I don’t write about Destiny much but maybe I should! I’ve played for 10+ years, have probably accumulated 4000+ hours in it across all the systems I’ve played it on (3100 on PC alone, after Destiny 1 on PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox One X). That ain’t nothing!
What I wanted to talk about today is the complexity of build-crafting with Edge of Fate. A lot lot lot changed, which is why I’m calling it 2.5 (and tempted to round up to 3) and it’s been a challenge taking it all in. First a small history:
I used to play Destiny as an MMO, which means fantasy, roleplay, living the lore. I didn’t take an interest in build-craft and it would be until the last two years when I started taking an interest that I would go back to my Destiny 1 Hunter and actually build-craft it with more intention than : can go invis, is agile enough for Crota runs; first stage.
But then Bungie introduced Stasis in Beyond Light and FORCED me into it. Next, they FORCED me into Strand even harder with Lightfall. It made me so angry. I didn’t want to darknessify my guardian. I wanted to be remain a roleplaying Light Baby forever! Forcing me into the other sub-classes got me to see some things I was missing out on, which tangibly became lore immersion anyway, and so…fine. I ate my boundaries and began learning to build-craft. I made a wonderful strand-spinning-disks build that became my favourite, and my Stasis Heavy Glaive build was wicked fun. I also made a Void based always-devouring/always-invis build which was perfect for tactical mechanics execution with weak blueberries that couldn’t stay alive for a whole minute, and once the Arc 2.0 meta came in, I made a grenade+scout jolting build that was just awesome. I even made a PVP build for Iron Banner periods and started getting off the bottom of leaderboards.
Long story short, I learned to enjoy build-crafting. My builds panel is full. I’m still avoiding prismatic though. I hate its dual-energy-bars-building mumbo jumbo and I avoid it as much as possible, but that’s for another day.
Today I want to comment on how Edge of Fate has impacted me given it has added so many more “and, and, and” layers to build-crafting.
First, I didn’t mind the power reset and more grindy nature. I love the game and would be playing it anyway, so that’s fine. Climbing my power hasn’t felt difficult. After a month of my usual few hours of play here and there several times a week, I’m in the 300s and having fun.
Second, chasing the new stats I wanted was harder but manageable. My solar build is mostly guns focused, my arc build remains grenades focused with a not-useless small guns boost, void build is centered on health and class, and stasis I’ve kept glaive focused with more ice-tornadoes fun, featuring two spikes for melee and super. It took a month of playing to set all those up, couple hundred hours, and constant resources droughts, but I got there! *pats self on the back*
But I’m struggling with the tiers, the gear-set 2|4 pieces counts, and the new-gear % multipliers that you see when you hover over the artifact.
Here’s why. Consider my solar guns build:
My gun stat is awesome, and my grenade one is boosted. This build is super fun. But it feels a bit weak still. Why? Because I don’t have all-tiered gear. I’ve avoided the diamonds because the stats are seldom as good as older or lower tiered gear. That sounds correct to a 10 year veteran, because the stats have always been the thing to boost and once there, you’re golden.
But the tier system, and artifact % multipliers, undermine the focus on stats. You need to actually risk lower stats for higher % multipliers from tiers and “new gear” synergies with the artifact.
THAT’S COMPLICATED! And it’s super annoying, because it leads to a spreadsheet level of numbers chasing I’ve never had to mentally grapple before. It feels like too much. When you can manage it, your build does pop off however, so it’s worth the extra “engineering” effort, and here’s an example of that. I took the same solar build concept, but let go of my stats preferences to unlock things that are phenomenal:
This NEW solar build is my previous solar build, + extra focuses on new gear, gear-sets + artifact % multiplier alignment, and the build is BETTER, STRONGER, more SURVIVABLE than my other build, despite the loss of exotic armour, loss of grenade stat, loss of health stat. I mean, look at the damage mitigation! Damage resistance went up 100%, for a x2, and the gear set bonus gives me heals and higher DPS through faster reloads. The survivability and output of this build is really slick in the harder content.
And yet, it’s confusing to dance like this, letting go of stats’ importance in favour of a synergy between tiers and the seasonal artifact. And every season the synergies can be whatever, so I’ll be obligated to re-do the build which may or may not force me back into the previous build with a stats-only preference. I just don’t know.
I don’t like this exactly. It’s too much work and complexity fucking around with numbers when I’d much rather be a guardian, out in the field, melting baddies. It took my late and hard earned comfort with build crafting and turned it up to 11 in stress for many more multi-dimensional verbs construction and numbers crunching.
Do I HAVE to do this? The good news is no, if I completely ignore tiers to artifact % gains metas I can still play content at my power level and be able to have a “strong guardian presence” type experience that feels like it’s me, earned, with my knowledge and effort put into the build.
But I can’t deny that targeting all the levels of synergies significantly CHANGES the experience. It boosts my guardian into feeling REALLY strong.
The question remains on if this level of effort and planning is what I WANT to do all the time going forward? Is this HOW I want to play, and that’s where I’m uncertain. Gains are nice, but good lord the numbers and pieces tracking I had to do, from numbers to activity selection to get whatever pieces I need to close gaps — the grind to find the right categories of stats to drop from whatever pieces I get, plus dismantling so many power climbing items to get the upgrade materials to build the build (which really slowed my power climb) — feels like way too many balls to juggle. It’s too much obsession with data — an immersion, story, roleplay breaking obsession on data.
Maybe this is only temporary because while all this happening, I’m also doing a power-level grind of my entire vault to get everything up to the max-bottom of 200 each. Maybe this effort will stick for longer than I realize and is a one-time cost to pay. We’ll see.
I’ll close with a peek on my other builds which are till only focused on stats because the effort of getting the solar one working has been so high that I haven’t had the time and energy to do the same with the rest:
Red Cross Healer
Stasis Windy Glaive
Arcnade Cat
Devoured by the Void
And here’s a cheeky moment shared by three Hunters who got the outfits memo:
