One month, 2 Raids per week, no check point yet. (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, October 16, 2017, 07:18 (2396 days ago) @ DEEP_NNN

If I'm reading this thread correctly, you are capable of completing the castellum (and you get rewards from the chest afterwards, so there's your rewards for doing it), but haven't cleared gardens, baths, or gauntlet yet? I hate to tell you, but castellum is not considered a "major" encounter in this raid. It's like an interstitial. The other encounters are the majors. Once you clear one of those, there will be a checkpoint.

Quick and dirty castellum tips:

- 2 people on offense, 4 on defense. Use your heavy ammo as needed, it drops like candy. Use good AoE supers. Try to chain your orbs. Be sure to kill counselors as soon as they appear. This is a pretty straightforward fight. Kill the standard bearers, carry the standards to the plate, repeat. The defenders keep the standard reclaimers from reaching the plate.

The other fights are not really about dps at all (you don't need light 305, by the way - anything above the light level of the enemies doesn't provide any additional bonus (270, iirc). All three fights are about mechanics execution, rather than gear checks or dps. If you're having trouble with any of it, please post your questions here.

Calus Tokens are a Bungie joke on players who may never see the end of the raid. They are unnecessary and are not a reward.

Or, they are a way of providing raid rewards that fit the system used in every other corner of the game (giving tokens to a vendor in exchange for loot). Plus, when you finally do beat the raid, you'll have loads of tokens stored up in your inventory, meaning you'll get lots of loot all at once. Almost like the time you've put in is being rewarded :)

Also, that chest can drop other rewards besides just tokens.

Castellum challenges every ability we have to compete. We know how to do it but it is quite a time sink and having to repeat it multiple times in one raid does not improve our spirit.

In many ways, the Castellum is a sort of "gear/skill/coordination check" for the entire raid. I obviously have no idea what your group is doing (since I haven't played with you or watched you play), but that's part of why I asked if there was anything in particular that was giving you trouble. Because if your group is having that much of a hard time with that intro section, chances are there is something you could change or do differently to make it more manageable. The basic idea of splitting your fireteam into 2 groups, identifying priority targets and taking them out (the bubble scions), all while managing large numbers of enemies is a pretty common dynamic for the rest of the raid, but it is far less complicated during that intro than anywhere else in the raid.

This raid is amazingly forgiving in terms of which gear/subclass you use, but that said, there are a few things that I believe everyone in the group needs to be comfortable doing in order to have much of a chance of making it through:

* Killing yellow-bar enemies. You mention the importance of DPS further down in your post, and this ties directly to that. Everyone in your fireteam should have absolutely no problem taking on a yellow-bar enemy, solo, and bringing them down quickly. You rarely have to do this in the Castellum, but later on in the raid there are plenty of times where every member of the fireteam is face-to-face with a yellow-bar enemy and must bring them down all on their own in a matter of a few seconds.

* Killing lots of stuff with your super Sounds obvious, but the sheer number of enemies that you face in some of the encounters in this raid makes it crucial to know how to use supers effectively. Some supers are inherently better for crowd control than others, so everyone should choose wisely. Don't go using a nova bomb to kill 1 or 2 red-bar enemies. Tied in to this point is the importance of chaining supers. During the Castellum, you can almost get to the point where someone on your fireteam is using their super at all times. Keep the supers happening around the area you need to defend so that the orbs are all close together. If you get this running smoothly, your team should have no trouble clearing the castellum.

* High DPS on bosses In addition to cleaning up low-level mobs, everyone in your fireteam will need to have a plan for delivering high DPS against boss characters. There's no single "best way" to do this, but it does require some thought and planning. If you're a voidwalker, make sure you're using the nova bomb that creates a lingering damage-vortex. Rocket launchers w/ cluster bombs are fantastic. Fusion Rifles are better than shotguns in almost every way (because most bosses will be standing outside of shotgun range). Merciless is an absolute monster. Pulse/vortex grenades do mega damage as well. So everyone should look at their class and subclass abilities carefully, and manage their ability usage accordingly. You don't want to reach a boss DPS phase and find yourself without heavy ammo and your grenade ability, for example.

I hope you are incorrect about power levels. Otherwise, what is the point of attaining 300+5?

In terms of the normal raid, there isn't a point in attaining 300-305. The normal raid is not the most demanding activity in the game with regards to power level. The point of being able to overshoot the raid in power level is so that you can easily gear up to the point where you are "raid ready" without having to spend weeks grinding just to get that pair of max-level boots you were missing, like what constantly happened with D1 and everyone complained about. It also makes it easy to get a variety of gear up to raid level, so that you can swap your loadouts from encounter to encounter and still maintain your level.

With our group, DPS is very important. Knocking down enemies quicker gives a bit more time to think and react. Having a clearer head helps with mechanics execution.

In my experience, one of the more challenging aspects of this raid is that it rarely gives you time to focus on just combat or just mechanics. Your team is going to be making calls and plays based on the mechanics of certain encounters while fighting non-stop. So I'd actually recommend focusing on developing that team skill, rather than trying to clear everything out so that you have more time to think.
DPS is certainly important (as I discussed above), but just make sure everyone on the team is being smart about how they judge their DPS. If someone in the group is using a sniper rifle because it is their highest-level power weapon, but they suck with sniper rifles, have them switch to something they are more comfortable and effective with. As others have said, light level is not uber critical for this raid. Anything above 260 is doable, 270-280 more comfortably so.