First ‘Destiny’ Raid Challenge Is ‘Meh’ But Very Rewarding
The first King’s Fall Raid challenge went live Tuesday for Destiny, with the promise of big rewards for beating one of the Raid bosses in a different way. The Warpriest was up first, but the challenge doesn’t live up to the hype. Fortunately, the rewards do for PlayStation and Xbox owners.
The new Raid challenges were teased for Destiny in last week’s Bungie Weekly Update, with Lead Raid Designer Gavin Irby making the following explanation of what to expect.
Each boss’s challenge requires that you defeat them in a very specific manner. How, exactly? We’re going to leave that up to you to discover (but apologies in advance to those that run the single-pool strat for Golgoroth).
The reference to the single-pool strategy for Golgoroth suggested at least taking players out of their comfort zones and strategies that have been established since the King’s Fall Raid first went live for The Taken King by requiring them to do something different. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Warpriest.
As those familiar with the King’s Fall Raid know, the Warpriest requires three of the six players to stand on three plates in the same sequence as glyphs that appear on the backside of totems. The last player to stand on a plate will gain an aura that allows others to damage the Warpriest when they stand in it. Meanwhile, the aura holder will have to kill a minion approximately every nine seconds to stay alive. When the aura finally times out, players will return to their starting positions and repeat the same steps until the Warpriest is killed.
This naturally sets up a strategy of two players stationed at each of the three plates with one player designated to be the one that stands on the plate when the glyph caller calls out the order. Typically, the last plate will rotate through each of the three plates, and it will take three to four aura phases to bring down the Warpriest. Well-seasoned teams with high Light levels can bring him down in only two phases.
The challenge mode for the Warpriest does not really deviate from this strategy, however. It simply asks that no single player be the aura holder more than once. This doesn’t deviate from the current strategy utilized by fireteams at all, and won’t even come into play with the veteran teams who can bring the boss down in two or three aura phases.
The only time this puts a wrinkle in the plans is if an aura holder dies and the aura is passed unexpectedly to another player or if a group goes through four or more phases. But even then, it is a simple matter of swapping between the two players stationed at each plate as to who will step on the plate. Additionally, a fireteam is probably inexperienced and/or under leveled if it is taking four or more phases to bring down the Warpriest.
These level of rewards from a single encounter are sending players to higher Light levels much quicker than the weeks of grinding through normal and hard mode difficulty for the Raid has provided thus far.
The reaction from the Destiny community to this first challenge has largely been mixed to the Warpriest challenge. YouTube players, such as DattoDoesDestiny, declared the challenge to be “pathetic” and “garbage” due to the lack of actual challenge from the normal way of playing the encounter. Meanwhile, the Reddit community is split between those that believe that challenge shouldn’t cater to just the hardcore players such as Datto, and those lamenting the lack of creativity in the challenge. Still, everyone appears to agree that the rewards ultimately make the encounter worthwhile.
There are still more challenges to go in the Destiny Raid, with Golgoroth likely planned for the next Weekly Reset. Irby’s comment above at least makes it sound like using the normal strategy for the boss will not reward the challenge. Guardians will have to cross their fingers and wait.
Have you tried and completed the first Destiny King’s Fall Raid challenge with the Warpriest? What did you think? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via Bungie]
