Apotheosis Veil isn't worth the exotic slot, IMO. 

I noticed you play a lot of voidwalker, and voidwalker warlocks have perks that allow almost constant health regeneration through their abilities. Build your warlock around the energy drain melee, maxing discipline and strength. Use scatter grenades. Your melee ability is gonna be life steal, and you're gonna use the hunger and embrace the void talents. You can use whatever you'd like for nova bomb. Your exotic will be Nothing Manacles. 

The voidwalker's main thing centers around fast ability cool down, specifically with grenades. When energy drain procs, which with tracking scatter grenades it will often, your grenade cool down is almost instant, and if you're lacking for a grenade, go melee something to further enhance your grenade recharge. If you're hurt, throw a grenade at a pack of trash enemies and when something dies, it'll instantly trigger life steal through the embrace the void perk. 

Set up appropriately and played intelligently, an energy drain focused warlock is very fun, very powerful, and very resilient. 

Seems like I might need a new tv. Maybe.

Crota's End this week. 

I'd be down to clown for a Crota run or three.

Corner railing over by the Speaker. 

Peregrine Greaves - no. Funny for brawler arc burn heroics, but otherwise, no. 

Nighthawk - yup. Every hunter should have one of these. Especially for this week's featured raid. 

Praxic Fire - meh. No one uses radiance for grenades anyways. 

Monte Carlo - no. 

It is very much a trolly exotic. I've only used it for arc burn/brawler/airborne strikes - I saw a video where Goose one shot the walker tank in the Taniks strike with those things and just had to try it myself. 

I saw that. 

Total garbage move by Activision/Bungie.  Give XBox players the exclusives when it won't matter anymore. Lame. 

The problem is that Monte Carlo itself is a bad weapon with a cool bonus. 

Besides, spec your voidwalker around energy drain and max disc/str.  Energy drain with Nothing Manacles, it is the way of the future. 

The Manacles aren't as powerful as they were, but they're still pretty good and a lot of fun.  They had a period where the tracking was nerfed into garbage, but they've been restored a bit and they're more than usable now.

I don't feel the Ram is as good as it once was.  With the last patch to voidwalkers, if you use the Hunger (or Ophidian Aspects) and Embrace the Void, you can get life steal with *any* ability.  I can hail mary a grenade across the map, and if it kills any trash enemy, it'll instantly proc energy drain/life steal and regen health and grenades.

And I don't have to get in anyone's face to do that.

The only thing the Ram is really useful for now IMO is looking cool and for max armor builds in the crucible, where it can save you from getting three tapped by Palindrome or Eyasluna.

At times it can, yes.  But it's a little inconsistent due to range fall off being a real thing now, and just how you're getting shot, and the practicality and helpfulness (is that even a word?  Whatever) is debatable.

Like in its optimal range, a Palindrome or Eyasluna hits for about 86 damage with a head shot and 57 with a body shot.  If you go for head/body/body, that equals 200 damage.

200 damage will kill any hunter regardless of subclass, armor perks, or armor boosts from chest pieces.

200 damage will not kill a max armor Striker or Defender Titan.  You need to use codex I and IV and Unstoppable for this on a Striker, and codex I and IV with Untouchable on a bubble bro.  Either combination will get you about 205 HP.  Sunbreakers do not have the talents to increase their armor like the other titan subclasses do.

200 damage will not kill a max armor Voidwalker or Sunsinger Warlock wearing the Ram.  You need to use Arcane Spirit and Divine Order, and Voidwalkers need to use Angry Magic to get an extra armor point.  Dunno why, because as far as the armor/recovery/agility bars go, Voidwalker and Sunsinger are the exact same, but a Voidwalker really needs that extra armor point from Angry Magic for this thing to work.  I think Sunsingers are just slightly more tanky than the other warlocks.  Stormcallers cannot get enough armor for this to work, but they do have higher recovery than the other subclasses.  

Now the thing is with max armor, getting three-tapped by someone with a hand cannon will leave you with an nth of health, a stiff breeze or a bad fall from height will kill you.  In a 1v1 engagement, that could mean the difference between win/lose, but in normal 6v6 crucible it isn't really all that practical or helpful IMO, because in a typical crucible engagement you tend to get shot by multiple people in this game which means your armor doesn't really mean jack shit IMO.  It's just interesting info and something good to know - I've noticed since hand cannons have really come into their own as the top choice in PVP, some folks are running max armor builds to try and save themselves from the three-tap.  Of course, all that goes out the window if you get shot in the head twice then body shot, if they're using a high impact hand cannon like the First Curse, Lingering Song or Ill Will, or if you hit in the head with an extra special bullet.  

Also consider that you usually have to use some jacked up and less-than-optimal perks to achieve max armor - no one really uses Angry Magic on a Voidwalker when Annihilate and the Hunger are way better perks, bubble cool down is already pretty quick so Untouchable is kinda silly especially with Bastion in the same tree, no one really uses Unstoppable on their Striker Titans when Shoulder Charge is in the same tree.

Higher *light* levels count in Iron Banner or Trials.

Armor is an intrinsic perk to a particular subclass and as such, it's always a factor whether light level is or not.

So Destiny 1 is basically over.  It's been a good run, and we'll all be playing a new game in another few months or so.  I've been going back and watching some old Destiny videos on Youtube, and it's really funny how things have changed throughout the years in this game.  It's very nostalgic for me, it's silly I know, but still.  Especially in the crucible.  If nothing, it's shown me that PVP has always been kind of a shit show no matter what.

I never got to experience it myself in its full glory before it got nerfed, but I definitely remember being on the wrong end of Suros Regime in the crucible:



And this terrifying thing before it got nerfed, holy shit.  56 rounds in the mag, hits for 45 damage to the body, 56 to the head, zero recoil.  They changed enhanced battery to extended mag sometime in year one, which dropped the mag down to "only" 45ish rounds if I remember right, but they didn't touch it otherwise.


The exotic hand cannons, Thorn and The Last Word.  I had potato aim (still do really) so Thorn never really worked out well for me, but I used and abused and spammed the shit out of TLW for most of year one crucible.  Thorn was annoying and super strong, everyone knew about just getting two head shots or a head shot and two body shots, then running away and letting the DOT do the rest.  But TLW was the real monster IMO, almost impossible to beat in a 1v1 gun fight.  This weapon was glitched for a long time, where its exotic bonus would proc when aiming down sights and firing, meaning you could get accurate, aimed head shots that did 111 damage, several times in the same mag.  Also consider that hand cannons at this time didn't really have the range drop off and limitations that they do now, meaning you could die from across the map by Thorn or TLW, they'd kill you before you had time to react and realize what had happened to you.



Felwinter's Lie.  Matador 64.  Party Crasher +1.  Judgment VI.  And gunsmith rerolling.  Oh boy.  When shot package made sniper shotguns, and everyone was scared.  And rightly so.  Man.  You could make a killer PVP shotgun for the cost of a few motes of light, some glimmer, and some time.  And the game threw plenty of special ammo at you to keep you stocked up so you could basically use your shotgun special as a primary the whole game.  Also blink had no recovery penalties at this time, so bladedancer or voidwalker blink/shotgun was a very real thing, very annoying and difficult to fight against.  



Radegast's Fury, the year one Iron Banner rocket launcher, was a problem in itself as well because of rerolling.  Most of the rocket launchers in the game could be rerolled for grenades and horseshoes, which that perk is still around now, but it's nothing like it once was.  In year one, it was close your eyes, pull the trigger and get a kill.  Also note multiple heavy spawns per game, and that if you killed an enemy with heavy, they dropped their ammo and you could pick it up, continuing your reign of terror.



Things kinda settled down around TTK, I think the main thing there was how annoying sniper rifles were.  Mostly 1000 Yard Stare, and the high impact shotguns were still a thing, one of the Vanguard story quests gave you a rangefinder/rifled barrel Conspiracy Theory for doing basically nothing, like "Here you go, go kill things in the crucible and have fun!"

Now it's all about tier 11/12 setups and ability spam.  Sticky grenades and sidearms.  It'll be interesting to see how things start off and how they change throughout the life of Destiny 2.

The things TLW could do in its heyday were broken and criminal.  Like MW2 One Man Army/Danger Close noob tube levels of crazy.  

I think that was late House of Wolves when Red Death was really capable and viable in the crucible.  By TTK, Hawksaw/PDX45 and Nirwen's Mercy were probably the big killers.

Gjallarhorn really was the answer to all PVE problems in year one.  I got my first one from the exotic chest in my second or third VOG run.  Me and that G-Horn, we went through a lot.  Probably the one thing that stands out was the 42 Gjallarhorn salute Hammr, Persinger and I tried to get done on Skolas the first week the 35 POE was out with solar burn.  We killed him on the first try, but couldn't get to disarming mines fast enough.  We failed every attempt afterwards to burn him down, I think we were up till like one or two in the morning before we finally cleared it.

The diversity of weapons now in year three is cool.  It probably started in TTK to an extent, but now, with rotating vendor stocks, crucible and strike weapons, rank up package weapons, four different raid sets, you can use whatever you want in any content in the game for the most part and be just fine.

I've shot oracles from up top with Icebreaker.  I've pushed the Templar off the ledge quite a few times before.  Jumped up on top of the tower at the bridge in Crota's End, or sent one guy over and wiped to make everything despawn, then self res and sniped everything across the way.  Unplugged my ethernet cable at Crota too.     But I've also completed all those things legit as well.  I justify the Crota cheese by the raid itself being very glitchy and inconsistent - swords disappearing, Crota not taking damage to his shield, or him immediately getting back up after a down to smash whoever's swording him, Crota coming into the center chamber and killing the entire team, etc.

I hate you and everything you stand for.  

Oryx-who?

We can get you a hard mode Wrath clear, that shouldn't be too terrible. 

That other raid, though....