About the boss fight... (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, September 28, 2015, 18:42 (3438 days ago) @ Kahzgul

First of all, it's a 10 minute fight. About average, as far as Raid boss encounters go.

2nd of all, you have plenty of margin for error most of the time. There are just a few key spots where everyone needs to be perfect. My group has beaten him twice, and both times we suffered multiple deaths through our successful runs. We often had people die while detonating their bombs, or our roamer would get crushed while fighting the ogres, or someone would get swarmed while in the other dimension. In all of these cases, we were able to press on, get the revive, and make it through.

There are of course certain parts of the battle that need to be done properly with little margin for error, but I think Bungie hit a good balance: demanding enough to feel rewarding, but with enough room to breath to feel doable.

Crota was far worse, IMO because success often relied on lack of bugs ruining things for you. Your team could do everything right and still fail because of broken encounter mechanics.

Crota and Aetheon were definitely the bugs beating you rather than the boss. Agreed!

When I say 1 little button press, I mean someone accidentally jumping while on a pressure plate tower, or missing their jump up to one. I'd say only 1 in 7 attempts do we even get the relic because people aren't good at standing still and killing ogres. The fact that there's literally no margin for error in that initial setup is brutal since you have to do that exact thing 4 times over the course of the fight.

I agree that there is very little margin for error during that sequence, but I'd add that once you get the hang of it, it's fairly straight forward. I'd say the most challenging aspect (depending on the player) is the relic runner making the jumps around the room.

You might already know this stuff, but there are a few things our group found helpful:

The obvious setup is to have 1 player assigned to each plate. With another player assigned as the relic runner, that leaves 1 final player left over. We would call this player "the floater". The floater's job would be to move around and help take out Ogres as they spawn. After staggering Oryx, the floater would remain in the relic holder's bubble and focus on keeping Oryx's chest open while the other 4 players go detonate their bombs. The floater is also in charge of replacing one of the other 4 players in their role if they die at any point.

Now here's a more subtle trick. When the relic spawns, you need to activate the plates in the correct order, starting with the plate immediately counter-clockwise to the relic's position. The catch is that you only actually need to activate the first 3 plates... the final plate (the one located directly below the relic) does not need anyone to stand on it. What this means is you actually can have 2 floaters moving around, helping take out Ogres and adds, until it is time to detonate the bombs (when the 2nd floater will need to resume their regular duties).

Once we stumbled on to this, dealing with the ogres became much easier. Since the Ogres spawn in the same order that you activate the plates, the floaters can rotate around the room and help kill the ogres in no time. They are tough, but they crumble quickly under simultaneous fire from 3 or 4 guardians :)

Hope that helps!