Absolutely not. That's revisionist history at it's best. You had to use the same subclass, the burn for the week i would like to add which you should be running anyway, to get the weekly. Not to get drops. Remember what happened if you forgot to put your best gear on before decrypting engrams at the cryptarch? Because it doesn't sound like you do. Your engrams would decrypt way below your level. Running arc in an arc strike is restrictive, but having to put on specific gear just to see the cryptarch isn't? Ever have a purple engrams decrypt to blue? That was another really fun aspect of leveling in d1. Not liking parts of d2 is reasonable, but a lot of these are totally ridiculous. You say you hate the leveling because you have to play there way, and when i suggest playing your own way you say it's not efficient enough. You can't have it both ways. Any game with choices Will force you to decide between what's most efficient and what you want to do. D1 did as much if not more than d2.

You missed my point entirely. Bungie has literally laid out a to-do list to progress. Specific activites. Do bounties. Literally "Play this [i]this[/i] way." In D1, sure. You did that for the weekly. But you could [i]also[/i] get power by just playing whatever you want from engrams. That bit right there, that little detail is completely unavailable in D2. Legendary drops in D1 could be up to +3 power. In D2, vendor drops are capped. Never powerful. Activity rewards are never powerful either. They can be used to "balance out" your character, but that's it. So if I do play the way I want, I don't progress [i]at all[/i]. If I play the way they want, I can progress. That's my point.

Yeah, i understand your point, and you're wrong. Unless you just want to ruin plain strikes with the wrong subclass for the entire week you will get drops. Crucible, eventually get drops. Gambit, eventually get drops. What is it that is playing your way where you never get drops? I literally always get drops .

You actually don't get the point at all. You cannot play any activity you want how you want and get powerful drops. They'll be used to even pur your power. That's it. Theyvare not a reliable way to progress. They aren't even reliable to progress slowly. They could be used to progress in D1.

I'm guessing you haven't played d1 in awhile, or you only have a very limited memory of it. Again, weekday are these activities you like to do that gave you drops in d1 that don't now? Almost every activity gives you guaranteed drops now where it was pure rng in d1. I ran strike after strike and never got anything to level up on several occasions.

I literally leveled up from grinding strikes in D1. I'd use strikes until Iron Banner came around then then infused my best PvP gear and then used that. I'd be as high as I could reasonably get without raids before IB was gone. I'd didn't have a group to raid with all the time and I didn't like LFG. So no. Either your experience was completely different from mine and many others for some reason or you weren't paying attention.

Or you don't understand that you can strike to get to the soft cap now, and use ib to get as high as you reasonably can now without raiding too. The difference is minimal at best. Unless you only started playing with taken king or roi.

You don't understand that a potential +1 at terrible RNG from strikes in D2 is not equivalent to the potential +3 D1 engrams provided. Hence the word "reliable" I've been using. You seem to have ignored that.