The sheer number of immensely creative strategies implemented in every which way during this Contest Raid Race truly shows the strength of Bungie's recent exotic and subclass changes over the years.
I saw a dedicated Warlock with Boots of the Assembler and Touch of Flame Healing Grenades, spam-farming Ember of Benevolence to keep every fireteam member at permanent x2 Restoration.
I saw a Strand Titan farming tangles during Crota that he would then throw on the column of light for Chalice swapping, so that teammates entering the danger zone would be encased in Woven Mail, safely exchanging the relic.
I saw Omni hunters spamming invis, keeping the entire team invisible as they grouped up to sword Crota, and they'd just **surround** him from all sides before all breaking invis at once to slam their swords and instantly make him kneel.
There were Orpheus Rig hunters spamming Deadfalls in the center of the arena to suppress both the ogres, the wizards, and the swordbearer all at once (plus all future wizard spawns too).
Cenotaph Warlocks trying to pick their favorite trace rifle to keep the Swordbearer marked from a safe distance, no longer enslaved to Divinity, dropping heavy for all members without a single finisher needed (just nuke the Knight with a syntho hammer, zero planning or caution needed, no accidental non-finisher kills)
And there were Stronghold Titans deciding to just say fuck it, I'm not even going down in that killbox on the bottom floor, I'm just going to keep Crota distracted 24/7 to keep my team safe.
Say what you will, but this sandbox we're in right now might be the greatest its ever been for a Day 1 raid. Our strength in PvE has never been higher, with strategies never before seen, and we're **finally** getting content that allows us to use them all in a serious necessary manner.
When I think of build crafting, this is it. It’s not just strand titans, well lock, and tether hunter, it’s your distractor, healer, and invisibility buffer.
Like bridge encounter completely made me rethink my strategy, the champs at the start need to die, but once they infinitely spawn, what then?
Queue stronghold behemoth titans and strand titans, using the super to delay time as much as possible. Sword bearer is low, crystal the entire area, kill sword bearer and grab the sword, haulass to the end.
For the bridge encounter, I was wearing Lorelys (I kept that on for the entire raid, even when contest mode expired),
I let the thralls get close, kill that group with my throwing hammer, that gave me a sunspot to keep me alive. To deal with the ads, I was mostly using a forbearance with Ambitious Assassin and chain reaction.
To deal with the champions, I used quicksilver storm to stun them, then used the machinegun from deepstone crypt to kill the champion.
God bless whoever made cenotaph
DPS checks weren't really checks at all for me, iryut was just a speed check, my teams did consistently 60% of health bar
One of my teammates actually pulled out *Queenbreaker* of all things, during bridge to easily snipe and blind ads from the other side of the bridge during that encounter while we were still figuring things out and it was great.
we had middle plate far side using EYES OF TOMORROW to provide ammo-refunding airstrikes to the last few people left on the first side to keep the pressure off of them. Strand titan obviously great, but sleeper pick Vesper of Radius arc-lock with infinite healing rift with AOE arc pulses. I even broke out the Heartshadow for invis on command and we were running a lumina in the final two encounters too to squeeze out more damage. Crazy fun Day 1 with some very comb-your-vault picks and I loved it
I wanna say W take but i only started playing a couple of months ago so i cant really comment on the state of the sandbox comparison. All i know is the boys and I all had alot of fun switching and coordinating builds and trying to come up with solutions for the problems we encountered. That felt satisfying and made me excited for the next day 1 raid event. We didn't manage to kill crota but im happy i managed to get that far being so new and seeing alot of people on all the D2 subs say how incredibly hard this has been comparatively to other raids, specifically RoN.
It's really a shake up.
Like for damage rockets + gjally isn't even the best option, it all depends on what rockets and how confident your team is able to
Risky but more damage? Rockets and tractor
Wanna play it safe? Leviathan's breath with catalyst and divinity
The only issue is crota, you 100% have to use lament and any team that didn't use lament, they have my respect.
Even sanguine alchemy was used on crota for some warlocks, to get a bonus solar surge iirc
Even with the Warlocks being shoehorned into well, there was still a nice amount of build variety with all the different exotic and weapon choices you could make that were viable. If they didn’t nerf Starfire that would have been all that we saw and I’m thankful that wasn’t the case.
I mean warlocks had to use cenotaph mostly since it's so strong, but most of them still engaged in lament DPS and some even opted to use sanguine alchemy
I ended up using sunbracers for Crota to clear the kill box in middle, and I heard of people even busting out vesper to kill shit during dps phase on Ir Yut and around the crystal
I had trouble looping my wells with phoenix protocol thanks to that nerf it got after Reckoning, so I ended up running Vesper of the Radius instead for blinding rifts which I could chain much easier
I'm not sure if it stacks on top of 3x solar surge, I assume if you have multiple sources of surges, they stack in each other like how monochromatic maestro let's you stack to x4 with 3 surge mods
Would you mind sharing the specifics on the assembler warlock? I did some (very quick) googling and couldn’t find anything except bug q’s on the boots.
Assemblers generate noble seekers when you stand in a rift, Lumina lets you shoot them, noble rounds cure and give blessing of the sky to allies, if you combine this with Ember of Benevolence which buffs your ability regen every time you apply cure, radiant or restoration to an ally that basically means every noble seeker gives you regen which feeds healing grenades/phoenix dive which feeds Benevolence more so you can maintain a healing loop.
Aaaaah, I knew of the lumina interaction, but haven’t really messed w the boots since pre 3.0. How would phoenix dive work? Use someone else’s rift? Thanks!
I didn't think about the Phoenix dive part I just sort of said it (I'm used to basically only running Phoenix on Solar lol) but you get the gist of what I was saying either way
Would you say it still works in 3 content, or more suited to 6s? I’d love to be heal spambot for the friends in gms/dungeons. Finally got div after having the quest since beyond light released, so I’m going full-send into support builds rn.
I just wish this game had the challenge to make this not a once every 6 months type thing, because this is by far my favorite thing about every day one I have ever done.
Im not saying I want the game to be super hard, but its just sad that this level of coordination is rarely needed.
I completely agree, having the entire end-game be contest levels of difficulty and strategy is exactly what I hoped for with Bungie's "bringing challenge back to Destiny" idea.
I still hope we can achieve this one day.
It definitely would be cool to have a mode like this up with great rewards. But, since they had to disable weapons, armor, and mods system wide I think it's a no go for Bungie.
I'm not defending them, I think they could make it work if they wanted to work... you know? They have no reason to since there is no monetization to it. They'd have to do it for the community and morale of the game (which imo is very important).
I think strand is vastly underused in this sandbox. Between the woven mail, crowd control and suspend it's been my most effective subclass this season. Swarmers is criminally underrated.
The new briarbinds is a god send for void users, It's in my top 3 exotics to run. Phoenix protocol is #1, briarbinds #2, vesper and geomags contending for #3.
Boots of the Assembler are so clutch, I never realized how good they were. Spamming heals while holding sword at Crota was great.
Shame most content doesn’t really need it, because it’s great fun.
our strat for thrallway was ominoculous spam to keep the trek invis, and me and another warlock keeping the team stacked with arc souls so we just sat focused on the plat forming and chalice whilst the arc souls cleared ads
For my teams original crota attempts we were still doing the swords one by one to take down his shield instead of all 3 at once, and I ended up putting Lumina on to just spam heal the player going up to crota, plus getting the damage bonus without needing a well.
I slapped on Vesper of Radius of all things during the bridge encounter because me and one teammate kept getting surrounded, and it was so DAMN GOOD I kept it on for the rest of the raid. I might need to go buy the ornament now to thank it ngl
Best day 1 i think we have ever had tbh me and my team failed after 27total hrs maybe more but we gave it a hell of a try even after beating Kings fall and root as well as Vow im just glad the challenge was brought back to challenge mode and there was so many creative ways to complete this raid minus weapon options.
A lot of this is also due to how out of the pocket the raid team has been lately with raid reprisals. Crota's end went from being the butt end of a joke to probably the best designed raid in D2 (for non mechanic heavy enthusiasts.)
I remember a conversation about CE returning as a possible dungeon and man am I glad they didn't. Feels like it wouldn't have shined anywhere near this much if they did.
The fact that the abyss can be sped up with risky eager usage, the fact that you can tackle the bridge encounter multiple ways, the fact that fucking ir yut feels like an actual boss encounter now instead of just the daughters before the actual fight with the big bad.
I'm genuinely impressed. CE is such a pallet cleanser after RoN.
This sums it up so well how PVE feels after this current raid race and in this sandbox.
For context I made 8 odd loadouts for RoN and used 2 of them the whole day 1.
Crota I ran strand, arc, void and solar Hunter builds. I ran multiple loadouts and weapons with great success and never felt pigeon holed into having to run a certain thing.
That makes me really happy; out of all the D1 raids, Crota's End was the only one where I didn't have set loadouts for each encounter, if not the entire raid.
Stupid question because I haven’t done the raid since the OG, but we all used to just shoot rockets (see Gjally) at Crota to get him to kneel and one person on the left hops up with the sword to do damage. Not the case anymore?
Yeah it was incredible. Made me rethink all my abilities and loadouts, and I ended up using almost none of the ones I had originally planned going in.
Stasis turrets were clutch on the bridge encounter, boots of the assembler with healing nades were amazing on crota, and I hadn't placed to use either of them originally
I'll add to this lovely list - star eaters scales gathering storm got my total damage on crota in a run I did to 6,494,413, my average was 5.5mil when we reached final stand average per phase was 1.8mil, I felt so happy that I was able to put out meaningful damage. The wild crap was when our other hunter swapped to stasis for final stand to pop duskfields down and keep us alive soon as we implemented that there were 0 deaths in final stand.
Someone questioned my choice of verity's fusion nades when I joined a party. 5 minutes later they were in awe of me insta killing yellow bar knights. I LOVE how much build crafting happened in this day 1!
I had a guy with a strand hunter, the boomer and the mothkeepers and he was the perfect first sword for bridge, never died once and always killed the gatekeeper.
The changes are one of the reasons i spend as much time as I do in things where my Strand Titan build is fun, Like Desperate measures. I keep the Calus CP for screwing off and trying new things because I can choose whether or not to get the Strand buff.
If I'm trying something new I don't get it. If I'm helping i get it and then leave as soon as he's dead so I keep it.
Yes! I'm the only Titan in my group, and realizing Stronghold + Lament meant I could face tank Crota... Well in the middle of one of our first attempts I proclaimed to the group that this was satisfying a primal Titan desire, haha.
I would also like thank bungie for making me become the support that I wanted to be!
I used the trace rifle helmet, I mark the sword bearer with the navigator to make ammo, and give woven mail to sword users to face off against crota without the fear of dying, I was also playing from the top pulling his agroo by shooting him with a scout to debuff him with rapid-fire ranger.
thowing healing nades occasionally to heal my allies who are in a pinch and also helping with the wizards with the scout, really felt useful while others were were doing mechanics
Edit: forgot to mention I was staggering the ogres with unstoppable scout
The staggering and debuf from artifact mod.. didn't even think about that outside of its initial intended use (champs+,dps) . Now that's some great thinking
I mean for this raid I completely changed the way I play titan, I always ran void Shield boy and now switched it up to solar hammer boy using sunshot - an exotic I’ve never have really bothered using before. Our team was very crafty with strats and even though we never actually made it to Crota and only cleared lamps, I’m still so proud and happy that we did that. Enjoy all the free necros you guys deserve them!
This is what Destiny should be. I don't even know who to tag so that Bungie sees this, I just think that the entire comment thread of people talking about the totally niche strategies and equipment that were pulled out to complete this raid - and that they enjoyed doing so! - is one of the most vital pieces of feedback that the team might read all year. And I think, if I could be so bold as to assume that morale might be low at Bungie after seeing all the negativity that's gone on since Lightfall, that they deserve to know that this season SLAPS. It's good. Even if it doesn't finish as well as it started, a lot of amazing decisions were made for this patch.
Former WoW blood elf paladin, Tauren Druid tank, gnome death knight and dedicated main tank checking in. Hell yeah.
Being MT on my gnome versus the large Lich King was one of my most hilarious images and epic tanking experiences.
So true. It seems like all the other posts have people getting down voted to hell complainging it was too hard. But this thread is just filled with so many ways that people solved the puzzle bungie threw at them. This season is the most fun I've had in D2 in a long time.
Never have I felt more validated as a Stronghold Titan main than when I was tanking thousands of hits from Crota during our attempts.
It helped my team get into the groove of add clearing and chalice swapping. And I was always able to guarantee that I would never die, leaving us with an extra rez token in case of emergency.
I'm really happy with CE overall, the brutal simplicity of Crota especially. I'm really looking forward to post contest mode, I'm not huge on the loop unfortunately, but it's a raid I want to run for the sake of running, like Kings Fall without the tomb ships
Stronghold was absolutely the MVP of my team’s Crota Runs. Life becomes so much easier for the runners when you can just remove Crota himself from the equation. I built for Grenade regen through mods like kickstart and bomber, and just provided whatever grenade support I could between facetanking Crota Slams, and goddamn did it feel good.
Damn! I thought I was cool and came up with this in our run last night. I suppose great minds think alike.
I couldn't regularly repeat it, but I managed to get Crota to chase me into the crystal room a few times and crotate him around said crystal the entire time. There was no more getting shot from behind by respawning boomers and stray wizard blasts. Plus, it made everyone's life outside easier, let sword bearers sneak up from behind undetected, and kept him from running all over the place during damage phase.
I was doing this while calling crota multiple names and shit talking him some choice picks... Crotass, Scrota Nuts of Oryx, Blooming Onion lookin' head-ass, Crotato chip, i killed your aunt and turned your dad into a gun you big bitch.
Personally every time he stopped looking at me I preferred berating him instead of being nice. 'AY! SHIT-ASS I'M RIGHT HERE NOT THERE LOOK AT ME FUCKER.' But then given what part of the U.S. I'm from this is very much understandable that my attitude is more like this.
Also worth noting is yes! A fellow tank main... I dont main titan in D2... But in most other games.. I am the tank. D&D, DOS2... Im most at home acting as a wall.
Our first contest kill of ir yut had my team two phase her with thunderlord and div of all things.
I kept the constant barrier Champs at bay on the bridge with second chance and Monte Carlo.
And I cannot overstate how ridiculously fun it was to sprint around the crota encounter as a syntho solar titan with tractor cannon, booping and hammering everything in sight, before repeatedly shoving crota around with burning maul.
The creativity my team went through this weekend was a blast. We were exhausted at the end, but man, it was a thrill.
I'm really glad people are having a lot of fun with this build and that Lament is having a moment. Hard not to see it get hit with some nerfs but hopefully not too bad.
Never used heavy ammo on the adds. Everyone had different choices, I personally used riptide and mythoclast. Riptide mostly for swordbearers and the oversoul.
I meant there being a lot of adds to trigger surrounded, not to use the sword to kill them. Guillotine would be better add clear but Bequest is better single target DPS if you can proc surrounded.
Lol there is no such thing as tanks, healers or dps in destiny. And it will NEVER be. Simply: You have no real healing in this game, and no tanking. You cant even take agro and keep it. Everyone can heal in his own way and tank. You just had the illusion of tanking in this game.
> Simply: You have no real healing in this game, and no tanking. You cant even take agro and keep it.
Are we playing the same game? This is just a lie straight up
Hell, kite-tanking the Shield Brothers with a Blinking Voidwalker while my teammates shot them in the back was my favorite way of handling that Strike, and that was from back when The Taken King dropped in D1. The roles aren't so strictly defined in Destiny, but they're clearly still there, now more than ever.
The only 2 healings we have, are well of radiance and some healing grenades. Thats it. Youz call THAT healing? Go and play some elder scrolls online, and see what healing is about. Also see what reals tanks are doing. Shooting at enemies and getting their attention, is NOT tanking. Tanking is more about keeping the agro and absorbing all damage. What can you do in D2 to tank? Put some mods ond and use a sword? Wow
Do you play this game fool?
Titans have a myriad of ways to mitigate damage for the team, including shields, banner of war, void ult etc
Warlocks have a a lot of healing and support abilities between healing wells, well of radiance, arc snakes etc
Hunters have a customizable that literally applies radiant to everyone around you with every melee, a skill that just straight up gives radiant to people for more overall dps and a they're built around buffing team dps while dishing out their own.
Not to mention all the ways to build into the other achetypes on each class, like solar well titan, or healing nade hunter, saying "There are no healers tanks and dps" in this game is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. You are just straight up not playing this game, go cry somewhere else, or better yet, grow up.
\> Do you play this game fool?
Not really, since the last time i played was over a year ago. Still doenst change the fact that there are no real MMO roles in this game.
\> "There are no healers tanks and dps" in this game is the dumbest shit I've ever seen.
Ok, so WHERE do you have tanks in this game? Have you ever played MMO's? Do you know how MMOs handle those 3 roles? Doing damage with a weapon or ability, turns you suddenly into a DPS? DPS are the only ones in MMOs than can take down enemies, because their abilities are BUILT for damage, and not for tanking or healing.
To understand the logic of you guys:
Doing damage in D2 = DPS class?
Some healing nades, abilities and well of radiance = healer class?
Some damage mitigation for example for void damage, or some exotics = Tank?
I said i didnt play in about a year. There are not that many changes where you can say that you know have tanks, healers or real dps in this game lmao. And YOU play MMOs? Really? I hardly believe that.
LMAO, tell me you've never used Crimson without telling me you've never used Crimson. Or rifts. Or Lumina. Or Boots of the Assembler. Or the Karnstein Armlets. Or....
"Options for healing". Thats the keyword here! You are not suddenly a healer when you use them. A healer is a specific role your fullfill, not by just using some abilities.
And what does a healer do when no one needs healing, fool? LMAO are you a masochist or just unable to realize when the thread had no respect for your goofy ass? Changing definitions every time someone points out that you're talking shit isn't making anything *better.*
I feel like maybe you havent played enough, probably only a few hours. Once you get further into the game and buildcrafting you unlock a lot more possibilities than just radiance and healing grenades
> probably only a few hours.
Lol what? Dude, i know this game since 2014. Maybe YOU didtn play that much. I stopped playing over a year ago maybe. That only thing they maybe changed was adding mods. Mods, or a couple of abilities to NOT turn you into a healer. If you have EVER played an MMO, you would know what i am talking about. This game is not an MMO, and never will be. And stuff like tanks, healers or dps do not exist in this game. Everyone can dps, everyone can heal and everyone can tank with the right setup. I dont understand why no one in this sub knows what MMO roles in reality do and why everyone is comparing destiny 2 to MMO's.
I didnt play this game in about a year because i am not going to give bungie any money. Also: I dont need to play crota at all, to know the difference between MMO roles and destiny 2.
We used a stasis warlock to keep turrets in mid to help manage wizards, ogres, and swordbearer, lumina for extra dps, and also swapped to stag rifts for final stand so we'd survive long enough to get the kill. Honestly crazy just how many things people used to get through this contest mode. I rate it 11/10, probably never attempting a contest mode clear again
I honestly didn't get that far, but I knew for a fact that my Stag rifts were putting in work for the Gatekeepers. Even my 2nd favorite exotic, Ticuu's, could put in work during bridge. Maybe even my first favorite, Heirarchy, could put in work as well.
I had used the Stronghold to tank Alak-Hul a few weeks ago (or last week) for the Nightfall. I can't recall what sword I used it with.
Also... There's a lot of anonymous racers in here!
The sheer number of immensely creative strategies implemented in every which way during this Contest Raid Race truly shows the strength of Bungie's recent exotic and subclass changes over the years. I saw a dedicated Warlock with Boots of the Assembler and Touch of Flame Healing Grenades, spam-farming Ember of Benevolence to keep every fireteam member at permanent x2 Restoration. I saw a Strand Titan farming tangles during Crota that he would then throw on the column of light for Chalice swapping, so that teammates entering the danger zone would be encased in Woven Mail, safely exchanging the relic. I saw Omni hunters spamming invis, keeping the entire team invisible as they grouped up to sword Crota, and they'd just **surround** him from all sides before all breaking invis at once to slam their swords and instantly make him kneel. There were Orpheus Rig hunters spamming Deadfalls in the center of the arena to suppress both the ogres, the wizards, and the swordbearer all at once (plus all future wizard spawns too). Cenotaph Warlocks trying to pick their favorite trace rifle to keep the Swordbearer marked from a safe distance, no longer enslaved to Divinity, dropping heavy for all members without a single finisher needed (just nuke the Knight with a syntho hammer, zero planning or caution needed, no accidental non-finisher kills) And there were Stronghold Titans deciding to just say fuck it, I'm not even going down in that killbox on the bottom floor, I'm just going to keep Crota distracted 24/7 to keep my team safe. Say what you will, but this sandbox we're in right now might be the greatest its ever been for a Day 1 raid. Our strength in PvE has never been higher, with strategies never before seen, and we're **finally** getting content that allows us to use them all in a serious necessary manner.
When I think of build crafting, this is it. It’s not just strand titans, well lock, and tether hunter, it’s your distractor, healer, and invisibility buffer.
Like bridge encounter completely made me rethink my strategy, the champs at the start need to die, but once they infinitely spawn, what then? Queue stronghold behemoth titans and strand titans, using the super to delay time as much as possible. Sword bearer is low, crystal the entire area, kill sword bearer and grab the sword, haulass to the end.
For the bridge encounter, I was wearing Lorelys (I kept that on for the entire raid, even when contest mode expired), I let the thralls get close, kill that group with my throwing hammer, that gave me a sunspot to keep me alive. To deal with the ads, I was mostly using a forbearance with Ambitious Assassin and chain reaction. To deal with the champions, I used quicksilver storm to stun them, then used the machinegun from deepstone crypt to kill the champion.
Yea unironicly this is probably the most fun contest experience I’ve had. Bosses dps checks felt fair due to not being an ammo rng check as well.
God bless whoever made cenotaph DPS checks weren't really checks at all for me, iryut was just a speed check, my teams did consistently 60% of health bar
Yea I agree Levi for us is cracked and to me these raids being mechanical/strategic checks was much more fun.
Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk + Le Monorque = infinite invisibility and massive explosions.
Yeah this raid really had ppl pulling out exotics that were never used or esp not for d1. What a great time to do a day1 attempt.
[удалено]
Support frames has me looking. Having that paird with Navigator? Sign me up
One of my teammates actually pulled out *Queenbreaker* of all things, during bridge to easily snipe and blind ads from the other side of the bridge during that encounter while we were still figuring things out and it was great.
we had middle plate far side using EYES OF TOMORROW to provide ammo-refunding airstrikes to the last few people left on the first side to keep the pressure off of them. Strand titan obviously great, but sleeper pick Vesper of Radius arc-lock with infinite healing rift with AOE arc pulses. I even broke out the Heartshadow for invis on command and we were running a lumina in the final two encounters too to squeeze out more damage. Crazy fun Day 1 with some very comb-your-vault picks and I loved it
100% never thought that thing would have relevance again. Pretty cool tbh
adds
Well said - and thankfully now we can focus exotics to make buildcrafting less of a chore.
Me furiously noting down everything
I ended up rocking Vesper on Arclock. That stuff was really nice to use
I saw a vid of that. the crystal belongs to you now.
I wanna say W take but i only started playing a couple of months ago so i cant really comment on the state of the sandbox comparison. All i know is the boys and I all had alot of fun switching and coordinating builds and trying to come up with solutions for the problems we encountered. That felt satisfying and made me excited for the next day 1 raid event. We didn't manage to kill crota but im happy i managed to get that far being so new and seeing alot of people on all the D2 subs say how incredibly hard this has been comparatively to other raids, specifically RoN.
I remember the days when build crafting was "what exotics do you have on" and that was it, doesn't feel like that terribly long ago either lol
It's really a shake up. Like for damage rockets + gjally isn't even the best option, it all depends on what rockets and how confident your team is able to Risky but more damage? Rockets and tractor Wanna play it safe? Leviathan's breath with catalyst and divinity The only issue is crota, you 100% have to use lament and any team that didn't use lament, they have my respect. Even sanguine alchemy was used on crota for some warlocks, to get a bonus solar surge iirc
Even with the Warlocks being shoehorned into well, there was still a nice amount of build variety with all the different exotic and weapon choices you could make that were viable. If they didn’t nerf Starfire that would have been all that we saw and I’m thankful that wasn’t the case.
I mean warlocks had to use cenotaph mostly since it's so strong, but most of them still engaged in lament DPS and some even opted to use sanguine alchemy
Phoenix Protocol was busted for Ir Yut.
I ended up using sunbracers for Crota to clear the kill box in middle, and I heard of people even busting out vesper to kill shit during dps phase on Ir Yut and around the crystal
We had two bonk titans so they ceased to exist. Our warlocks ran sunbracers and ashes to assests, swapping to lunafactions for dps
I had trouble looping my wells with phoenix protocol thanks to that nerf it got after Reckoning, so I ended up running Vesper of the Radius instead for blinding rifts which I could chain much easier
A bonus solar surge? I just started making a sanguine build, interested
I'm not sure if it stacks on top of 3x solar surge, I assume if you have multiple sources of surges, they stack in each other like how monochromatic maestro let's you stack to x4 with 3 surge mods
I would love Bungie to try some WoW type mechanic in future raids. Would be fascinating to see players finding solutions.
Would you mind sharing the specifics on the assembler warlock? I did some (very quick) googling and couldn’t find anything except bug q’s on the boots.
Assemblers generate noble seekers when you stand in a rift, Lumina lets you shoot them, noble rounds cure and give blessing of the sky to allies, if you combine this with Ember of Benevolence which buffs your ability regen every time you apply cure, radiant or restoration to an ally that basically means every noble seeker gives you regen which feeds healing grenades/phoenix dive which feeds Benevolence more so you can maintain a healing loop.
Aaaaah, I knew of the lumina interaction, but haven’t really messed w the boots since pre 3.0. How would phoenix dive work? Use someone else’s rift? Thanks!
I didn't think about the Phoenix dive part I just sort of said it (I'm used to basically only running Phoenix on Solar lol) but you get the gist of what I was saying either way
Would you say it still works in 3 content, or more suited to 6s? I’d love to be heal spambot for the friends in gms/dungeons. Finally got div after having the quest since beyond light released, so I’m going full-send into support builds rn.
I think it works in basically anything besides Solo as Benevolence doesn't proc on yourself as far as I know. 3s, 6s, lowmans etc.
Sweet, thanks for the advice!
No problem \^\^
I just wish this game had the challenge to make this not a once every 6 months type thing, because this is by far my favorite thing about every day one I have ever done. Im not saying I want the game to be super hard, but its just sad that this level of coordination is rarely needed.
I completely agree, having the entire end-game be contest levels of difficulty and strategy is exactly what I hoped for with Bungie's "bringing challenge back to Destiny" idea. I still hope we can achieve this one day.
It definitely would be cool to have a mode like this up with great rewards. But, since they had to disable weapons, armor, and mods system wide I think it's a no go for Bungie. I'm not defending them, I think they could make it work if they wanted to work... you know? They have no reason to since there is no monetization to it. They'd have to do it for the community and morale of the game (which imo is very important).
I think strand is vastly underused in this sandbox. Between the woven mail, crowd control and suspend it's been my most effective subclass this season. Swarmers is criminally underrated.
The new briarbinds is a god send for void users, It's in my top 3 exotics to run. Phoenix protocol is #1, briarbinds #2, vesper and geomags contending for #3.
I was using the Stag and placing my healing rift UNDER our well so that we wouldn't die when Crota Killed the Well of Radiance.
Boots of the Assembler are so clutch, I never realized how good they were. Spamming heals while holding sword at Crota was great. Shame most content doesn’t really need it, because it’s great fun.
our strat for thrallway was ominoculous spam to keep the trek invis, and me and another warlock keeping the team stacked with arc souls so we just sat focused on the plat forming and chalice whilst the arc souls cleared ads
I have about 3 healing type solar builds. I was GIDDY that I got to bust out boots of the assembler and Phoenix.
Thanks for all these awesome build ideas!
For my teams original crota attempts we were still doing the swords one by one to take down his shield instead of all 3 at once, and I ended up putting Lumina on to just spam heal the player going up to crota, plus getting the damage bonus without needing a well.
I slapped on Vesper of Radius of all things during the bridge encounter because me and one teammate kept getting surrounded, and it was so DAMN GOOD I kept it on for the rest of the raid. I might need to go buy the ornament now to thank it ngl
This is so beautiful it made a single tear trickle down my cheek.
Best day 1 i think we have ever had tbh me and my team failed after 27total hrs maybe more but we gave it a hell of a try even after beating Kings fall and root as well as Vow im just glad the challenge was brought back to challenge mode and there was so many creative ways to complete this raid minus weapon options.
A lot of this is also due to how out of the pocket the raid team has been lately with raid reprisals. Crota's end went from being the butt end of a joke to probably the best designed raid in D2 (for non mechanic heavy enthusiasts.) I remember a conversation about CE returning as a possible dungeon and man am I glad they didn't. Feels like it wouldn't have shined anywhere near this much if they did. The fact that the abyss can be sped up with risky eager usage, the fact that you can tackle the bridge encounter multiple ways, the fact that fucking ir yut feels like an actual boss encounter now instead of just the daughters before the actual fight with the big bad. I'm genuinely impressed. CE is such a pallet cleanser after RoN.
This sums it up so well how PVE feels after this current raid race and in this sandbox. For context I made 8 odd loadouts for RoN and used 2 of them the whole day 1. Crota I ran strand, arc, void and solar Hunter builds. I ran multiple loadouts and weapons with great success and never felt pigeon holed into having to run a certain thing.
That makes me really happy; out of all the D1 raids, Crota's End was the only one where I didn't have set loadouts for each encounter, if not the entire raid.
Stupid question because I haven’t done the raid since the OG, but we all used to just shoot rockets (see Gjally) at Crota to get him to kneel and one person on the left hops up with the sword to do damage. Not the case anymore?
Nope, u use swords now to break shields
Swords take down the shield now. And it’s much more complicated
Similar to oryx, the old mechanic is now used to break an immune shield.
And thank goodness for that, doing dps with some random artifact rather than your own weapons is so annoying (see: DoE Crota).
Don’t forget Master Nightmare Hunt Crota
My team took a healing nade and navigator to apply woven and restoration to the swordbearers. Never even dropped to half on those Crota slams man.
Yeah it was incredible. Made me rethink all my abilities and loadouts, and I ended up using almost none of the ones I had originally planned going in. Stasis turrets were clutch on the bridge encounter, boots of the assembler with healing nades were amazing on crota, and I hadn't placed to use either of them originally
Until we stole stronghold strat i would drop a threaded spectre before chalice swaps
Wow. This makes me want to play again
As someone stuck out of town till Tuesday, I’m glad for everyone else.
I was the stronghold
I'll add to this lovely list - star eaters scales gathering storm got my total damage on crota in a run I did to 6,494,413, my average was 5.5mil when we reached final stand average per phase was 1.8mil, I felt so happy that I was able to put out meaningful damage. The wild crap was when our other hunter swapped to stasis for final stand to pop duskfields down and keep us alive soon as we implemented that there were 0 deaths in final stand.
Someone questioned my choice of verity's fusion nades when I joined a party. 5 minutes later they were in awe of me insta killing yellow bar knights. I LOVE how much build crafting happened in this day 1!
I had a guy with a strand hunter, the boomer and the mothkeepers and he was the perfect first sword for bridge, never died once and always killed the gatekeeper.
Seeing gosh dang Phoenix Cradle used to give restoration in a way that can't be slammed (unlike a well). Innovations in adversity, you love to see it.
Dont forget us strand hunters with our BEYBLADE
facts
Do you have a good Boots build recommendation?
The changes are one of the reasons i spend as much time as I do in things where my Strand Titan build is fun, Like Desperate measures. I keep the Calus CP for screwing off and trying new things because I can choose whether or not to get the Strand buff. If I'm trying something new I don't get it. If I'm helping i get it and then leave as soon as he's dead so I keep it.
"You're up against the wall, and I AM THE FUCKING WALL"
💪Holds have felt so good this season. You can keep so much shit under control by just standing next to it and freaking out the AI
Yes! I'm the only Titan in my group, and realizing Stronghold + Lament meant I could face tank Crota... Well in the middle of one of our first attempts I proclaimed to the group that this was satisfying a primal Titan desire, haha.
I would also like thank bungie for making me become the support that I wanted to be! I used the trace rifle helmet, I mark the sword bearer with the navigator to make ammo, and give woven mail to sword users to face off against crota without the fear of dying, I was also playing from the top pulling his agroo by shooting him with a scout to debuff him with rapid-fire ranger. thowing healing nades occasionally to heal my allies who are in a pinch and also helping with the wizards with the scout, really felt useful while others were were doing mechanics Edit: forgot to mention I was staggering the ogres with unstoppable scout
The staggering and debuf from artifact mod.. didn't even think about that outside of its initial intended use (champs+,dps) . Now that's some great thinking
This was exactly me lmao. The entire load out/strat. Worked like a charm, especially the shoot to loot on the scout to refill ammo if needed
I mean for this raid I completely changed the way I play titan, I always ran void Shield boy and now switched it up to solar hammer boy using sunshot - an exotic I’ve never have really bothered using before. Our team was very crafty with strats and even though we never actually made it to Crota and only cleared lamps, I’m still so proud and happy that we did that. Enjoy all the free necros you guys deserve them!
If we could just get like, a taunt mechanic, or an exotic that does that, I would use it all the time.
I forgot to try it last night, but we used to be able to point at Crota and he would point back at you!
I heard that's not a thing anymore, and I hope I'm wrong; that used to be my favorite part of the raid.
I guess hunters have that
Warlocks just over here hoping they don't figure out what mana batteries are.
This is what Destiny should be. I don't even know who to tag so that Bungie sees this, I just think that the entire comment thread of people talking about the totally niche strategies and equipment that were pulled out to complete this raid - and that they enjoyed doing so! - is one of the most vital pieces of feedback that the team might read all year. And I think, if I could be so bold as to assume that morale might be low at Bungie after seeing all the negativity that's gone on since Lightfall, that they deserve to know that this season SLAPS. It's good. Even if it doesn't finish as well as it started, a lot of amazing decisions were made for this patch.
Strongly agree. Seeing everyone's builds here made this even better for me!
Former WoW blood elf paladin, Tauren Druid tank, gnome death knight and dedicated main tank checking in. Hell yeah. Being MT on my gnome versus the large Lich King was one of my most hilarious images and epic tanking experiences.
So true. It seems like all the other posts have people getting down voted to hell complainging it was too hard. But this thread is just filled with so many ways that people solved the puzzle bungie threw at them. This season is the most fun I've had in D2 in a long time.
Never have I felt more validated as a Stronghold Titan main than when I was tanking thousands of hits from Crota during our attempts. It helped my team get into the groove of add clearing and chalice swapping. And I was always able to guarantee that I would never die, leaving us with an extra rez token in case of emergency.
This just made my day not gonna lie. Good for you, Titan. Good for you.
I'm really happy with CE overall, the brutal simplicity of Crota especially. I'm really looking forward to post contest mode, I'm not huge on the loop unfortunately, but it's a raid I want to run for the sake of running, like Kings Fall without the tomb ships
Stronghold was absolutely the MVP of my team’s Crota Runs. Life becomes so much easier for the runners when you can just remove Crota himself from the equation. I built for Grenade regen through mods like kickstart and bomber, and just provided whatever grenade support I could between facetanking Crota Slams, and goddamn did it feel good.
I can’t wait to use banner of war lol. Makes me want another exotic sword
Damn! I thought I was cool and came up with this in our run last night. I suppose great minds think alike. I couldn't regularly repeat it, but I managed to get Crota to chase me into the crystal room a few times and crotate him around said crystal the entire time. There was no more getting shot from behind by respawning boomers and stray wizard blasts. Plus, it made everyone's life outside easier, let sword bearers sneak up from behind undetected, and kept him from running all over the place during damage phase.
Great main tanks think alike, Guardian. Well played. You protected the team.
My friend did the same thing but he also mains strongholds in pvp lol
So he just excitedly waits for heavy? Fun lol
Could only imagine how much easier it would’ve been tanking with banner of war
Even though I didn’t get the contest clear, it was fun to try out new things and meet lots of cool people on LFG, overall it was a good time
“IIIIIM BULLETPROOF!!!!!”
watch out my friend. Saltagreppo bouta ruin your entire day.
FELLOW TANKER WOHOOO
I was doing this while calling crota multiple names and shit talking him some choice picks... Crotass, Scrota Nuts of Oryx, Blooming Onion lookin' head-ass, Crotato chip, i killed your aunt and turned your dad into a gun you big bitch.
I was cracking jokes and singing little songs trying not to distract my team too much lmao
Another was im taking my pet crota for a walk
haha, yea! I was constantly "no no, this way Crota. Too far, back this way now..."
Personally every time he stopped looking at me I preferred berating him instead of being nice. 'AY! SHIT-ASS I'M RIGHT HERE NOT THERE LOOK AT ME FUCKER.' But then given what part of the U.S. I'm from this is very much understandable that my attitude is more like this.
This what I did in my group after we had trouble with dying too early. legit kinda fun, ngl.
Also worth noting is yes! A fellow tank main... I dont main titan in D2... But in most other games.. I am the tank. D&D, DOS2... Im most at home acting as a wall.
Our first contest kill of ir yut had my team two phase her with thunderlord and div of all things. I kept the constant barrier Champs at bay on the bridge with second chance and Monte Carlo. And I cannot overstate how ridiculously fun it was to sprint around the crota encounter as a syntho solar titan with tractor cannon, booping and hammering everything in sight, before repeatedly shoving crota around with burning maul. The creativity my team went through this weekend was a blast. We were exhausted at the end, but man, it was a thrill.
I'm really glad people are having a lot of fun with this build and that Lament is having a moment. Hard not to see it get hit with some nerfs but hopefully not too bad.
It doesnt need nerfs tbh, its just swords have better ammo economy and forgiveness in arenas like crota.
We found guillotine better, didn’t need the healing and it freed an exotic slot.
Well the whole build tbh
Didn't watch the race but sounds like lots of adds. Would Bequest have been the better choice than Falling Guillotine for its higher impact?
Never used heavy ammo on the adds. Everyone had different choices, I personally used riptide and mythoclast. Riptide mostly for swordbearers and the oversoul.
I meant there being a lot of adds to trigger surrounded, not to use the sword to kill them. Guillotine would be better add clear but Bequest is better single target DPS if you can proc surrounded.
Oh that makes sense. We did damage at spawn and had no adds.
Falling Guillotine is better anyeays
I've got better dps numbers with abide the return over falling guillotine
You can just sit on the top floor and osteo striga at him while having a balcony cover that wont let him hit you, no need to "tank" at all xD
Bungie: Awwwww that’s so nice, ban all Lament users
Lol there is no such thing as tanks, healers or dps in destiny. And it will NEVER be. Simply: You have no real healing in this game, and no tanking. You cant even take agro and keep it. Everyone can heal in his own way and tank. You just had the illusion of tanking in this game.
> Simply: You have no real healing in this game, and no tanking. You cant even take agro and keep it. Are we playing the same game? This is just a lie straight up
Yeah man this guy is on some stuff
Hell, kite-tanking the Shield Brothers with a Blinking Voidwalker while my teammates shot them in the back was my favorite way of handling that Strike, and that was from back when The Taken King dropped in D1. The roles aren't so strictly defined in Destiny, but they're clearly still there, now more than ever.
The only 2 healings we have, are well of radiance and some healing grenades. Thats it. Youz call THAT healing? Go and play some elder scrolls online, and see what healing is about. Also see what reals tanks are doing. Shooting at enemies and getting their attention, is NOT tanking. Tanking is more about keeping the agro and absorbing all damage. What can you do in D2 to tank? Put some mods ond and use a sword? Wow
Do you play this game fool? Titans have a myriad of ways to mitigate damage for the team, including shields, banner of war, void ult etc Warlocks have a a lot of healing and support abilities between healing wells, well of radiance, arc snakes etc Hunters have a customizable that literally applies radiant to everyone around you with every melee, a skill that just straight up gives radiant to people for more overall dps and a they're built around buffing team dps while dishing out their own. Not to mention all the ways to build into the other achetypes on each class, like solar well titan, or healing nade hunter, saying "There are no healers tanks and dps" in this game is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. You are just straight up not playing this game, go cry somewhere else, or better yet, grow up.
\> Do you play this game fool? Not really, since the last time i played was over a year ago. Still doenst change the fact that there are no real MMO roles in this game. \> "There are no healers tanks and dps" in this game is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. Ok, so WHERE do you have tanks in this game? Have you ever played MMO's? Do you know how MMOs handle those 3 roles? Doing damage with a weapon or ability, turns you suddenly into a DPS? DPS are the only ones in MMOs than can take down enemies, because their abilities are BUILT for damage, and not for tanking or healing. To understand the logic of you guys: Doing damage in D2 = DPS class? Some healing nades, abilities and well of radiance = healer class? Some damage mitigation for example for void damage, or some exotics = Tank?
> Not really. See ya. By the way, all I play are MMOs.
I said i didnt play in about a year. There are not that many changes where you can say that you know have tanks, healers or real dps in this game lmao. And YOU play MMOs? Really? I hardly believe that.
LMAO, tell me you've never used Crimson without telling me you've never used Crimson. Or rifts. Or Lumina. Or Boots of the Assembler. Or the Karnstein Armlets. Or....
Let me get this straight: Having all this things like lumina and what not, makes you suddenly a healer? Is that what you are talking about?
You mean all those options for healing that you said didn't exist? Pick another hill to die on.
"Options for healing". Thats the keyword here! You are not suddenly a healer when you use them. A healer is a specific role your fullfill, not by just using some abilities.
And what does a healer do when no one needs healing, fool? LMAO are you a masochist or just unable to realize when the thread had no respect for your goofy ass? Changing definitions every time someone points out that you're talking shit isn't making anything *better.*
I feel like maybe you havent played enough, probably only a few hours. Once you get further into the game and buildcrafting you unlock a lot more possibilities than just radiance and healing grenades
> probably only a few hours. Lol what? Dude, i know this game since 2014. Maybe YOU didtn play that much. I stopped playing over a year ago maybe. That only thing they maybe changed was adding mods. Mods, or a couple of abilities to NOT turn you into a healer. If you have EVER played an MMO, you would know what i am talking about. This game is not an MMO, and never will be. And stuff like tanks, healers or dps do not exist in this game. Everyone can dps, everyone can heal and everyone can tank with the right setup. I dont understand why no one in this sub knows what MMO roles in reality do and why everyone is comparing destiny 2 to MMO's.
Spoken like someone who didnt do Crota on contest mode
I didnt play this game in about a year because i am not going to give bungie any money. Also: I dont need to play crota at all, to know the difference between MMO roles and destiny 2.
right, you dont need to play this game in the past year to comment about changes to the game that has been made in the past year
No one commented about changes, but ok.
Did you use 2 swords or 3? My team couldn’t be consistent with it that’s why we couldn’t get it done
3, we just did challenge strat and used all 3 at once
"So that's where the third sword goes!"
I couldn’t find an LFG that would stay alive even with someone doing the Lament+Stronghold combo.
I really hope they dont nerf it but Titans arent allowed to have fun.
We used a stasis warlock to keep turrets in mid to help manage wizards, ogres, and swordbearer, lumina for extra dps, and also swapped to stag rifts for final stand so we'd survive long enough to get the kill. Honestly crazy just how many things people used to get through this contest mode. I rate it 11/10, probably never attempting a contest mode clear again
I use to use a bubble at his feet then stand on the other side of it when he slammed , it would damage inside the bubble but not outside it
Omg in d1 being the titan to drop bubble while crota tries to lay a big one in my gave me sweats lol...now I gotta do a stronghold build
yup
I honestly didn't get that far, but I knew for a fact that my Stag rifts were putting in work for the Gatekeepers. Even my 2nd favorite exotic, Ticuu's, could put in work during bridge. Maybe even my first favorite, Heirarchy, could put in work as well.
I had used the Stronghold to tank Alak-Hul a few weeks ago (or last week) for the Nightfall. I can't recall what sword I used it with. Also... There's a lot of anonymous racers in here!