I don't think I was actually the one that first said it, but yeah -- it's frustrating. We beat it last week and shoulda had it a few times last nigh, but I don't know how much "easier/faster" it's going to get until we're over-leveled. This is the big problem with the main point of "hardness" in this raid coming from the "artificial" difficulty of just making us be a level beneath every enemy in the encounter.

Once you have it down... I ran my alt this morning with a bunch of Randoms cobbled up through DestinyLFG, and we had very little trouble using a combination of tactics... Only one of which our group used the first time.

I actually like the Hard Crota fight, because while the bugs are annoying, you can adapt on-the-fly a lot. You have to. You can use a number of tactics depending on what classes you have, and who is doing what. Sometimes things go south, but you can still recover and adapt.

VoG only had one strategy per area. Only one thing worked, and the trick was staying alive. Now, if the swordbearer is killed, and you survive oversoul, you've got a countdown.

If the sword disappears, the schedule shifts.

If you enrage him a bit too early or too late, you've got a tiny window to drop him a third time...

Each encounter, pulled off right, takes no more than a few minutes, and can be done quickly or slowly depending on planning and execution, unlike VoG, where everything is kind of on a timer...

I love Raids in Destiny; I love the challenge, the frustration, and the ultimate feeling of empowerment that comes from mastering such difficult encounters. I'm looking forward to beating Crota's End on hard mode for the personal sense of accomplishment. But Speedracer said something during the Crota battle last night that stuck with me:

"I don't know if we can run this weekly".

I had joined the group late; they had already been stuck on the hard-mode Crota battle for a few hours when I got online. We tried a couple strategies (the "center window", "under the boomer tower") and time and again we were thwarted by seemingly random occurrences. I could be wrong, but this battle doesn't feel like something that can be mastered. It feels like you can perform the same actions 5 times in a row and get completely different results each time. That's not "challenging", it's frustrating as hell.

Aside from the many glitches that seem to occur during the final battle, I believe the big problem is Crota himself. He is just too wildly unpredictable. His aggro & behaviors are all over the map. Sometimes you can stand 30 feet away and he'll just stare at you. Other times if you get within 50 feet he'll charge and take out your entire group with 1 swing.

...

You basically expressed our grievances to the point of being verbatim, sans a few swear words for effect.

If you stop at the Deathsinger, the whole encounter is fun and there are cool drops to be had.

If you decide to carry on to Crota...I don't know. I flushed about 20,000 glimmer down the toilet in the form of heavy ammo synths. After flying through the first part of the raid in an hour and a half, I ran face first into a Crota shaped wall and proceeded to smash my head against that wall for about 15 hours over the course of a week, making absolutely no progress. After putting in another four hours on Monday in a last-ditch effort to score the win before the reset, our team gave up a little after midnight.

Putting in so much time, effort, and resources and still falling short is pretty damned depressing. I tried to go to bed and put the whole experience behind me, but I couldn't sleep. I had to get up and give it another go.

I jumped into a group of fellow raid n00bs from Destiny LFG, showed them the method that had almost worked a dozen or more times for our earlier group, and 45 minutes later, I had a new shader and a new toy (but still no raid helmet).

The shader looks awful on Titans (but is pretty cool on Hunters), but the scout rifle is pretty sweet. If nothing else, being able to basically put a flare on the Swordbearer's head with the Target Mark perk will be pretty useful. No more playing hide and seek for that jerk.

But was it worth the headache? I really don't know. The most telling part was probably that, for seemingly everyone in the group, instead of a feeling of accomplishment, it was a feeling of "Thank God that's over with!" and most vowed never to do it again (though, you can see how that worked out for me.)

tl;dr If you stop at the deathsinger, it's absolutely worth it. If you decide to carry on, prepare to start wishing Bungie had included an "assume the fetal position" emote*.

-Disciple

*Credit to someone from the raid group, I think either INSANEdrive or ChrisTheeCrappy, for that wonderful image :)

I love Raids in Destiny; I love the challenge, the frustration, and the ultimate feeling of empowerment that comes from mastering such difficult encounters. I'm looking forward to beating Crota's End on hard mode for the personal sense of accomplishment. But Speedracer said something during the Crota battle last night that stuck with me:

"I don't know if we can run this weekly".

One day we will. Strategies get better, and in March we'll be able to hit 34. Even so, Korny seems to imply that he's found an easier way to do it.

Look at it like a challenge. Remember when I said the Vault of Glass would be super mega hard to even finish?

It'll probably be a lot less of a nightmare when the issues get worked out, at least some of the more egregious ones.

I imagine Bungie's working on them, and hopefully can make some progress.

I just completed the Hard mode raid. The following strategy is MUCH easier than what we attempted last night. I have no doubt we can make this a regular thing even before we hit 33.

It's the same, using the middle except that you only down Crota twice.

After the second round of swords, run under the right tower. Get on top of a door, and kill the first ogre. Then snipe the second.

Go back up and wait in the crystal room. We waited until he rotated back mid a second time to be safe.

Then do another round of the sword, and you have him.

I was the sword bearer, and here are my tips if you are a hunter:

All the various ways to go invisible have separate cooldowns. So, I supered and used vanish before picking up the sword, which was enough time to be invisible until you attack Crota the first time. Then blink strike to go invisible again. After that, run under the tower, crouch to go invisible, then run back up to the crystal room.

If you use R2, it is 14 hits to enrage. That means you want to do 13 hits in two rounds. So that's 3 x 3 and 1 x 4 which is not to difficult. Just be sure to count.

I'll upload a video, but guys this strat has much much more room for error. Munky was right!

So the PS4 crew beat Crota last night. We used a hybrid method combining the center window strategy with the "right tower during ogres" strategy.

A few points about the experience:

* We were very lucky in terms of avoiding any bugs. Nothing crazy or unpredictable happened.
* Without getting wiped by random bugs, this encounter is in fact a lot of fun.
* Every time we wiped, it felt like it was our fault. When we succeeded, it felt like we had won (rather than simply lucking our way through)

As a reward, I got the Scout Rifle. So far, I'm liking it a lot. Might even replace Fatebringer as my go-to primary.

My takeaway from last night is that the Crota hard mode fight CAN be a great amount of fun. If Bungie can eliminate at least some of the bugs from the encounter, it will make a big difference.

make your sword bearer host. Just read this on reddit. I feel stupid for not thinking of this.

If the sword bearer is host, you will have less chance of crota kneeling late, or getting up early. i guess it would fix health/shield regen problems too.