A Destiny player has provided data testing the game's Vanguard Streak strike bonus, which appears to show that it is not having any extra positive effect.

With Destiny: The Taken King, Bungie took another look at improving loot drops in Destiny. For the most part, the changes have been positive, allowing players to make incremental, but steady, progress up the Light level scale. Along with new features like Three of Coins, Bungie also added in the Vanguard Streak bonus, billed as a buff that gives better drops the longer a player stays inside a Strike playlist.

For many players, however, the Vanguard Streak bonus hasn’t appeared to make much of a difference when it comes to getting those much-desired Legendary loot drops. And some new data provided by a Destiny player could back up those claims.

Reddit user FruityAlpaca ran 50 strikes within the Heroic Strike playlist; 25 consecutive strikes using the Vanguard Streak bonus and 25 non-consecutive strikes without the streak bonus. FruityAlpaca made a comparison video showing the drops received at the end of each strike. But here’s how the comparison breaks down:

It appears that the Vanguard Streak granted eight more Rare engrams, one more Legendary engram/item, and two more exotics (as a side note, the Vanguard Streak does not affect exotic drops). Bungie defines the Vanguard Streak as

“Vanguard Streaks are buffs applied to characters that complete multiple Strikes within a Strike Playlist in a row. These buffs grant a chance at more rewards when defeating a boss at the end of a Strike.”

So either, the Vanguard Streak is much more random and based on RNG than many players assumed, or else it is broken. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that the system is bugged, considering that Crucible rewards weren’t working correctly since the launch of The Taken King. That problem was only discovered in October and just recently fixed in last week’s patch 2.0.2.

This is obviously a small sample size of data from just one player, but it does provide some statistics to otherwise anecdotal evidence and general hearsay by the Destiny community. The Vanguard Streak bonus was designed not only to reward players for taking part in Destiny's strike activities, but it also was an attempt by Bungie to curb the common problem of players dropping out of matchmade strikes that they either didn't want to play or after their fireteam struggled through a strike.

More data will most likely need to be gathered by the community or Bungie before anything is changed, but the community investigating these issues will definitely help in raising awareness of any potential broken systems in Destiny. Bungie has said they are regularly listening to community, so only time will tell if they will provide follow up to what players are seeing with the Vanguard Streak bonus.

How has your experience been with the Vanguard Streak strike bonus? Do you notice better rewards or not?

Source: Destiny Reddit