Let's perfect the hard mode Crota battle (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 07:25 (3818 days ago)
edited by CruelLEGACEY, Thursday, February 12, 2015, 08:06

The DBO late-night crew ran Crota hard mode last night. The run went extremely well overall. I wanted to take a closer look at the Crota battle in particular. There are some little things we did to make the fight much more manageable. I also think there are at least a couple key elements we can improve on.

Here's the video:

First, some things we did that really worked:

1) Orbs at the beginning - This is one of the more basic elements of the Hard-mode routine, but I still see a lot of teams messing it up. During the initial fight out of the Deathsinger's room, don't kill the majors unless it's with a super move. Whittle down their health until they're almost toast, then finish them off with super moves. The goal is to generate as many orbs as possible so you can replenish health each time you return to this room.

2) Dealing with Boomers. These bastards are a constant source of frustration on hard mode, but we did several things that helped minimize the potential danger.
- No early aggro. Until we were ready to break from cover and run for the center window, nobody attracted the Boomer's attention. By the time they saw us and opened fire, most of us had reached the ledge. When leaving the ledge to return to the Deathsinger's room, we would break early while the boomers were still focused on our sword carrier.
- Stagger them. Each sword round, as our Defender Titan moved to the boomer tower to distract them, I would stagger at least one boomer (if not both) with an Ice Breaker round to the face. This meant our defender had a little less fire to dodge on his way up to the tower.

3) Bladedancer as Sword Carrier Cody used the invis/blink strike technique against Crota flawlessly. I cannot recommend this technique highly enough. It is both the safest way to attack Crota while also doing the most possible damage. Everyone with a Hunter character should practice this method.

*** With all that covered, there are a few things I think we can do to make the fight even smoother. ***

1) Orbs for sword carrier I'd like to work out a system for generating orbs down in the pit for the sword carrier. I have an idea that might work: On normal, after clearing out the initial swarm, 1 player runs for the chalice and brings it back to the group. Perhaps on hard mode we could have a player run down to that same spot and use their super to generate orbs? I'm thinking a Sunsinger or Gunslinger could stand off to the side (near the boomer tower, but out of the boomer's sight) and use their super to take out some Thrawl before returning to the center window ledge. That way the sword carrier can grab the orbs on their way to the rocks beside Crota.

2) Safer spot for defender Titans? This may not be possible, but I'd love to come up with a less suicidal position for the Defender Titans to take when they draw the Boomer's aggro. Even with me pinging the boomers, our defender drew a ton of fire. There's gotta be a better place to drop that bubble.

Thoughts/suggestions?