how you are playing. If you are playing with a group, where you can coordinate, then by all means take your time. There's no benefit to going one at a time attack on a point. You'll get mowed down. So group rush and limit your cap time and exposure to being hit. I am pretty sure that's where witty is coming from.

But if you are playing solo, with idiot randoms, imho go attack a flag as fast as possible. If you just got capped (falling behind 2 to 1), then most likely that means their other flag is/could be open. Or at least have decent odds on your side that you are only facing one or two people when getting there. It's a numbers game.

If you wait, ...it's not like your random idiot teammates are going to coordinate. They won't. Most likely they'll be sitting back on their/your one flag, trading kills. All you will be doing is allowing the opponents to set you up in a sort of Destiny'ish spawn trap. And if you wait a bit, now you are facing difficult odds on both of their flags, not just one.

Note that you are talking about a player like you who knows how to play Crucible and have a quite positive K/D spread. My advice is more for players who are not doing well in Control, either because they are not good at Crucible in general, or underleveled / out gunned.

Spawn trap is good in Destiny, but much more fragile compared to CoD, because a) Supers, and b) Heavy ammo.

[mannon]

What is meant by take your heavy weapon out? It seems like I always have to load my heavy when I go from zero ammo to having ammo whether I've switched to it or not.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 13:34:15 GMT -5 mannon said:

What is meant by take your heavy weapon out? It seems like I always have to load my heavy when I go from zero ammo to having ammo whether I've switched to it or not.

Meaning that you are holding the gun even when it has no ammo at the moment.

What I do is to immediately switch to heavy weapon when heavy ammo are "available", run to the crate, and pick up. You can immediately start shooting at enemies who come in 1 second too late . Otherwise you will be busy reloading while he takes you down and then steals your ammo (which I am able to do quite often thanks to this tip not well known to people).

[iw5000]

I don't think it's a player skill issue, it's a teammate issue.

If playing solo, most randoms are bad & dumb. But if you can hold two flags, even bad & dumb teammates can help you get a win. If they just hold a 0.60 to 0.70 KD tradeoff, you'll win the match.

But if you fall behind 2:1 flags....bad teammates become an insta-loss. Trading kills at a 0.6 to 0.9 range, while down a flag, just makes you fall behind by a huge margin and fast.

And when you couple the above with some of the maps like Blind Watch, where if you get trapped on the wrong flag, the loss becomes certain.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 13:54:07 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

I don't think it's a player skill issue, it's a teammate issue.

If playing solo, most randoms are bad & dumb. But if you can hold two flags, even bad & dumb teammates can help you get a win. If they just hold a 0.60 to 0.70 KD tradeoff, you'll win the match.

But if you fall behind 2:1 flags....bad teammates become an insta-loss. Trading kills at a 0.6 to 0.9 range, while down a flag, just makes you fall behind by a huge margin and fast.

And when you couple the above with some of the maps like Blind Watch, where if you get trapped on the wrong flag, the loss becomes certain.

I think that the key here is whether the player is good at capping or not.

You are a very good capper, so leading the charge on capping is the right thing to do. Even if you can't quite cap the flag, you'll be able to weaken the defense and encourage your teammates to follow.

I am not a very good capper, my attempts of running in without power weapons/abilities often result into steaks of death. I can contribute to the team better by trying to flank the defense or snipe out their flag campers, wait for super and heavy become available, then go for caps.

In summary: the main point here is to play smart, capping is important, but don't feed enemy with kills. The game is designed to give losing team a chance to turn things around with smart usage of supers and heavy.

[iw5000]

My capping abilities improved tremendously once I started using the fusion rifle all the time.

Use one of those and anyone can cap.

[wings]

Fusion rifles are the best secondary weapon by the looks of it. I get killed by them the most out of the secondary weapons anyway.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 14:41:56 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

My capping abilities improved tremendously once I started using the fusion rifle all the time.

Use one of those and anyone can cap.

That's a good point. I have still yet to use Fusion Rifle much although it is my most effective special during beta. I have a fully upgraded Plan-C and a couple of Light/Beware that are missing the last 3 attack upgrades, I should put them into good use.

[iw5000]

I use the LightBeware. Anytime I see the radar fully light up around me, I start tap charging it before heading around a corner. The shot goes off the instant I see someone. If it doesn't one shot kill, flipping to my primary will usually finish them off. The primary being the Shadow Price or Suros.

It's working for me. My game got better.

[wittyscorpion]

While we are on the topics of specifics, I have a few random notes:

1) Defender Titans are superb at capping flags. Drop that bubble and the only way for the enemy to stop you is to run into the bubble, which is rarely a good idea;
2) Sunsinger Warlocks with Fireborn can respawn where they die, in "superman" mode (grenade spam, melee spam, less damage, etc). Great for both cap and defend;
3) There are sniper spots with sightlines covering 2 flags. Great for defending;
4) Tripmine like grenades are superb for ambushing. Intentionally go near places where enemies are around, and use your "red blob" on their radar to lure them into traps;
5) Enemy seeking grenades are great for finding where the campers are;
6) AoE grenades are great for covering doorways during capping, so you can face another direction. Tripmine works too, but they don't have the AoE's ability to also block line of sights visually;

[GodMars]

Nov 19, 2014 15:11:54 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

While we are on the topics of specifics, I have a few random notes:

1) Defender Titans are superb at capping flags. Drop that bubble and the only way for the enemy to stop you is to run into the bubble, which is rarely a good idea;

Unless you pop a super on said Defender Titan. That bubble (and possibly the Titan) is dropped by every other super in the game. Alternately, you can just run into the bubble and shotgun the Titan. Easy kill. As a Defender Titan, one of the two outcomes happens to me about 50% of the time I pop a bubble.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 15:49:32 GMT -5 GodMars said:

Nov 19, 2014 15:11:54 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

While we are on the topics of specifics, I have a few random notes:

1) Defender Titans are superb at capping flags. Drop that bubble and the only way for the enemy to stop you is to run into the bubble, which is rarely a good idea;

Unless you pop a super on said Defender Titan. That bubble (and possibly the Titan) is dropped by every other super in the game. Alternately, you can just run into the bubble and shotgun the Titan. Easy kill. As a Defender Titan, one of the two outcomes happens to me about 50% of the time I pop a bubble.

Well, the bubble won't make you invincible

Regarding dropped by other super: that would need an enemy to use his super without getting any kills (I assume that it won't kill anybody inside the bubble), which is probably uncommon because players have multi-kill hopes on their super.

Regarding run into bubble and shotgun: I think the players inside the bubble will have significant advantage in that encounter. Just make sure you also have a shotgun, and have your melee finger at ready. Keep in mind that you either have stronger attacks (weapon of light) or stronger defense (armor of light).

The biggest advantage of capping with bubble is that it takes away enemies' ability to defend with "ranged" weapons. It essentially turn things around, you are now the defender, and enemies becoming attacker, and defending is usually easier than attacking.

[malgato]

Supers, such as nova bomb or titan smash, still kill you in a bubble.

[GodMars]

Nov 19, 2014 16:24:30 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Nov 19, 2014 15:49:32 GMT -5 GodMars said:

Unless you pop a super on said Defender Titan. That bubble (and possibly the Titan) is dropped by every other super in the game. Alternately, you can just run into the bubble and shotgun the Titan. Easy kill. As a Defender Titan, one of the two outcomes happens to me about 50% of the time I pop a bubble.

Well, the bubble won't make you invincible

I don't expect it to. I just don't expect it to be so easily countered considering it is solely a defensive ability.

[wittyscorpion]

Anyway, from my point of view as a hunter: I don't like defending against Defender caps. The bubble may be a little UP in PvP compared to the other supers, but if wins are all that matters like in IB, I like Defender teammates and hate Defender opponents. The bubble is still probably the best thing to use when capping a flag.

[n1gh7]

Nov 19, 2014 13:34:15 GMT -5 mannon said:

What is meant by take your heavy weapon out? It seems like I always have to load my heavy when I go from zero ammo to having ammo whether I've switched to it or not.

I think I understand what you're asking... The way it works if if you pick up heavy ammo straight from the source (either holding the button at the box or picking one up off the ground from where the box would be) your gun should already be loaded with bullets in the mag. If you pick up purple ammo from a dead person, you'll have to reload to get ammo in your mag.

Nov 19, 2014 17:23:57 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Anyway, from my point of view as a hunter: I don't like defending against Defender caps. The bubble may be a little UP in PvP compared to the other supers, but if wins are all that matters like in IB, I like Defender teammates and hate Defender opponents. The bubble is still probably the best thing to use when capping a flag.

Blance dancer beats bubble every time. Use the area effect of blade dancer a couple times to pop the bubble then kill the player with the melee.

[wittyscorpion]

Nov 19, 2014 17:29:27 GMT -5 n1gh7 said:

Nov 19, 2014 13:34:15 GMT -5 mannon said:

What is meant by take your heavy weapon out? It seems like I always have to load my heavy when I go from zero ammo to having ammo whether I've switched to it or not.

I think I understand what you're asking... The way it works if if you pick up heavy ammo straight from the source (either holding the button at the box or picking one up off the ground from where the box would be) your gun should already be loaded with bullets in the mag. If you pick up purple ammo from a dead person, you'll have to reload to get ammo in your mag.

Nov 19, 2014 17:23:57 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Anyway, from my point of view as a hunter: I don't like defending against Defender caps. The bubble may be a little UP in PvP compared to the other supers, but if wins are all that matters like in IB, I like Defender teammates and hate Defender opponents. The bubble is still probably the best thing to use when capping a flag.

Blance dancer beats bubble every time. Use the area effect of blade dancer a couple times to pop the bubble then kill the player with the melee.

Based on Mal's comments: looks like the bubble is vulnerable to all kinds of super attacks. In that case, I agree the bubble is UP in Crucible.

The main point I want to make, is that the bubble is great for capping flags. A well organized "Control" team should have 1 or 2 Titan Defenders to make capping a breeze. Also, the ability to drop orbs without having to kill anybody, armor of light / weapon of light, and the long lasting effects of the bubble, all provide great support for teammates.

[n1gh7]

I agree. I just wanted to note that if you're playing solo it's really easy to break them up with a bladedancer.

[GodMars]

There is no reason for a Bladedancer to try to "pop" a Titan bubble; they're better off charging right inside and dropping the Titan. I've never actually seen a Bladedancer even attempt this.

[n1gh7]

Well, kill the Titan, and then pop the bubble. I've done it...

[GodMars]

Nov 19, 2014 22:23:10 GMT -5 n1gh7 said:

Well, kill the Titan, and then pop the bubble. I've done it...

The bubble disappears with the Titan.

[n1gh7]

Nov 19, 2014 22:24:12 GMT -5 GodMars said:

Nov 19, 2014 22:23:10 GMT -5 n1gh7 said:

Well, kill the Titan, and then pop the bubble. I've done it...

The bubble disappears with the Titan.

Then kill the Titan?

Played some Iron Banner earlier. With a shitty blue primary I felt a bit underpowered, but still managed to go positive in most of my games and have a 1.0 W/L. Overall, a pretty good experience.

[iw5000]

The grind continues. I got to around 1,080 points into Level two. So i am about 1,400 away from Level 3. More of the same. But i did have to post this. I got my "Ten consecutive kills' bounty done. I actually got 12 kills i think. Below is the end part of the sequence. I was on a good start there though. If I had kept that up, I was on pace for like 12,000 pts and 50 kills. Obviously, slowed down a lot as the game went on, but we only had five people on my team.

In the second video, it's worth a look if only for the comic value of watching me cap the middle B flag, while not one, not two, but three teammates run right by me, completely ignoring the flag. More interesting is later in the video, the last sequence. You can see the effects of a level 21 player trying to shoot me. He hits me with a decent/full clip. I don't die. I then turn around and smack him to death. Level advantages at play there.

[dm]

A tactic I see used against me is letting one/two players neutralise a flag, then kill them and cap the flag, so they have lost 1 or 2 x 25 points, but they gain x75 points plus the kills. I haven't perfected doing this to the enemy, but I am aware of not making it too easy for the other side to do this.