I just did it last night. I am extremely pleased with myself.
For starters, I am a Titan main. Generally something with shoulder charge. I usually use scout rifles + shotguns with a good rocket launcher for my setup.
The entire, and I mean 100%, of my motivation was to get the MIDA catalyst, (I know it's dumb) but I have loved the MIDA since D1. I sort of build an identity around it.
Even at lower levels, I realized that the MIDA just couldn't complete. It's not that it doesn't measure up well against other primaries, within it's range it's very good. It's just that everyone and their mother is running Revoker + hand cannon. So almost every time I was lane challenging it was against Revoker or some other low zoom sniper instead of another primary. It made holding any lane against it extremely hard, even at mid range.
Basically it's not up to you. They have to miss. You can land perfect headshots 4 in a row and still get you head taken off. So I had to get a new plan.
I realized I was getting double teamed a lot so I shifted to a recovery build and swapped all my armor to a hand cannon style. I chose the crimson for it's good range, fast ttk and high Cal rounds with the healing perk. I cannot snipe at all, not my skillset (odd because I use scouts so much), so I put on the best mindbenders I had and went for mostly close range encounters. Especially if I saw that a lot of players were hard scoping with snipers. Get close, shoulder charge in, Shogun ape + crimson made everything great. Crimson is an excellent dueling gun at mid and mid to close distances.
I put on solar melee boost for ohko charge even with overshielded players like in warlock rifts. I was running crest of alpha lupi for the health bump big wall. I usually only play Ward of dawn on Control for PvP with the helm of saint.
I was out of my comfort zone. I tried a few things. Some good some bad. Skullfort. Hallofire. But absolutely nothing was better than the one eyed mask. Extremely consistent. The wall hacks last forever and it gives you the constant drop on them.
So I found it. My sweet spot. Teammates fluctuated good, average and bad, but I found a nice little niche for me the play in. Crimson + mindbenders on the shoulder charge solar class wearing OEM with recovery build. Avoid long and upper mid range lanes, don't push too far up alone. Don't get greedy with the ape charge. Too easy to get shutdown.
Once I hit 4,000 or so about 90% of what I was fighting was a hunter with stomps, using Revoker + Luna's or NF. Very difficult to stop. Lots of bows so that they could go invisible all the time. Made OEM even better.
All of the sudden, I was get 20+ kills per game with 3.0 kd basically every game. I was getting the rage messages about being a shoulder charge crayon eater, and the "thanks for the carry" messages. It was surreal. Usually I'm the one getting 0.7 kd while some dude just goes full ape on the enemy.
I made the post so that others like me know there's hope. I'm a dad with a wife and 3 kids and 2 jobs. I basically only play on the weekends. I have never done a raid. I haven't done almost any exotic quests. Just play randomly on the weekends. I'm not even particularly good. I'm okay at best. But I found my sweet spot in Comp. You can find yours too. Don't be afraid to modify your build to win. Learn the maps. Learn where you're going to be fighting them. Know if your weapons can compete against theirs at that particular range. Don't relax just because it's 3v1 and they are out of lives. I have seen people do some incredible stuff.
Good luck Guardians
Edit: I just wanted to be clear, I did the entire thing on the Solo freelance playlist. Xbox.
Edit again: I made this post when I hit Legend at rank 5486. Since then I played one game that put me at max rank 5500, no MIDA drop. I played one more at 5500, got the win and the MIDA catalyst did drop for me. I have seen mixed information about it, but for my experience the MIDA catalyst drops from your first win at 5500.
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Bro that was an awesome read congrats.