I was able to secure this during the Halloween festivity last year. This was the only time you could get it (as far as I know).

When I created a referral link (to send you) for the Refer-a-Friend program, it said

NOTE: New players qualify for referral for 7 days after they first play Destiny: The Taken King.

If you launched TTK in order to earn (or buy) that helmet last year, you might no longer qualify for this program. :(

(I can't remember if you had to have TTK to participate in the Halloween stuff, so if you didn't have it then, no problem - I could just be misinterpreting your text. ;) )

I'd be interested in know if it gives you a different message if the recipient has already played TTK. I would hope it does.

The way the system works, you generate the link, and then you email it to your referee. The system doesn't know who you're creating it for when the link is generated.

Then there's the PvP side, where every tiny little advantage can be important. If I'm using a decent Doctrine of Passing against a highly skilled opponent with a perfect Doctrine of Passing, he is going to win every single time. "Decent" just isn't good enough in that case. And since infusing weapons up to Trials levels can be a bit of an investment, I don't want to spend the materials and infusion fodder on anything less than an excellent roll.

lol - I don't even HAVE a Doctrine of Passing, so I don't experience this struggle. ;) (In a more general, less jokey sense, when I lose 1v1s during a game, I almost NEVER think about what perks the other guy might have that I don't. Almost always, it's that he's better than me. I have a few go-to guns as primaries - and they're almost all Exotics, so perks are less important to me, I guess, because the other people using the same gun as me have the same perks as me. I use non-exotics in PvE - but there, there's nothing to compare with.)

I actually wonder if that is one of the reasons why exotic primaries often seem to dominate the crucible (in terms of "which weapons get used the most")... there's no guess work involved. If you're using a Mida multitool and you get killed by a guy who is also using Mida, he outplayed you. Simple. No doubt about "is his roll better than mine" or "I wonder what perks he has". I guess there is still the slight possibility of attack levels making a difference in certain playlists, but I doubt it makes a huge impact. It just seems simpler psychologically.

2) If you absolutely can't live without a particular roll, yes, you'll have to run things a few times to get it... but you might be exaggerating on the actual numbers. I've run Warpriest 2 or 3 dozen times, I'd guess, and I have worse luck than EVERYONE I've played with for Defiance of Yasmin (sniper rifle) drops. I ran it half a dozen times before the first one dropped. And then I ran it ANOTHER half-dozen times before one dropped above 312.

But if I look back now, I've had 6 or 7 drop, at least three of which were over 315. That's one every 3-5 runs... and like I said, I've never played with anyone who has worse luck than I do for that particular gun. Most people get one every other run or so. So 15 runs for a Zauli's Bane might be a slight exaggeration. :)

I agree that Challenge mode has made the raid weapons far easier to come across, and I think that's great. But I don't think I'm exaggerating that much ;) I must have run the warpriest challenge 9 times (3 characters per try) before I got the sniper rifle I wanted. Considering that Challenge mode essentially yields double drops, that's A LOT of drops before getting the one I wanted. But that's fine. Not really a big deal at all. But when you apply those drop rates to activities that don't have a challenge mode, it becomes more frustrating. Aside from a single class item, a ghost, and a single pair of gloves, I've never had a item drop above 314 from Trials or Iron Banner, and I put a lot of time into both activities. 6 months into TTK, that feels a bit crummy to me. It's still not a big deal at all, but I can't help but ask "why?". Why keep the drop rates so low? Yes, it's silly... but it would be nice to get a drop every now and then that makes me say "wow, look what I got!" without having to add "too bad it doesn't have good perks" or "too bad it's only 302". It's kind of insane to me that you don't get a guaranteed 320 drop for going to the lighthouse or from a rank 5 Iron Banner package.

Hmm... I wonder if you and I are playing the same game. I've gotten exactly TWO types of Defiance of Yasmin/Harrowed DoY guns: one with Perfectionist, the other with Life Support. (Just looked - I currently have 4 left, and 3 have Perfectionist, one has Life Support.) They all have Cocoon as the second perk, they all have the same sights, the same barrel mods. I'm not seeing multiple rolls on this gun.

Likewise, most of my Quillim's Terminuses have Persistence or Eye of the Storm (I think I have one with Life Leech, but it's really not that different). They all have the same everything else.

I am NOT seeing huge numbers of variants for any of the raid weapons. :(

In particular, I wanted a sniper with Firefly. I think I've become a bit of a Firely addict... the perk, AND the TV show :)

Agree with you 100% there. I think the key difference to me is that in year 1, when you finally did get that weapon you were hoping for, there were none of the caveats that exist now. You never said "I FINALLY GOT A FATEBRINGER... oh, the perks aren't great". The drop rates were certainly too low then, but you knew what you were getting when it finally dropped. This time around we have higher drop rates, but I'd argue that the chances of getting the "ideal" drops are even lower. I'm not convinced that it's an improvement. Is there really an argument against making every single normal Oryx drop a 310 and every single heroic drop a 320? Would that not be an instant improvement when it comes to the enjoyment players get out of the activities? Considering we still might not get a roll that we want, at least it would be awesome infusion fodder. Yes, there is challenge mode, but I see that as a solution to a problem that should never have existed.

Yeah, I'd definitely like your solution - but clearly Bungie doesn't agree with us. :)

I've heard 2 episodes of the Planet Destiny podcast that featured Bungie employees over the past few months; they did an episode with Luke Smith back in October and an episode with Leif Johansen (one of the PvP designers) during Crimson Doubles. In both episodes, the cohosts of the podcast relayed their rather disappointing loot-drop experiences to their guests from bungie, and in both cases the bungie employees sounded legitimately surprised. The PD guys were quite specific: "36 games of Crimson Doubles, no ghosts" or "7 King's Fall completions, 2 primary weapons, no helmets". That kind of thing. This is obviously 100% conjecture on my part, but after hearing both reactions I wouldn't actually be surprised if there was a bug somewhere in Bungie's loot-drop algorithms that is causing things to behave strangely. Leif in particular was very clear that the experience the PD guys were having was "not the intended design".

Agree with you 100% there. I think the key difference to me is that in year 1, when you finally did get that weapon you were hoping for, there were none of the caveats that exist now. You never said "I FINALLY GOT A FATEBRINGER... oh, the perks aren't great". The drop rates were certainly too low then, but you knew what you were getting when it finally dropped. This time around we have higher drop rates, but I'd argue that the chances of getting the "ideal" drops are even lower. I'm not convinced that it's an improvement. Is there really an argument against making every single normal Oryx drop a 310 and every single heroic drop a 320? Would that not be an instant improvement when it comes to the enjoyment players get out of the activities? Considering we still might not get a roll that we want, at least it would be awesome infusion fodder. Yes, there is challenge mode, but I see that as a solution to a problem that should never have existed.

Do we have some indication that challenge mode wasn't planned all along? Honestly (and I say this as someone who has spent many hours this week unsuccessfully completing a challenge--BTW, Cruel, get on early tonight and HELP!), the challenges are not substantially more difficult than doing it the usual way, and they do entice you to raid, so perhaps the "problem" was presumed to be short-lived from Bungie's perspective.

That's a very interesting question. The first thought that comes to mind is "what has challenge mode done to the raid?". Or put another way, "look at how challenge mode has effected the way we play the raid".

I can't remember the last time I jumped in with a group and played the raid from start to finish. It just doesn't seem to happen anymore. I believe the reason for that is simply that the raid drops were abysmal until challenge mode came along. People don't want to bang their heads against Oryx for 2 hours and walk away with a 311 hand cannon with crappy perks. By comparison, Challenge mode showers loot on the player in such a way that it can be tough to pass up the opportunity.

I could be way off on this, but my gut tells me that the way many of us play the raid now is probably not what Luke Smith and the raid team were hoping for when they released King's Fall. It just doesn't seem like the kind of experience they would want us to have.

Do we have some indication that challenge mode wasn't planned all along?

I believe so. If you look at how the chests are placed when you defeat Oryx challenge mode they're mirrored along the symmetric axis of the room, but when you defeat Oryx (non challenge mode) you only get 1 chest, and it's off to the side kinda wonky style with no match on the other side.

I will definitely agree with you that they scaled back the loot drops in the TTK endgame, in comparison to the HoW endgame... but I don't think it's as bad as you're saying it is. (For perspective: I've gotten every single gun available in King's Fall, at least once - and usually more than once. I got my VERY FIRST Vex Mythoclast, and my VERY FIRST Vision of Confluence, last week - despite well over a year's worth of running VoG. I got my VERY FIRST (and only) Black Hammer about 3 months after I got a Black Spindle, despite many months of running Crota. So while getting EXACTLY the right gun might be harder now than it used to be... getting the GUN itself is actually easier.)

The difference is that those pre TTK weapons were already ready to go and easily maxed out for the endgame. There is no way you have all of the King's fall weapons at 315+. Getting it is only the FIRST step in TTK. You then have to get more to infuse it to a level you like. 310 is a comfortable minimum for all guns in the end game I think. This would all be fine if there were more options for infusion.

I can't tell you the levels of the guns I've used for infusion, but I can tell you that with one exception (the fusion rifle, which dropped at 317), I've had at least one, and in a couple of cases, multiple drops of every single raid weapon at the 320 level. I still have one copy of the pulse, one copy of the scout, and three copies of the HMG. I've used at least two 320 ARs and two 320 hand cannons for infusion. I've got two 320 snipers right now, so i must have had at least two raid snipers drop. (I can't think of what else I might have used to bring up my 1kys and my black spindle.) I've gone through at least 4 rocket launchers.

Just curious :) Challenge mode aside, I've never gotten a single 320 from the raid.

So anyone with 7 tiers of armor or higher will survive. I, personally, always run at least 6 tiers of armor plus I wear a chest piece with "bonus armor for X subclass" to get me to 7.

Enough that I don't think I've never not killed someone that was actually stuck with a tripmine unless a super was involved.