Who doesn’t love the idea of Brigs and Tanks fighting it out on a battlefield?
Heavy Metal is Bungie’s new fun PvP event that lets you do exactly that — hop into a Brig or a Tank and battle it out with your team against the other machine, to see who comes out on top. It’s quite unserious, but it’s some of the most fun I’ve had playing Destiny in some time.
But, what do you actually get from playing Heavy Metal other than the glee of running around in a Tank or a Brig? How do you stop yourself from getting rolled every game? And which is better, a Brig or a Tank? (It’s a Brig, I promise).
All will be answered in this article, so you know exactly what you’re getting into when playing Heavy Metal. It’s a strange and interesting mode, but it’s incredibly fun and silly, and has some really cool rewards. Let’s get into it!
What is Heavy Metal?
Overview
Heavy Metal is a PvP event for Destiny 2, but it’s not any normal PvP event. In Heavy Metal, you control either a Brig or a Tank, and you aim to join with your brethren and beat the other team — in the Supremacy variant that’s currently up for offer, that means blowing them up and collecting their Crest.
Both Brigs and Tanks have the same attacks and movement strategies:
- Primary Attack: This is your primary attack, which is just a projectile that fires in a straight line.
- Secondary Attack: This attack locks onto an enemy and fires projectiles, but is a ‘special ammo’ attack and so isn’t always online.
- Dash: Your dash will let you glide forward and dodge attacks and projectiles that are locked onto you.
The best player, or ‘leader’, on each team will have an orange glow. Picking up their golden crest after killing them will grant an additional point for your team.
That’s pretty much it. You load in with two other teammates who are in the same kind of vehicle as you, and go head to head with the other team. Unfortunately, there’s no way of selecting whether you want to be a Tank or a Brig, but I imagine that’s because there’s a massive preference towards one of the two currently.
Heavy Metal is going to be on for one week, so if you want to play it and grab the available rewards, make sure to do so quickly!
Rewards
Event Pass
Heavy Metal has a few different rewards available for earning. There’s a 15-rank Event Pass that you can progress through, which has the following rewards:
- Enhancement Core
- Heavy Metal Engram
- Reroll Chip
- Enhancement Prism
- ‘Explosive Disassembly’ Emblem
- Heavy Metal Engram
- Two Enhancement Cores
- Reroll Chip
- Nine Strange Coins
- Ascendant Shard
- Two Enhancement Prisms
- Nine Strange Coins
- Reroll Chip
- Heavy Metal Engram
- Gryphon Exotic Combat Sparrow
Gryphon Exotic Combat Sparrow
Gryphon is an Exotic Combat Sparrow — the first of its kind. It’s a 140 Speed Sparrow that has a built-in weapon with a primary fire and a secondary weapon, which lets you inherit the damage keywords of your equipped super.
Whether Gryphon will be enough to overtake the current dominance of Skimmers is yet to be seen. But, this is a fun reward from a fun gamemode that you should probably grab while you can. And, there’s even some raid potential with this vehicle. (Please don’t try this at home)
Rewards Shop
The rewards shop has a few goodies for sale for Event Tokens:
- Glimmer: 3 Event Tokens
- Enhancement Core: 5 Event Tokens
- Enhancement Prism: 50 Event Tokens
- Heavy Metal Engram: 70 Event Tokens
- Ascendant Shard/Ascendant Alloy/Exotic Cipher: 200 Event Tokens
Heavy Metal Engrams
Heavy Metal engrams are earnable through the Event Pass and through playing the mode. They contain one of four weapons:
- The Palindrome (Nightfall)
- Lotus-Eater (Nightfall)
- Boondoggle Mk.55 (World Drop)
- Cruoris FR4 (World Drop)
Heavy Metal Title
The Heavy Metal title is pretty easily attainable — you just have to complete the following challenges:
- Vehicle Compactor: Defeat 150 opponents in Heavy Metal.
- Kill Streak: Get a kill streak of 2 or more 20 times.
- The Undefeated: Win 10 games.
- I Get What I Want: Finish the Event Pass in the Event Home section, all the way to Level 15.
If you want to gild the title, there are 4 more challenges:
- Usurper: Kill the leader of the enemy team 20 times.
- Atop the Throne: Become a leader 10 times.
- Valuable Legacy: Collect leaders’ coins.
- Salvo Sender: Defeat 25 targets with the secondary fire.
Heavy Metal’s Event Home
Heavy Metal has introduced a new feature to Destiny’s UI, the Event Home. This is a peek into the Portal system coming in The Year of Prophecy, and brings everything about the whole event into one nice page.
On this page, you can find all of your daily and weekly challenges, as well as your Event Pass progress and the rewards shop. There’s even a section for the event title, so you can keep track of how far away you are from earning your seal.
Challenges
In the Event Home, are a list of daily and weekly challenges. These need to be completed to progress your event pass, and there’s a new set of challenges at the end of their respective timer.
You can use a Reroll Chip to reroll a challenge once it’s finished (or beforehand, if you want a better one) to be able to do more challenges.
Honest Thoughts
Heavy Metal is a really fun mode and deserves a shoutout for being something unique in the world of Destiny. It isn’t without its flaws, and there are definitely a lot of bugs and kinks to iron out.
Especially when driving Tanks, the movement can be very glitchy, and you can find yourself getting stuck incredibly easily onto ledges, textures, and environments. I do have to say that this does add to the charm of the mode, though, and it kind of makes it more hilarious to play.
If you’re wanting to know whether you should prefer Tanks or Brigs, I’m personally a Brig enjoyer. I think that Tanks are a little better objectively when it comes to actual combat, but Brigs feel so much easier to control and are generally more enjoyable to play, in my opinion. Your mileage will probably vary, though, so make your own choice on this.
I’m not giving this too much thought, though. It’s very much a case of ‘do I enjoy this mode?’, and the small wacky details can be refined with future versions of the event. It’s just nice to see Bungie actually doing something interesting and unique rather than having to play the same things over and over. So, I like this.
Tips and Advice
One of the most important things about Heavy Metal is teamwork. Doubleshotting is key, as you will not win fights without help from your team, and if you isolate yourself from them, you’ll face three of your opponents and have no way out of a quick death.
The other main tip that I have is to get used to firing. It can take a lot of time to be able to predict how to fire to hit your shots, and I found myself missing a lot of shots in my first few games. Shots will hit the ground, they’ll fly past your enemies, and sometimes even hit your teammates awkwardly. So, get used to it.
Otherwise, just have fun. This mode isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, and it’s just there to enjoy and get some fun loot out of. There’s probably a host of things competitively wrong with it, but it’s not like you’re playing Trials of Osiris — there should be no pressure outside of just enjoying yourself and a silly gamemode that Bungie has given us to mess around with.
If you do want the title or Sparrow, get on and grind for it now. There’s only a week in the event, and so there’s not a lot of time — it caught me by surprise, as I thought it’d be on until the end of Rite of the Nine.
Closing Time
Heavy Metal is a silly and entertaining gamemode with some cool rewards, and nothing too stressful or complex. It’s definitely worth trying out if you want something to do that’s different from your usual Destiny experience, and I’d recommend it even if just for the fun factor.
There’s a lot to do in Destiny right now, leading up to the exciting Year of Prophecy ahead of us. So, get stuck in, and keep an eye out for our guides on everything you need to know while going into the next era of Destiny 2.
Thank you for your time, and see you in the arena (I’ll be a brig, probably).
