Its the long way round but vanguard rep to lv 2 and buy with marks had loads of purples drop but they turned blue or strange coins

Nice one mate. Sorry about earlier, I was just sneaking a chance to finish a bounty while the kids got ready for bed before Doctor Who. Reading through various forums and websites it would appear that a lot of people are annoyed at the way gear works in Destiny. The thing with WoW was if you got a good drop, it was just that, and if you didn't play the relevant class you could sell it and make some money. In Destiny you get a legendary engram which just gives false hope. My own percentage of legendaries to legendary engram is approximately 10%. I read that a large group of gamers got together to test conversion rates of the various engrams. Approximately 35% of 55 legendary engrams collected and turned in gave a legendary item. That would indicate either I've been unlucky or they got slightly luckier than they should. As others have said and as you have done, focus on rep and buying stuff from Xur. I can't decide on the glowing hands or not. He stocks other stuff I'd prefer but it's how many weeks I'd have to wait to get them. Could I replace the coins spent in a week?

Update: Had a few purple engrams that have all turned out to be blue gear. Very disappointing :( On the plus side, I completed a weekly strike and got enough strange coins to buy exotic gauntlets from the agent on the nine. Glowy yellow hands of justice ftw!

Start farming a faction's rep for their legendary armor. Don't forget to play the crucible for marks!

If you look at my thread lower down you'll find it seems to be quite common. I think some people get lucky but on the whole purple engrams rarely give a legendary item (I've had one in ten). Dunno where you've been farming for them but I've found that barring doing the exploits that involve dying repeatedly, the best spots to get purple engrams to drop are the well known ones on Earth and Venus. The side effect is that you'll get plenty of blues to decrypt giving you a higher cryptarch rank and with it the blue and purple freebies he then sends you.

I just turned level 24 today. I've had 5 or 6 legendary engrams and not a single one has been legendary. I've done a fair bit of farming and no luck from that. I got a legendary fusion rifle from a blue drop a while back-but I've not met many people at our level who's had a legendary drop at all! I was talking to a few guys earlier and we came to the conclusion that you're better off aiming to buy legendary's-get your vanguard levelled up by doing bounties, and stockpile vanguard marks from the strike playlist. Then buy them from your class vanguard. Hopefully while your doing that you'll pick up something useful!