The Destiny 2 Iron Banner for Season of the Seraph Is a Discouraging Grind

Destiny 2’s Season of the Seraph will soon conclude its first week of Iron Banner and I've been struggling to pour the usual grind needed thanks to the current meta and this season’s Iron Banner game mode. It’s a discouraging mix that I'll unlikely make even one reset this week. 

Iron Banner - Season of the Seraph

The grind itself is already punishing as you need to spend a good amount of time to even complete one rank reset. But this isn’t the problem as last Season (Season of Plunder), is proof that with a decent meta, and an adrenaline-inducing game mode like Eruption, the grind isn’t so bad when you’re having fun.

This isn’t the case this season as I could not stomach even two hours of playing Iron Banner. Matches for this week-long event are filled with Guardians wielding the crazy effective Dead Man’s Tale Scout Rifle and Void Titans with a Super at the ready. 

Dead Man’s Tale is an Exotic Scout Rifle that was unusually buffed lately that it has pushed the meta to a mid to long range play style. Players have picked up how effective the rifle is again as a primary weapon that all you hear is the rifle’s unique gun shot sounds in every match. It’s crazy how we are back to this gun overperforming as Bungie have nerfed the gun on multiple occasions, but somehow tampered with it enough for it to come back to the spotlight. 

Having one gun being so dominant isn’t healthy for a PvP space, especially during a week-long event like Iron Banner. To make matters worse, the unique game mode called Fortress makes the Sentinel subclass a solid choice as you’ll likely see them in most of your Iron Banner matches this season. 

For those that haven’t tried Fortress, this game mode is a capture the point objective mode, just like Control. The only difference is that at some point during the match, an additional control point will appear and will be guarded by Cabal turrets that drop from the sky. Players will have to eliminate these hostile defenses to unlock the new point, which gives a good amount of points to whoever team captures and holds the area.  

When this happens, all other objective points are disabled, making it the sole focus for all players for a limited time. It becomes complete chaos in such a small area, so it makes sense players bring abilities that can help them secure and hold a location. 

Here comes the defensive Void Titan, a subclass that can drop the Ward of Dawn Super, which lets the Guardian drop a spherical bubble that  not only grants overshield but protects allies inside from incoming fire. 

Without fail, it becomes a fight on who can drop a Ward of Dawn onto the objective first as that’s all I see when playing this week’s Iron Banner. The amount of points you earn when a team controls is so significant that the first drop determines the momentum of the match. 

Don’t get me wrong, the effectiveness of the defensive super isn’t the problem, it’s actually doing its job. The issue is that’s all you’ll likely see in every match. There’s no variety at all when participating in this activity. The combination of seeing purple bubbles and Dead Man’s Tale firing in every corner of the match makes Iron Banner a dull grind to unlock exclusive Iron Banner rewards. 

This is far different from last season’s Iron Banner, where you see different weapons being used despite the current meta at the time. Matches didn’t look identical to one another either. In fact, it was always exciting as the Eruption game mode kept most matches so close that a match could go either way. 

It’s a horrible combination for this season’s first Iron Banner week, which is unfortunate as I prefer the rewards this season compared to the last. The new shader called Iron Countershade, is what everyone is grinding for as the shader makes any cloth material turn into chainmail. It looks fantastic, but the grind to unlock it requires you to reset your Iron Banner rank once and reach Rank 16. That’s at least over 10 hours of grinding.

After this Iron Banner week there will be one more for Season of the Seraph. Hopefully Bungie makes adjustments for its second Iron Banner week for the season, which will go live sometime in the future. 

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