Destiny’s Iron Banner returns tomorrow, and with it a massive infusion of PvP noobs like myself into the fires of the crucible. Lord Saladin sets up shop in the Tower starting at the weekly reset, only he’s bringing big changes to Destiny’s monthly power-enabled multiplayer event. The Iron Banner usually operates on a control playlist, where two teams of six fight to control three zones, each of which increase the number of points earned for an individual kill (a bit complicated), but tomorrow we get a straight 6v6 firefight in the clash playlist. Here’s Bungie senior designer Derek Carrol in a blog post:
“I’d expect to see a bit less Super ability usage, and a lot more shooting across the board, but good teams will work together and hold territory even without the scoring incentives that Control provided. This will be the first time we’ve played Clash with power differences enabled, so it will be interesting to see how power affects this most basic of 6v6 gametypes.”
Control always offers players some excellent opportunities to just camp outside of the fray and score easy kills, so we’ll if clash forces you to play fair. Those aren’t the only changes: last month’s Iron Banner fell pretty flat, with loot drops coming few and far between and not that exciting when they did arrive. I kept playing to get that wolfs head Hunter cloak, but that’s really the only reason. Bungie is giving us 20 percent more reputation for each Iron Banner win, increasing the rewards at all ranks, and offering reward packages at 3 and 5. Saladin is also selling artifacts, which will be a nice way to get a legendary item for alts.
More frequent loot will only be half the solution, of course. However, the real problem with the Iron Banner loot last time was that it inevitably dropped at a light level far below some players actual character, meaning that even if you really like it, it would mean untold trips to King’s Fall just to get the infusion trash required to make it useable. Endgame gear, on the whole, is almost entirely restricted to the King’s Fall raid, with some available in Trials of Osiris, but not in any way as reliable as the raid. You always want to avoid the game swinging too hard to any one activity, and let’s hope Bungie addresses this soon.
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