Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph S19

Last season was pretty mediocre, at least in my opinion. Burnout was a real thing. D2 hit its lowest player count since Curse of Osiris. While the dev team has heard the feedback about the seasonal model, which everyone seems to hate, it will take until S21 for some changes to be implemented. This weekend, we also saw the release of a new dungeon called Spire of the Watcher.

After the dungeon launched, the API went down. It was down for the whole weekend. This meant that DIM, the companion app, which features LFG, light.gg etc, were all down for a whole weekend. It’s probably because Bungie doesn’t work weekends and they’d rather underdeliver than overdeliver. I’m petty, but I don’t like these kinds of comments and opinions that came out of the GDC panel and their overall philosophy of not doing any crunch. I don’t call it crunch when you have people on hand to deal with issues after the launch of an expansion, a season, or a new raid/dungeon. I just call it common sense. I was stuck running my arc assassin’s cowl build for so long. I was lucky enough to have a fully transmogged IB PvP armor set on my character to switch over to do my comp placement matches. Comp feels so much better than quick play, holy f. Even though I played 2 2v3 matches. That should be illegal.

This was all in all pretty frustrating. I managed to do the dungeon thanks to discord. My last clan had a bunch of elitists, who played amongst themselves most of the time, congratulating themselves in front of everyone else, using some stupid app that everyone hated. Most of the people I had been playing with had either left or moved on.

They reprised the Ikelos weapons for the 3rd time. The only really interesting roll is the SMG that can come with voltshot, and can be crafted with enhanced voltshot. The other weapons include a solar glaive, a stasis 450 pulse, an arc trace rifle, a stasis aggressive frame LFR (with really shitty perks), a 900 rpm void LMG, and an arc bow. The seasonal exotic is a 900 rpm Veist SMG called the Manticore, which allows you to float, like Wings of Sacred Dawn while firing. It feels like a gimmick.

Revision Zero is an exotic pulse rifle with different catalysts, which will be obtainable on December 20th. In the first two weeks, we played through Operations Archimedes and Diocles as part of the quest More than a weapon.

They made getting red frames a little less grindy, which is cool. I’m only interested in the SMG. The other weapons are sort of average. The pulse isn’t bad. It can roll with Desperado, but since the nerf, it’s not as good. You can also get red frames from DSC. I haven’t run it yet, but you can get a guaranteed red frame once a week.

The story involves Clovis Bray and Rasputin. It looks like Bray will betray us. The final seasonal ink blot cut scene was already leaked. I won’t go into spoilers, but there’s no doubt, Bray is way too suspicious.

The seasonal activity is another 3-man battleground. In the playlist, the difficulty is always +5, so it’s a bit more challenging than before. For now, seasonal anti champion mods can’t be slotted into class items, so I’ve been using Bastion for unstops, a pulse for anti barriers. The 7 energy arms GL unstoppable champion mod is by far the easiest way to deal with them, especially with Witherhoard. However, it messes up my builds.

They’re also more generous with the umbral energy. I’ve already gotten an SMG with voltshot by focusing an engram. The seasonal ornaments are average. Nothing like Season 17. However the seasonal armor looks pretty good. It takes shaders well, and can get an interesting sheen with shaders like spectral indigo or photo finish. It looks good on all classes.

The Gyrfalcon exotic now grants volatile rounds upon exiting invisibility, which is awesome. You pair that with the aspect stylish executioner, you can keep proccing volatile rounds if you’re using a void primary. If you’ve got repulsor brace, you’ll keep getting void overshields. If you’re using Collective Obligation, the Vow exotic pulse, it’s a pretty insane combo. It’s definitely one of the best builds for hunter, up there with the omni wraith, caliban’s knife solar, and assassin’s cowl arc. I’m going to finally be able to tinker with my renewal grasp stasis build. One thing that ultra sucks on void, is the -30 stat penalty for some of the fragments. Holy shit. I have to run 40 mobility with 100 resil and discipline, because I’m loosing so many stats. It doesn’t help that my Gyrfalcon doesn’t have an optimal stat distribution. It’s a 60 meh roll, with not bad recovery.

On Titan, I’m still running the HOIL (which got an insane looking ornament in Eververse) storm lightning grenade build. Warlock was stuck on the Starfire protocol solar grenade build.