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Finally completed the hard raid (Destiny)
(apologies for the length, and it's all spoilers for the raid)
Late last night some friends and I beat Oryx on hard. For anyone struggling with this, I'll share the approaches we took. The fireteam was made up of 2 titans, 2 warlocks, and 2 hunters. Lowest light was 306, highest was 311.
We tried the "leave the Ogres alive until after the stagger" stratgey for a while, but found it very susceptible to RNG fails. Random Ogre pathing can interfere with the runner, and the timing needs to be be very close on the ogre kills (and detonations). The taken adds (and Oryx) can kill a platformer during detonation. Getting everything right 4 or 5 times in a row was proving frustrating, especially since any guardian death eventually seems to lead to a wipe in this fight.
We put the above strategy aside and tried our normal mode strategy a few times to see where we were having problems related to heroic. On normal, we use 4 platformers and 1 floater (yes, the 4th platform isn't actually required to activate, but it's a good location for killing ogres and knights). The pain points using the normal strategy on heroic were downing both an Ogre and a knight quickly, and the occasional platform team death - usually related to staying on the platform too long trying to kill a knight, or running to/from a bomb detonation. Oh, and lack of ammo.
There's not much to be done about the ammo problem. If you're lucky, your chest armor will have a sniper ammo perk, and your boots will have a machine gun ammo perk, but at the moment it's better to have higher light than perfect perks. We've noticed that multi-kills seem to drop ammo more often, and since orbs are also usually in short supply, we changed the approach to the initial small wave of adds. Instead of killing the taken adds as soon as they spawn, we stayed back (spawn-side just behind the Daughter platforms) and let them come to us. As they collected in the center (Saturn side), a hunter trapped them with a bow before everyone opened fire/grenade. This left us a pile of ammo and orbs for future use.
For the Ogres, Knights and bombs, we stuck with 4 platformers and one floater, but added a short-duration titan bubble in the center for safety. This provided a safe haven for the platform team, who will eventually find platforms unsafe due to eyes, axion bolts, and tomb ship fire. We didn't try to have a single platform person kill both an Ogre and a knight solo. The platform team and floater worked together - the floater's priority was Knights over Ogres, and platform team priority was Ogres over knights. Missed knights were picked up from the center. There was only a brief pause to stagger Oryx; most time in the center was spent killing everything else.
Saturn
Knight #4 Knight #1
Plat #1 Plat #4
Ogre #1 Ogre #4
Daughter Daughter
Ogre #2 Ogre #3
Plat #2 Plat#3
Knight #3 Knight #2
Spawn
Runner:
The runner's job was unchanged in heroic - make the jumps and stay alive. Some relic positions have longer routes to the vessel than others; if the titan bubble is up it could be used for extra shields. It's important that the runner called out when he had the relic, as this informed the titan when he can place his bubble. Once the brand is stolen from the Vessel, the runner stayed a bit further away from center than normal so the invincibility bubble was beyond the titan bubble. The runner was responsible for calling out when it was time to stagger Oryx, and firing at Oryx after the stagger to keep his chest open.
Floater:
The floater began on the Daughter Platform away from Oryx, and moved to the center for the stagger or cover if needed. The Floater's primary responsibility was the Knights and staying alive, but he could place a couple rounds into an Ogre when when possible. Platformers that don't kill their knight called for assistance. The titan who created the bubble usually needed help with his knight, as did the 4th platformer (since his Ogre spawned last there wasn't much time to drop the last knight before needing to move to center). Eventually we just assigned the 4th knight to the floater entirely.
Platformers:
Simple instructions: stay alive, kill Ogres, kill knights if you can. As with normal mode, the Saturn-side platformers were a team, and the spawn-side platformers were a team, and they worked together to down their Ogres and knights. The Platformer's primary responsibility was to focus on the Ogres and drop them quickly, any missed knights were called out to the floater and picked up from the center. The bubble in the center was a safe haven until the invincibility bubble was available.
Titans:
We had one titan Saturn-side and one titan spawn-side. As soon as the runner grabbed the relic, the titan furthest from Oryx would move to the center area between the daughter platforms and pop a 30 second blessing bubble. Platformers beeline to this safe haven after killing their Ogres and knights, and move in and out as needed to kill the Vessel and adds.
We staggered Oryx as normal, but then spent several seconds clearing adds. The 30 second bubble was over by then, so there's a clear field of fire on any remaining taken. The platformers then detonated their blights as normal with a countdown. The platform person nearest Oryx needed to be mindful of his ranged fire; sprinting and taking cover behind the wall that separates him from Oryx helped.
The airstrike wasn't any different, but the knight appear to have better aim. Never run though fire and always sprint. Since we had two titans, used a blessing bubble in the Thunderdome as soon as the titan teleported. Taken control outside is critical, and as soon as each person entered the dome they ran directly to the edge to avoid the shade (he may already be moving to slam the center as you arrive).
Rinse and repeat. Looking back it ended up similar to the normal approach, but we added a blessing bubble in the center and the thunderdome, a floater who concentrated on the Knights instead of Ogres, and we made sure to kill knights and taken from the center before and after the stagger.
I read a similar strategy on reddit today: http://bit.ly/1N8A0MM
This approach uses an earlier 45 second bubble, two floaters (one a titan) to prioritize Ogres, and 3 platformers killing knights (the reverse of what we did). I'd like to give this strategy a try in tonight's XBox One raid.