Let's perfect the hard mode Crota battle

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?

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Use youtube in the brackets instead of img or b, etc. Only use the YouTube id (everything after v=).

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Use youtube in the brackets instead of img or b, etc. Only use the YouTube id (everything after v=).

It will look like this when you type it:
(youtube)"letters"(/youtube) where "letters" are dQw4w9WgXcQ in this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
And the ( and ) are replaced with [ and ].
You don't put the entire url.

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I fixed it for you, if you don't get what these other fine gentlemen are saying check the edit (while you can) I made to see how I did it.

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Regarding the boomers... I'm sure it's safer to just avoid them rather than kill them... but curious on the timing. I know you get a wizard that I assume is pretty lethal that comes out in place of the sword guy once the boomers are down. There's an obvious advantage to never seeing this guy. But is there an advantage to having him come out?

Assuming he charges the group like the sword knight I'm sure it's a bit dangerous. Is this something that could be beneficial if overcome? If there is enough time between the wizard going down and a new group of boomers coming out, maybe this could be worth the effort? Also, if he is up do the boomers still respawn before he dies? Is kiting this guy somewhere worth thinking about?

It seems odd that we're just standing around most of the time waiting. Maybe this is intended, but the fact that we are doing that makes me wonder what Bungie's intent was when designing the encounter. I can't imagine that it's doing a bunch of standing in the back room pointing at crota a whole bunch. =) However, just like sniping from the back in VoG (which I'm sure wasn't intended as a go-to strategy), that doesn't mean what they intended is any easier/safer than what we are doing now.

I wonder if chaining some supers could help here with both boomers and the wizard, while dumping a bunch of orbs around too. Other than the bubbles here and there, we really aren't using supers for anything. It doesn't have to be, but this may be a waste of resources. I know the raids are generally about coordination rather than firepower... but might be worth thinking about.

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I personally have very little experience experimenting with other methods to deal with the boomers. I've been in groups that have tried a few different locations for bubble placements, but they all pretty much result in the same outcome: a dead defender (poor Vortech ;p).

I have wondered if the Wizard would in fact be less dangerous than the boomers. I could see the Wizard being lethal to the sword carrier, if the sword carrier is jumping off Crota's platform between attacks... BUT if the sword carrier is using the invis/blink strike technique, they might be able to stay out of the Wizard's range the entire time.

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I wonder if a different route to place the bubble would be helpful. The boomer knights don't seem to lead their targets like a real person would, at least when running out of the crystal room toward the ledge I notice that I'm most likely to get hit if I'm following someone else's path. Thus if I'm in the back half of the group I'll take a different route to the ledge).

Perhaps the bubble titan would find it easier to avoid boomer shots better if they jumped over toward the crystal room door & then took a hard left at the top of the stairs & ran across the 'bridge' before jumping up. That way you're not running AT the boomer fire, but across it.

This suggestion is from a guy with vast amounts of experience placing the bubble. I've had the role once, on normal mode. ;)

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I wonder if a different route to place the bubble would be helpful. The boomer knights don't seem to lead their targets like a real person would, at least when running out of the crystal room toward the ledge I notice that I'm most likely to get hit if I'm following someone else's path. Thus if I'm in the back half of the group I'll take a different route to the ledge).

Perhaps the bubble titan would find it easier to avoid boomer shots better if they jumped over toward the crystal room door & then took a hard left at the top of the stairs & ran across the 'bridge' before jumping up. That way you're not running AT the boomer fire, but across it.

This suggestion is from a guy with vast amounts of experience placing the bubble. I've had the role once, on normal mode. ;)

That just might work. I was also wondering about using a 2-man technique:

2 people leave the window ledge. The first person runs towards the doorway that leads to the Deathsinger hall. This person goes first to draw the boomer's fire, while the Defender Titan then moves up to the window. Once the Titan is in place, that should draw the boomer's fire, meaning the "distraction" player can fire rockets at Crota from the doorway.

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Another thought I had was if you have 2 titans one could place a Blessing of Light bubble somewhere for the other one to pass through on the way to the tower.

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I personally have very little experience experimenting with other methods to deal with the boomers. I've been in groups that have tried a few different locations for bubble placements, but they all pretty much result in the same outcome: a dead defender (poor Vortech ;p).

A few times I have run the raid with others, they drop a bubble over the little glowing circle where Crota runs to when he goes to the sides. The boomers will fire on that, and so long as the sword carrier remains out of sight, will never be fired upon.

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...last night on a normal run and it seemed to work quite well. I suspect it's less prone to dying there as you have to run much less of a gauntlet to get there. When I'm running my titan and bubbling in there I'll be using this spot in the future.

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Somewhat unrelated to the thread, but this happened last night... gave me a good laugh :)

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I would love to either get a no wipe hard mode run, or a flawless normal run on recording. If 3 others record too, we can do the 4 up video and be super sweet for your website.

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I would love to either get a no wipe hard mode run, or a flawless normal run on recording. If 3 others record too, we can do the 4 up video and be super sweet for your website.

That would be very cool. I'll try hooking up my elgato and capturing it that way. I've had problems doing that in the past... I can't get the audio to go to the elgato AND my headphones at the same time. If you plug headphones into the controller (as I ususally do) it mutes the audio through the HDMI cable. I've got my Astros hooked up now, using the optical cable. Maybe that will work :-/

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I would love to either get a no wipe hard mode run, or a flawless normal run on recording. If 3 others record too, we can do the 4 up video and be super sweet for your website.

That would be very cool. I'll try hooking up my elgato and capturing it that way. I've had problems doing that in the past... I can't get the audio to go to the elgato AND my headphones at the same time. If you plug headphones into the controller (as I ususally do) it mutes the audio through the HDMI cable. I've got my Astros hooked up now, using the optical cable. Maybe that will work :-/

That should work as long as you choose stereo, as the PS4 will output over optical and HDMI at the same time. Maybe your normal raid tonight will be the one :-P

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So I put my bubble on the front edge of the round platform just to the right of the window ledge, and stand just to the left of it to draw boomer fire and still be able to rocket crota. This works great, just 5 manned it the other night first try. Wish I had a PS4 so I could join you guys :P

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1. Just before the glass drops, throw up a Blessing of Light. This lets you take a few hits without worrying because you can dip back into the bubble to restore your shield, and will prevent any overeager Knights from killing you with just 1 melee. As you mention, orbs are super important (even more so with this approach) so I like to spec Gift of the Void too (or whatever perk gives you 3 extra orbs if your bubble takes enough damage).

2. If you have a pair of Warlocks (or a Golden gun hunter) you can handily generate 16 orbs in the crystal room just from kills. Even better, if you have a second Titan he can pop a second bubble after the first expires. That makes a total of 20-26 orbs, without factoring armour perks that generate orbs. There should be plenty for both Titans to regen their bubbles before leaving.

3. Wait. Do not leave the room until everyone is synthed up and waiting at the doors.

4. Leave as a group and head for the ledge. When the Swordbearer comes out you need to get your Hunter down there to keep him aggro'd and stop him from hiding.

5. Swordhunter punches a Thrall to Invis, then gets onto the platform from centre. After dealing 3 smashes worth of damage to Crota, he runs to the right side and crouches to invis again. You should have plenty of time to get away and doing it this way round means you don't have to crouch-invis in the pit and you don't have to Blink Strike Crota - less things to go wrong.

6. After 2 downs, your ledge team edges round to the left of the ledge, hidden from Crota, while your swordhunter runs into the bottom right Ogre room, activates Arc Blade and Vanish, and runs back to the Crystal room.

7. When the swordbearer comes out, your hunter in the crystal room and anyone who can see him on the ledge aims down their sights at him. This seems to aggro him into heading down underneath the ledge - a nice easy target.

NOTE: the hunter indoors may want to shoot the glass while aimed at him. It seems to help but I cant confirm. If he hides behind the rock on the right or runs too far right, bob back and forth towards the crystal. Again, it may be confirmation bias but it seems to help.

8. Once Crota moves back, your swordhunter crouch-invis just inside the doorway to get past the boomers while your ledge team kills the Swordbearer.

9. There's no Thrall down there to punch, so your swordsman will want to use Arc Blade Vanish to grab the sword and get to Crota this time - THIS IS WHY THOSE ORBS ARE SO IMPORTANT. There needs to be enough to give your swordhunter at least 1-and-a-half Supers (the rest will come from running through Titan bubbles).

10. Once Crota has been downed once, run to the rock on the right again and crouch-invis again, just like before.

11. After the second down, everyone heads into the right side Ogre room and gets on top of a door.

12. Kill the first Ogre, then pop a Ward of Dawn for protection/orbs (ONLY if you have 2 or more Titans) and kill the other as he comes out of his room.

13. Ward of Dawn at the bottom of the stairs (Blessing, to protect from Boomers/Thrall)and head inside the crystal room, watching out for Cursed Thrall.

14. Kill all the Thrall trying to get inside.

15. Now it's everyone's turn to Agg the Swordbearer. As before, shooting the glass and moving back and forth towards the crystal might help. The swordbearer usually wont head down under the ledge until Crota is stood by the right door.

16. As soon as Crota starts moving, have a Titan put a bubble just outside the door to protect from boomer fire.

17. Everyone heads to the ledge and kills the swordbearer. Swordhunter Vanishes again and hits Crota 3 more times to enter Enrage.

18. Swordhunter runs back to the right side one last time. He should have enough time to crouch-invis before the ledge team fires, but don't marry the idea.

19. Ledge team downs Crota as soon as his shield drops.

20. Crota goes down, ledge team distracts enraged boomers, ledge team is killed by Theall magically hitting them through the window, Crota dies.

21. PROFIT.

NOTE 1: We run with 2 of each class. Gives us 2 bubbles, 16+ orbs from kills and a backup hunter in case something goes wrong.

NOTE 2: We have never had trouble with Boomers shooting the swordhunter before enrage. I dont know if it's because we jump up to Crota from the middle, but they completely ignore our swordsman so we don't bother distracting/staggering them. After enrage all bets are off, so it's best to have someone distract them as soon as the second volley of rockets have been fired.

NOTE 3: I know you guys like triple-downing Crota. That should make things even simpler, but this is how we do it.

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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.

To be honest, unless you are going for a two sword kill, this is unnecessary, only because of the auto enrage. If you are going for a three sword kill, you only need 3 smashes per down anyway. Add in a super, and you can push him over the edge and end up enraging him too early. I feel like the three sword kill is the safe reliable strategy.

That being said a super is very handy if you are trying to go for it in two swords, since it is very fast and makes a great last smash on the super awesome combo. If we want to push it (which we should, for fun!) then generating orbs would be very nice.

If there's titans in the group, all they have to do is place a bubble right where Crota stands before we start the fight. That way the orbs are right up by Crota :-p

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

Silly question: how do I embed a video in a post?

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Fixed it for you, you can see how if you check fast

Thanks for the video help everyone!