Keep things balanced in PVP, that's good. Continuously Nerfing the most effective weapons in PVE, however, would be bullshit.

@sammo21: The Sunbreaker, Stormcaller and Nightstalker returning were just rumors, but everything from that list of rumors that was posted has turned out to be true so far. So we will likely get one new and two old subclasses for each class. Which is disappointing to me still.

I am aware this will never happen, but what would make sense to me is to end up at a point where, before D3 comes out, you have two subclasses for each element in D2. So you launch will 3, then add one every year or so. Unfortunately, it is looking like it will actually launch with 2 (also not confirmed but since they avoid all questions of the third subclass it seems likely) and add a third at some point and that will be that.

@spaceinsomniac: I'm just afraid this new system gets a whole lot wrong and puts Destiny 2 in a worse position overall that Destiny 1 was. You likely won't see God Rolls (Firefly, HLS/Extended Mag, Triple Tap Scouts "Hung Jury roll" in PvE, or Rangefinder, Rifled Barrel, Hidden Hand/Luck in Chamber HC's for PvP) anymore for either PvP or PvE, or they will quickly be nerfed, the base stats of Weapons in the same archetype becomes meaningless (like which is better, Eyasluna, Palindrome, or *Lord High Fixer) because only the perks matter as they shape a gun's effectiveness far more than +5 AA, +10 base stability, or +15 more vertical recoil direction, etc. So what we end up with is meaningless base stats of weapons and perks that will be nerfed into the ground if 1 gun sneaks by Bungie's "lets not let Guardians have fun" Desk (ie John Wisniewski and Derek Carroll). Then think about what @zevvion was talking about how this effects the player experience. We go from solid Legendaries quickly and then searching for great Legendaries to gain power to just being thrown that power. What is going to happen is players will quickly find the top 10 guns for both PvE and PvP. Those weapons will drop in specific locations. Player will grind a couple hours, and obtain each of those weapons. So within the first month, all of the best weapons in Destiny 2 will be owned by the entire playerbase. So then, outside of playing Destiny 2 to help players, or just cause, what is the goal of playing Destiny 2 at that point? There is nothing to chase... Exotics I guess. But just wait for Xur to sell them each weekend and have enough ? currency to purchase his wares each weekend. Destiny 2 then gets stale far quicker than Destiny 1 ever did, and the player population will drop off a cliff much faster than what happened in Destiny 2, which is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a game like Destiny. Low population, as we are seeing right now in Destiny 1, is the biggest hindrance to finding groups and making the game a success. So in that respect, this is a bad move, especially for Bungie and Activision.

I do understand where you are coming from on the good for PvP side though. House of Wolves was arguably the best place, competitively Crucible ever was in Destiny. The two major reasons for that were Weapon Re-rolling and a set of common best Primaries (Hawkmoon, Thorn, Last Word, and Red Death) that were frequently used by the majority of players. This meant that players could easily create God Rolls of each weapon they had, and many were using Exotic Primaries with static rolls. Funny thing is, even though this was the most competitive (since players were using the most similar loadouts they ever did in Destiny 1's lifetime), this time period is also seen as one of the worst times in Destiny's history to play PvP. There were more complaints about The Last Word and Thorn during that time period than any weapons have ever seen in Destiny since (even more than the Matador hatred from early Rise of Iron). This is likely the place we will return to with Static Weapon drops. Ideally I would have liked to see more of what they were doing with Destiny 1 with rotating Vendor stock each week, and also re-implemented Weapon Rerolling with some adjustments (only 1 perk tree can be rerolled, and you only get 5 attempts before it's locked). Both of these would drastically reduce the RNG involved with drops but also maintain the search for loot that currently exists. But hey, that's just what I would have done.

Datto posted his thoughts on this. I thought his suggestions for what to do for extra versions of the same weapons were interesting, even though he doesn't think they will implement anything like that. I particularly like the idea of having +1 to +10 versions of a weapon that increases it's effectiveness in PvE. If they announce that each +LL of a Weapon, capped at like 10, increases the damage in PvE by 1%, it would really go a long way to changing my mind about static rolls in Destiny 2. Being able to gain up to 10% extra PvE damage would be great, but wouldn't hurt players without multiples. It would also make guns a sort of trophy to show off your +10 HC or Sniper. What do you guys think, would something like that get you on board with static rolls?

http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/824536/Destiny-2-news-release-date-beta-PS4-Xbox-One-X-PC

Saw this last night. For those worried about DLC content for Destiny 2 already, which I know there are some here, this news will likely belay those worries a bit. We've known for awhile that both Vicarious Visions and High Moon Studios were working in conjuction with Bungie to develop Destiny 2. According to Eric Hirshberg both will directly be working on DLC's for Destiny 2. It also appears that Hirshberg likes the idea of a 3 year content cycle for Destiny that involves a Major Paid DLC in September and two Minor Paid DLC's throughout the rest of the year, with a full Destiny release appearing in place of the Major DLC every 3rd year.

Now for a bit of speculation, it seems likely that we will see DLC 1 in December having been done in large part by one or both of these studios under the supervision of Bungie employee's. It is also likely that DLC 2 would then be done by the other studio. That would mean that likely both DLC 1 and DLC 2 have already been in development alongside Destiny 2 and this will be the formula going forward, which would give each studio a year or so to develop the Winter and Spring DLC's each year, allowing them to be substantially larger than The Dark Below or House of Wolves. This also allows the Bungie Live Team the ability to focus on Live Events like Festival of the Lost, The Dawning, and each year's April Update, which they have proven is about all that team can handle each year. It is also likely that the April Update (if it still exists under these new DLC plans) is moved out further, or closer to Summer. This would truly put Destiny in the place, content availability wise, that many in the community (which seems to include Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg) kind of expected.

@hestilllives19:

So I had a thought today. Take a random Destiny 1 legendary, let's say Three Little Words, since it was one of my favorite guns for a time. Look at the random perks that gun could have. Take the very best "god roll" you can think of, then the next best roll, and then the third best. Now take two other possible rolls, and ignore the worst rolls with perks that would be awful on that weapon. Finally, take those five specific perk rolls on the Three Little Words archetype, and give each of those five weapons a new weapon name.

What if this is how Destiny 2 will handle loot? What would be different than the current system? Not a lot. What if getting rid of random rolls just meant a lot more loot? In a sense, there wasn't random loot in Destiny 1 anyhow, since the developers knew darn well what perks could show up on each weapon. If done correctly, this will just give a specific name to each possible perk roll that would be worth keeping, and rid the game of rolls so bad that they might as well not even be an option.

@spaceinsomniac: In that sense random loot doesn't exist. Even Borderlands has pre-determinable perks on their guns.

However, you have a good point. They could increase the volume of different weapons to an extend that the number of (worthwhile) possibilities matches or even outmatches Destiny. There are some things that make me somewhat wary of that though. Weapons in Destiny feel premium unlike any other shooter that revolves around loot. Your gun is truly something unique. I can pick my favorites out of a line up, I can even spot them based on how much my health drops and how quickly, heck, I can identify them purely on sound. Creating these weapons was no doubt a serious task. If they took any one gun and made it into five unique guns, I'd say I am skeptical on how those guns would look, feel and sound. If they can do it, I'm all for it. But I was under the impression they don't really have time to spare.

@zevvion: @spaceinsomniac: Yeah, I honestly think that's what they are going for. But their track record of created Legendaries for Raids/Trials isn't promising. They tended to steer as far clear of those God rolls as possible after Fatebringer. If we get a lot of great guns in the mix like Fatebringer was, I'm all for it, but what I expect is we are going to get a whole lot of guns like Fever and Remedy, Genesis Chain, Atheons Epilogue, Fang of Ir Yut, Preydyth's Timepiece, Word of Crota, Steel Medula, Winged Word, Zeal Vector, etc. All of those guns are good, mainly because of their archetype, but the perk selection is bad or just inconsistent with what would be needed to truly make those guns great. We've only gotten a handful of truly amazing guns, and most of those were Y1 with a few in Y2 (Fatebringer, Vision of Confluence, and Glass Promontory are the few that come to mind). And as some people may not know, currently in Destiny each gun has hidden stats that can really change how specific perks interact and make rolls on specific weapons better. Take a look at the common HC's for PvP, Eyasluna/Palindrome/LHF. Palindrome Recoil Direction is 94, 90 for Lord High Fixer, and only 60 for Eyasluna. This stat determines how vertical vs horizontal the kick is on a fired shot, and in practice it means both Palindrome and LHF have pretty directly vertical recoil, where Eyasluna kicks hard up and to the right every shot. This is similar to having a built in Counterbalance on those two. This is a huge reason why I personally prefer those two HC's over Eyasluna. Palindrome also has 70 base AA, with LHF sitting at 65, and Eyasluna only at 50. This means each have more AA than a Eyasluna with Hidden Hand by 10-15 AA, as it only provides +5 AA. Many people though, prefer Eyasluna because it has a higher equip speed (quicker gun swapping and ADS speed) and Base Stability. Some also do not like LHF due to its max range being 3 points lower at 59 rather than 62 which makes dropoff happen about half a meter closer in PvP. These subtle differences don't effect the vast majority of players much, and wouldn't in a system like Destiny 2 has due to perks having a much larger impact on a guns performance, but they actually make each gun have a different feel to them, which tends to matter in the more competitive parts of Destiny like End Game PvP. It's just sad to see all of that becoming irrelevant.

I think the new system could be good, but it's success hangs largely on how many gun's overall there are, how many are created with good and purposeful rolls, and what the plan is for obtaining multiple copies of the same gun. I promise I'll have 20 or so Dead Orbit Auto's or Scouts, so if they allow me to level those guns up with each subsequent drop, I will feel much better about this system.

@pyrodactyl and @zevvion, if we only get 6 Subclasses now, I'm going to be a little bit upset because of the way Bungie is handling this mess.

https://twitter.com/knowsworthy/status/885530260371943425

In response to this question, "When are you guys going to announce Nightstalker? As a Hunter main, I'm feeling underwhelmed right now and probably switching to Titan lol.", Mark Noseworthy said "There are many things we are not going to announce or reveal before 9/6. We want the community to have new memories of discovery together."

My logical interpretation of this comment would be that Nightstalker (or another Void Hunter Subclass, though less likely otherwise they'd talk about those) is in Destiny 2, but that the Taken King subclasses return in a majorly impactful way within the story confines of Destiny 2 in a way that officially unveiling them now would harm one's experience of their reveal within Destiny 2. But I'm also hit with a heavy set of skepticism now, that this may just indeed be a way of avoiding the question of 9 Subclasses altogether because they are only launching with 6. If that is the case, I will actually be pretty upset at how they've handled this, because just ripping off the band-aid so to speak about only bringing forward 6 Subclasses into Destiny 2 would be much better for the community to understand. I really hope this situation turns into the former rather than the latter.

If there are indeed 6 subclasses this messaging strategy for Destiny 2 would be a repeat of the messaging for vanilla Destiny. Saying a bunch of vague things so people build their own expectations and deliver a game that will disappoint based on these expectations. Hopefully they aren't stupid enough to repeat the exact same mistake in a sequel built as the one that's going to fix the mistakes from the past.

Just a heads up for anyone, the Beta is up for pre-load on PS4 and Xbone. I think those links only work if you bought digitally, so try this link if you have a beta code already redeemed on bungie.net to choose your platform, or here if you need to enter one on bungie.net

@hestilllives19: @pyrodactyl: I'm with pyrodactyl. I actually think that was a bad move to tweet that no matter how you look at it. It seems heavily implied that the third subclasses are in the game, but if you want to keep it a secret, then why are you responding to this question in a way that conveys they are in the game? That just seems like a knee-jerk reaction to try and shush the negativity around the prospect of having only 6 subclasses in the base game. If they are not in the game, what the hell are you doing halfway-confirming that they are? That will lead to massive disappointment.

I mean, I guess I hope it is scenario 1 since that means no real damage done when playing the game when it's out. The only damage would be now, which won't matter in retrospect.

@pyrodactyl: @zevvion: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with all of that. It was a pretty dumb thing to tweet out either way. It's real bad if it turns out we are only getting 6, as this was basically a bald faced lie and they have continued to allow the community to believe their will be 9 Subclasses through speculation without confirmation. This is the kind of stuff where I wish Bungie would get their act together a bit more.

Striker has had almost every single ability that was previously revealed, adjusted or reworked entirely. It seems very different as a result. I am willing to see Striker be very strong in PvE now. As we have all experienced in the beta, Ward of Dawn doesn't seem as strong and necessary as it once was. Between Barricade and Healing Rift, there are now alternate ways of protection and the increased Super recharge only means that you will be 'wasting' your Super if you place a Ward of Dawn. I bet it will still be key to certain strategies in Raids and such, but I do not think you will see Ward of Dawn used often otherwise. Striker can clear more ads than Sentinel can and the Flashbang has always been quite powerful in PvE, especially if you have two grenade charges and even a way to instantly recharge your grenade.

Dawnblade has also changed more than a few perks since the first reveal. Most notably, Angel of Light was removed entirely in favor of something else. Attunement of Hunger for Voidwalker looks insane for PvP and Attunement of Chaos looks very potent for PvE.

It is quite interesting that we haven't been given a single perk cluster among any class for PvP to play around with. The beta only unlocks one perk cluster for you and they are all PvE centered perks. As a result, I have no idea which subclass I would prefer in PvP right now for several classes, though Voidwalker with Attunement of Hunger seems like a no-brainer if I am playing on my Warlock. Interestingly, I found that Sentinels have no perk cluster dedicated to PvP. They both seem oriented for PvE. Though Code of the Aggressor is obviously the better one in PvP, it is still geared heavily towards PvE.

I will update this as I find out more from these leaks. Though most of this is information that needs to be known by players quickly after launch, as many of these weapons will be dropping rather quickly for players, and they will need to understand how they work. As a side note, Destiny 2 is shaping up to be insanely massive if all of this is true, which it likely is, since the vast majority of this comes from the early release of the Official Strategy Guide for Destiny 2. Some of the information, like that about Adventures is just suspected due to Map leaks awhile back though.

Huge QoL improvement for Destiny 2. This was explained better in the TWAB but here is Mark Noseworthy's first mention of it. From the TWAB...

Tell us about this new system. When do rewards determine their power, and how is it determined?

Daniel: Rewards determine their power at the time they're earned. This means that, when an engram drops in Destiny 2, it decides its power at the time it drops. Also, when we roll rewards, we look at your character's level and your best possible gear to determine the power of the reward. This is true for Crucible end-of-match rewards, Engram drops, Strike rewards, etc. Note that some sources can still produce better gear than others; once you're exploring endgame content look for the "Powerful Gear" rewards in tooltips if you're hunting the best drops.

What gear do you use to determine a players best equipment?

Daniel: When we say "best possible gear," we look at what the best scenario is for your character across your account. This means that, if you are playing on your Hunter (like you should), we might use the Helmet you accidentally left in the vault, the Boots you just picked up but haven't equipped, and the Auto Rifle that you forgot to transfer from your Warlock. Gear on other characters, in the vault, in your inventory, or currently equipped are all compared to find the best loadout you could have.

That’s convenient! What if I have a level 20 Hunter and make a new Hunter so I can have 3 Hunters? Will all my drops be level 20 gear on the new Hunter? What if I've got a ton of Exotics?

Daniel: Nope! The system is smart enough to look at level requirements and make sure it ignores anything that is too high for the current character to equip. It also obeys equipping restrictions, so it understands that you can only equip one Exotic weapon and one piece of exotic armor and figures that in.

Okay, what about the contents of Engrams we haven’t decrypted yet? Are they included when you calculate my best possible equipment?

Daniel: While Engrams do set their power at the time they drop, they don't roll what they contain until the moment you decrypt them. As a result, best possible equipment can't use their contents in its calculations.

If Engrams set their power at the moment they drop, how am I supposed to know which ones have the best gear?

Daniel: Destiny 2's Engrams are pretty cool, because they'll tell you right on the tooltip what the power they dropped at is. This is the minimum power that will come out of the engram.

Also, as you can tell from this image, you Character now holds up to 10 Engrams at a time not in your inventory space of the spot it goes like in Destiny 1, another QoL improvement.

Update: In further news, a QoL unimprovement has been noted by the developer of Ishtar Commander via the API Docs. Apparently he found code allowing developers to see the numerical value of infusion from item to item. This indicated to him that we would be going back to The Taken King style Infusion Rates, something that caused huge backlash back during The Taken King and was updated in April 2016 (and remains to this day) for the betterment of Destiny 1, which is 100% Infusion. To see this be reverted back would be a huge mistake and honestly a very Bungie move in the always 2 steps forward and one leap backwards department. I don't know why they retcon some of the best decisions they make at times...

Any confirmation on this matter yet? Haven't got far enough to do infusion yet, but would like to know.

@galerian: Just did it, you know for Science. I put a 220 rare into a 205 Exotic... Said Exotic went to 225? Maybe Ishtar was correct, but our assumptions about Infusion were backwards since I received a gain of 5 Power, which coincidentally coincided with the same Power other armors were dropping at. I will keep testing this stuff. This could be a very good thing we weren't expecting.

@hestilllives19: Woah, that's cool if it means infusion is tied to your max power level.

@galerian: Looks like it's 100% Infusion within a certain Power Level. The reason I got a +5 to my Exotic is because my Exotic had a +5 Armor Mod which wasn't in the Infusion calculation. Hope this clears things up a bit.

@hestilllives19: Ah, so that's what is it. I also got the same result as you with the exotic that were given by an NPC.

@zevvion: Another tip to get gears past 260 is to turn in your milestones (that reward legendary) after you reach 260

@zevvion: A couple things to note, Exotics drop at their Power Level when they drop, your Guide makes it sound like you should hold on to them which isn't the case. Whatever they drop as they will always be so go decrypt them as quickly as possible since they don't give you that light until then. You didn't mention the Flashpoint. You should probably have a list of all of the Powerful Gear Weekly Milestones like: Nightfall, Flashpoint, and Crucible Weekly. Maybe also include future Weekly Milestones like Leviathan 9/13, Trials of the Nine 9/15, and Iron Banner next month (date unannounced). Also, you might mention the special "Faction Rally" event that happens on 9/26, as those are sure to include higher level gear, likely Powerful Gear since they held those Factions until then. I might would also make a section on what to do Post Campaign between like 200-260. Personally I've found just doing Adventures, Public Events, and Lost Sectors all at the same time is by far the fastest way to level between that timeframe. I would have thought it would have been doing the Strike Playlist, but that was terrible for getting my Power Level up. I would also however suggest holding onto all of your Vendor Mats until after you hit 260 because grabbing a ton of packages at 260ish from Devrim and the like would have boosted me way past 260 pretty quickly and set me up nicely for my Weekly Milestones. Too bad I didn't do that, but hopefully my stupidity can help others. Nice guide though Zev.

@hestilllives19: I'll update this in a bit, I'm too busy playing and occasionally eating. In regards to the Exotics, the projected Power level it gives you before decryption is not accurate. I had one that claimed it would be 250 Power and it turned into a 272.

@zevvion: Thank you for this! This is the best guide I've found, mainly because it gives the light level caps.

Question as someone that didn't play Destiny 1:

Is there anything to avoid doing during the main story that could hinder you at endgame?

I heard Brad mention on the podcast something about not using a certain type of item/currency right away as it is better used later on (unfortunately I can't remember exactly what), so that's the kind of thing I want to be aware of.

@tommytours: I'm not sure what he was referencing but if I had to guess it's the Planetary Vendors. But a lot of that is Brad not understanding the game fully. If you spend those items at the Vendor all it does is Level him up to 1 and hold onto an Engram you can't pick up until you hit Level 20 anyways. It also appears to not roll that item until you hit 20 anyways, so it's not like you are even missing out on Power. I would hit up those Vendors right after hitting 20 to go obtain as many Engrams as possible to start the Power Leveling process at 20 anyways, so it isn't a big deal. The only way to miss out, is if it rolls the Power at 20 and you wait several hours to go see him and that Power is now irrelevant (but even so, it's only 2 items, you will live). You are probably better off not Leveling Vendors up until 20 anyways, but it shouldn't hurt you if you do.

He was referring to the engram rewards (engrams are the glowy-glowy 12 sided dice things) you get from random drops and various vendors in the social space.

Engrams are random rewards and their power in D1 was determined by the players power when you turned them in. You would typically only get them randomly as they fell off an enemy you killed. So for example--in D1 you pick up a purple engram in a mission then you rush to the tower and put on all the highest number gear you have THEN you turn it in.

In D2 engrams decrypt at the power level the player is at the time they pick it up. SO to get back to your specific question--after the story is over, there are quests that have rewards in the form of guaranteed Legendary (purple) engrams. Because they technically "drop" at the time you get them from the vendor, it is best to wait until you've hit Power level 260+ to accept the reward from the vendor.

Those rewards can unlock at +/- 5 power to what your current level is--so if you pick up an engram reward at level 220 it will give you something anywhere from 215–225. So the best course of action is to run public events and strikes to get random drops that will get you to 260--THEN when you've hit that number, complete your milestone quests and accept the purple engrams from the vendors in the social space.

@superdomino: @hestilllives19: Ok thanks, that clears up my confusion to an extent (I've only played past the main title to the slightly jarring switch to 3rd person area, so I've yet to encounter engrams).

@tommytours: @superdomino: Oh, so he was talking about doing Weekly Milestones for Powerful Gear not the Planetary Vendors? That makes sense, yeah, those are two very different things. But you have to kind of go out of your way to start obtaining Powerful Gear rewards so I'd assume players are getting close to that 260ish mark before they even attempt Powerful Gear activities anyways. This is also a bit hard to explain at the same time because while you don't want to do Powerful Gear activities under Power 260 Tuesday - Saturday, you probably should make sure to do them Sunday - Monday no matter your Power Level as all of those activities are on Weekly Resets and if you don't finish them up they no longer exist (note: if you finish the activity and let reset happen without decryping them, those vendors keep the items but autodecrypt them at reset time based on your current gear, so you won't lose the items if you've finished the relevant activities) so you might as well obtain them for as much impact as they can give at that time. The things you may want to wait on for sure though are finishing the World Quest activities, or Blue Missions on each planet after the Campaign has concluded. There are 16 of those which lead to very lucrative 260+ rewards. Those are 1 time missions per character. The ones players might be "wasting" I would have to guess would be Clan Rewards, as those are always 260+ as well.

Important note: if damage scaling works like it did in Destiny 1, there is almost no benefit to being overlevel in PvE. Running a normal Nightfall at 240, 280 or 300 doesn't change anything.

So to anyone who doesn't care about being ready for the raid in one week you can stop reading this thread. Just play the game and complete milestones, you'll be fine. Optimizing power turns the game into a very transparent threadmill. If you just go through it organically you can do everything without following guides or any of that dumb shit. You'll be ready for the raid (280) in 2 weeks no problem.

@pyrodactyl: I agree, for casual players, none of this really applies. Though there are a lot of people that don't like to feel like they've wasted time, which is what doing things out of order does in a game like this. When I get some free time I want to put together a list of more appropriate Level 20 plus guide, that walks through how to do things like the Heroic Public Events, what they are, Adventures, Lost Sectors, etc. It will have a section to explain Powerful Gear, but not be designed specifically for getting players Raid Ready, more for informing them about the game's system to be understood.

Not sure where to post this, as there isn't a general tips topic. But I haven't seen anyone say this, and I didn't realize this until today. Mods that add +5 (purple legendary mods) don't actually count towards your base number. So your Power Level isn't what it actually shows you. I mean it is, but in terms of engram/faction drops and infusing, it isn't.

So lets say you have two weapons or armor pieces. One is 265 and has a legendary mod, the other is 265 and does not have a legendary mod on it. The first one with mod is actually only 260. You can infuse the 265 without the mod into it and increase it by 5 points. Making that a 270 now. This is also why, like me, you can be power level 289, but are only getting 275-8 engram drops. Its because your actual base power level isn't 288. Its more like 265 (or lower) without all those mods.

I was struggling to understand why I couldn't get past 275-ish for 50 hours. The I found this and instantly went to 289. I was just dismantling all those 265-270 legendary's without realizing they were that power without mods. So infusing them increased all my gear each by 5 power. At which point all faction/engram drops jumped a few points, and then a few more.

@spamfromthecan: Yeah, I've told a few people this too. I'll sit down at some point and make a general tips and level up guide type thing. That will be on there. I also want to make a Raid Guide for Leviathan, but I figure I should probably beat myself a couple times first.

If you're power level is displaying 288 with mods, the lowest your true power level can be is 283 (not 265), since every mod is +5. The reason you're getting engrams in the 270s is because regular engrams drop under level past 265. The only drops that will level you up in the endgame are powerful rewards from specific acitvities (nightfall, weekly milestones, raid, etc.) and exotic engrams.

Not exactly. And yes the 265 was a typo, that should have been 275, but even that was still off by 3.

But, each item can have a +5 mod. Doing it like you're saying would mean that only one mod doesn't count. I'm pretty sure they factor it with some equation that makes each mod then deduct one extra point. So you have 5 armor and 2 weapons with a mod. That would be 11 power (5 + 6 ones). Which explains why at 289, faction items are 11 points less and 278. So the faction level items power is your true base power I believe.

And you don't have to do any of those activities to keep progressing. Yes those give you higher gear level than you are and will progress much faster. But as you slowly progress with faction and regular drops you will slowly move all items by 1-3, possibly 5 points. Because all those legendary items drop without a mod installed.

Power is a straight up average of all your gear. If every piece of gear you have is 280, you are power 280. If you put a +5 mod on every piece to bring them all to 285, you're 285. Mods can only increase your overall power level to a maximum of +5.

As for leveling from regular engrams/packages, it only works if you have pieces of gear that are falling behind. If your engrams are dropping at 280 and you have a piece or two of gear that has an unmodded power level under 280 (or modded level under 285), that will help. However, if all your gear has unmodded levels above 280 or modded levels above 285, engram and package gear will do absolutely nothing towards increasing your true power level under any circumstances.

Also, mods do not increase your faction and engram power cap. All it cares about is your true unmodded level.

Well, I don't know what to tell ya then. I've gone all the way to 299 today only using regular drops and faction gear. No raid, only one knightfall, no weeklys. Just regular content and faction engrams. I got two exotics from heroics, but even that going by what you are saying couldn't have been enough. So it is what it is. I did what I said and went from 275 to 299 in 8 hours of game play. Solo. No special end game rewards. I moved clans this week and didn't even get anything good from completing the knightfall.

And I didn't say mods increased your faction rep. I don't think you fully read or understood what I wrote. I think there is a disconnect. I said your faction level is your true power level minus the mod buffs.

Faction packages and engrams drop 5 under your true power level. Obviously I don't know exactly what your gear situation was and what drops you got, but the way I explained it is how the drops work. Also, your visible power number of equipped gear is not exactly what the game looks at to determine your drops. It looks at everything you have, whether it's equipped, in your inventory but not equipped, or even in your vault. It determines your highest possible power level based on all of that and determines the power of your drops based on that.

@spamfromthecan: Exile is right. Your Power Level is an average of exactly what your gear drops are. It's always been like that for Destiny. So having a true 280 Power Level with zero Legendary mods would increase your displayed Power Level to 285 exactly if you put a Legendary Mod on every Piece of Gear (of which Kinetic Weapon Mods are very hard to create, as they are very RNG based). I haven't personally looked up if Legendary Mods count towards your True Power level or not, but from personal experience I was getting about a 10 Power drop with zero Legendary Mods, and I'm still getting a 10 Power drop with all Legendary Mods equipped, so I would assume that they do count towards that True Power level. That 10 Power drop is in reference to the difference between your Power Level and the Level of Vendor Packages (because Factions aren't in Destiny yet, not until later in the month) and other Rare or Legendary drops that aren't Powerful Gear drops (ie Illuminous Engrams or Exotic Engrams). But like Exile has said, Destiny now also takes into consideration what your highest possible Power is in any given slot. So if you have say an Exotic Helmet, Exotic Chest, Exotic Gauntlets, and Exotic Boots, and the same for Weapons, all with your highest possible Power Levels, it will actually take the power of each of those rather than your highest equippable loadout. The only caveat to this is that it considers Hunter/Warlock/Titan Armors completely different Armor, so say you level up a Titan to 20, it will not take your Warlocks who is 280's Armor into consideration, only his weapons, because it deems you do not have 280 Titan Armors. The only way to make meaningful progress via normal non Powerful Gear drops is if you have slots that are vastly superior to others. So if I created a new character and hit 20, but I have Power 300 weapons across the board, and I pulled my Armors to 260, I would actually still be making progress via Vendor Packages and Rare drops simply because my 300 Weapons are dragging my -10 Power drops up because those 300 Weapons are skewing my overall Power Level higher than what my current Armors are. Another point after hitting 280 and being able to infuse everything +5 with Legendary Mods is that you just jumped to 285 meaning that -10 is now 275, so if you have any piece that is dragging behind, say Boots at 265+5 (LM), a 275 Boot brings your entire Power Level up to 286. To do this though, you would have to have, like both Exile and I said, at least 1 outlier Weapon/Armor that is 295+5 (or more likely 2-3 at 5-8 Power). I hope all of this makes sense. If you went from 275-299 in 8 hours, somehow you broke the game. I don't know if that is even possible from a couple Flawless Trials cards which each drop like 7 Powerful Gear drops and at least 4 -10 drops and is easily the best source of Power leveling in Destiny right now. That gap took me a week to climb doing every Powerful Gear activity in Destiny 2 this week on 3 characters, which included 3 Flawless Trials cards, and reaping 8 Powerful Gear rewards from the Clan (Trials and the Raid are only 10 Power drops).

Is it just me, or does being above the recommend power level not actually matter? I mean for example, in the nightfall, I don't seem to do anymore damage based on a 245 build than with a 300 build. And I don't seem to take more damage before dying. Am I testing this wrong? Or whats the deal here. I have to be doing something wrong right, why would they cap your power level based on recommend. This wasn't the case in the first game.

First column is power level, second is the critical damage to an enemy at point blank range using better devils hand cannon.

Yellow bar Acolyte

• 238->281
• 245->292
• 273->292
• 303->292

Normal Acolyte

• 238->561
• 245->583
• 273->583
• 303->583

That's correct, the game is designed so that you are always scaled down to the power level for an activity. If you are below the requirement you will feel weak, but at no point you become overpowered.

It's a design choice common in MMOs, Guild Wars 2 also scaled you down to the level of the mobs in the area you currently are, because otherwise you would get bored with the shooting if there was no challenge because you 1-shot all enemies in the body while replaying earlier missions.

Well that is stupid and makes playing post story content completely pointless. So now I literately have no reason to play this game ever again. I've already played it more than I should have since every second of post game I played was pointless. The second I reached 240 it was over. Yet I wasted hours and hours to get to 300 apparently for no reason. What a joke. The whole point of grinding to level up is to feel powerful, and to make things slightly easier. But I guess that is a concept bungie doesn't understand.

@spamfromthecan: The Raid recommends a power level of 270 (maybe it caps around 280 for realsies) and the prestige raid is going to require power of 300, so not quite entirely pointless. But I see your complaint.

Just in time for the PC release, I updated this thread and changed some of the things we assumed were the case, but discovered through community testing how they actually work. The OP should now have more accurate information. It's worth a read if you are wondering what to do or how certain things affect your gameplay.

@zevvion: Wow, is that true about hitting Level 20 from 15 if you just finish the Campaign? I legitimately didn't know that. I honestly finished the Campaign on alts at 20 already though.

Also, the Recommended Leviathan Power Level is 270, besides the fact that it's what it says in game, http://www.ign.com/wikis/destiny-2/Leviathan (I only linked this because this was surprisingly hard to confirm as most people were just talking about the Luke Smith 260-280 comment). Along these lines I think you should probably talk about both the Normal Nightfall Recommended Power Level in that section of 240 and both the Prestige Nightfall and Raid at Power Level 300.

Other than that, the guide is looking really good, good job Zev. I think the only things I would add is recommending players in the post Level 20 to 260 Power Range to do Heroic Public Events, maybe a Video Guide on how to complete each Heroic Public Event, Datto has two good videos about it, and suggest doing Lost Sectors while waiting on Public Events to Spawn. I know several people who wasted a lot of time doing Adventures and the Heroic Strike Playlist thinking those were good sources of Gear at that time, and they aren't. You might also mention the Medalions (maybe even the Poptarts Motes Promotion), how Eververse works, advise that the Purchase of Bright Engrams is completely unnecessary, etc. Since this will be pretty much the only Guide here for players hitting Level 20, it should probably hit all of these points. Seriously, good job though.

Edit: Man, I feel like I'm telling you a lot of stuff that probably needs to be mentioned but you might also make a section for Subclasses. Talk about which ones are good, which Exotic Armors make them Shine and why. If you need help with any of this just let me know. I can write something up and send it to you in a PM for you to look at and edit if need be.

@hestilllives19: It may have changed with updates but the last time I ran through the story the last level-gated mission was 17, so you had to be at least that. But yeah, after you do the post-story "talk to everyone" thing, you get bumped to level 20 if you're not there already. My Warlock had been level 20 for a long time before I finished the story, but my Hunter was 17 when they beat it, and Titan was 19. Both were bumped up.