You can plausibly just do the heroic strikes at 340 Light if you’re a very talented player with a good fireteam, but your damage will be reduced by about 30 percent. But before you can tackle them, you have to get to the recommended 350 Light. This year, the rewards make heroic strikes worthwhile. Last year, since the loot from basic strikes could get you all the way up to the pre-raid cap, there was no reason to bother with heroic strikes, which are harder and take longer. That means blue engrams will not get you to the endgame this year - in fact, they’re obsolete as soon as you finish Rise of Iron’s campaign. If you were playing T he T aken King, you probably started Rise of Iron at close to 335 Light and, if you play through the new story campaign, you’ll get 340 Light gear for most of your slots as mission rewards. Blue engrams now decode to items with a maximum Light of 340. This year, things are a little more complicated. Light is the stat that dictates everything that matters about your character in Destiny The most efficient activity turned out to be grinding the basic strike playlist. That meant that the most efficient way to get blue engrams was also the most efficient way to raise your Light to 300. The path to raid-readiness was pretty simple at the launch of The Taken King: The cap at the expansion’s release for all activities outside the raid was 300 Light, and the maximum Light level of an item decoded from a blue, or rare-quality, engram was also 300. You will continue to get incremental upgrades from repeating that activity until you hit 365 Light, which is the cap for that exercise.Īfter that, you’ll continue to get gear at 365 Light, but you’ll need to find an activity with a higher cap to raise your Light level further. If you do the same activity again when you’ve upgraded your gear to 354, you’ll probably get items with up to around 357 or 358 Light. That means that if you are Light level 350, and you’re doing an activity that can drop gear up to 365, the drops you will get will be between 351 and 354. In Destiny, the Light level of the drops you get is dictated by the quality of the gear you have, up to a cap that defines the maximum quality of gear a certain activity can provide. If you’re a PvP player, and you enjoy Iron Banner or Trials of Osiris, you need to get your Light level as high as possible, because you will encounter players with the highest possible Light in those activities, and any deficit will put you at a disadvantage.Enemies in the later fights of a raid typically have a higher Light level than those in the earlier fights, so you’ll want to get your Light as high as possible before tackling this. For the weekly Nightfall strike, you need a Light level of 360.You need a Light level of 350 for the heroic strike playlist and the daily heroic story mission.You should be well above this by the time you finish the Rise of Iron campaign. For the basic strike playlist, you need a Light level of 320.Here are the targets you’ll need to hit in Rise of Iron:

The short version, however, is that you need to get your Light up to compete in endgame activities. If not, you may want to check out the explainer in last year’s guide. So, if you played T he T aken King, you know how this works. The Light system had a major overhaul for the release of T he T aken King, but Bungie didn’t change it this year. And, if an activity has a higher Light level than your Guardian, your damage in that activity is reduced by about 3 percent for each point you find yourself below the recommended level. It dictates how many cooldown-reducing stat points you can get. It determines how much defense your armor offers. It determines how much damage your weapons do. Get your Light upĪs always, Light is the stat that dictates everything that matters about your character in Destiny. You’ll fall behind the most elite players.īungie’s marketing will still tell you that your Guardian is a legend even if you don’t clear the raid. 27, so the opportunity will be gone if you haven’t cleared the raid by then. The first week’s lockout will reset on Sept. The Rise of Iron expansion for Destiny dropped on Tuesday, and the expansion’s endgame raid, Wrath of the Machine, opens up this Friday, Sept.

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