After 2 successful completions of the Oryx Heroic Challenge Mode battle, I thought I'd post some quick tips for any other DBOers hoping to try it before the reset on Tuesday.

The wrinkle to the Oryx Challenge Mode is that Oryx must have his health completely wiped out by a single light-bomb detonation. So instead of detonating 4 bombs at a time to wear him down, you need to set off at least 16 bombs at the same time, draining all of his health in a single attack.

First, some general tips and comments:

Weapons

Touch of Malice is a long-time favorite for the Oryx encounter. Not everyone will agree with me on this, but when it comes to this specific challenge mode, I would argue that ToM is not ideal. It is great for staggering Oryx, but that's about it. Given the option, I think the better choice is to go with a high level Sleeper Simulant or Black Spindle as your exotic weapon. Like Touch of Malice, both the Sleeper and the Spindle are great for putting major DPS on Oryx when he opens his chest. But unlike ToM, these 2 weapons are also very useful for killing Ogres, Shades, and Light Eater Knights.

Whatever specific weapons you decide to use, remember that Special and Heavy ammo are both hugely important for this fight. Any perks/abilities you can combine to maximize the amount of ammo you carry is very useful (in the video below, I equipped Ruin Wings for extra heavy ammo drops, as well as boots that let me carry extra sniper ammo).

Subclasses

Hunters, Warlocks, and Titans all have distinct advantages they can each bring to this fight. I wouldn't say there is any 1 subclass that is crucial for this fight, but some subclasses do make things far more manageable.

Titan: If you're playing as a Titan, I highly suggest you go Defender.

The exact type of bubble you use will depend on the position you play during the encounter. The most helpful use of a bubble is dropping weapons of light for the floater during the Ogre phase. In the video below, I was the team's dedicated floater. I held position up on the sister's platforms, using a weapons of light bubble to boost my damage against the Ogres and provide cover. If you have multiple Titans, it can also be helpful to deploy a Blessing of Light bubble in between the Sister's platforms (off-center, so you don't block your team's firing lines). We had a 3rd Titan who would drop an Armor of Light bubble during the Shade encounters, which was also helpful.

Hunter: If you're going in as a Hunter, I would recommend using Nightstalker, but a Gunslinger with Celestial Nighthawk can also be very useful.

Nightstalkers are great for crowd control and Orb production. Spec your tethers for maximum range and duration (Black Hole perk), as well as the Predator perk which turns your Shadowshot anchors into sticky traps. During our run earlier this week, we had a pair of Nightstalkers in the group. We'd begin the encounter by firing a single trap into the middle of the room (between the L2 and R2 pillars) to snag the initial batch of adds and generate orbs for the rest of the team. Then, immediately after killing all 4 Ogres, 1 Nightstalker would fire an anchor in between the two front pillars, while the other Nightstalker put an anchor between the 2 back pillars. This made it far easier to handle all of the adds that crash the middle of the room at that point. More importantly, it would snare any Light Eater Knights that were still running around, making it easier to take them out from the safety of the Immortality Aura in the middle of the room.

Gunslingers with Celestial Nighthawk can fill a key role by doing massive split-second damage to a single target. This can be very helpful when taking down Ogres, or the Vessel, or even for staggering Oryx. Just make sure you don't miss ;)

Warlock: Warlocks will almost certainly want to use the Sunsinger subclass.

As always, the ability to self-res can be a great "get out of jail free" card. But during this encounter, self-res can have more specific and deliberate uses. One of the most dangerous parts of the battle is the Shade phase. At certain points during your fights against the Shades of Oryx (usually once per fight) the Shade will move towards your group and attack with a sword smash. This smash can be deadly, particularly when a member of your fireteam has the misfortune of being spawned into the arena directly in the path of the Shade's attack. A Sunsinger can be a huge asset here, by drawing aggro from the Shade and leading the attack away from the rest of the fireteam. By sacrificing themselves, the Sunsinger can prevent anyone else from being taken down by the Shade, and safely self-res.

On to the specifics of the encounter. Your exact plan of attack will of course depend on makeup of your fireteam, but there is a solid general strategy that seems to work very well.

You'll want: A dedicated relic runner, a dedicated floater, and 4 dedicated pillar-holders (some groups like to have each pillar-holder claim a specific pillar, others like to assign an order and rotate around the room based on where Oryx starts. Either strategy works fine).

Relic Runner: Your relic holder needs to move fast. Very fast. They should be able to retrieve the relic by the time the Hive Ship has spawned into the room, and steal the Aura from the Vessel moments as soon as he spawns in. Otherwise the ship, adds, and Oryx will obliterate the pillar-holders.

Pillar Holders: The Pillar holders are primarily responsible for killing Ogres as they spawn, as well as the Light-Eater knights that appear after each Ogre dies. Each Pillar Holder should take responsibility for the L.E. Knight that spawns across from them. Prioritize the Ogres, but as soon as both Ogres on your half of the room are down, shift focus to the Knights.

The Ogres need to be killed fast. To complete the challenge mode, you need to keep all the Light Bombs stacked on top of each other in their respective corners. Ogres also have the annoying habit of teleporting away from the pile of Light Bombs piling up in their corners. They only way to reliably prevent this is to kill each Ogre as fast as possible. This means you must kill each Ogre before they have time to move. Crit hits with high-impact snipers are key, but keep plenty of heavy ammo available as well.

By the time the Relic Runner has secured the relic, all platform holders should move off their platforms and head towards the middle of the room. This means that 2 of the platform holders might have to kill their final Ogre while on the move. It also means one or two of the Light Eater Knights may still be on the loose. The platform holders, along with the Floater, should kill any straggler Knights as they cross the middle of the room.

Floater: The floater should be armed to the teeth, and have a weapons of light bubble to boost their damage output. Having the floater take position up on the Sister's platforms works very well, as long as they have a Weapons of Light bubble up their with them for cover. If no bubble is available, they'll probably want to stay down between the sister's pillars. Ideally, you want the floater using a high-impact sniper to do massive damage against the Ogres while also staggering them to keep them from moving forward.

The floater should be able to keep pace with the Ogres as they spawn. In other words, your group should be killing the first Ogre as the 2nd spawns, kill the 2nd as the 3rd spawns, etc. The floater can't afford to fall behind. Sometimes this means leaving one Ogre still standing as you move to the next. This is acceptable, as long as the Ogre is almost dead. The pillar holders can finish the Ogre off.

The floater should be prepared to hit the 4th and final Ogre hardest of all. By the time the 4th Ogre spawns, the Platform Holders will already be on their way to the middle of the room, meaning they won't be able to apply as much focus fire on the final Ogre. Use grenades/heavy weapons/whatever you can to kill the final Ogre, then switch back to your sniper and make sure the final Light Eater Knight is dead before you drop down to the middle and take position with the rest of your fireteam inside the Aura.

From there, the rest is fairly straight forward. Stagger Oryx. Defeat the Shade. Repeat until you have 4 Light Bombs in each corner (or at least 16 total). Detonate. Profit.

Hope this is helpful! Please feel free to respond with any questions or tips!

Didn't occur to me until afterwards, but if you are playing as a Hunter, the Skyburners Annex helmet is ridiculously useful. Heavy weapon kills cause you to spew orbs left and right, and if your Super is full, orbs have a chance to grant you Special ammo, which is extremely important in this fight.

Best of all, you drop enough orbs with Heavy that you can avoid using your Super at all, while building your teammate's supers to give you endless ammo.

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Didn't occur to me until afterwards, but if you are playing as a Hunter, the Skyburners Annex helmet is ridiculously useful. Heavy weapon kills cause you to spew orbs left and right, and if your Super is full, orbs have a chance to grant you Special ammo, which is extremely important in this fight.

Best of all, you drop enough orbs with Heavy that you can avoid using your Super at all, while building your teammate's supers to give you endless ammo.

The raid helmet is pretty good too. On picking up orbs you get bonus damage to taken. The ogres count as taken! So you dip into the weapons bubble, grab the orbs, and now you have massive damage boost. Wish I had the helmet during the fight!

One point about the platform standers. Depending on who is doing what for platforms, you will see your roles change as oryx moves to different platforms first.

If you are across from oryx when he first slams his fist, congratulations, you don't need to even get on your platform. You are #4 and can do a little floating of your own. You are, however, still responsible for your own ogre and knight pair. It is very beneficial for you to help #1 out with the first ogre and knight. Once that is done you both can fully focus on ogre #4 when it comes up, helping it go down faster. if the regular floater is taking care of knight #4 you're good to go after the 4th ogre. If it makes sense hit that knight, but don't stress on it -- the floater up top has a better angle and you're likely taking heavy fire from the adds -- get to safety. Also, if you think the other half of the map is going to have ogre trouble, you can ditch your platform buddy once his ogre is down and soften up the ogres over there before yours comes up.

If you are in the front right or back left you won't have any other strategy -- your ogre will be coming up sooner than your partner's ogre. You shoot your ogre, you kill your knight, and you help your buddy with his knight if it's not dead already, then head to the middle. While jumping off the platforms as to not go down with the hive ship. =)

If you're in the back right or front left it's a little more nuanced. You may be platform #3, which will change the order a little. You will still need to jump up on your platform. But you'll be hitting the ogre across from you first, then your own ogre, then your knight. (the same as if you were a floater, but you're still on your platform)

Seems complex in writing like this, but isn't that bad. Really it's kill your ogre, then your knight, and help out as makes sense before and after that part happens, then get to the middle when it's time to do so.

You are pretty much spot on and I agree with most. Here are some thoughts/counter arguements:

1. Touch of Malice is the best for floaters, If you have a Defender running Blessing of Light. You can find that sweet spot of standing in the bubble to get the buff, but also still being able to shoot out of it. Running in and out of the Bubble with ToM is a HUGE DPS, and allows you to use heavy/snipers for other things. While Snipers would be able to take them down faster, not having to worry about special is a nice relief. (Keep in mind, this applies to the floaters only)

2. I ran it with Several Nightstalkers earlier this week. Alot of then woul die while trying to make it to the middle bubble/aura. While part of this is due to them not paying attention and leaving late, alot of it could have been avoided. Invisible Smoke grenades. The Ogres die fast enough (should) that you dont need to use it on them. A good counter to that is you can use it to blind adds so your neighbor plate can have some relief.

That is, the teleporting ogre on the last phase.

That is, the teleporting ogre on the last phase.

The only real way to prevent the teleports is to kill the Ogres before they start walking around. Once they take a couple steps, they stand a chance of teleporting. So your team just needs to be totally on point with your damage to drop them as fast as possible.

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Yep, staggering the Ogres is huge. That's why I primarily use a sniper rifle to deal with them. If I'm the floater, I also try to time my shots specifically to stagger them. So I'm not actually shooting as fast as I can, because that would cause me to miss the stagger window. I know the platform holders will be unloading with everything they can, so I focus on keeping the Ogre staggered to prevent them from moving/teleporting.

That is, the teleporting ogre on the last phase.

The only real way to prevent the teleports is to kill the Ogres before they start walking around. Once they take a couple steps, they stand a chance of teleporting. So your team just needs to be totally on point with your damage to drop them as fast as possible.

I wish i had saved the video, b/c i have killed an ogre standing in place, and his blight dropped in the middle walkway. But yes, USUALLY if you kill them before they take a step, you're good to go.

A split second before they spawn, you'll see steam or smoke or something to that effect coming up from the ground. I always toss a solar grenade on top of them to give a little extra help. If i'm running platform 1 or 3, there's a chance that platform 4 will be across from you (depending on Oryx's starting location), so i always try to toss a nade onto Ogre 4 to help out the floaters as well.