Destiny; Crucible Loudout

Hi guys,

Today I wanted to talk you all through my typical gear set up I use when playing the Crucible in Destiny! I will put my hands up right now and say I use one of the most typical loadouts in the Crucible at the moment, but I still wanted to walk you through what I use and why! Firstly an overall look at my loadout:

So at a glance it I use as a primary weapon the Thorn, a Shotgun(Matador 64) as my special weapon, and for my heavy I use the Wolves' Bane, which in my opinion is the best weapon to come out of the Queens Chest!

First let's look more closely at my primary weapon choice Thorn, it is one of a select few weapons that are currently considered the best in the game. If you have ever picked Thorn up they you will know that people aren't lying when they say this, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. It actually doesn't have the absolute quickest time to kill in the Crucible, that prize rests with The Last Word(a weapon I can't fully get along with for now). Some people say that you are a lesser player if you use the Thorn, however it is the weapon that I have the most fun with, and also how I perform the best. So I see no reason not to use it under the current balance scheme. It has the ability to kill an enemy with two shots to the head, and then the DoT(Damage over Time) will finish them off. The only exception to this rule are Warlocks wearing The Ram, in which case three head shots are needed to finish the job.

Lets look at the class and perks that I opt for in the Crucible.

So for my jump I use Blink(takes some getting used to but it's worth it), in my my super ability I use a AoE(Area of Effect) which sends out a circular blast radius around me. I use this when ever I'm in a tight situation, it doesn't always kill enemies, but it can give you time to prioritise targets! For my melee perk I use Fast Twitch which dramatically reduces the cool down of Blink Strike. There is no point in my opinion using the invisibility perk or the backstab perk, I don't find that either of these are as useful in moment to moment combat as a Blink Strike which is nearly always active. For my two passive perks(stat buffs) I have prioritised armour and agility, armour for obvious reasons, and agility because I want to be able to slide and immediately sprint again, which isn't always possible with low agility!

To partner with my aggressive play style, I use Quick Draw which means my weapons ready immediately, which partnered with quite high agility works very well! I could use Fleet Footed, which means I can slide further and reach a higher top speed with my sprint, I do use this from time to time, but I find the buff of Quick Draw very useful. Lastly I use Hungering Blade, this is a semi useful perk, but I use it partly because I really don't want the other two perks, the first increases the duration of arc blade for each kill. The second perk means you turn invisible after crouching in one place for a certain time, but again tying into my aggressive play style I have never done this in Crucible.

This brings me to the end of my class perk selection, I will briefly touch on my armour choices, though these are largely irrelevant. For my Legendary armour I either ware my gear that gives me level 34(for Iron Banner or Trials of Osiris), but the rest of the time I ware low level Legendary gear to give it some XP! My Exotic of choice is the Knucklehead Radar, which means that whenever I aim down sights with a primary weapon I can still see my radar. Possibly because I'm not a good enough player yet, but I rely rather heavily on the radar to know where people are, so always knowing I have a radar active is good to know!

Now let's move onto the meat and bones of the loadout, the weapons! As I mentioned earlier I use the Thorn as my primary weapon, this is always the slot that I use my Exotic in. I vary between the Red Death, Thorn and The Last Word, all of which are very powerful! For my secondary weapon I use the Matador 64.

I reforged it until I got Shot Package, which basically makes it affective at a greater range. I would not advise trying to reforge to get two perks of your choice, shot package in its own with this weapon will make it very affective! In a typical match I will probably get half of my kills with a shotgun, half with Thorn, or another primary, so a good shotgun is vital for me. I still plan to use this after the 2.0 patch has been released as sniping is a weakness of mine! Lastly there is the heavy weapon that I use!

The heavy weapon that I use is called the Wolves' Bane, this is a random drop from the large loot chest at the end of any level Prison of Elders(PoE). I love this weapon because it is quite a slow firing high damaging weapon, and can take an enemy out in very few bullets. It is more efficient to use a machine gun in place of a rocket launcher for my money, because you can get far more kills with it if you know what to do. The perks are of very little consequence, and once I get enough motes of light and weapon parts I will be reforging it to try to get a larger magazine perk!

There you go guys, my set up for Crucible matches as a Bladedancer, if you liked this then let me know on Twitter and I can release a guide for my Gunslinger!
Thanks for reading,
Ed