Published on: Apr 28, 2015 @ 03:45
This new monthly “super good advice” series will attempt to bring some lesser-known tips and tricks to the forefront.
Most of what you’ll read below came from the Destiny subreddit, so be sure to check out that for even more helpful content.
If you’re looking for answers to HoW-specific questions, we’ve got them in this article, so check that out if you’re fuzzy on how things will work on May 19th.
For more guides, click here.
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Make Use of Invisibility While On a Sparrow
This is a bit of an oddity, but a Bladedancer that’s properly spec’d for Invisibility can maneuver at speed throughout an environment while being treated as “invisible” by enemies for the duration of a Stalker or Escape Artist invisibility buff.
Simply crouch or melee a foe (with Shadowjack, preferably), and quickly board your Sparrow. You’ll have a few precious seconds to make your way unseen through a horde of enemies unnoticed, which can be really helpful in a Nightfall.
Although only Hunters can really use this to any positive effect, it’s definitely a worthwhile tip for those who like to skip more combat-intensive elements of Destiny’s PvE.
As noted in the first Reddit post detailing it, this technique can be used smartly to avoid the open “pike section” of the Winter’s Run strike. Hop on and zip by to safety!
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Wear the Corresponding Class Item When Collecting a Faction Package
Most of us have probably made use of this helpful tip without even recognizing it. Essentially, when you collect your faction package from the Postmaster, ensure that you have a class item of the corresponding faction equipped as well.
You’ll earn a helpful 125 bonus reputation on top of your rewards to get you on your way to earning your next rank.
Reputation is limited in large quantities; the Nightfall and Weekly provide big chunks of reputation, but there are only so many Vanguard/Crucible bounties you can do in a day. Get in the habit of always ensuring you’re wearing the right class item, and you’ll wonder how you ever survived without this piece of SGA![divider]
Survive Crota’s Oversoul Without Destroying It
A few of us have, at one time or another, found ourselves still standing following Crota’s Oversoul eliminating the rest of our fireteam. What was once thought to be an a bug that couldn’t be replicated, it was recently discovered to be a combination of several unlikely factors.
You need at least two Defender Titans with the Ward of Dawn ready to make this work. One most be spec’d for Blessing of Light, the other for Armor of Light. Have each team member stand inside, at full health, and they will be left standing… barely.
Both bubbles must be placed on top of one another. Anyone who’s still alive can then regenerate health and continue the encounter as normal.
This is a neat trick, but probably not anything that’s going to drastically alter your chance of success in Crota’s End. Someone had to have died in the first place to trigger the Oversoul, which means you’re already down one member. This works on Hard Mode too, but you also will likely be missing out on precious DPS before Crota’s Enrage timer triggers.
It could be a lifesaver in very niche situations, but is otherwise relegated to the realm of novelty.
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Crota’s Enrage Timer Begins When Your Team Triggers the Crystal Platform
Many teams have noticed that the Boomers and Crota’s movement timer don’t start until you exit the areas adjacent to the crystal. While this is true, the overall Enrage timer actually starts on a static counter from the moment your fireteam activates the “Presence of Crota” debuff by grouping together on the Crystal.
This is a useful tip for those who have been frustrated by frequently using up all of the time available to take down Crota on Hard Mode. If you’ve been taking your time on the Hallowed Knights, pausing to let everyone use a Heavy synthesis and to transfer weapons from their vault, and then wondering why Crota is getting angry before he reaches low health, now you know why!
Thankfully, you have a full 10 minutes & 25 seconds before the nasty Enrage begins, so make the most of that time by limiting dawdling and being aggressive enough to eliminate the Knights and Acolytes that harass your team.
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Sunsingers Do Not Need to Use Grenades to Spawn Orbs Under Radiance
Well you probably already know this one, but we’ve all been in the fireteam with the Sunsinger who suddenly forgets how to use his weapon when he uses Radiance. He flounders around throwing grenades left and right, and when the effect is up, you’re left with only a couple of orbs on the ground.
A Sunsinger can kill an enemy through any means and still spawn just as many orbs.
What does this mean for you? Well, you can let that not-too-savvy Guardian know that he can and should stick to firing weapons if he’s better at it. His Fatebringer or Truth is just as effective as Fusion or Solar Grenades under Radiance. You can even spawn Orbs from a distance with a Sniper Rifle!
Spread this one around. The promise of a dozen grenades is an alluring one, but the ultimate goal is to keep your DPS up and create enough orbs for your teammates to return the favor shortly after. Fingers on triggers, unless of course you’ll get more DPS out of the grenades!
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Manipulate The Spread of Your Shatter-spec’d Nova Bomb
Our hats are off to the attentive Guardian who figured out this neat trick. Reddit user /u/humble_squid brought this to the collective attention of the community with an informative and succinct video demonstration. By quickly sweeping your Guardian’s reticle from center to either left or right, you can widen or condense your Shatter pattern when using Nova Bomb as a Voidwalker.
Sweep left to lengthen the distance between explosions; sweep right to shorten it – or as humble_squid put it “lefty loosey, righty tighty.”
Now can you really take advantage of this in PvE or PvP? It’s up to you. You need to practice, certainly, and then you need to be able to quickly appraise where you’ll need to distribute your damage. Trying to take down a particularly bulky Ultra? You’ll want to go right. Are there three clusters of two Vandals evenly spread out? Left it is.
The utility you get from this mostly comes down to your own skill, so get out there and try it!
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Razor’s Edge Can Travel Through Bubbles
As if Ward of Dawn wasn’t already a little too porous, this tip allows Bladedancers to completely trivialize it. If one with Razor’s Edge parks outside and chooses the right vector, he or she can send a deadly pulse of energy into the bubble, neatly killing anyone in its path. Well, unless the Defender in question is using Armor of Light.
Situations in which it behooves you to adopt this strategy are probably few and far between unfortunately. You’re not always going to have your Super up at the same time as an opposing Defender, and unless he has a few of his friends in there with him, you’ll likely be better off picking off stragglers who got caught out within range of your lightning-fast slashes.
Still, for tight Control matches where a team is coordinated and taking advantage of the WoD cover, this could earn you some hilarious free kills. Of course, with the innate damage reduction afforded to you by Arc Blade, you could always just run in and use Showstopper.
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Re-Consider How You Fight Someone Who Abuses Blink
Anyone who’s played Crucible has had to deal with Shotgun Blinkers, and avoiding their warp-to-blast antics is a pain, to say the least. Most of us just backpedal and try to pull off a couple of lucky shots before we’re killed, but this SGA makes a case that this isn’t the best strategy.
Instead, try sprinting forward instead, forcing the Bladedancer or Voidwalker in question to have to turn around. You’ll have to turn around too, of course, but you can do this while running forward, while the unlucky blinker is locked into the animation until he or she lands.
You’ve got a much lower chance of winning an encounter of this nature if you’re sticking to your primary and trying to land a lucky headshot or two when they’re mere feet in front of you. You seize an element of control that you had previously forfeited when allowing your foe to close, and this levels the playing field somewhat.
You’ll have to judge where your enemy is going to land, though, and this is much easier in principle than in practice. If you misjudge, you could end up walking right into a face full of buckshot.
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Best Crucible Machine Gun? Xerxes-C With Focus Fire
This one is spelled out pretty clearly. The uncommon Xerxes-C has a perk you don’t see on many machine guns: Focus Fire, which increases the damage done per bullet while decreasing the overall rate of fire.
This perk isn’t available on Legendaries or Rares, so you’ll have to get lucky with a drop. The result is a weapon that will always kill in 2-3 shots, no matter what the situation. While its base stats are nearly identical to Jolder’s Hammer, this perk gives it an utterly unique niche in the Crucible.
This gun is a murder machine. If they’re already injured, two body shots will do them in neatly – otherwise they only have a second to react before they’re made into mincemeat by the Xerxes.
Focus Fire has the unintended benefit of artificially increasing both Stability and effective range by making the weapon easier to handle. It still only has a magazine size of 23, but it’s a great precision weapon for suppressing and dominating your opponents.
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You’ll Respawn Facing the Same Direction That Your Camera is Facing
This is another one of those little things that might go unnoticed by those of us in a hurry. Sure enough, if you are revived by a teammate or use Fireborn to self-resurrect, your guardian will show up back in the fray looking wherever you had moved the camera while dead.
While it’s not going to be a game-changer, it’s a nice quality of life SGA to help you do one of two things: you can either ensure you’re facing the enemy you want to engage the second you’re back up, or you can pick an escape route so you’re ready to sprint to safety. It’s good to get in the habit of practicing this until you’re unconsciously doing it. Then again, you could always just practice dying less.
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Exotic Armor Max Rolls
While not an explicit piece of advice, this list is useful for subjectively assessing the quality of your Exotic rolls.
| Type | Split Max | Max |
| Helmet | 77 | 136 |
| Gauntlets | 76 | 120 |
| Chest | 103 | 181 |
| Leg | N/A | 174 |
Keep an eye on our “Is That Worth Buying?” articles and aWrySharK‘s weekly “Notable Rolls” for opinions and analysis on the value of Xûr’s stock according to these upper ranges.
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Who’s Next Is Actually Useful
“A kill with the final round of the magazine increases reload speed.” This description makes this perk sound laughably bad for a lot of weapons. Unless you’re consciously ensuring your killshot always comes from the final round, how could you utilize this perk consistently? Well, it turns out the description is a little misleading.
User Dempseylicious23 explains: “Who’s next is a combination of Feeding Frenzy and Spray and Play more or less. 50% reload speed increase for 3 seconds after any kill, 150% reload speed increase after killing an enemy and emptying your magazine within 3 seconds.”
So, it’s a bit of a high-risk, high-reward perk with the helpful fallback of providing at least a slight boost to Reload Speed following any kill.
This means you should definitely test out this perk on any weapon that is otherwise appealing to you. You might have thought your Timur’s Lash that ended up with Who’s Next is worthless, but 150% Reload Speed following any kill is nothing to sneeze at.
Moreover, if you land a kill with the last or second-to-last round in it (and fire off the last shot quick enough), you basically have a Spray & Play level buff quickly refilling your mag. Not bad!
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What’s Your Advice?
We hope these pieces of Super Good Advice have been useful to you! We’ll be sure to keep an eye out on the Destiny community to continue to relay the advice of the best and brightest.
Have any SGAs yourself? Please feel free to share them with the community.