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Destiny 2 has launched its new season this week, and there’s plenty of intriguing new content to explore, from new battlegrounds (think mini-strikes), to the new HELM Vanguard base of operations, which functionally acts as a dedicated private space for you to accomplish many tasks that you need to do between missions. However, for my part, the one aspect of the new Season of the Ascended that excites me the most isn’t a new activity or a new location – it’s a specific new weapon, and the style of play it engenders. ; Ticuu’s divination has been the most entertaining new weapon in the Destiny universe for a long time. If a flaming explosion arc with tracking abilities doesn’t pique your interest, you may be playing the wrong game.
You will notice that I didn’t say this was the most powerful or “best” exotic weapon. While three days is far too little time to assess the balance of a powerful new weapon, or where it will fit into the game’s meta, my first feeling is that Ticuu’s divination is carefully crafted to require skill. and a smart game to capitalize on its most complete. Unlike the infamous Gjallarhorn, who practically took over everyone’s exotic slot machine at the time, this new arc doesn’t feel like it far outstrips everything else on the scene.
On the contrary, Ticuu’s Divination earns my praise for being so remarkably fun and for the way it encourages a totally unique playstyle. After years of playing the Destiny franchise, I’m drawn more to the novelty of the playstyle than the overwhelming power. If anything in the game requires me to think or play differently, that’s a winner. And that’s why this new bow immediately won my enthusiasm.
At first glance in its description, Ticuu’s divination may seem a bit confusing. When he shoots from the hip he shoots three arrows, and if you have marked targets before the shot, these arrows have an impressive ability to focus on said targets and light them up with a not-so-subtle flame effect, dubbed the Sacred Flame. The initial hit doesn’t do much damage – it’s the follow-up that’s the kicker.
The Sacred Flame explodes when the target dies or when hit by another Sacred Flame explosion. Plus, if you switch to aiming down, your “causal arrows” instantly trigger the explosion, dead or not. What if that downsight shot is a precision shot? Even more damage on the explosion.
In practice, the bow encourages players to constantly vary their shooting style. In the past, some Destiny bows were masters of shooting from the hip, and others were all about aiming accuracy. Ticuu’s Divination requires you to use both in concert, lining up punches and chain reactions through clever play, while requiring precise aim and timing to pull off those precision shots. As I shoot, I find myself quietly intoning the line from the X-Men comics I read years ago, as mutant hero Boom Boom rushes into battle with his slogan of “tick, tick , tick … Boom! “
Beyond that, the other aspect of the new arc that is so exciting is its potential for group play. While Ticuu’s divination goes well solo, the nature of the perks it provides allows for synergistic play with your teammates. If someone else’s bow has installed holy flames on your enemies, you may be the one to set off the explosions. This means that good teamwork can result in a near-constant firestorm of cascading explosions, which is both brutally effective and visually exciting.
Bungie has made a very smart choice in deploying this weapon on the player base, since the developer has made it free to all players, and available at start of season. If you’re a season pass owner, you can grab the bow right away at season one level and start going into town. And even if you don’t own a Season Pass, you can still earn it on the Non-Paid Season Route at level 35. Due to so many players having access to it, a good deal of the synergy potential The weapon’s teamwork is on display in these early days of the season. Players are naturally trying out archery in all kinds of activities right now, so we can see a lot of insane solar explosions as even random players in match squads are constantly triggering each other’s explosions. In determined and structured teams, the potential is even higher. Consider if instead Bungie released the arc as a hard-to-obtain random drop, or at the end of a long questline – the potential for players to play with this new toy together would be much lower.
Finally, (and I realize that’s just a plus for our traditional-minded Guardians), Ticuu’s Divination is a wonderfully fun concept in the ever-weird fictionality of the Destiny universe. A Cabal weapon, made by the Psions, the bow is itself a kind of time machine, playing with causality and the natural passage of time, finding futures in which the heads it hits ” already had arrows’ embedded in them, then selecting this future. Like many of Destiny’s best weapons, the writers at Bungie have created a surrounding fiction that makes Ticuu’s Divination even more appealing, and its artists have accentuated this story with the spikes and sharp curves of its distinctive visual style.
After dozens of exotic weapons collected, and years to shoot them On the battlefields of the Destiny universe, the best new additions aren’t the ones that break the game and require everyone to use them until they get nerfed. Instead, it’s guns like Ticuu’s Divination that keep me coming back, eager to experience the new twists on action and playstyle in what remains one of the tightest shooting experiences on the market. .
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