Slow is smooth; smooth is fast (Destiny)

by scarab , Thursday, September 11, 2014, 06:09 (3523 days ago) @ NotTheVacuum

Don't get sloppy or greedy; in that extra half-second of poking out of cover when you've pulled agro, a direct boss hit could down you. That costs your team several seconds of damage dealing, plus giving up position and time to revive you.

Yes, timing is everything and you have to judge how far you can push it. Usually the answer is, "not very far at all" :-)

But I am a cautious player. I haven't tried more aggressive play. I have seen players getting in the bosses' faces and they seem to do OK(ish). It would be nice if an aggressive player could chime in with their experiences of the aggressive play style.

Damage dealt by weapons does increase as you get closer but I don't know how much extra damage is dealt at 20 feet away. Never been there for some bosses, never hung around to find out. So I don't know if it is worth getting up close.

These fights are meant to take discipline and tactics, and going lone wolf will be punished.

I think so. But I also like reviving people. The Strikes do go better when everybody understands the basics. OTOH it can be fun carrying new players - more of a test of my abilities and everybody is a beginner some time.

One other thing: in some encounters, hanging back and picking off enemies at a distance will be severely punished. I think this is exquisite game design; that tactic is a bit too simple and obvious, so I'm glad Bungie discouraged it. If you haven't seen this, you'll know it when you do. Be brave.

Hanging around in the entrance is usually punished by waves of high level enemies or other (unspecified spoiler avoiding) dangers. I don't know if saying that is a major spoiler. The worst I've done is deprive a player of the chance to die once in order to learn never to do it again :-)

OTOH

In the alpha I joined a game in progress where the players had become stuck in the entrance hall. Sepkis Prime was bombarding the entrance opening and waves of extremely high enemies were attacking from both ends of the entrance corridor.

I tried to help out but it was impossible. This was at the very end of the alpha and I'm sure that Bungie was experimenting with upping the enemy strengths to see how we'd fare. As an example: I would use my Titan super, smash into a group of Fallen and even the Dregs didn't die. (not an exaggeration)

Anyway, I managed to complete the strike by jumping like a loon until I got out of the corridor, running to cover far from the corridor and the waves of enemies running to it - then I pounded SP until he died (it didn't take long).

So I guess that some people would have taken ages to work out the no-hiding-in-the-entrance lesson.