Welcome! (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Wednesday, June 24, 2015, 19:34 (3251 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by General Vagueness, Wednesday, June 24, 2015, 19:43

Keep in mind I've never done it and don't have ideal gear. I guess that's a lot of what I haven't really explored yet. I mostly make armor decisions based on Light Level at this point, I haven't explored the actual perks on most of them.

Depending on how you play, few to none of the non-exotic perks on armor matter. Some of the exotic armor perks are really freaking useful though, and some aren't super useful but are much better than they first appear. (Some are also just not that useful.) I play as a Hunter where the melee ability coming back is either not an issue (Bladedancer) or not terribly useful (Gunslinger) and I love having a fast reload so I focus on discipline and intelligence, having gauntlets that speed up reloads for whatever I'm using, and having chest and/or leg armor that lets me keep more ammo for whatever I'm using. Your play style would probably make different stats and perks best for you.

I got lucky and got The Ram helmet for my Warlock the week HoW dropped, and I got a lucky drop for Mask of the Third Man for my Hunter. Other than those two, it's all random Legendary drops. As I said, I don't have a huge amount of time for gaming, so my Faction reps aren't high enough yet to buy most vendor gear. I'm about 900 rep from Dead Orbit Rank 2, so I'll hopefully be able to knock out some bounties soon to get that. My Warlock still has a bunch of blue armor that I need to replace.

You'll want to be decked out in mostly legendary or better armor at least before you do raids. For the Vault of Glass the game recommends 26 but you'll want to be 27 or 28 if you can, and for hard mode it's fairly important to be above 28 if not at 30 or more.

Being one level below an enemy means you do something like 15% less damage I believe, two levels below is more severe, three or four levels below and you only do half damage, and five or six levels or more and you can't do any damage or even see what level they are. Being at a higher level than an enemy doesn't give you any advantage in your attacks, you deal the same damage as you would if you were at the same level as the enemy. (The higher defense that comes with being a higher level is always nice though.)

In other words, player at 27 + enemy at 28 = less damage dealt, player at 28 + enemy at 28 = full damage, player at 29 + enemy at 28 = full damage.

The best way to get those legendaries is to grab Vanguard bounties and play Vanguard strikes. The strikes give you rewards that can include legendary items. Completing strikes and bounties gets closer to buying legendaries or getting reward packages that have legendaries in them. Strikes are also a great way to get engrams. With the engrams you can get a legendary one, or you can get a surprise legendary from a blue engram, and decrypting any engrams will move you towards getting a Cryptarch reward package that can have a legendary in it.