mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 17, 2015 11:56:09 GMT -5
It's a decent strike, but far too common in rotation. I think Bungie may have added something to the code that decides the strike which starts by deciding on vanilla or DLC and has something like 50/50 odds. The sample size is far too low for conclusions so it's just a guess. If true the HoW should at least diversify the DLC weeks some. We'll see.
At any rate... yeah there's not a lot of content. Technically Destiny is a single player game with built in coop and a few coop specific missions that we all like to play as if it were an MMO. It's a shame that Bungie didn't diversify their content more, but from watching the Cosmodrome ride along it seems like this version of the game just sort of grew up organically around the content rather than the content being specifically built to be played the way we play it. The loot and progression systems are clearly pushing the core game far beyond what it was really designed for. If the mechanics weren't as solid as they are we'd have all packed our bags and moved on a long time ago.
Personally I'm really hoping they pull out all the stops for the "comet". They have to sell us on it all over again. I don't have much hope for HoW. Most of the sales of it have already occurred. They already have most of the money, it was already budgeted and planned before the game even came out. What we'll get will be TDB 2.0 with a Fallen theme. I'm kind of okay with that. I feel the Fallen are a little underutilized. Sure you see them on Earth, the Moon, and Venus, but they generally play second fiddle everywhere, even on Earth in some ways. They are on more worlds than any other faction, but they just don't seem very deep. The Hive and the Vex seem the most fleshed out, for sure. I dunno about the Cabal yet. I've barely played Mars. ;3
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 17, 2015 12:00:29 GMT -5
I am seriously sick of Omnigul. The lack of content is finally burning me out. Might be time for a new game. Omnigol is actually one of the strikes I still enjoy a lot, when playing with friends together. That said, lately I have been playing Halo campaigns through MCC. Maybe we can coop sometime, at least until Borderlands remake is out.
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malgato
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Post by malgato on Feb 17, 2015 12:02:29 GMT -5
I agree - I think it is actually the best and most challenging strike. But the repetition in Nightfall is too much. Plus no burn, which often can make it more interesting.
The game framework is awesome. Content is very disappointing.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Feb 17, 2015 12:17:16 GMT -5
It's fun... it does get quite hectic with all the wizards bombing the $hit out of you (XBOX Users Spoiler alert: the Undying Mind/Black Garden strike that you'll get in september is also hectic and fun too... at least imho.
I'll still do it though... I like the rep boost.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 17, 2015 12:50:05 GMT -5
The problem with strikes is low replayabliity. Not only for each individual strike, but the setup in general. All strikes have pretty much the same formula: kill waves while waiting for something to happen, kill more waves while waiting some more, get through some optional areas which you can choose to kill or speed run, then final boss fight.
Weekly/NF modifiers did squeeze significant more out of it, but it won't be sustainable. Even if we have twice as many strikes as today in rotation, it will still feel boring.
Significant innovations are needed sooner than later. Horde mode, adding raid like elements, better co-op support, etc.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Feb 17, 2015 13:10:09 GMT -5
How to make Nightfalls sustainable. Step 1: Similar to CsE hard, make every nightfall strike default 1 or 2 level Step 2: Up the rewards to include a variety of mats (ie: not just AMats... but RMats too) and no weapon/armour below legendary in it's rarity scale Step 3: ? Step 4: Profit EDIT: One change I would make is give it matchmaking... this way it's not a miniraid, but just as hard as a raid.
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 17, 2015 13:30:40 GMT -5
How to make Nightfalls sustainable. Step 1: Similar to CsE hard, make every nightfall strike default 1 or 2 level Step 2: Up the rewards to include a variety of mats (ie: not just AMats... but RMats too) and no weapon/armour below legendary in it's rarity scale Step 3: ? Step 4: Profit I'd argue that wouldn't help at all. In fact, doing #1 would just make them feel even more cheap and bullet-spongy. Everyone already does nothing but sit in cheese spots against the bosses, and that certainly wouldn't help. You'd basically get one-shotted by every boss or major who had a weapon dishing out whatever type of damage the burn happened to be that week. Fuck that. #2 isn't really any better. At some point nobody will need more RMs, just like endgame players don't need AMs or coins now. There already aren't any weapons or armor rewards below legendary as it is now, so that's a moot point. Change that to exotics only, or maybe legendaries that are guaranteed to have good perks instead of the random crap you usually end up with now, and you'd be on to something.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Feb 17, 2015 13:37:25 GMT -5
How to make Nightfalls sustainable. Step 1: Similar to CsE hard, make every nightfall strike default 1 or 2 level Step 2: Up the rewards to include a variety of mats (ie: not just AMats... but RMats too) and no weapon/armour below legendary in it's rarity scale Step 3: ? Step 4: Profit I'd argue that wouldn't help at all. In fact, doing #1 would just make them feel even more cheap and bullet-spongy. Everyone already does nothing but sit in cheese spots against the bosses, and that certainly wouldn't help. You'd basically get one-shotted by every boss or major who had a weapon dishing out whatever type of damage the burn happened to be that week. Foxtrot that. #2 isn't really any better. At some point nobody will need more RMs, just like endgame players don't need AMs or coins now. There already aren't any weapons or armor rewards below legendary as it is now, so that's a moot point. Change that to exotics only, or maybe legendaries that are guaranteed to have good perks instead of the random crap you usually end up with now, and you'd be on to something. My rationale for #1 is to make it so that it can't or not very easily be soloed. It kinda annoys me that it can be done. If making a swarm of thralls extra spongy, so be it. My rationale for #2 is that as the game progresses, new weapons come out and mats will still be needed. I disagree that RM's are worthless or not valuable, as you might get another weapon that you have, but with better perks and stats. Hell, if they are going to allow VG weapons to be upgradeable, then dollars to donuts, yer gonna need RM to do so My rationale for #3 and #4 is that is what you need to do to make the joke work
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 17, 2015 14:05:27 GMT -5
Marko, have you tried soloing a Nightfall lately? It's not particularly easy by any means. Bumping the enemy level up above the player level is nothing more than an artificial difficulty increase that doesn't require any new tactics or creativity on the part of the player. It simply requires the player to sit in a cheese spot for 10 minutes instead of 5. More bullet sponges =/= higher difficulty. Making Nightfalls more grindy is the last thing anyone should want in a game that's plenty grindy as it is.
To a point, on #2, yes. But after that point, they're practically useless. For endgame players (which I made it a point to state in my first post), that point has either been reached or is quickly approaching. I got new vendor armor and weapons for each of my characters when TDB released, and I still had a ton of AMs left over. Now I'm up to ~300 of both AMs that are more or less worthless -- I'll never be able to buy enough weapons or armor to use them all. The same will happen with RMs sooner or later, especially if Bungie introduces yet another new upgrade material with HoW. From my point of view, adding 10 RMs to the Nightfall loot table does jack squat. It doesn't make Nightfalls more sustainable because it doesn't do anything for the endgame players who are considering leaving the game -- they probably have plenty of mats already, and if they don't then they soon will. You're not going to keep those players (or lure them back) unless you're giving them something new and shiny. Materials are old and boring for them.
#3 and #4, yes, fully agree!
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 17, 2015 14:11:41 GMT -5
I'll add this: #1 could possibly work if you actually rewarded players with something commensurate with the time and effort put into it. Right now, that's absolutely not the case, and adding bullet sponges would only piss people off. Add a guaranteed exotic and you'd have my attention.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Feb 17, 2015 14:14:55 GMT -5
I'll add this: #1 could possibly work if you actually rewarded players with something commensurate with the time and effort put into it. Right now, that's absolutely not the case, and adding bullet sponges would only piss people off. Add a guaranteed exotic and you'd have my attention. First, I have soloed a nightfall with the triple burn... it was intense, especially for a player of my skill and conservative playing style. I didn't do it all because my kid was screaming and I had to attend to him. But I got as far as Omnigal's hill. I probably would have lost to the boss, but whatever.... And agreed... if the RNGebus would guarantee high end rewards (I hesitate to go as quickly to a guaranteed exotic, because of multiple players... 3 guaranteed exotics a week is excessive) it would all be worth while.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 17, 2015 14:16:49 GMT -5
Part of the problem is other than the raids there are really only about three gameplay modes built into the missions and those are: explore, map crawl, minihorde.
Explore mode is almost exclusive to patrol or at least to the public areas. They don't even put chests and resources inside the private areas, just a few ghosts.
Map crawling is standard corridor shooter fare. You get to an area, kill everything as you get to it, nothing can come from behind you because you killed everything, it's linear, and everything stays dead. However there's nothing impeding your progress other than the possibility those enemies might actually kill you. Once you can navigate an area without dying you can speedrun without even fighting.
Minihordes are just places where the game forces you to stop and survive waves of enemies. Enemies will spawn in waves. Personally I count boss fights as a subset of this. These events use a combination of timed triggers and kill triggers to progress and end the events.
Since you have a pretty solid goal during a strike nobody bothers with the exploration areas mid strike. You just sparrow across public areas as fast as possible to get down to business, and that makes sense. If you really wanted to explore you'd have gone on patrol in the first place. But that just leaves two main modes of play for the devs to build strikes out of. Unfortunately, until they add some more variety to their palette there won't be much variation in the strikes. They will always seem formulaic when this is all you have to work with.
Note: Technically there is some extra variety in Destiny gameplay modes. Most predominantly I would say that some of the patrols, and public events actually have you doing things besides map crawling and surviving minihordes at times. Some of those features are even worked into a couple of the story missions. But almost none of it is utilized in any of the strikes. Strikes almost exclusively only require the minihorde events actually be completed, and the exploration and map crawl areas can merely be speedrun and thus rarely add any extra elements unless a public event or faction battle happens to break out while you're passing through. And there are certainly no raid elements... they saved all of that for the raids themselves.
Personally, I completely agree that Bungie really needs to take a look at what works in the raids and try to encorporate miniature versions of good gameplay activities into new strikes. I'd really like to see some of the puzzle elements of VoG get translated into more of the game. I would understand that people don't want the strikes to be unplayable solo, and I agree. But I still think it's possible to design events and encounters in such a way that it's playable solo, but greatly rewards teamwork.
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wings
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Post by wings on Feb 17, 2015 14:32:54 GMT -5
My rationale for #1 is to make it so that it can't or not very easily be soloed. It kinda annoys me that it can be done. If making a swarm of thralls extra spongy, so be it. The player population would drop by a considerable margin. Bungie designed the levels for normal strikes and then the modifiers afterwards. There are already criticisms issued at Xur and Banshee for being of minimal benefit to day 1 players already. There could be some alleviation at giving the Gunsmith the job of err smithing guns so people can reforge their weapons rather than Lord Saladin. Good co-op modes like Horde might work but I doubt it would be anything like Gears of War. Then again, you have the voices of Marcus Fenix and Samantha Byrne in the Tower anyway.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 17, 2015 14:43:09 GMT -5
I nearly soloed the Nexus Nightfall last week. I had bounties that required NF kills so I went in to do them and I kept running out of things to kill so I kept progressing. I will say, that early fight with the servitors was a BITCH! Partly because I was farming fusion rifle kills, but it was a motherbitch of hiding in the doorway to the room and picking things off one by one. Especially towards the end it was a royal pain until I killed the last servitor. Everything after that was okay up until I let one of the Goblin's with the void projectile cannon's berserk and he managed to nail me. Sucky part was I had fireborn on and I was just waiting for him to back off a bit before I revived... I forgot that you have a pretty short window to actually use it and if you don't then it just dumps you to orbit. lol I remembered at the last moment and the screen changed. I heard myself revive and be attacked by the goblin again as the end of mission screen did it's thing and sent me to orbit... oh well. I probably could have done it too now that I know you can melee pwn the minotaur at the back of the cave. Just get close and crouch and he doesn't even hurt...
Oh well... I finished my bounties.
I think the biggest problem with nightfalls is that they are just beefy strikes at heart. Strikes already suffer from lack of variety, and when you tack on the lethality and bullet sponginess of NF to the minohordes the game is basically cheesing you. The AI and the encounters are designed in such a way that cheese is unavoidable so they are then balanced largely with the cheese in mind, which makes playing them strait up almost impossible. You can't realistically run and gun... you have to become a filthy camper. Maybe some of the best players with already maxed out gear can manage to run and gun the minihordes and boss fights, but then, they no longer need the rewards you get for completing them.
It's not just a problem of difficulty level. It's not just rewards either. You can add all sorts of loot to NF and it won't fix the problem. Eventually end game players are still going to have very little reason to run NF, or VoG, or CE. Eventually you just run out of loot. In fact the more ways Bungie gives you to earn loot the faster hardcore players burn through it. Rewards are a double edged sword. They make an activity attractive, but the more of it you give per completion the faster it gets consumed and becomes obsolete. That is why MMO's usually do have varied drop rates. So that you can have a lot of rewards that drop all the time, but still have a few rares that take many many tries to get them all.
I think TDB unbalanced NF's reward vs investment. Prior to TDB it kind of made sense, but now the rewards are less useful and the investment is much higher since they upped the difficulty. I don't see the rationale behind increasing the difficulty, but not the reward other than technically... they are the same level since all they really did was delete levels 28 and 29 and replace them with 30 and 31. Still, though... they definitely reduced the value of the shards.
I think the problem is primarily a content problem. Nightfalls and strikes in general need more variety. Not just more strikes, but more varied gameplay in general. They need to be more compelling in and of themselves. They also need to rework some of the reward systems in the game. The economy is a bit of a mess. Granted I understand that game currencies are going to be harder to come by when you desperately need them and then far more plentiful once they become obsolete, but that seems to be done a bit to the extreme in Destiny. I think we should really have more currency exchange mechanisms built into the game. They need not have good exchange rates, but we shouldn't be left with hundreds of things we earned that are completely and utterly useless. It makes us feel we've wasted our time...
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tooros
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Post by tooros on Feb 18, 2015 7:59:22 GMT -5
1 pixel. That's all it was. 1 pixel shy.
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dm
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Post by dm on Feb 18, 2015 8:07:34 GMT -5
it's always exciting when you are teamed up with us
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Post by thebb22 on Feb 18, 2015 10:09:02 GMT -5
This week's nightfall feels to me like the grindiest one yet without any burns on. I can only imagine how much worse these would feel if they increased the enemy level. I'd honestly probably quit doing them. HebbNH and I ran through it last night. Probably took us close to an hour to complete after assuming it would only take 15 to 20 minutes like usual. I was rewarded with a legendary primary weapon engram, which I immediately claimed would turn into 2 energy. Go to the tower, turn it in.....2 energy. This is the 3rd time in 4 weeks that's happened to me. It's complete bullshit. Either just give us a damn weapon as the drop or give us the 10 energy. You talk about a complete waste of time. I could effortlessly walk through a daily mission in 7 minutes and get rewarded better than that.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 18, 2015 10:27:31 GMT -5
This week's nightfall feels to me like the grindiest one yet without any burns on. I can only imagine how much worse these would feel if they increased the enemy level. I'd honestly probably quit doing them. HebbNH and I ran through it last night. Probably took us close to an hour to complete after assuming it would only take 15 to 20 minutes like usual. I was rewarded with a legendary primary weapon engram, which I immediately claimed would turn into 2 energy. Go to the tower, turn it in.....2 energy. This is the 3rd time in 4 weeks that's happened to me. It's complete bullshit. Either just give us a gosh darn golly gee whiz weapon as the drop or give us the 10 energy. You talk about a complete waste of time. I could effortlessly walk through a daily mission in 7 minutes and get rewarded better than that. Good lord, it took both of you (who have kick ass stuff) an hour? Ridiculous. The Crota raid gives 10x better stuff, and like 1/4 of the work and effort. What is wrong with this game.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 18, 2015 10:39:51 GMT -5
It's not just a problem of difficulty level. It's not just rewards either. You can add all sorts of loot to NF and it won't fix the problem. Eventually end game players are still going to have very little reason to run NF, or VoG, or CE. Eventually you just run out of loot. In fact the more ways Bungie gives you to earn loot the faster Touch Football players burn through it. Rewards are a double edged sword. They make an activity attractive, but the more of it you give per completion the faster it gets consumed and becomes obsolete. That is why MMO's usually do have varied drop rates. So that you can have a lot of rewards that drop all the time, but still have a few rares that take many many tries to get them all. As someone who has become officially bored with this game (at least before I made a new HUnter character) I will say this. The Raids are still fun. Grouped up is still fun. Even the Crota raid, being as easy as it is....that is where the fun solo stuff is located. Pretty much, Crota solo is where the fun 'skill' test stuff is at. Run the abyss solo legit. You don't have to spend an hour either like a dumb nightfall. It's either done in minutes, or you fail. A real test of skills, not a dumb test of patience shooting bullet sponging bullshit enemies like in the Nightfalls. Bungie still hasn't figured this out.
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hebbnh
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Post by hebbnh on Feb 18, 2015 10:53:54 GMT -5
Yup, I'll pretty much echo what THebb said. At least I got a SUROS (free exotic shard) out of it -- not really worthwhile, but certainly better than 2 AEs. Marko, if you haven't run this week's nightfall yet, you should. Then imagine doing it again while doing 33% less damage at all times because you're underleveled. It's not challenging by any means, and it's not fun either. It's tedious, boring, and absolutely grindtastic -- the complete opposite of what Bungie would need to do to make nightfalls better or more sustainable.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 18, 2015 10:54:11 GMT -5
Been planning to play at some abyss running, but no time... especially when it doesn't give any rewards and I already don't have time to just finish bounties and run weeklies, ect... But what little I have played at it was fun... if neigh heart attack inducing... ;3
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 18, 2015 14:39:54 GMT -5
Although Omnigul is in super hard mode this week, you can still have fun with her. Some tips: 1) Killing Omnigul can be significantly more fun with 3 players: with 1 player stationed in the back room so the fireteam can hit her from both sides. I am still not tired (yet) on putting the final nail on her coffin. 2) There is also a (very) cheesy way to speed up the final fight with two players: have both situated in the back room, one as "reviver" and one as "hitter". The hitter will repeatedly dumping sniper shots (and heavy, if he has a ammo pick up gun and is using the heavy ammo glitch) onto Omnigul and pretty much ignore everything else unless necessary (say to have minions drop heavy ammo or remove Omnigul's annoying body doubles). The reviver does nothing but revive hitter once in a while when he dies (he can enjoy snacks and read a book in between )
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malgato
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Post by malgato on Feb 18, 2015 14:58:06 GMT -5
I like snacks.
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wittyscorpion
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Post by wittyscorpion on Feb 18, 2015 15:02:57 GMT -5
I have loot pick up gun, Ice Breaker, enjoy heavy ammo glitch and love killing Omnigul, looks like we will have fun together
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 18, 2015 15:03:52 GMT -5
You can always join me in the IB. Park your character in the corner with mine. Then go do other things at home.
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tooros
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Post by tooros on Feb 19, 2015 3:59:37 GMT -5
3 of us did the nightfall last night, having failed - for the first time in a looong time - the previous evening. One got a gjallahorn - only the second time I've ever seen one drop.
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Post by iw5000 on Feb 19, 2015 10:14:59 GMT -5
3 of us did the nightfall last night, having failed - for the first time in a looong time - the previous evening. One got a gjallahorn - only the second time I've ever seen one drop. Props. Thank god I wasn't there, that would have probably never happened then.
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Post by TheHawkNY on Feb 19, 2015 11:40:46 GMT -5
(XBOX Users Spoiler alert: the Undying Mind/Black Garden strike that you'll get in september is also hectic and fun too... at least imho. Can't agree more. It's the best strike in the game, by far. I'm always happy when it comes up, even though it takes a long time. It's just nonstop enemies. It's insanely fun when you have three people dropping orbs in Precursor Alley. On the other hand, I'm glad it won't be a Weekly/Nightfall for a while...it would probably be absolutely brutal.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Feb 19, 2015 12:01:08 GMT -5
Don't think I've even done the exclusive strikes since I pretty much only do strikes for weeklies. ;3
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on Feb 19, 2015 12:25:27 GMT -5
(XBOX Users Spoiler alert: the Undying Mind/Black Garden strike that you'll get in september is also hectic and fun too... at least imho. Can't agree more. It's the best strike in the game, by far. I'm always happy when it comes up, even though it takes a long time. It's just nonstop enemies. It's insanely fun when you have three people dropping orbs in Precursor Alley. On the other hand, I'm glad it won't be a Weekly/Nightfall for a while...it would probably be absolutely brutal. Oh baby yea baby... especially with void burn.
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