Salvage Tips (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Saturday, July 09, 2016, 15:20 (3152 days ago) @ Kahzgul

First off, I feel your pain. Salvage is horribly designed (sorry bungo).

- Never attempt to capture the relic unless all three of your teammates are present and actively capturing. You only get points for the people in the circle when it captures.

- If the enemy team has captured the relic, disarming it nets your team 150 points per player on your team, regardless of where they are on the map. The best strategy in the game is to let the enemy capture with only 1 player (+100 points to the enemy), kill that one guy (+100 points for the kill to your team) and disarm (+450 points to your team) for a net gain for 450 points.

- If your team is able to successfully defend a captured relic, you get 200 points per player on your team (so +600 points).

- You get 50 points per revive. Always revive. Always prevent your opponents from reviving if you can.

Now let's break down the risk/reward of capturing:

- Capture with 1 player = 100 points
- Capture with 2 players = 200 points
- Capture with 3 players = 300 points
- Disarm = 450 points
- Successful defend = 600 points

Min points: Capture w/1 minus disarm = -350 points
Max points: Capture w/3 plus defend = 900 points

Other scores to keep in mind:
- Capture w/2 minus disarm = -250 points
- Capture w/3 minus disarm = -150 points
- Capture w/1 plus defend = 700 points
- Capture w/2 plus defend = 800 points

Capturing with all three players present and immediately being disarmed is roughly equivalent to one guy on your team being killed by two people at once (100 points kill, 50 points assist), so it's not a huge loss. But missing people during that initial capture is giving your enemy free double or triple kill points, which really adds up.

More specific strategy stuff: Defender titans are boss in this game mode. Bubble over the relic after you capture it to make defending easy. Save your offensive supers for clearing defenders if the other team seems to be trying to capture. See a lone enemy capturing? Let him. Two or more enemies? Kill them until only one is left. On some larger maps, the spawns are so far away from the action that capturing with 1 is okay if you know the enemy is spawning across the map. Thieve's den comes to mind.

Good luck, guardian!

The only thing I'd add to this is that your disarm numbers, all the way through, assume that all 3 players on the disarming team are alive at the time of disarm. Since this happens so infrequently, your numbers are a little misleading. (Far more common: you go for the disarm, two teammates are killed in the attempt, one player manages it and the disarm is worth 150, instead of 450. Likewise, a successful defense is rarely worth 600, because doing so can require sacrifice.)

The key to salvage, as you point out, is that critical actions (arm/disarm/capture) are worth more when players are in specific states (in the arming circle/alive). My win percentage when playing with folks who pay attention to this (mostly friends, because communication is key in Salvage) is well above 60%, while my overall win percentage (because I've played a lot of Salvage solo) is under 40%.