3) Dress to Kill
Just as with your weaponry, the Iron Banner lifts all limitations off of your armor. This is one of the main reasons lower level Guardians are recommended not to enter. While weaponry is important, it can be avoided. A player highly skilled in traversal can dodge most bullets. But what happens when you can’t dodge? This is where your attire steps in.
As with your arsenal, legendary and exotic armor should be the uniform for the event if you can manage to collect some. Most high level Guardians will will have an armor rating well over 1000 making it much more difficult to kill them. Instead of getting upset over their lack of dying, you too can become nearly unkillable just like your foes. This will require a lot of grinding.
Exotic and legendary armor require ascendant shards in order to upgrade them to their fullest potential. Ascendant shards are an extremely rare material that got upgraded to legendary status during the last Destiny patch. They can be obtained by completing the daily heroic mission on a higher difficulty, playing the Vault of Glass, salvaging legendary armor, rare or legendary armor engrams, or rarely through public events. The only method that guarantees shards, however, is the salvaging of legendary armor.
Once you have your shards and other necessary materials, it is time to upgrade. This is where your strategy should differ from weapons the most. It is recommended that you upgrade all weapons you use so that you are prepared for any situation. Due to the increased rarity of legendary and exotic armor (as opposed to weapons) it’s recommended that you focus on armor that you know you are going to keep. You can only equip one piece of exotic armor at any given time so choose wisely.
What makes exotic armor so special is that they have subclass specific boosts. This is a great way to really fine tune your build as you prepare for the Iron Banner. Once you have your subclass locked in, just pick the piece of armor that has the boost you want and upgrade. These invaluable boosts range from an extra shot with the Hunter’s golden gun, to your Warlock instantly recovering all its health upon activating their supercharge ability.
Aside from the subclass specific bonuses some things to keep an eye out for when choosing armor are the intellect, strength and discipline stats. Intellect affects your super abilities’ cool down timer so if your super is an integral part of your strategy look for armor that boosts this particular stat. Strength focuses on your melee ability and Discipline focuses on your grenades. While it may be difficult to cherry pick exactly what stats you want, you should always keep an eye out for the next best thing.
There are also other boons to your Guardians such as cool down bonuses for certain actions, and the ability to carry more of specified ammunition types. For all of you special and heavy weapon aficionados, these are bonuses you should definitely keep an eye on. Being able to carry extra ammo for your favorite weapons means more slaying with less ammo hunting.
Since exotics and legendaries are difficult to come by you can always save up your hard-earned Vanguard and Crucible marks. If you are at least reputation level 2 with whatever vendor accepts these marks as payment, you will be able to purchase legendary armor. For exotics, save up your motes of light and strange coins for Xur who appears in the tower every weekend with select exotic pieces for sale. He always has one piece of armor for each class priced at 13 coins, a weapon for 23 coins and an engram for 23 motes of light.
Whatever it takes you must make sure that you equip the best possible armor you can if you want to succeed. While the Crucible focused solely on skill with its leveled playing field the Iron Banner will not be as forgiving. Your armor will make all the difference if you are forced into a direct confrontation. So dress the part and destroy any Guardian who crosses your path.
