Published on: Apr 11, 2015 @ 10:52
We’re in a new generation of first-person shooters. Destiny is more fast-paced and mobile compared to games from a few years ago, with triple jumps, slides, and teleportation, it opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Unfortunately, most players don’t use that extra mobility to their advantage to better maneuver around maps and disorient enemies.
In this chapter of the Crucibible, we’ll be talking about those mobility options and how to use them to your advantage to become the fastest and most agile Guardian you can be.
Click here for in-depth class builds and other helpful articles.
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Who’s the Fastest?
Aside from the Supers, armor, recovery, and agility are some of the biggest differences among each class. Titans come standard with the most armor, Hunters with the best agility, and Warlocks with the highest recovery.
Even though these default values are stacked in such a way that benefits certain classes, you can choose certain perks skills to help improve a particular stat.
Titans may want less armor and more recovery, so they can focus on a Codex that provides that. For more about toughness specifically, check out this guide:
Since this is the Mobility chapter, Agility is the stat that will be covered in this article, along with perks that affect it.
Agility affects your jump height and movement speed. By how much? No one knows for sure. Destiny uses arbitrary graphs and line bars to show these changes and as a result it’s hard to calculate it.
An interesting note about Agility is which parts of your movement it actually affects; more Agility only increases your characters max walking speed and jump height. Contrary to popular belief, it does not affect sprint speed. Another popular myth is that Agility also affects your slide distance; slide distance is only increased by the Bladedancer’s Fleet Footed talent or the Kneepads perk.
Titans
- Titans by default have the slowest walking and sprinting speeds of the 3 classes. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to directly make your Titan sprint faster, but Catapult and triple tapping your jump button you can get a small boost to your running speed with each jump.
- Titans can have the highest jump in the game even with their low base Agility. Using Increased Height allows your Titan to reach spots that Warlocks cannot. Hunters can jump equally as high as Titans but with the caveat that they need to spec completely into Agility and have certain weapons, perks, and/or armor pieces equipped.
- In Crucible, jump height isn’t nearly as important as it is in PvE as there are little to no spots in the Crucible maps that are high enough that you need Catapult to reach. Mobility and speed are of better use in PvP, therefore Increased Control and Catapult will serve you better.
- Use Shoulder Charge in mid-air to if you need a couple meters of extra distance.
Titans will never be as fast as Hunters, and which stat you choose to spec into depends on personal preference and playstyle, but we recommend going for Recovery & Agility.
Warlocks
- Warlocks are faster than Titans by a respectable amount. Similar to Titans, Warlocks can use Focused Burst to get a small boost to their speed by triple tapping your jump button.
- The Warlock glide is similar to the Titan’s, except a Titan will jump a bit higher and farther while Warlocks have more control over their glide. Warlocks also have Blink available, which is a blessing and a curse, but undoubtedly a good way to daze opponents.
- Warlocks who want more speed can equip Surge and come close to matching a Hunter’s speed when this perk is active. Combine this with a Monte Carlo and a good shotgun and you’ll be the fastest Warlock of them all.
Warlocks have the highest Recovery, which reduces the amount of time needed for your shields to recharge and health to recover. Their base Agility and Armor are decent, and their talent trees offer enough flexibility that you can spec to maximize whichever of those stats you want, and come pretty close to matching Titan Armor or Hunter Agility levels.
It probably would be best to spec into the strength of the Warlock class: maximum recovery will recharge the all important shields and HP almost instantly, letting you get back into the action quicker with less time spent cowering behind cover.
Hunters
- Hunters are the fastest of all the classes by a wide margin and have the highest base Agility. The Bladedancer subclass in particular can run and jump at ridiculous speeds, and with Fleet Footed, you’ll be really ahead of the curve; no other class has a talent that directly increases sprint speed.
- Blink is notorious for being extremely aggravating to fight against, and combined with the high speeds of a Bladedancer, make them very difficult to track and counter. The biggest downside of Blink is that it offers little precision with jumping, so you find yourself jumping over or under your intended destination.
- Triple Jump is the ideal jump for PvP for those who aren’t using Blink because it lets you ruse around maps in ways that Glide and Blink don’t allow for. With Triple Jump you can jump over, around, and even underneath many pieces of cover and out-of-bounds areas.
- With the Triple jump, a favorite tactic of mine is jumping off the map with the initial jump (tricking your opponent into thinking you’ve fallen), then with the second/third jump you get back onto the playing field and go for the take down.
- Hunters also have Radiant Dance Machines, which lets you move faster as you ADS. Combine these with a MIDA Multi-Tool and you’ll move blisteringly quickly.
All things considered Hunters are by far the fastest and most agile class in Destiny. Because of this, they are the optimal class if you’d like to move quickly and use the increased mobility to gain the advantage.
The Gunslinger’s Triple Jump is the most user-friendly of all jumps; it’s something that we are all familiar with, unlike Glide and Blink. Triple Jump is very easy to learn but difficult to master while Blink is both difficult to learn and master, and cumbersome with its cooldown.
Of course the downside to playing with a Hunter is their low Armor and Recovery, but as long as you move fast enough to avoid the shots or tactically retreat when it gets too rough, you’ll be fine.
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Light on Your Feet
It’s definitely worth trying out each subclass in PvP, you may enjoy the increased speed from a Hunter but find that you just can’t live without a certain grenade from a Titan.
As alluded to in the Aiming chapter, a high controller sensitivity causes your Guardian aim, turn and move quicker.
Benefits of a high sensitivity:
- Jumping and turning in the air becomes a lot easier. Navigating through the air while jumping works best with Glide and Triple Jump.
- Allows you to turn corners quicker, more sharply, and increases the control of your jumps.
The high sensitivity combined with Destiny’s great jumping mechanics are the perfect setup for some awesome parkour. Take advantage of Bungie’s obsession with coding every little ledge and pebble on the maps.
- Keep your eyes open for ledges, rocks, boxes, and pieces of cover that you can jump on to gain a new line of sight on the battlefield. One of my personal favorites is the broken wall to the right of C flag on Rusted Lands. Jump up here and snipe the top of the water tower where Alpha team loves to snipe from; no one expects anyone to be up here.
- Or jump on the wall and triple jump into the air, offering you a clean Rocket Launcher shot at the very center of B flag, obliterating anyone who is trying to take it without exposing yourself to any danger.
- Keep these ledges and rocks in mind as you retreat from a fight; everyone expects you to jump over a rock and keep running. No one expects you to jump on the rock, double jump jump off, turn around a toss a grenade at your pursuer, turn back around, jump one last time, slide as you hit the ground, and then keep sprinting to keep your momentum. Use things you run past as cover.
- Consider which weapon class you are holding while running. Rocket Launchers weigh you down the most, followed by LMGs. Handcannons are the lightest of all weapons and don’t slow you down at all.
- Assault, Scout, and Pulse Rifles slow you down by about 1-3 meters per second. All secondary weapons slow you down by about 3-5 meters per second. If you want to get somewhere as quickly as possible, equip your primary weapon.
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Maximize Speed
Destiny is a very mobile game. The Crucible is a very different beast than traditional FPS games and should be played as such. Top-tier PvP players take advantage of all movement options available to them and slaughter those who ignore these options.
If I could condense everything in this article into a single sentence, it would be this: Never stop moving and never stand still.
The Crucible is no place for mercy, so keep these tips in mind next time you’re slaying! For more “Crucibible” be sure to check out the previous chapters.
What’s your favorite class to play as? What tips do you have for getting around rapidly?
Chapter 4 of the “Crucibible” will be all about Supers. We will discuss how the charge rate works, the numbers behind Intellect, what each Super is best (and worst) for, countering each Super, and a myriad of other topics.
As always, feel free to discuss your own PvP techniques.